If you chose to breastfeed your baby, we are lucky to have good breastfeeding support locally with Gloucestershire Breastfeeding Supporters Network (GBSN) and Breastfeeding Network (BFN).
If you are breastfeeding your baby and would like help or would like to get out and meet other mothers, breastfeeding groups can be a lifesaver.
In Gloucestershire you will also be supported by the practice and your health visitor and midwife if you breastfeed.
We are fortunate to have two charities providing non-judgemental support.
- Gloucestershire Breastfeeding Supporters’ Network
- www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk
- NHS: Breastfeeding: the first few days
- Information library – ABM
- Get Support – La Leche League GB
- National breastfeeding helpline
- Positioning and attachment video (unicef.org.uk)
Books you may enjoy
- The Positive Breastfeeding Book
- The Food of Love: Your Formula to Successful Breastfeeding
- The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding grief
Sadly sometimes support is not as it should be for families and their babies. We are told continuously how good breastfeeding is for us and our baby and how we should breastfeed. However, we are not always given the tools and support to do this when we come across challenges and also to help with our expectations and society’s expectations of breastfeeding.
We have all seen images of babies being breastfed and may have seen it in real life. But in the same way that we see cars, we don’t know how to drive them unless we are shown how in the form of lessons.
Mothers who do not achieve their breast feeding goals, have not ‘failed’ they have been failed by society.
Grief around finishing a breastfeeding journey early can stay with mothers for decades, affecting their relationships with family and their children and even into the next generation as they support their children becoming parents.