Breastfeeding my baby would most definitely have meant giving up my health.

For some, health conditions can be so chronic and debilitating that it is quite simply impossible to go without the appropriate medications to treat them. While there usually are some medications that can be used that are still safe to breastfeed while taking them... Where do you go when they no longer work?

For me... breastfeeding my son meant being in so much pain that I couldn't get out of bed. Being in so much pain that I could barely hold him as a tiny, 2.5kg premmie baby.

The medications that were safe to take while pregnant or breastfeeding where no longer effective for my condition. The medications needed to restore me to some sort of health where I could be functional are dreadfully unsafe to breastfeed with.

While I understand that for MOST women, it's not a matter of needing to sacrifice your health to be able to breastfeed, there are SOME women with health conditions that are so severe that it quite literally is a matter of having to give up breastfeeding in order to have some sort of relationship with your own child.

I fail to see how health outcomes in my family could have been any better if I had insisted on breastfeeding. For a start, I wouldn't have been able to care for my son, let alone myself.

Kate, I know that you also suffer from a chronic health condition. Sometimes it's simply more important to be healthy and well enough to interact with your child and feed them formula than to persist with breastfeeding and end up sacrificing your health. I know that some may find that statement offensive, but the reality is that unless you have also suffered from a chronic and debilitating health condition, you cannot know what it is really like to walk in those shoes.

BW