Let me begin by reassuring you, the reader who might be put off by the title, that I support breastfeeding wholeheartedly. I am convinced of its benefits and pleased to see public awareness of them on the rise. I even hold the belief that sometime soon, it will become the pleasurable experience it is said to be. The very fact I no longer let out a yelp every time my daughter latches on is encouraging. Plus, she is beginning to focus further and for longer, so we may be approaching that fabled moment of eyes locking while she's on my breast. It's a good thing it's taken her a while, so she can be spared the sight of horror in her mother's eyes.

Many women would tell you that natural birthing is the most wonderful experience, but they won't spare the painful details. I wish more of them would have fessed up to the discomforts of that other wonder - breastfeeding.

I thought there are basically only two, interrelated challenges to breastfeeding - the baby latching on early on and properly and the mother having enough milk. So when Rada latched on as soon as I put her on my breast, I let her work at it with abandon. After all, she needed the exercise and my milk glands could use the stimulation. I scored high on both fronts, but instead of breastfeeding bliss, I secured a two-week nightmare.

Someone should have told me to go gentle on my nipples in those first days, so that they don't start to resemble minced meat. And I should have been prepared about waking up with two humongous, rock-hard, painfully throbbing, alien appendages on my chest on day two of my daughter's life.

So began the merciless cycle of feeding, pumping, smothering my cracked nipples with pure lanolin and all over again. As soon as I tried to pare down the pumping to alter the dynamics in this supply-and-demand environment, I started getting mastitis. In the hospital, a motherly but matter-of-fact nurse assessed the damage to my nipples and ruled out the electric pump. She led me to a sink and milked me manually. I came undone. Whether it was the actual pain or the emotional wear of the past days I don't know, but I think I hit her and then cried all the way home.

Now there were new steps added to the cycle, including learning to milk myself by hand (it took me two days), placing hot towels on my breasts and stuffing my nursing bra with cold cabbage leaves, which would soon start giving of the faint odour of cooked cabbage. Mmmm, sexy.
It took a lot of support from my husband and mother, great commitment, a high pain threshold and sheer willpower (and a lot of lanolin and cabbage) to get me over those first weeks. The "breastfeeding-is-wonderful" ideology clearly needs a strong educational component.