Happy World Breastfeeding Week!!

 

I'm so excited to be apart of this celebration of women, babies and feeding the natural way.  Here is some information on this year's theme:

"When we look at breastfeeding support, we tend to see it in two-dimensions: time (from pre-pregnancy to weaning) and place (the home, community, health care system, etc). But neither has much impact without a THIRD dimension - communication!

Communication is an essential part of protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding. We live in a world where individuals and global communities connect across small and great distances at an instant's notice. New lines of communication are being created every day, and we have the ability to use these information channels to broaden our horizons and spread breastfeeding information beyond our immediate time and place to activate important dialogue.

This third dimension includes cross-generation, cross-sector, cross-gender, and cross-culture communication and encourages the sharing of knowledge and experience, thus enabling wider outreach."

From WorldBreastfeedingWeek.org

How perfect is that?!    

I feel lucky and amazed at how awesome my breastfeeding journey has been so far.  Stella nursed like a champ 20 minutes after being born! Before I had Stella, I was determined to breastfeed her.  I got informed, educated and was going to make it work no matter what.  While in the hospital there came a point where the nurses said Stella had lost a pound in a day and needed to be supplemented and she wasn't getting enough milk (later we found out that the nurses weighed her on different scales and one wasn't balanced right. ha).  I was devastated!  I felt really discouraged.  But we stuck to it, spoke for hours with lactation consultants and got through it.  Baby girl is (almost) 11 months now.  She's strong, healthy and growing like a weed. 

I love that this year's theme has to do with communication!  There is no big company to put out breastfeeding ads, like formula companies.  No one makes money off of nursing moms (er.. unless you think about how much we would save if WIC didn't have to get out so many formula vouchers).  So, it's up to all of us to spread the word and information!  I am shocked at how often I hear wrong information being puked out of the mouths of people, who have cleared done absolutely no research on the subject.  Moms have to rely on doing their own research.  A lot of woman (like myself) think it will just come naturally and when it doesn't they get bombarded with formula ads, formula samples and everyone telling them to simply "supplement".  So, this year's theme fits perfectly.  We need to make breastfeeding normal.  Information and help need to be easily accessible.  So, keep posting pictures and sharing ads on facebook.  Keep nursing in public so everyone can see that is normal and natural.  And most importantly, keep supporting other moms!