“Breastfeeding is being championed. Yay!” We cheer on social media, and around our female friends with feminist pride. But at three am you may be cudgeling yourself with, “Oh, dear god, what have we done.” Intellectually, we all know it’s better for our babies, and instinctually, many of us want to do it. But at no point during our pregnant daydreaming did we really understand the pain, frustration, self-judgment, and fear we would be in for by choosing to breastfeed. 

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For some women there is a great fear surrounding breastfeeding. It is an unidentified fear, a sinking feeling, an unnamed anxiety. A friend of mine’s saintly cousin called this fear her “Impending Sense of Doom.”… She trained her family to tell her everything was going to be OK and to cheer her on… I picture her husband and other kids cheering her on, pompoms in hand, every three hours. While the fear part is awful, having a cheering squad every time you feed your baby seems awesome!

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For me the fear was precipitated by pain. By the end of week two of nursing, my nipples felt like they were being held in vice grips while being licked by a cat with a sandpaper tongue over and over. I was pretty sure I could hear the scraping, but I may have been hallucinating from the pain. Both nipples were cracked and white... when they weren’t bleeding. Hoping it would resolve itself, I grinned and bore the pain, and had fantasies of giving The Best Husband Ever the worst titty twisters of his life just so I wouldn’t be alone in the pain.

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We tell ourselves that breastfeeding is natural, and therefore we should all be able to do it. While it is natural, it is not easy. This book is for every woman who found the truth of breastfeeding to be somewhat askew from her pre-baby fantasies, and for every woman who does not want to be taken by surprise by the latch – or lack there of.

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Includes topics like:

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• Latching onto Latching

• Screaming at the Breast

• The Good, the Bad And the Ugly of Pumping

• Nursing Mothers Do it in Groups

• Mastitis, Engorgement and Other Pains in the Boob

• Woman vs the Cover

• And Then There Were Teeth

• The Bottle Battle

 

This book is not intended for diagnosis, but for entertainment and commiseration.