First Baby Due Next Month - key BF question

[stempyandco]

all my life i have been brought up to see breasts as sexual things. speciifcally, my own breasts - i like them to look nice and i liked their function as a secondary sexual area for me.

now they have to be functional. and ugly. and sucked in a non-sexy way. and i find all of this v difficult. why does no-one else talk about this. i know a lot of people have probs with the mechanics of BF'ing, but for me i cant help thinking that if could just feed my baby with my elblow, or wrist or anything other than my breasts than i would not find the whole thing just so damn weird.

It's a common feeling.We all think of our breasts as sexual things.
You can breastfeed and still be sexy you know.
Does it ever occur to yuo that the people who have a lot of money to make out of formula put these thoguhts into women's heads?

Do you look at a penis and think only of pissing? I'm sure you don't, so why can't a breast be multi -purpose.

Not saying that your worries aren't valid or important by the way,just giving you food for thoguht.

not sure the sexualisation of women's breasts can be laid at the hands of formula companies .

the peeing penis example is an interesting thing. when i tried to explain my anxieties about my norks new role, the only thing i could liken it to was him using member to keep our new baby alive. i hadnt thought about the fact that men's main bits do have two functions anyway. they just dont seem so strange. peeing/sex feed baby/sex

Never heard the penis/pissing/sexual thing - thats absolutely true....

My breasts have never felt sexier as they are very sensitive and hub can;t keep his mits off. Yet it feels right to breast feed dd. The two things are very seperate. Like when you're naughty with your hands.... and yet wipe your bottom....cook....hold hands with a child etc...

All are appropriate and can feel good in their own way.#

Good luck - breast feeding is soooooooooo much easier thatn bottles when you get into it. I mix feed (don;t shyun me) and that works very well. I choose to breastfeed most of the time cos I prefer it.

stempy - courageous to be so honest - well done.

I have to say, purely from my own experience, my boobs look better now than ever (I was quite small pre-baby!), and breastfeeding has turned out to be, put simply, lovely.

It's a completely novel experience, and at first the whole newness of it is strange. (But no more so than being stripped naked squeezing a baby's head out of your fanjo with several onlookers admiring the view, I suppose)

You do get used to it, and for many of us we can honestly say, hand on heart, that it is a really lovely thing to do. I do hope it's the same for you!

BTW, now have mental image of someone feedng a baby with their elbow.

Before I started breastfeeding I thought that breasts were sexual. Now even though I've stopped. I don't think there's anything sexy about them. I don't want dh to touch them or even get near them.

stempy - all i can say is that for me, the actual experience of bfeeding very soon overtook any previous view of breasts. Feeding DS is an absolute joy and pleasure (in a non sexual way I feel i need to add). Seeing him nuzzled in close, seeing him grow and thrive - I get such happiness from these things, I never knew it was possible before I started bfeeding.
So yes, they will be sucked in a non sexy way, but I guess what I am trying to say is that that suckling brings an entirely different sort of pleasure and fulfillment - does that make sense? Hope so

Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to getting them back also for my own use so to speak - but am equally enjoying this time to bfeed. I have the rest of my life (another DC barring ) to use them for purely sexual use.

Oh and on a shallow note - you wait til you see the cleavage you get! Winner! Give it a go and see how you feel.

HTH

it's so different thinking about it before the baby comes. You can't even imagine milk coming out of your boobs.
But once it happens you don't remember what it was like before. It;s just feels right and natural to have milk gushing out of you in 7 different directions!!

They don't have to be ugly (for me getting an F cup cleavage after being a B cup was amazing), and they certainly don't have to be unsexy- as DH will testify.
You can't imagine a baby exiting your fanjo, but it does and it still the same afterwards.