Stories | La Leche League Canada - Breastfeeding Support and Information

This section is a collection of heartfelt stories shared by members of our La Leche League Canada community. Here, you’ll find a diverse range of experiences—from breastfeeding journeys to navigating the challenges of returning to work, and the profound sense of connection found within our community. These stories come from parents, Leaders, alumni, and others who have walked unique paths, each with their own joys, struggles, and triumphs. We hope these reflections resonate with you, offering inspiration, comfort, and a reminder that you are never alone on your journey.

Baby Health Issues

Being a Breastfeeding Mother, Parent and Family

Beyond the Early Months: Solids, Biting, Nursing Older Ones, Nursing Strikes, Weaning and More

Getting Ready and Breastfeeding in the Early Days

Expressing and Storing Milk

Lifestyle Questions: Eating, Drinking, Working Outside the Home, Travelling, Holidays and More

Milk Supply Issues: Too Much and Not Enough

Mother and Parent Health Issues

Breastfeeding, Attachment Parenting, and the journey to becoming a La Leche League Leader

Shared by Alyssa Warmland

The following is an excerpt from my La Leche League Leadership accreditation process. This process happens through correspondence with other Leaders, prompted by specific questions. This was a response to how my beliefs and experiences align with the philosophies of La Leche League. Please take from this whatever is helpful to you and your family and leave the rest. Everyone deserves to be met where they’re at, and everyone deserves support in meeting their goals.

I feel that breastfeeding, and specifically breastfeeding on demand, has taught me how to tune in to my baby’s needs and to meet him where he’s at. It’s been empowering in that it’s taught me how resilient and adaptable I can be! Breastfeeding has allowed me to provide the best possible nutrition to my baby as well as meet his needs for emotional connection. Nutritionally, breastmilk contains everything my baby needs, when he needs it, as my breasts respond to his saliva. Breastfeeding gives us the opportunity to be close and even to meet skin-to-skin at times, the benefits of which are expansive and proven in the way my son clearly grounds himself while being held at the breast. I feel confident that the touch associated with breastfeeding strengthens attachment and bonding.

Nighttime nursing is quite simple for our family, since we bedshare. I lie in the C curl so he is safely nestled at breast height. This allows me to nurse him easily while in the side-laying position. He nurses from both breasts, either top or bottom, though I personally prefer to have him nurse from the top breast by angling my body slightly downward. He seems to enjoy the extra snuggle this provides. Our family practices the safe sleep 7. Bedsharing and nursing on demand throughout the night allows all of us to get the most sleep. It simply works best for our family. I do understand why some parents consider strategies such as various sleep training methods, especially if they don’t bedshare or wish to discontinue bedsharing for whatever reason. For some families, it can be a matter of harm reduction- if mom is struggling with little sleep, she’s not going to be at her best when it comes to caring for her child. Although I personally do not feel that sleep training is an appropriate response to the challenges posed by infant and toddler sleep, I would hope to empower a parent considering such strategies by providing them with more information about what biologically normal infant and toddler sleep is like and the benefits of responding to a child’s cues. Sometimes it can be so helpful to even be able to connect with and relate to other parents! It’s not my personal opinion that matters here, even though I feel strongly about this topic. My job, as someone who wishes to support another person, is to provide evidence-based information and to listen and search for connection.

When my baby cries, I often try to nurse him as a first course of action. This almost always grounds him in our connection so that we can work on him communicating and me understanding what he needs (if it wasn’t nursing itself!). I’m blessed with a baby who doesn’t cry often. I think that this is partially due to his personality naturally being quite content, but I do also take credit for prioritizing responding to his needs. Because I take the time to listen to him and have such an intimate understanding of his patterns, I am often able to predict what he needs (ie. a diaper change, a snack, a nap, more stimulation, less stimulation, etc.) before he gets frustrated enough to cry. Some other favourite soothing strategies include: being in the wrap, listening to his favourite music (Ella and Louis), singing, camila drops, and getting out for a hike in the forest. As it turns out, these things all feel very calming and good to me too!

When my baby was very young, I struggled to get him into a position that allowed for a deep latch because of my C-section. This caused my nipples to crack and bleed- it was SO painful! While I waited for them to heal, I corrected the latch issue and also pumped enough for one feeding in the evenings. By the end of the day, the nursing on my super sore nipples was just too much sensory overload, and I felt like I needed a break. My friend, Shannon, told me that it is important to consider an alternative to bottle feeding rather than relying on a fake teat, such as a bottle. She taught me about open-cup feeding and syringe-feeding, and I slowly syringe-fed my newborn a few ounces of breastmilk for a couple of weeks while my nipples healed. During this time, I also tried to give him a soother a few times, but he had no interest in taking it. Recently, I gave him a bottle with some water in it to see what he would do. He bit it, looked at me like I had three heads, and handed the bottle back to me. Although I would not offer a bottle or soother now knowing what I know, I do have empathy for parents who are looking for strategies to get them through those early days. One paradigm I reframed for myself was that soothers and other artificial nipples are replacements for the breast, not the other way around! Too many people told me I was being used as a soother as though it was a bad thing. Now I know and hope to share with others that the soother is just a stand-in for the breast- but without the plethora of benefits.

