Although your breastfeeding goes like silk, it is more than likely that at some point someone has asked you how long you will keep it. If problems also arise, for example, repeated mastitis, or let's not say if breastfeeding starts to be prolonged (something that happens to some soon enough), almost anyone will dare to ask you why are you still breastfeeding despite the difficulties, with how easy it would be to leave it, with that of alternatives that exist, with how easy it is to give a bottle, etc. and so on.
The truth is that when you breastfeed and give it with pleasure, there are many reasons to continue breastfeeding and overcome complications. Everyone will have their own, I tell you what are mine.
Personal relationships, the vital situations we are going through, are almost never perfect. Expecting breastfeeding to be all pink is unrealistic.. It's like believing that love has to be like in Hollywood movies. You have to learn to value difficulties as what they are, difficulties that almost always have a solution.
Even in a breastfeeding that works very well, some difficulty may arise at any given time. For example, an obstruction, a pearl of milk, a strike of breastfeeding, the child who is with the mouth and gives him to bite the nipple, a trip that we must do without the child and we must take out milk or suddenly take the child the habit of manipulating our face while breastfeeding, as in the photo of this article. They are annoying situations, sometimes painful, but almost always overcome in a short space of time. Are we going to throw overboard something that satisfies us both for a circumstance that will have happened in a few days?
Put the pros and cons on a scale
Just as I do not separate from my husband because of a quarrel or resign as a mother on the day my eldest son is fatal or when the child wakes up ten times in one night, I do not stop breastfeeding when difficulties arise. I put everything on a scale and it compensates me to continue because even after a year and a half I still find it very nice and I don't want it to end. If one day it were not so, perhaps I would think of a gradual and respectful weaning, but in the meantime my balance continues to lean on the side of the pros.
Women have been told and they continue to tell us many lies and one of them is that there are many alternatives to breastfeeding. As a mom who has given her baby and breastfeeding almost exclusively to the second, I can say that the only alternative that exists to breastfeeding is non-breastfeeding.
If the baby is small and does not breastfeed, he will take bottles, and that is not an alternative, it is a means of feeding that has the same end but very different characteristics to breastfeeding, which goes far beyond pure nutrition. Real alternative would be to be able to offer something of the same characteristics for both, which is not the case. And if the baby is large, the alternative is to take dairy, cow's milk, in short, what each family considers, but there we are not even talking about artificial feeding but about the cessation of all types of breastfeeding.
That this fits worse or better in each family is a very personal matter. It suits me very well to continue breastfeeding and other options, knowing them as I have known them, they don't convince me.
My little son eats little and bad. While we are breastfeeding, I am calm that I eat a complete and healthy food, absolutely free and that is also always at its point.
If we add to this the viruses that his brother constantly brings from school and take a year and a half checking as while others fall without compassion, he is the one who stays healthier of all, for me it is another reason to continue.
It is the most obvious but not least important reason: we are both happy. Like all personal relationships, they are healthy when both parties come together willingly and willingly. From my baby it is clear his desire to continue and for my part even more, I do not even know how it has been so long since we started, it has become very short.
If I was not happy, if I was tired, if I felt it as a sacrifice, I would not continue breastfeeding or think about maintaining breastfeeding until natural weaning.
Today's moms have very few cultural references as far as breastfeeding is concerned. You breastfeed little, breastfeed secretly and breastfeed children over six months is Rare avis. And it's a shame because although breastfeeding has a lot of natural, it also has a lot of culture, of comadres, transmission of wisdom from mothers to daughters. Before giving birth to my first child, I was very clear about how to make a bottle, but I had no idea how to breastfeed or have seen anyone give it.
When there are no references or anyone to help you, it is much more difficult. When they criticize you, they don't support you, they insist you with wrong information, it is much more difficult. If I continue, if other moms continue, if we treat it naturally, we will create a new culture of breastfeeding and the moms who come behind will have seen breastfeeding and know who to ask if they have doubts.
I will continue until natural weaning. How long are you going to continue? What are your reasons?
