For You

Spilt Milk Book, Excerpt
This book is lovingly dedicated to women and their feeding experiences. It is dedicated to the memories we have made in our journeys and to the new stories that are to come.
It is for mothers denied the chance to breastfeed, by a healthcare system that often did not appreciate the importance of human milk, for human babies.
It is for mothers who could breastfeed in theatre straight after a caesarean, while being stitched up and for those who couldn’t, due to nausea, breathlessness or the position of their breast or nipples when they lay on their backs.It’s for the women who fear there is something wrong with their nipples, when they are in the wonderful range of perfectly normal.
It is for our precious breastmilk donors, who are helping the slow return to this life-giving practice.

This book is dedicated to women who had milk coming in after a 12-week miscarriage and women who had milk coming in after a stillbirth.
It is for women told to stop expressing when they wanted to keep going and for those told they must express, when they needed to stop.
It is for women told to wake a growing, happy baby overnight and those told to not wake a baby who slept well overnight, but who really wasn’t growing well.
It is for women who had a wonderful breastfeeding experience, even though they didn’t always feel they could talk about it.

This book is for those mothers who broke all the rules.
It’s for women for whom the trauma around their breastfeeding meant that they never breastfed again.
This book is also for dads, who often don’t have a lot of support themselves, through the difficult early days of parenting.
It is for non-biological, adoptive mothers and rainbow parents, who sometimes can lactate but often can’t, yet find a way to lovingly nurture and sustain their babies.
It is for lesbian mothers, for whom the birth mother breastfeeds and for those that share the feeding, if they can.
It is for mothers who regretted their prior breast surgery when they wanted to breastfeed.
It is for those who were so much healthier and happier after surgery that they didn’t regret it, whether they could breastfeed or not.

This book is for women who faced the heartache of having an abnormality of the breast, which only became apparent when they tried to breastfeed and couldn’t, despite trying every bit of advice given.
It is for women whose breasts filled, but neither the baby nor pumping, could get their milk to flow.
It is for women who suffered sexual or physical trauma or abuse in their pasts, or in their childhoods, which came to light for them in their breastfeeding years.

The list above is not exhaustive but it shows us the huge range of experiences, joys and sorrows that come with breastfeeding. It’s so hard in the dark of night, when you’re alone with your baby and wondering if you’re ‘doing it right’ to remember that no one mother-and-baby-team feeds the same as any other. Find the place that you’re comfortable in and take time to work out your synergy as a team. Be kind to yourself, mama.