Breastfeeding.... what I was expecting was a beautiful, natural, nourishing, most amazing bond with my infant, what I got instead- tears, aguish, frustration, self doubt, and more tears. I am a HUGE breastfeeding, or feeding your child whenever the heck you want advocate, and when this didn't go well for me, I basically felt like a fraud to put in bluntly. I remember pumping every 2 hours for almost 3 days straight at one point for ONE ounce... ONE ounce. It eventually go to the point where I would look at the pump and just start bawling my eyes out. My husband literally had to tell me, "that's enough. It it okay to put that thing away." I of course cried some more, because now in my mind I was a failure. Looking back now, there are many things I now know and resources I am aware of (trust me, they don't make these resources easy to locate for a post partum mother). I wish I knew then what I know now, and for the longest time I couldn't even talk about it without just breaking down. As strange as it may sound, photographing mother's on their breastfeeding journey has been such a healing process for me. It brings me so much joy to capture a moment so fleeting and so special. It's also felt pretty darn special that my own son has been a long for many of these shoots. He is such a goofball and tends to keep all toddlers involved happy lol. The moral of the story is you are enough BUT if you need help there ARE community resources
#1 find your local le leech league - they can help you with different holds as well as assess for lip and tongue ties (yes that's a thing, who knew!?) https://llli.org
#2 join "crunchy mom" groups on facebook, they are a wealth of information
#3 there is an entire community of mothers that share their oversupply called Human Milk for Human Babies HM4HB www.instagram.com/hm4hb/ they also have state by state pages on facebook
