So, a few months ago I wrote an impassioned piece about my experience with breastfeeding. And my experience was…well, at that point, it was not good. I was heartbroken that my breastfeeding experience hadn’t started well. I was frustrated that it didn’t seem to be getting easier when every website assured me that if it wasn’t all good by the third week or so, then something was wrong.

Oh, and I was hurting. A lot. Pain. Every waking moment.

Baby Owl is now four months old. We’re still exclusively breastfeeding, and as rough as things were before, that’s how smooth they are now. No more pain. Everything’s fine. It took over three months to get there, but…we’ve arrived.

Now that I’ve got four months of perspective, it’s interesting and mildly entertaining to look back and examine my perceptions of what breastfeeding would be like before I actually did it.

I pretty much expected my breastfeeding journey to start out at the point I’m at now. I can admit now, very sheepishly, that I expected it to be easy. Before I had Baby Owl, I couldn’t understand why anyone would not want to breastfeed. I mean, of course, I knew that there are some women who physically cannot breastfeed. But as for moms who say, “It’s hard, and I am a better mom when I am not doing it”? I just did not understand that. And you know what they say about karma. Because now, oh, I get it. When I put on a shirt and my nipples felt like I was attempting to adorn myself with some sort of Lady Gaga-esque garment constructed out of cheese graters, I got it. I really, really got it.

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At this point, I have to laugh at myself at how illogical I was about breastfeeding. Yes, breastfeeding is totally natural. Yes, it’s a great thing to do for your baby. Why in the world did I think that meant it would be easy? Natural childbirth certainly wasn’t easy. Pretty much nothing relating to parenthood is easy. And breastfeeding, like everything else about parenthood, takes work. It takes effort and it takes determination. It’s not easy, by any stretch of the imagination…at least not for most women, and especially not in the beginning. But I can safely say now that it’s worth it for me.

A few days ago I attended a gathering here in Riyadh for women who are breastfeeding, or are interested in breastfeeding, or are just supportive of breastfeeding. There was a huge room full of women, and after we chatted for a while, the two ladies who arranged the gathering, one of whom was the breastfeeding specialist who had visited me at my house a few months earlier and whom I had been emailing ever since, announced that they had some certificates to hand out to some of the ladies present.

I was shocked when my name was called, and even more so when they handed me a certificate that had my name on it, and then, “For outstanding motivation and determination in breastfeeding your little girl. May Allah reward you in this lifetime and the next for the lifetime benefit you have given to her.”

I have to admit, I almost got teary. I hadn’t really thought of breastfeeding as an accomplishment up until that point, but as I took the paper, I realized that I really had been admirably determined. I was strong. I soldiered on. I did it.  And I have every right to be proud of myself.

But then I thought, “Look at you, patting yourself on the back like this, for doing something as necessary as feeding your kid. This is just the beginning, woman. You’re going to earn a whole lot more certificates that you’ll never get. That’s just part of being a mom. Stop giving yourself airs over figuring out how your body parts work.”

The truth is that parenthood is fraught with constant struggles; breastfeeding just happened to be mine for a little while. I wish I could give everyone reading this a certificate.

  • “For going to work bleary-eyed because you stayed up all night rocking your baby and singing lullabies.”
  • “For not freaking out when your baby was sitting on your lap and her diaper exploded and leaked all over your favorite linen pants that you had somehow managed to find time to iron because you finally fit back into them.”
  • “For refusing to buckle under the pressure of your mother-in-law’s weird baby care rules.”
  • “For not chucking a sippy cup at your spouse’s head when he or she gets home from work and sighs and says, ‘I’m so tired; I worked all day long. You’re lucky; you get to stay at home with the kids.’”

Yes, we all deserve a certificate or two, but I’m fine with never seeing them. Recognition is nice, but the greatest certificate I have ever been awarded is one I didn’t really earn: Baby Owl’s birth certificate. I’ll spend the rest of my life proving I deserve that one. Everything else pales in comparison.