I love that he feels safe

Chantay's story

I have a beautiful, loving and smiley boy. More than ever I feel our bond when feeding. He smiles up at me, puts his fingers in my mouth and strokes my face and just stares lovingly as if to say ‘thank you’. When he is in pain with his teeth, I am his comfort. When he is tired, I am his comfort. I love that he feels safe and can still fall asleep in my arms. It’s magical.

Our feeding journey started off hard and got even harder. I always knew I wanted to breastfeed, but never knew the complications that it could entail.

Noah was delivered via emergency caesarean section after four tiring days of what felt like a failed birth. We were both stressed and tired and I thought my journey would never begin. I missed that beautiful moment of skin-to-skin and bonding. Instead, I had cannulas and wires in the way and he didn’t want to latch.

Once at the ward Noah still didn’t want to latch and if he did it was never for long. Despite this, I was sent home and ended up in tears by day two. Engorged with a baby that couldn’t feed and a mumma that was tired, I will never forget and can only thank the support of a patient midwife that came to my home and helped with latch, showed me how to hand express and more importantly taught me about all of the signs that Noah was showing.

He became reliant on nipple shields, was full of gas and constantly being sick. It was tough, emotional and I just wanted to help my baby. At this point we learned he was tongue-tied and had a whole new journey to experience. He ended up getting his tongue tie snipped, however this wasn’t a quick fix and we saw little improvement, his latch didn’t improve for weeks, and I just learned how to navigate on little sleep and lots of cluster feeding. I can remember crying during feeds, thinking that it couldn’t be normal for my baby to be so sad after feeds and during. Even at this point, eight weeks in, I knew that I couldn’t give up because I loved every moment when he did latch and was content. I just felt like I needed to continue.

From eight weeks to around four months our journey still wasn’t simple, Noah had what we think was reflux and potentially a diary intolerance. I gave up dairy, which was tough as chocolate was my best friend. Noah was constantly spitting up, crying, arching his back and was not comfortable. Despite this, breastfeeding still offered him comfort and warmth.

It was at around four months that I found my groove. I began breastfeeding in public without fear, in fact, with pride. Noah didn’t stop growing throughout our whole journey, even with his complications… He loved the boob and all of his milk.