My breastfeeding experience By Claire Foskett
How it inspired me to write a book My breastfeeding journey started in June 2017 when I had my first daughter Nora. In hindsight, I had a pretty ordinary breastfeeding experience – though I didn’t know it at the time. However many books I read and however much the antenatal classes told me, in the early days I often found myself thinking ‘Is this normal?!’. Then I’d look online and see that hundreds of other women had been through the same thing. I loved breastfeeding but I wasn’t prepared for all the added extras – the leaking, the restrictions, the sheer relentless monotony of it all. I felt like knowing what to expect might have made those frazzled, foggy times a little clearer.. After a few weeks of breastfeeding I started writing poems about what me and my boobs were going through. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the poems but I wanted to share my experience somehow. There seemed to be a lot of organisations supporting breastfeeding, lots of serious instruction manuals available, and plenty of online forums with posts from sleep-deprived mums – but very little published on what breastfeeding is really like. The ideas kept coming and, before I knew it, I had written about 20 poems. I decided to embark on publishing them as a book. Life took over and the book took a back seat as I committed myself fully to breastfeeding, despite all the boob admin involved! When Nora was 5 months old I went away to a hen do. I pumped every day for weeks so that my husband Daniel had enough milk to feed Nora while I was away. Throughout the hen do weekend I had to duck away from
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the festivities multiple times to pump and dump. And I thought my boobs were going to explode as I sat waiting for my delayed train to take me home! Despite the discomfort and effort involved, that weekend was so important for my sanity – so I felt like it was worth it! I couldn’t wait to start solids and share the load more with Daniel. We started at 6 months, but it wasn’t the instant fix I’d hoped for. I was surprised and disappointed when, weeks later, Nora was still breastfeeding multiple times a day and once overnight. At 8 months I went back to work and Daniel began shared parental leave. We switched Nora to formula for daytime feeds whilst I continued to breastfeed her morning, bedtime and once overnight. At 9 months she finally started sleeping through and I felt like a real weight was lifted. I was still having to pump in hotel rooms when I