Human milk is incredible, so much so it often reminds me of magic. Understanding the capacity of my body to produce such an amazing and versatile substance has been one of the most empowering opportunities of my life so far. In my family, we use breastmilk for treating rashes, in the ear to help clear built up earwax, in the eye if it’s irritated, and, of course, as a food for my baby. The antimicrobial properties have kept my baby rash and infection free! I value the way breastmilk changes to meet my baby’s changing needs, including as he moves into toddlerhood.

My midwife made sure that my baby and I got skin-to-skin as soon as he was born. When I was being stitched up, my partner did skin to skin with our son in our room until I could be brought back. Once we were reunited, which didn’t take long at all, my baby latched, well within the first hour, and with the support of my midwife, doula, and the nurses. At first, it felt uncomfortable when he latched, but mostly okay. I utilized the resources I had around me.

I’m grateful to have had good support in the hospital from the staff as well as from my midwife. I think the simple encouragement to latch and latch well in those early days, as well as the encouragement to do as much skin-to-skin as possible was foundational when it comes to my breastfeeding and the attachment myself and my baby feel.

Once I got home, my midwives came over in the first few days and helped me with the latch, since it started to hurt. They showed me the same thing over and over and it just didn’t seem to be helping. I needed to hold him closer, but I didn’t realize that until my doula and friend, Shannon came over. She sat with me and helped make sure I was holding him in close enough and positioning him so he could get a deep enough latch with his tiny mouth. I can’t even describe how much her hands-on support helped me form the foundation of my breastfeeding journey. I also had support from a few close friends who were breastfeeding their babies. Because of my struggle to get a good latch, I got a clogged duct and my friends, Holly and Daniel came over to help us. Daniel ran to the store to get me lecithin and Holly held my son while I took a shower and then set up a crock pot of warm, wet face cloth compresses while I nursed him. Later that evening, my friend, Jeannette, dropped by with homemade muffins.

I remember three things feeling really important in the first hours, days, and weeks my son was born: skin-to-skin, being close to my baby, and support. I needed him close to me and knew he needed me close to him. I think that this closeness facilitated a good breastfeeding relationship, even when it got challenging. Breastfeeding allowed us to bond in such a deep way by fostering our closeness and being in tune with my baby’s needs. And without the support of my midwives, doula, the nurses at the hospital, and my friends, I would have struggled with breastfeeding so much more for so much longer. In that way, breastfeeding was a reminder to allow myself to be vulnerable and to lean on my community when I need to.

My partner supports my breastfeeding relationship by making sure I’m set up with water, snacks, and the controller a million times per day. In the early days, he watched closely as my doula showed me how to position our baby and helped me remember after she left. He has also brought the baby to me when I was working events for more than a few hours and worked my booth while I nursed the baby.

My baby absolutely loves to be physically close to me. He’s always crawling all over me, snuggling with me, and checking in affectionately with me, even throughout his independent playtime. He loves to be worn in carriers, and has since birth. At thirteen months old, he squeals in delight when he sees us putting on a carrier. He wants to do, and be part of whatever we are doing, and delights in our attention and engagement. He clearly and openly searches for connection, and I am honoured to answer.

My son loves to nurse and clearly communicates when he wants to by tugging on my shirt or pressing his face against my chest or laying down in my lap as though he is nursing. He loves to be held and will insist on it often. He contact naps and bedhares exclusively. He always wants to be touching one of us when he is asleep.

When we are separated, my baby is sad and cries for me and goes to the door to look for me. When we are reunited, he jumps into my arms and giggles. He is securely attached and my hope is that by fulfilling these needs for closeness while he is young, he will feel confident and independent as an adult.

We introduced complementary foods and a cup at 6 months. At this point, he was able to sit independently, had lost his tongue thrust reflex, was ready and willing to chew, was beginning to use a pincer grasp, and was very eager to participate in mealtime. We used a loose version of baby-led weaning, introducing foods similar to the meal on our plates, occasionally modified (ie. grapes cut in half) for safety. We let him feed himself. Occasionally, we give him some puree from a pouch for a snack, but we do not consider those meals, they are more for fun and for the sake of exploring textures. We introduced allergens early and regularly and have not found any allergies yet. We tracked our baby’s first 100 foods and it was so much fun to be mindful of the foods we were eating as a family so as to take diversity of our diet into account and also to celebrate milestones in exploration together.

