World Breastfeeding Week 2026: Breastfeeding for a Sustainable Start in Life: Strengthen What Works - Part 1

Last year’s World Breastfeeding Week theme was ‘Prioritise Breastfeeding: Create Sustainable Support Systems.’ This year, the focus shifts to ‘Breastfeeding for a Sustainable Start in Life: Strengthen What Works’, highlighting the role breastfeeding can play in food security, nutrition, poverty reduction and the importance of strengthening lactation policies and community support. These are incredibly important conversations, and I wholeheartedly support improving access to skilled, compassionate breastfeeding support for families who want it.

At the same time, I think it’s equally important to acknowledge another reality. For some mothers, breastfeeding doesn’t unfold as they had hoped despite every ounce of determination they can give. When campaigns rightly celebrate the benefits of breastfeeding, we must also make space for those whose journeys were shaped by trauma, illness, low milk supply, painful feeding experiences or circumstances beyond their control. Supporting breastfeeding should never come at the expense of supporting mothers. In fact, the two should go hand in hand.

“I feel that being able to feed you is what makes me ‘Mam’. If I can no longer do that then anyone could be Mam.”

I remember writing those words through tears.

When I read them back now, they stop me in my tracks. Not because I still believe them - but because I remember exactly how it felt to.

Those words were written in the early weeks after my eldest daughter was born. Looking back, I can still picture myself sitting in the nursery at 5am, exhausted beyond anything I had ever known, desperately trying to make breastfeeding work whilst convincing myself that if I just tried a little bit harder, everything would fall into place.

It didn’t.

And for a long time, I thought that meant I had failed.

Last year’s World Breastfeeding Week theme is a theme that resonates with me deeply—not only as a CBT therapist working with mothers, but as a mum whose own breastfeeding journey was shaped by incredible determination, overwhelming guilt, and the difference that support (or the lack of it) can make.

When people talk about breastfeeding, we often focus on the baby. Is baby feeding well? Are they gaining weight? How many wet nappies? How many feeds?

These questions matter. Of course they do. But somewhere amongst the feeding plans, the weighing scales and the conversations about supply, I think we sometimes forget to ask another question.

How is Mum doing?

Perhaps that’s what “strengthening what works” really means. Yes, we should continue investing in breastfeeding support, evidence-based lactation care and communities that help families achieve their feeding goals. But we should also strengthen the support around mothers themselves, recognising that a sustainable start in life isn’t built solely on how a baby is fed, but on the wellbeing of the person doing the feeding.

Feeding a baby doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens whilst recovering from birth, whilst navigating one of the biggest identity shifts of your life, whilst surviving on broken sleep and whilst trying to learn something completely new, often whilst doubting yourself every step of the way.

Sometimes, the person who needs the most support is the one everyone assumes is coping.

My journey didn’t begin the way I’d imagined

After my eldest daughter was born, everything changed in a matter of hours. I experienced a significant postpartum haemorrhage. What I didn’t fully understand at the time was how much that would affect everything that followed.

I became incredibly unwell.

I needed a blood transfusion (which was ‘forgotten about’ during handover).

I spent time on oxygen.

I could barely stand without feeling faint.

My body was trying to recover from losing a dangerous amount of blood, yet at the same time I was trying to establish breastfeeding.

At the time, nobody explained that severe postpartum haemorrhage can delay lactogenesis (the onset of mature milk production) because blood loss and the physiological stress placed on the body can disrupt the hormonal changes needed for milk production (Thompson et al., 2010).

I didn’t know that.

All I knew was that my baby needed feeding - and I believed it was my job to make that happen.

So I tried.

And tried.

And tried.

We triple fed; Breastfeeding. Pumping. Hand expressing. Topping up. Then starting all over again.

For days, I barely slept.

Eventually, the sleep deprivation became so severe that I started hallucinating.

I collapsed.

I ended up on oxygen.

Looking back now, I can see a woman whose body was desperately asking for rest. And sadly, at the time, all I saw was someone who wasn’t trying hard enough.

From my diary…

“It has been so difficult even leaving the room because I get such anxiety with every movement or noise in case you need to be fed and it’s only me who can do that. I think the lack of sleep may be making these feelings more intense.”

Reading those words now, I want to reach back through the pages and hug the version of me who wrote them. She needed somebody to tell her it was okay to stop carrying everything on her own.

I don’t think anybody prepares you for how emotionally loaded breastfeeding can become.

Before I became a mum, I never believed breastfeeding was what made someone a “good” mother. I have never believed that families who formula feed love their babies any less. I have never judged another mum for how she feeds her child.

Yet somehow, when it became my journey, everything changed. Breastfeeding quietly became tangled up with my identity. It stopped being something I was doing and it quickly became evidence of who I believed I was.

And that is where the guilt began.

“We have also had to master you feeding off the other boob now AND WE HAVE ACHIEVED THIS! So you are now feeding off both breasts each feed. I now don’t have enough milk to express so you are now having formula for your night feed. It’s amazing how much this affected me. I cried so much and felt I was letting you down, even though I was actually doing what was best for you.”

Looking back now, I can see the contradiction.

I knew I was doing what was best for my daughter. Yet emotionally, it felt as though I had failed her.

Both things existed at the same time. That, I think, is something many mothers will recognise.

Stay tuned for part 2 coming tomorrow.

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