If you chose to breastfeed your baby, we are lucky to have good breastfeeding support locally with Gloucestershire Breastfeeding Supporters Network (GBSN) and Breastfeeding Network (BFN)

If you are breastfeeding your baby and would like help or would like to get out and meet other mothers, breastfeeding groups can be a lifesaver.

In Gloucestershire you will also be supported by the Practice and  your health visitor and midwife if you breastfeed. 

We are fortunate to have two charities providing non-judgemental support.

• Gloucestershire Breastfeeding Supporters’ Network – Friendly and free breastfeeding support groups run weekly (gbsn.org.uk)
• www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk
• Breastfeeding: the first few days - NHS (www.nhs.uk)
• Information Library - ABM
• Get Support - La Leche League GB
• National Breastfeeding Helpline – Helpline
• Breastfeeding Videos | Best Beginnings
• Positioning and attachment video - Baby Friendly Initiativ (unicef.org.uk)

• The Positive Breastfeeding Book
• The Food of Love: Your Formula to Successful Breastfeeding
• The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding

Sadly sometimes support is not as it should be for families and their babies. We are told continiously how good breastfeeding is for us and our baby and how we should breastfeed. However, we are not always given the tools and support to do this when we come accross challenges and also to help with our expectations and society's expectations of breastfeeding.

We have all seen images of babies being breastfed and may have seen it in real life. But in the same way that we see cars, we dont know how to drive them unless we are shown how in the form of lessons.

Mothers who do not achieve their breast feeding goals, have not 'failed' they have been failed by society. 

Grief around finishing a breastfeeidng ojurney early can stay with mothers for decades, affecting their relatiosnhips with family and their children and even into the next generation as they support their chidren becoming parents.