I’ve been really relaxed about breastfeeding and I am pleased that it has been easy. No washing or making up bottles of formula in the night. No extra stuff to carry around when we leave the house. It’s fantastic! But there are several things that I think have made it this way for me.

Firstly, I think reading ‘The food of love’ by Kate Evans before I gave birth was the best thing I did. I felt confident from that book that I could do it and that I would find it easy. I knew what to expect and what to look out for before I had even had the baby, which definitely helped me when I was in the hospital. Although nurses were around to offer advice, they didn’t have a lot of time to spare. Without having read the book I think I would have found it a lot harder and overwhelming.

Breastfeeding is a team sport. If it was in the Olympics, I think it would be a bit like dressage. You have yourself, the baby and all the people around you who take a part in it and make the circumstances right or wrong. In dressage you have the horse (I’ll let you decide if that’s the mother or the child in breastfeeding), the rider and the team around who help with the training. And so it is with breastfeeding – the people around you make all the difference to your state of mind. You need confidence and support – just a few words from my partner every so often have made the world of difference to me; he doesn’t even know how much he’s helped just by saying ‘You’re doing really well with that’. Yes, I am, aren’t I? It’s working and the baby is putting on weight regularly, she’s happy and she’s healthy.

He’s providing a great support team to us both by making sure I fit a few naps in to the day and he cooks healthy, tasty food for me to eat. I’m also lucky that my daughter took to feeding right away and we work well together. She would make a great dancing horse in the Olympics.