The Art of Breastfeeding and Avoiding Difficulties

Tuesday February 3rd LLL of Murray held her second official meeting. We had 12 moms in attendance, the only 4 "returning moms" were the leader and the 3 moms who took on group jobs at our fist meeting. . . so, 8 new moms. An entirely different group dynamic and lots of new perspectives. We had 4 expecting moms (all of whom have older children, 3 of whom are still nursing) and babies in attendance from ages 2 weeks to 3 years. I am also happy to announce that Jaclyn is our new group Treasurer/Bookkeeper. We hope to be selling slings, maya tais, etc in the near future.

Our discussion began with the questions "Who were you before you were 'mom' and how have you held onto those things or incorporated them into your life AS a mother?" Answers ranged from community activism turned breastfeeding advocate, to those with degrees in higher learning still using their specialties a few hours each week or when they need to be part of the "grown up" world, and of course we had some working moms as well.

This month's meeting topic was Meeting 3: The Art of Breastfeeding and Avoiding difficulties.

Each mother was given a piece of paper with a difficulty that may be encountered during the "normal" course of breastfeeding written on it: mastitis, nursing strikes, "normal" nursing patterns in a newborn, more/less nursing at milestones,etc. We went around the room reading our "difficulties" and hearing from those who had encountered some of them. We discussed what the "normal" course of breastfeeding included and that "normal" is an arbitrary word really, each baby, mother and nursing situation is completely different. We also talked through some difficulties not listed, such as dealing with public opinion on nursing in public, including places like gyms, malls and even the pediatrician's office. And finally talked through where different moms found their resolve to continue nursing even when experiencing difficulties at various stages/ages of nursing.

Moms came and went at various times due to older children in school, work schedules and the like. I was able to meet with one mom privately before she left while the meeting needed to continue for a few minutes without me. Several of the "new" mothers had learned of our meetings online either through our blog or other online forums. About half of the mothers stayed after the official meeting where I was able to address some one-on-one questions. The later conversation circled around child wearing, weaning and child spacing. To make our meeting space more "breastfeeding friendly" we displayed photos of nursing moms (with photographer's permission) taken for a project titled "Positive Images of Breastfeeding" which have recently been donated to the Utah Breastfeeding Coalition. Of course these will be taken down after each meeting.