Can I breast feed AND work?

Breast feeding is recommended for the first year of your child’s life, with the addition of solids after 6 months of age.

For most Mums, returning to work once their baby is firmly established on solids, this is still managable with a morning and night feed.  For many Medics, working long hours and shifts, this can be more difficult.

The guilt of not doing ‘the best’ for your child and weaning them from the breast before one year can often be confounded by the childs unwillingness to do so.

Many of you will sympathise with my experience of a screaming baby, ten different varieties of bottle, teat and formula all discarded.  Weeks of giving in and unclipping the bra.  There is no magic way to wean from the breast and your friendly health visitor will likely tell you “You need to do what you feel is best”.  Not very helpful when you start work in 4 weeks, kicking off with a week of nights and you have a baby who will not entertain a bottle and still breastfeeds twice in the night.

There are multiple discussion forums focussing on how to wean from the breast and unfortunately your Health Visitors are quite right with their vague advice and attempts at reassurance.  Every baby is and individual and, even as teeny tots, we all have diverse personalities, strong wills and, often, down right stubborn natures.

Whether you are of the ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ school of thought, you can not deny that our little angels are made of clever stuff and Doctor genes, unfortunately, can mean stubborn little babes who learn quickly how to get what they want!