Breast feeding cafe

I'm struggling with breastfeeding. It is hard, I know she is not latching on properly. Sometimes she does it and I know it is right but it is not always right. My nipples are sore, so sore. My breasts ache, they are hard and I don't know if I'm ever going to get the hang of this. The more stressed I'm becoming with it the harder it is getting, my back is so tense as I contort my body in strange shapes to try and get it right. I continue to leaf through the breastfeeding booklet again, again and again in the vein hope that some new piece of information will leap out at me and shed some light on this seemingly easy process.

There is a breastfeeding cafe in Whoberley Youth Centre on Friday mornings. Richard is still off so I asked him to come with me and we ventured out, the aim was twofold a) to get help breastfeeding b) to find out where I can go when I'm left alone. I had a cup of tea and waddled around the corner to the centre, leaning on the pram. I'm still bleeding a lot and I hate the sensation. I haven't worn sanitary towels in such a long time and there is a good reason, they are horrid. A great big wedge of disposable material stuck in between my legs, sitting on top a pool of my blood. It is disgusting. Even if I wasn't waddling from the pain, swelling and stitches I'd be waddling from the sheer size of this enormous pad. I hate it.

We arrived in the centre and there were a few mums there with babies. They looked surprised when I said she was only 5 days old, by the looks on their faces I guess most mums take a while before coming to such things but I need help. My nipples are sore, I don't think I'm doing right, my breast hurt, my stitches hurt, I can't sit down without wincing, I waddle everywhere. But most importantly right now I need help with breastfeeding and as this is a breastfeeding cafe what better place to be? Well it would have been helpful if Tilly had woken up! We sat there and chatted, the midwife Erica seems lovely if a little manic, you know one of those ones who is a woman who has been taught the whole current legislation on this and that and reels it off. She gave me a tonne of leaflets and I'm slightly confused by the dates and venues of the things she has said I should go to. Reading the leaflets now, they don't seem to clear it up. I've been bombarded by sheets of word document graphics on photocopied scraps of paper.

I waddled back home. I feel better for going out, I'm glad I went, I'll probably go next week just as then I'll be alone and it will be good for me to keep active and social. The only thing is I haven't had any help with breastfeeding, they gave me lots of advice but I want someone to sit with me, see if I am doing it right and show me how to do it properly. One step forward but I feel like I'm on a travellator and it is going in the other direction so in fact I'm not moving.