OUCH!

After all the hassle of breastfeeding to start with, now Eve is 9 months I find that I am still giving up my boobs for feeding. It is now just twice a day, and it is pure laziness (the feeds come first thing in the morning and before she goes to sleep) that it is simply easier to breastfeed still. If the truth be known, it also means I get a nice little nap or lie in while she feeds too.

I had always said that once Eve became mobile I would stop feeding. She is mobile now, very mobile, and happily crawls over to me if she is in bed and thinks nothing of grabbing and helping herself. Yes, it is a bit strange, but in the great scheme of what me and my body have been through this doesn't even make the top ten.

I also said I would stop when Eve got teeth, but now she has 4 through it hasn't really changed how she eats and there is no nibbling.

Except Eve has a bit of a sniffle at the moment. Well, like most children she has a sniffle all the time. Tonight I was lying down, feeding her, in a nice dark room and gradually drifting off to sleep. When Eve sneezed. Think about what you do when you sneeze. You bite down.

I screamed and, to her credit, she was not diverted from the task at hand and stayed latched on (nothing, but nothing, comes between my daughter and her food). I, however, was in a lot of pain. I muttered ow, ow a lot and Eve kept on sucking away happily. At which point all sorts of horrible thoughts went through my head. What was the damage? Was I bleeding? Was Eve actually drinking blood mixed in with her milk? Would I find in later life she would join some odd vampire cult in Slough? Had any part of me ended up somewhat detached?

Admittedly I could have just stopped her drinking and checked, but such is my maternal instinct to keep feeding my child, and possibly because I was still a bit sleepy, it didn't occur to me.

Finally she finished. I popped her in the cot, and stared down in the light of the bathroom to find no major damage done.

What I am wondering now is whether this could be the final nail in the breastfeeding coffin.