Proud to be a Breastfeeding Mom

There are some mothers who breastfed because they were told to do so. So they did it and that was that.

There are some mothers who breastfed because it's supposed to be the best and they want to be good mothers. So they did it and that was that.

There are some mothers who breastfed because they were stay-at-home Moms or were poor and felt they had no choice. So they did it and that was that.

And then there are some like us... not everyone of us started out fine, not everyone of us had the right support group, or the correct information, or the ideal birthing scenario or healthy baby. Not everyone of us was exclusively breastfeeding at first and some of us even had sores and infections and whatever else breast-related pain. Heck, some of us even had babies who refused to latch, period. But somehow, breastfeeding became a personal thing for us. We fell in love with it, its benefits, its rewards. So despite the initial discomfort and the exhaustion over being at the beck and bawl of a wee babe, we kept on. And we started reading up about it. And we started egging friends and family to do it. And we dressed for it. And we did it in public. And we can talk for hours on end about it. It's become part of our belief system, our lifestyle, our child's babyhood. And however way you shake us, and though we can respect other moms' decisions, a part of us will never, ever understand again how other moms can choose not to breastfeed.

Somehow, in the course of the conversion, breastfeeding has become as natural to us as breathing, eating, loving and mothering. Suggest to us that we stop cold turkey and we feel threatened, that we're being stripped of rights.

Any fertile woman, heck, even a teener, CAN technically become a mother by getting pregnant. And with modern medicine, giving birth isn't anymore the one-foot-in-the-grave thing that it used to be. But breastfeeding still remains to be as much of the motherly sacrifice as it was hundreds of years ago.

And thus, donated breastmilk can nothing be but pure love in milk bottles.

I'm blessed to be a Mom. I'm proud to be a breastfeeding mom.