Part 4 World Breastfeeding Week 2026 - The Journey That Changed Me

A few years later, I became a mum again.

People often ask whether breastfeeding was easier the second time. The honest answer is yes, but probably not for the reasons people expect.

It wasn’t because my body was different. It wasn’t because my baby was somehow easier. And it certainly wasn’t because everything went perfectly.

The biggest difference was me.

This time, I walked into motherhood carrying something I didn’t have before: experience. I understood cluster feeding. I knew that soft breasts didn’t mean empty breasts, that babies don’t always cry because they’re hungry, and that comfort feeding, growth spurts and unsettled evenings are all part of normal newborn life.

More than anything, I trusted myself. That didn’t mean I stopped listening to advice. It meant I could hold someone else’s opinion alongside my own instincts instead of immediately assuming they knew better.

That quiet confidence changed everything.

When I think about this year’s World Breastfeeding Week theme, Breastfeeding for a Sustainable Start in Life: Strengthen What Works, I find myself thinking about confidence just as much as breastfeeding itself. Because sustainable feeding journeys aren’t built on perfect mothers. They’re built on mothers who feel informed, supported and able to trust themselves, even when things don’t go exactly to plan.

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Confidence Is One of the Greatest Gifts We Can Give a Mother

Looking back now, I don’t think confidence simply appears. It grows. Mine was built through experience, through education and through the people who took the time to explain instead of simply telling me what to do.

I’ve realised there’s a big difference between information and understanding. Information tells us whatis happening. Understanding helps us believe that we’re capable of navigating it.

As a therapist, I often think of confidence as something we borrow before we build it ourselves.

Sometimes it comes from a midwife who calmly says, “This is normal.” Sometimes from a partner who reminds us we’re doing better than we think. Sometimes from another mum who quietly admits she felt exactly the same.

Little by little, those borrowed voices become our own. I think that’s one of the greatest gifts we can give a new mother. Not perfection, but confidence. Confidence doesn’t just change how a mother feels. It changes the way she experiences breastfeeding, the decisions she makes and the relationship she builds with herself along the way.

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The Difference Between Fear and Trust

When I think back to my first breastfeeding journey, I remember searching constantly for reassurance. Every cry, every feed, every weigh-in and every unsettled evening felt like another clue that I must be getting something wrong.

The second time, I still had questions. The difference was that they weren’t driven by fear and rather they came from curiosity. Instead of asking myself, “What’s wrong?” I found myself wondering, “Could this simply be normal?”

That single question changed the way I experienced motherhood. Looking back, I don’t think confidence removed the challenges. It simply gave me somewhere steadier to stand when they came. It didn’t make the sleepless nights disappear or stop the cluster feeding. I still worried, because that’s part of loving someone so deeply.

But I stopped assuming that every difficult moment meant something had gone wrong. That gave me space to enjoy my baby in a way I’d struggled to the first time around.

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Looking Back With Kinder Eyes

Something else changed too.

The way I looked back at my first breastfeeding journey. For years, I’d thought of it as the experience that hadn’t gone to plan.

Now I see something completely different.

I see a woman recovering from a significant postpartum haemorrhage while trying to establish breastfeeding with reduced glandular tissue and nerve damage from previous surgery.

I see someone surviving on almost no sleep, pouring everything she had into caring for her baby. Most of all, I see a mother who kept showing up, even when she was frightened. I don’t see failure anymore. I see resilience, determination and I see love.

And if I’m honest, I feel incredibly proud of her.

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Becoming a Therapist Changed the Way I Understood My Story

One of the greatest privileges of my work is helping people make sense of their experiences.

Parents often come to therapy because they’re anxious, overwhelmed or weighed down by guilt. Yet underneath those emotions there’s often something much deeper.

A belief.

That they’re failing, that they’re not enough or that everyone else is coping better than they are. Those beliefs rarely appear overnight. They grow from experiences, expectations and the stories we quietly begin telling ourselves.

When I read my diary now, I don’t just see breastfeeding struggles. I see the beginning of a belief that my worth as a mother depended on what my body could produce.

At the time, that belief felt completely true.

Now I know it wasn’t. That’s one of the things I love most about CBT. It doesn’t tell us our thoughts are wrong. It invites us to become curious about them.

Where did this belief come from?

Is there another way of understanding what’s happened?

What would I say to someone I love if they were carrying this same thought?

Those questions haven’t just shaped the way I work as a therapist. They’ve changed the way I look back at the woman I was. Instead of judging her, I understand her.

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The Mother I Thought I Needed to Be

I used to believe that being a good mother meant doing everything myself. Breastfeeding, comforting, settling, getting it right, never needing help.

Now I believe something very different. I think one of the bravest things a mother can do is let someone support her. To admit she’s exhausted, to say she’s scared, to tell someone she doesn’t know how much longer she can keep carrying it all on her own.

Because motherhood was never meant to be something we survived in isolation.

Support isn’t only about helping women breastfeed. It’s about helping mothers feel safe enough to be honest.

Safe enough to ask for help.

Safe enough to rest.

And safe enough to believe that they matter too.

Because if there’s one thing my two breastfeeding journeys have taught me, it’s this: we strengthen breastfeeding when we strengthen mothers. Confidence, compassion and connection don’t sit alongside successful feeding journeys—they’re part of what makes them possible.

This year’s campaign reminds us to strengthen what works. For me, what worked wasn’t simply information or feeding techniques. It was relationships that built confidence, healthcare professionals who took time to explain rather than instruct, and the people around me who helped me believe I could do this.

Read parts 1-3 here on my blog and stay tuned for part 5.

Sophie 🍃

World Breastfeeding Week 2026 Series

* Part 1 – I Thought Breastfeeding Made Me a Mother

* Part 2 – When Breastfeeding Support Doesn’t Feel Supportive

* Part 3 – Nothing About My Body Had Changed

* Part 4 – Confidence Changed Everything

* Part 5 – You Were Always Enough