Yarning about breastfeeding

Jacara Egan
Gunditjmara | Muthi Muthi
Jacara Egan is a proud Gunditjmara/Muthi Muthi woman who
grew up in Mildura, Victoria. She is the mother of a baby boy,
Taten who is one years old. Jacara breastfed Taten for five
months. Her partner, Shaun Thomas is from Cape Barron Island
in the Bass Strait and was very supportive of her decision to
breastfeed their baby boy.
Jacara
My goal was to breastfeed for at least six months, as they
were the recommendations I followed from the World Health
Organization. It was hard because I did go back to work quite
early, but you just find ways to make it work.
I was pretty lucky that Taten had a good latch and fed really
well from the get go. I had two midwives in particular that
were really helpful in that they didn’t try to push their own
views onto me, which was really encouraging. I think it’s
important for your confidence to have a lot of encouragement,
and also use the information you get from the hospital and
from your maternal child health nurse. My approach to it was
that I got to give breastfeeding a go and because he was good
at it I just let him have a more natural approach and it seemed
to work for us. I know it’s not the case for a lot of women, but
it did help us have a strong relationship and allowed me to
breastfeed for as long as I did.
I was supported by a lot of people like my mum, my family and
my partner Shaun, he was great. My new mums group was really
supportive, it was run by a nurse through the local council who
was great. We were visited by the Aboriginal liaison worker in
the hospital which was awesome, she helped us a lot while we
were in hospital.
I think partners play an extremely important role in
breastfeeding. You go through all these thoughts especially if
it’s your first time, like “OMG is this normal?” It can really stress
you out and if you have someone who’s not on board with
“I think educating fathers more is really
important, I was lucky that I had a
really supportive partner and he was
willing to learn, read and just support
whatever way we decided to bring up
our little one.”