Back to reality....

So I've finally come back down from cloud nine and it's time to get back to reality... Just over three weeks after my last post on April 10, my fiancée and I welcomed our beautiful monster Jayse Anthony into the world. Weighing in at a healthy 4.2kgs, he is nothing short of perfection. Jayse is almost 4 months now and I still cannot believe how quickly time has flown. It still feels like yesterday that I was pacing the floor of the birthing suite at the hospital. And yes labour isn't something I would recommend to everyone. It is nothing short of pure agony. But the reward you get for all your efforts is pure bliss and simply breath taking. Those first few moments with your new bundle of joy leaves you to wonder how on earth you could feel such immense love for a teeny, tiny human you've only just met.

Already motherhood has thrown me a lot of curved balls and it has at times been amazingly overwhelming. But it is by far unlike anything I have ever experiecned in my 24 years and everyday it seems my little man is teaching me how to be a better mum. I've discovered that no amount of baby books can prepare you for the journey of motherhood and that most of the time it's about trusting your gut instinct.

So far the biggest hurdle we've faced has been the ongoing feud between breast and bottle feeding. Many tears were shed over the decision to put our bub on full time formula. The amount of times I got the "breast is best" speech off midwives made me feel, as a first time mum, like I was a failure. But after six weeks of perserverance every feeding session had turned into me physically sobbing from the pain and it was hard to bear. I went to many breast feeding clinics, where all the midwives told me Jayse was "attaching" fine and "it shouldn't be hurting", but by the time my nipples were blistered and had cracks as deep as the Grand Canyon in them I knew something had to change. Yes I had many family members telling me that formula-fed babes turned out no different to breast-fed ones. But it wasn't until a very experienced midwife pulled me aside at a breast feeding clinic one day and told me that it was ok to put Jayse on formula that I felt better about my decision. God bless her!

That got me thinking - have other mums experienced these feelings too?

How many other first time mums had been made to feel like failures because they decided to give their first borns formula?

And could breast really be best when it got me to the point of not wanting to feed my own child because of the severe pain?

My whole experience of motherhood became a whole lot brighter when I decided to formula feed and I want new mums who are going through the same thing to know your not putting your baby at risk in any way by deciding to switch to formula.

Jayse at 1 day and 3 months old