When I started ttc my second child in January 2010, I also starting thinking about how I'd feel about feeding a new baby, given my experiences with failure to establish breastfeeding first time around. I realized that even though my son was over a year old, I still had 'issues' surrounding our experiences with breastfeeding, and that I needed to work through them for myself before any new baby came along. So I started writing it all down - what we went through, and how it made me feel.
It was originally going to be just a quick journal to post on a parenting website to which I belong (UK Babycentre), to finally let those feelings go. But one year on and 14,000 words later it turned out to be far more than a quick journal post. I finally forced myself to finish it in February 2011, with my new baby's arrival immanent. I posted the journal in instalments on Babycentre, but due to the encouragement I received there I have decided to post it more publicly here, to create a more permanent record of my breastfeeding experience, and to share my journey with others who may also be coming to terms with similar issues.
I should say that writing all this down and releasing it to the world felt, and to some extent still feels, incredibly self indulgent. I realise that my woes over a comparably minor issue are nothing compared with the many things people go through in becoming, or trying to become, parents. I realize how lucky I am to have a happy, healthy, baby and another on the way, and it does feel slightly ridiculous to have devoted so much time and heartbreak to something so minor. But it's how things felt to me, and I feel I have to acknowledge that (after all, no one needs to read the damn thing).
So this is just by way of explanation of where the following entries are coming from, as a record of a two year journey coming to terms with an emotionally difficult experience, and preparing for the possibility of going through it all again.
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