Salt Lake City Based Photographer Timbra Wiist owns/operates Landslide Photography & Photographs the Journey of Motherhood (see bottom of page or sidebar for more info. . .depending on what this blog is choosing to do for the day).

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Story of our Success

breastfeedingcafecarnivalWelcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!



This post was written as part of the Breastfeeding Cafe's Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today's post is about breastfeeding success stories. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 22nd through August 4th!







I want to write something more profound here than I have time or capacity to do justice. I knew that I would breastfeed, it was never a question. I didn't understand what that meant, entirely. I never wondered if I could or if I would or if I should. I did have a limit of how long. I took that line in the sand and I jumped over it ten fold (no exaggeration). I wasn't aware of how many things could potentially put a kink in my plan and maybe ignorance is bliss or maybe it makes it that much simpler to just start and push forward. No looming cloud of what ifs and uncertainty to stop you before you even have a chance to try. I have wandered down an unexpected road. I have charted unfamiliar feelings and territories and explored things in my relationship with my husband, that we never even fathomed considering as part of our parenting BEFORE we were parents. I have done things I swore I would never do and once rolled my eyes at friends for. My daughters, bonded as they are to me, attached as they are to me, have grown and are growing into the girls that are inside of them. My success is ongoing, because it will never be complete, as I will always be their mother, nurturing, loving, moving them forward, through every part of their lives that I am present for.

Is success in the length of days that a child is brought to breast? Or in knowing that you have done your very best to do what was right for your child, different as they are in ever circumstance. I have not always been the most amazing mother, but with my milk I have healed every imaginable hurt that the universe could throw at a child until the age of 5. . .from here, my hugs, my words, my kisses and my listening ears will have to offer the healing. With my milk I have grown two FAT babies on the outside of my body, after growing them inside me first. I have watched their thighs grow enormous, their chins double and triple, the corners of their mouths running over with drips of that which makes them drunk. I have held a sleeping baby for more days than I have slept since my first night of motherhood more than 7 years ago. I may sleep again someday, and I will miss knees in my back and clinging to the edge for dear life, because I will then remember how short a time they shared that space with me.

I am successful because I did what I set out to do and I opened my heart up to realizing there was so much more to it all than what I went into it for. I am successful because I sat back and allowed my children to teach me instead of holding on to preconceived notions of what motherhood and parenting are about. I am a success because. . .they see me no other way, until I tell them so :)





Here are more post by the Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival participants! Check back because more will be added throughout the day.

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