Breastfeeding debriefing sessions can be a powerful way to move through your breastfeeding story.

Just like birth, we carry our breastfeeding journey with us. Sometimes for decades! Grandmothers often tell me their feeding story when they find out what I do!

It is important that we process it. By understanding what happened and why, we can move through and let go of some of the subsequent guilt, shame or anger that women often feel (even through we shouldn’t!).

Maybe it was painful feeding, supply issues, recurrent mastitis, weight gain concerns, irregular breasts, traumatic life events at the time, previous breast surgeries or any combination of above, we can talk it all through.

When breastfeeding doesn’t go well, there is often a Mother struggling with her mental health as well. PND affects 1 in 5 or 20% of women in Australia, this stat goes pretty well hand in hand with our breastfeeding rates. 

So we need to do better at helping women to breastfeed. But we also need to respect decisions to stop, help that process and debrief with the Mother so that isn’t carried around as guilt or shame for the rest of her life.