Lauren Conrad reveals breastfeeding struggles: “I felt like I was failing”
Another day, another story about breastfeeding ‘failure’.
This time from The Hills star, Lauren Conrad, who has revealed her struggles also made her feel like a “bad mom”.
Sigh.
But while we wish women wouldn’t torture themselves when breastfeeding doesn’t work out, we also admire Lauren for sharing her story and for being open about her feelings about it.
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“Most difficult part of becoming a new mother”
Lauren is mum to 22 month-old Liam and is also a lifestyle blogger.
In the first episode of her new podcast, Lauren Conrad: Asking for a Friend the actress has labelled breastfeeding the “most difficult part of becoming a new mother”.
I thought it would be easy
In the candid podcast, Lauren admits she thought breastfeeding would be easy because it’s natural.
“I, like a lot of moms, thought that breastfeeding would be the most natural, beautiful thing in the world and that it would just come really easily to me and I would just kind of know what to do because that’s what my body is made to do,” she says.
“It was, without a doubt, the most difficult part of becoming a new mother.”
Low supply
Lauren started off breastfeeding, but four months in, she found she wasn’t producing enough milk for baby Liam.
She even kept a bag of frozen milk in the freezer to remind her of her days of good supply.
“I had this one, really sad half-full frozen bag of breast milk sitting in my freezer and it had a tiny little martini glass drawn on it because it was from the one time I had a martini, and I couldn’t give it to him,” she says.
“But I also couldn’t bring myself to throw it out, so it just sort of sat there next to the Popsicles, like, mocking me. Besides that, I had nothing and I couldn’t keep up with him.”
Although Lauren tried supply boosting remedies, such as teas, pills and homemade lactation cookies, nothing helped.
“I felt like I was failing at something that should come really naturally and it was really difficult for me,” she says. “I felt ashamed and it kind of made me feel like a bad mom.”
A bad mum
Although we couldn’t disagree more with Lauren on the “bad mum” comment, we can sympathise with her feels. She isn’t saying bottle-feeding is bad, but admitting that it made her feel awful not being able to breastfeed when she believed it was something she should be able to just do as a mum.
She felt guilty and somehow at fault.
We wish mums wouldn’t feel less than if they can’t or chose not to breastfeed. Fed is best.
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