A Matter of Choice

When I was pregnant with Leo, although nervous about the pain of labour,  I was quite relaxed about how it all might turn out,  I had a vague birth plan -  avoid an epidural or c-section if possible, would quite like a water birth, but failing that gas and air or pethidine.  The main aim was to have a baby and I wasn't planning to beat myself up about how that might happen.   The same applied when it came to feeding him, I planned to breast feed as 'that's what you do' but I had brought a steriliser and bottles before birth just in case (No formula though - really didn't think that one through as I realised at midnight on the first day home!)  I also had a breast pump as I was going to express so Aaron could feed him too.  I said many times while pregnant when asked if I was going to breast feed (Why do people insist on keep asking that anyway, what's it got to do with anything?!)  that I would if I could, I never said a definite ye...

This week's prompt from  The Gallery  is Motherhood. It's taken me a couple of days to think about this one and even still I don't feel there are the right words to describe what motherhood means to me, I could come up with many different words but I don't feel I would have done it justice. Looking through my pictures, (and that takes a couple of days!) I was having a hard time deciding, until that is I came across this one. During my pregnancy I had planned to breastfeed, I had a couple of bottles which I planned to use after a while with expressed milk, and had NO formula (hence the  midnight dash to buy formula ) but breast feeding didn't happen. I decided before Leo's birth that I wouldn't beat myself up about it if it wasn't working for us and apart from a slight hormonal wobble I didn't. Obviously breast milk is the "ideal" as it's designed for the purpose but I have a healthy happy little boy who doesn't seem to be dis...