Breastfeeding - the most natural thing in the world

When breastfeeding works it must be fantastic. I can't think of anything I'd like to watch more than LB on SWMBO's boob with SWMBO's smiling face looking down at our cooing, sucking, happy baby.

On the other hand I can't think of anything I hate more than watching SWMBO struggle with nipple shields that don't stick a supply line that randomly leaks and a double breast pump that means I have to help her drink as one-handed breast pumping takes too bloody long. Throw in meltdowns because SWMBO thinks that she's a failure and LB screaming randomly at 4 in the morning when all we want to do is get his latest feed into him and get back to bed so that I can get up for work in 2 hours and you can hopefully forgive for wondering how the hell women breastfeed!

Oh sorry, I forgot to add the pressure put on new mothers with the whole "breast is best" thing. Yes, I'm well aware the breast milk is better than formula but there's so much pressure put on mothers to breastfeed here in Australia that mothers feel like sh|t when their baby won't feed from the boob or they can't for some reason.

I now can't decide what has been the hardest part of this whole process so far. The candidates are:

• Getting SWMBO up the duff
• Getting LB happily on the boob
• Choosing LB's name

To be fair, we are very lucky in that our local Child and Family Health office isn't overrun like some others and SWMBO has been able to spend a few days at a residential facility that deals with feeding/settling issues and she's going back there against at some point in the future as well as having regular appointments at our local children's hospital's breastfeeding help unit.

Everybody that we've spoken to so far has been fantastic, don't get me wrong and we're incredibly lucky to have access to some of the resource that we do but all the help seems to have been focused on getting breast milk into LB whether it's getting SWMBO into a continual cycle of express, feed, play, settle, express, feed, play, settle or having LB breastfed 'naturally' with the help of a nipple shield a supply line and a sheet to 'help' with wandering hands.

I would like nothing more than to see LB happily sucking from SWMBO's boobs (except for the contraceptive effect), but how can the most natural thing in the world be so f$cking difficult?

Rant over!