Breastfeeding--or as we call it in my house, "food from the boobs". Because we are classy like that.

Yes, "food from the boobs" is actually what we say.  I said it as a joke one day, and it stuck.  It's ridiculous.  We ALL say it.

Anyway, let me begin this somewhat complex post with this:  I don't claim to be an expert on breastfeeding, nor do I turn my nose up at women who do not breastfeed.  To be frank, I don't care how you feed your baby, because your baby is not my baby.  Unless you are literally abusing or harming your baby, I will not intervene in any way, shape, or form, until you specifically ask me to.  

I have had a lot of my new-mom friends ask me for advice on breastfeeding, because I've been doing it since day one of my son's birth, and I'm still doing so at 15 months.  Sometimes, I find it hard to be of any real help because I am one of those women who have had no obstacles to overcome with breastfeeding.  He latched on as soon as the nurses handed him back to me after being cleaned off post-birth.  My supply has always been abundant, and since I stay home, I never had to stress about pumping.  I have pumped before, and I have to say, that's the only thing that didn't work out so well.  I wanted to pump so that my husband and the girls could have the opportunity to feed him.  They were really excited about doing that, and I wanted to make it possible.  It was difficult for me to pump for a few reasons.  First, I was holding a baby in my arms who could see the pump in "his" spot, so he would push it away, and second, I really only got 2 ounces before I was over it.  I had a manual pump, so that may be why!  He also had little interest in the taking a bottle--when I was around, anyway.  Before he was eating solids, there were two occasions that I had to be away from him, and therefore, had to pump.  Now, if I worked outside the home, this would all have played out differently, and I would have made it a point to get my son used to a bottle, and made pumping a priority.  With that particular point, I am in no way saying that if you are a working mother who doesn't pump, that you are doing something wrong.

At around 6 months, people started asking me when I was going to stop breastfeeding.  I'm going to go on a tangent for a minute here.  Recently, I've seen a lot of blog posts and articles where women say that they feel like they must defend their formula-feeding.  In my experience, bottle and formula feeding is "the norm".  That's why there is a big push to normalize breastfeeding, because it's not considered "the norm".  In my life, I have never known any of my formula-feeding friends to have dealt with the sort of quizzing that I've dealt with.  But I've had SO many people--friends, family, and even people I don't know very well--ask me "why don't you just formula feed?" or "when are you going to stop?"; and while being with my formula-feeding peers, I've never encountered people asking them "why aren't you breastfeeding?"  That is certainly not to say that it doesn't happen, because according to the many blog posts and articles I've been seeing lately, it does!  Please keep in mind, I'm simply speaking from my own experiences.  I have someone in my family who can't believe I'm still nursing at this point, because that person assumes that my milk should have dried up by now.  There is a statistic through Northeastern University that cites that only 16% of infants are exclusively breastfed through 6 months.  So, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised when people are surprised at the length of time I've been nursing!  

Now, the advice that I have been giving to my friends who come to me with their breastfeeding struggles is as follows:

Do YOUR personal best.  Whether that is 2 minutes, 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years--you do what YOU can.  You do what works for your family.  And be as positive as you can, with whatever comes your way.

Again, that is for women who have proactively come to me and are breastfeeding.  This is not for a woman I happen to see out in the world giving her baby a bottle of formula.  She did not ask me anything.  Unsolicited advice is not cute.

I was nursing in public once, (which I do often) and a random woman gave me the "good for you" pat on the back, and told me she tried to breastfeed, and "failed".  I told her she didn't fail at anything.  And according to the look on her face, she hadn't heard that before.  That made me sad.  It also made me sad that she felt that she owed me, a perfect stranger, any kind of explanation!  I think there is a weird stereotype about nursing mothers, and that is that we are all a bunch a-holes who look down upon mothers who don't nurse.  I'm sure there are women out there who do that, but I am not one of them.  The kind of woman that I consider myself to be is one who will listen to you, support you, and help you if you ask me to.  I'll hug you and tell you it's ok, because I know that I need that sometimes too.

*Here is a picture of me feeding the little one that got reported on Facebook.  I took the picture because my husband was out of town, and asked me to take a picture of all of us, so this is what I captured.  I thought it was adorable the way my son was touching his sister's face, so I decided to post it on my Facebook, you know, where I have friends who aren't jerks to me about my life.  It got reported within 10 minutes of me posting it.  So lame.*