I remember quietly celebrating World Breastfeeding Week and National Breastfeeding Month for the first time in August 2017. My daughter was just around six months old at the time. I couldn’t believe I had made it to six months of breastfeeding. Ironically enough, I’d been sitting in our rocking chair scrolling Instagram as I nursed and rocked her to sleep when I stumbled upon a photo of a woman breastfeeding with “World Breastfeeding Week” scrawled across the photo. Shock had hit me like a bucket of ice water; wait, people celebrated breastfeeding?!
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely didn’t have a problem with the picture or the content of her post. I was just so surprised that there was recognition for the somewhat hidden work of breastfeeding. Now, I say hidden work because a lot of the time I had to leave a room where people were to go feed my daughter in a different, silent room. Not from shame or embarrassment, but rather because she was a distractible baby and wouldn’t focus on nursing if anything was going on around her, or because I needed to nurse her to sleep. I was shocked because before that moment I’d never felt seen as a nursing mom.
Sure, I’d been in public with milk leaking out of my breasts and staining my shirt, and I’d had to whip one out in numerous places to satisfy my hungry child. However, I’d only felt seen as sort of a freak show in those moments, not as a woman trying her hardest to continue sustaining her baby by spending the hours almost equivalent to a full-time job breastfeeding around the clock. Breastfeeding was just something I did, it wasn’t something people talked about.
But suddenly, that post made me feel seen and reassured me that there was a whole community of women out there sitting in their rocking chairs with a breast out, too. Even just knowing there were other nursing mamas out there made those hours nursing alone in the dark seem so much less lonely. It was like I’d joined the sisterhood of the nursing mamas.
That woman will never know what her post meant to me back then or what it still means to me now. Breastfeeding takes time, dedication, some of the mama’s freedom and can feel back-breaking at times, but it is truly worth celebrating. Nursing mamas continue to give even more of themselves to their little ones every day, every moment spent breastfeeding.
So, the next time you are alone in that quiet room doing the unseen work of breastfeeding, please know that every minute, every drop of milk, every kink in your neck is worthy of recognition and you are not even close to being alone because I am still here sitting in our rocking chair now with my son on my breast.
If you need any help with breastfeeding, the hospital you gave birth at and/or your doctor should be able to get you in touch with a lactation consultant. Here are some other resources for your review as well:
Dakota DeSanctis is the Editor-in-Chief of Connecting Mothers Initiative, a Navy wife and a mother of two. She has her bachelor’s degree in English from California Baptist University and loves baking, reading, spending time with her family and exercising.
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