Our son was first introduced to an open cup, though he now also uses straw cups and 360 cups. We have not used bottles. We continue to nurse on demand, including at night, and nurse before eating complementary foods since breastmilk is so nutritious.

Tracking my baby’s first 100 foods, as I previously mentioned, drew my attention to our family’s diet, and I was surprised at how varied our diet naturally was! We enjoy nutritious food and recognize that our bodies feel better when we eat well in a balanced way. When it comes to my son’s diet specifically, I try to balance protein, iron, vegetables, and fruit as the priorities and to maintain diversity in his diet. I try to avoid a lot of empty carbs and limit processed foods and sugars in our household. One of the most important things to our family is to celebrate food and eat together.

I see no end in sight to our breastfeeding relationship and plan to continue to nurse on demand. When the demand stops, I’ll stop breastfeeding. I’m happy to follow my baby’s lead. If at some point an issue comes up where breastfeeding is infringing on my wellbeing in some way, I’ll manage that as it happens and aim to do any weaning as gently as possible.

As he gets older, and I feel more confident we are communicating fairly effectively with one another, I’ll begin to enforce more boundaries around breastfeeding, such as nursing after an outing rather than during one or nursing only during the day. Ultimately, I believe that any discomfort I am feeling at any point is an invitation to establish boundaries. I also feel that having boundaries around breastfeeding is a good opportunity to model boundaries and conversations about things like bodily autonomy.

My primary parenting philosophy has become “lean in”. Listen to my baby and lean in. Frustration happens when I’m fighting what my baby is communicating he needs. If my experience of a situation is framed as an opportunity to connect with and respond to my baby, it turns out more positively for both of us. I believe in time in, not time out when he is older and redirecting rather than punishing. This is especially true when he is this young - he doesn’t even have the capacity to understand consequences yet, it would be unfair to expect him to. Right now, loving guidance is all about recognizing bids for attention and searching for opportunities to connect with my baby.

Some of my favourite resources are my local Le Leche League Group, other connected parents in my life, and connected parenting groups on Facebook and Instagram. I also love podcasts, such as The Badass Breastfeeders, which have been excellent resources. I most often refer to The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding or simply to my doula and other mothers in my life.

Matrescence and Northumberland Forest

Shared by Alyssa Warmland

My son was born two weeks before the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. I remember driving to my friends’ farm to source some lemon verbena, days shy of forty-two weeks pregnant, listening to the hosts of CBC talk about the coronavirus sweeping the world and slowly trickling into Canada. “I’m so bored of this coronavirus conversation. It’s not gonna be a big deal here,” my partner said before plugging the aux cord into his phone and opting for some band that sounded like the Ramones over talk radio. When the herbs and the walking and even the castor oil failed to induce labour, I ended up in the hospital where the midwives and doctors worked on evicting my baby from my body, which was holding tight to him. A failed induction resulted in a C-Section, a far-cry from the salt-lamp, Sarah Harmer-serenaded waterbirth at home I’d had planned. This wasn’t the way I’d wanted to bring my baby into the world, but I was glad he was here, and I committed to raising him gently.

My dad and brother had come to meet my son the night he was born, and an aunt and uncle who I’m close with had made the trip too. My aunt ran into the hospital room minutes before I was taken in for surgery to give me a hug and show me her own faded C-section scar. She and my uncle were back the next morning to meet Wilhelm. A few days later, my dad, stepmom, and brothers came to my apartment and we ordered pizza while they took turns holding our new family member. A couple of my closest friends came by with food and my partner and his childhood best friend went to the store to get me lecithin while my friend set up a crock pot with warm, wet cloths to combat clogged ducts as my milk came in. This was how I’d imagined my postpartum experience, lovingly surrounded by the community I’d worked so hard over the years to build.

I mentioned my son’s growing relationship with trees, and that’s another gift in building connection with Northumberland Forest. Through intentionally attuning myself to my baby throughout our hikes, I also took the opportunity to pause and notice things about the forest I’d never paid attention to. As the seasons shifted, I noticed the way the ice builds up on trees and how to tell if snow is packed down and slippery. I learned about gear: which boots were best for which terrains and how to layer to stay warm while compensating for the heat I’d generate while hiking. As the Lymantria Dispar Dispar (LLD) moth invasion dominated the forest in the spring, I learned all about them and watched the destruction of the trees and subsequent regrowth. I learned to identify plants and their uses, both to the forest and for humans. In the fall, I noticed the mushrooms filling the forest and took the opportunity to learn about (and from) them. I learned about navigating trails and even a bit of very basic trail maintenance. I learned how to build a lightweight first aid kit and to navigate my (and my son’s) discomfort when it came to the weather or pests like the LLD moths. There were and are continuously so many gifts. I’m incredibly proud to play a small role in facilitating my baby’s relationship with nature, and I hope that he continues to nurture it. I feel confident that he will. I see him emotionally corregulate, not just with me, but with the forest. And I get it, because I do it too.

