E-Friends and Breastfeeding

When I was planning our wedding, I found a website called "The Knot". I was on this site everyday for a year while getting ready for the biggest day of my life...About 3 months before the big day, Frank and I started talking about having a baby and what our plan of action would be. There is a sister website to the know called "The Bump" for all things baby. So I decided to hang around there for a while. I got to know a bunch of the ladies on there. After our wedding I was on the bump more and more, and just 2 months after our wedding we found out we were going to be parents!

As a young wife and young soon to be mom, my friends really didn't get me. Why does this 22 year old want to be tied down, why would she want a baby and give up her "freedom"? I never saw it like that. Since I was a young girl I wanted to get married young and have a baby young. So when I found this group of women on the bump I was overjoyed. A few weeks into my pregnancy we went to a small private site of about 75 of the girls who were closest on the bump.

Over the last year we have shared our lives with each other. We have been there through pregnancies, losses,births, loss of family and friends, marriages and divorces. I cant explain how much these ladies and their children are apart of my everyday life.

Now to the breastfeeding part...When I was working in the day care center I saw a lot of the moms bringing in breast milk and coming in to nurse their babies. To me it was a whole new world, no one in my family breastfed. It was not something they did or wanted any part of. Well I got interested and started researching all things breastfeeding. I told myself that when I was going to have a baby, I would try to nurse them. With no real experience from family or friends I was kind of going at this blindly.

WELL back to my E-Friends.... Who are pro-breastfeeding, they have been such a resource for me in my breastfeeding. In the hospital I could not get Samantha to latch, I was crushed....all my ideas and dreams to nurse my baby were slipping away, they were giving me formula telling me to give her that blah blah blah ( I'm not against formula, hey I was formula fed and a fed baby is a healthy baby, but breastfeeding was something I wanted to do for my daughter)

Here we are 6 months in and still nursing and I owe most of it to my E-Friends...whenever I needed a "your doing great keep it up" or "try this, it helped me" I was able to get it from them. I don't know if I would still be nursing without their help and support.