When did breastfeeding get easier for you and in what way?

[HannahBee92]

Just looking for personal experiences with breastfeeding to help keep me going through these tough first weeks and hopefully give me something to look forward to! My DD is currently nearly 3 weeks and the constant frequent feeding has definitely been challenging. At what age did you start to see differences and how did it easier?

Around 7 or 8 weeks here. Although everyone told me it would get easier from 6 weeks! Around that time, mine started being more predictable in when she wanted to feed, so I knew once I fed her we could have a couple of hours to leave the house! She also didn't need as much help latching, so easier to feed out and about. 14 weeks now and she can feed in the sling which is another great breakthrough!

Getting to three weeks in itself is great, so well done! Think of it as half way to things getting easier at 6 weeks, but don't stress if it takes a couple of weeks longer than that!

About 3 months for me. It really does get easier though I promise

After about 6 weeks it became bearable, 12 weeks for it to properly feel like I knew what I was doing. Definitely worth it after that though :)

By 4 months i would say gets easier but cluster feeding during developmental leaps can be pure torture i fed my first 2 until 2 years and this time im 5 months in but he feeds constantly compared to my girls.if you have a sling try feeding in that to free up your hands x

I found life generally got better when my ds got to about 10 weeks and then again when they were 4 months. The first 6 weeks can be particularly challenging and with ds1 once I got past 6 weeks of breastfeeding I could see that it was getting easier. There is a lot about 'the fourth trimester' which I found comforting.

6 weeks to get the hang for the pain and the latching issues to completely resolve, probably 3 months until I became properly comfortable and the cluster feeding reduced. Definitely worth it. Well done for getting to 3 weeks you’re doing a great job!

About 6-8 weeks I found it easier. It stopped hurting and he went longer between feeds.

4 weeks, it felt comfortable and stopped needing to curl my toes. Baby also got better at latching so stopped having to help.

I sort of got used to it with the assistance of a lot of box sets and got to like the time I spent watching a lot of Netflix. I found those silver nipple covers the best thing in helping my nipples strengthen which made it a lot easier

About six weeks. He had his tongue tie cut at 10 days, and then it was lots of relearning how to feed.

It got easier once I gave in and started safely cosleeping, and once I stopped trying to track feeds in an app and keep track of times. Babies don't really follow schedules and I've learnt boob fixes everything even if he only finished feeding five minutes ago.

I know it's not for everyone, but breastfeeding has been the most incredible part of being a parent for me. It makes me feel so connected to him, but also to all the other mothers out there feeding in the middle of the night now and through history. Also I think it just made sleep/naps so much easier. He would always fall asleep feeding, and it's so easy in the middle ofthe night when I didn't even have to get out of bed. I'm inherently lazy and breastfeeding fits in with that very well!!

I also loved using it as an excuse to not have to pass the baby around and to keep him to myself for cuddles sometimes!

Push on through. I was so so desperate to stop but my baby wouldn’t allow it as she just was not into bottle feeding at all. I didn’t have much choice. She had tongue tie cut at 5 weeks which maybe helped a bit, but in general between 1-2 months things just got easier and I carried on until 14 months. I am also lazy like pp and it suited me down to the ground, lazy night feeds, lazy early wake up feeds, back to sleep in an instant for both of us, amazing. The pain and stress felt so unbearable at the beginning but it really paid off.

Latching stopped hurting after about 3 weeks so it got easier then. But then I had pain from mastitis until about 6 weeks so it got easier after that. Then at about 10 weeks feeds became less frequent and I got more confident, and started to love it.