In these first two weeks, meeting my son, meeting my new self, Covid-19 trickled into Canada and we “locked down”. My friends and family stopped coming around, since households weren’t supposed to mix and we weren’t supposed to travel. We were told it would just be two wild weeks and then everything would be back to normal. Suddenly, we were on our own. As those two weeks came, and then were extended, we began to realize that things weren’t going to go back to normal and our postpartum experience wasn’t going to be as connected as we had anticipated. Our friends and family who hadn’t met Wilhelm would never meet him as a baby; one of my best friends didn’t even get to meet him for over a year. My midwife appointments became virtual; a baby scale was dropped off on the door handle in a plastic bag.

And through all of it, my doula, Shannon was there. She sat with me for hours into the morning, helping me latch my baby, answering all the questions I had, sharing books and information. And one day, shortly after I was cleared post-surgery to drive, I suggested to Shannon that we go hiking. I’ve loved hiking since I was a teenager, escaping the reality of my mothers battle with cancer and her subsequent death (and the implications of that) on the Bruce trail. Eventually, I hiked much less, distracted by university and the chronic pain I would struggle with for years- up until my pregnancy with my son. With the relief of inhabiting a body that was not only profoundly healed, but also incredibly powerful in my eyes, after growing and birthing an entire (radiant) human, it’s no surprise that matrescence brought me back to the forest.

We found ourselves at the Beagle Club trailhead in Northumberland Forest. I nursed my eight week old baby, changed his diaper, and wrapped him in a long, stretchy piece of fabric against my body. We started slowly, and over the next eighteen months, we would explore every trail Northumberland Forest has to offer, as well as journey to neighbouring trails in Peterborough, Orono, and Brighton. Once, we even traveled back to my hometown to hike my favourite piece of the Bruce Trail with my brother and childhood friend. As my baby grew, I adopted different carriers, first a soft-structured carrier worn on the front of my body and then on my back, and then eventually a structured carrier . I also learned to go with the flow differently- more intuitively, as lead by my son. For example, I’d ask him if he wanted to start out in the carrier or if he wanted to start walking on his own as he grew into toddlerhood. Those times where he’d choose to walk himself, he always impressed me. He was so at home in the forest, so respectful of it. The pace was slower, but it was nourishing for both our hearts to slow down and follow his toddler zig-zag lead. I also learned, the older he got, that bringing snacks along was key to happy, longer hikes in the carrier.

Hiking has been a powerful way to stay connected with my people over the course of the pandemic. Shannon and I had been “bubbled” since the beginning, so we carpooled to the trailheads, but I also often met other outdoors-oriented friends at the trailhead and we would hike and connect. Sometimes we’d wear masks, depending on what was going on and how we were feeling. We created an entire ritual involving warm beverages, nursing, and solving the world’s problems (or at least our own) within ten kilometres or less. Shannon, a longtime La Leche League Leader, taught me a massive amount of information about breastfeeding, a constant topic on our adventures. She supported me through clogged ducts, mastitis, latch difficulties, and cluster feeding. Her support eventually led me to using my time on parental leave to work through and achieve my La Leche League Leadership Accreditation. I wanted to support other new parents and their babies the way that Shannon had supported me. I knew how transformative and powerful it was to receive that kind of shoulder-to-shoulder (breast-to-breast?) support, especially during a fundamentally transformative time in my life. Especially during a pandemic that suddenly, violently disconnected parents and other support people.

My breastfeeding education (how powerful, and fundamentally feminist that my education came in the form of an oral exchange of knowledge from one mother to another!) wasn’t the only magic that came from spending my period of matrescence in Northumberland Forest. I learned to listen to and respond to my baby, pausing to sit on the side of the trail to nurse him when he was hungry, thirsty, or needed comfort or finding ways to connect him to the forest around us. He was fascinated by trees from the beginning, growing with them as he transitioned from staring at them in awe to pointing at his favourites and requesting to touch their bark as he giggled at the sensation. I learned the subtleties of his sounds and his facial expressions and made myself available to meet him where he was at. This responsive parenting style, complete with the breastfeeding and babywearing, is referred to as “attachment parenting”, and I’ve joked more than once that it’s an extreme sport. But as rewarding and empowering as any sport you’re intentionally training in.