Breastfeeding Mom On A Mission

I encountered a lot of humps and bumps on the road in my breastfeeding journey with both of my sons. There were many times when I thought of quitting. But I chose not to give up because I knew that achieving my breastfeeding goals for each of them is worth the fight.

 

My boys whom I breastfed 
beyond 2 years old.

I chose not to focus on my bruises as I stumbled along the way. I kept going, got up on my feet after every fall. I fixed my eyes on my end goal and celebrated my short term victories as I achieved them. Before I knew it, I already hit my short term goal (to breastfeed for at least 6 months). I even surpassed my stretch goal (to breastfeed each child for two years).

 

I realized that those difficult years -- when I was still breastfeeding my children and I was going through a number of breastfeeding challenges -- formed my character and strengthened me as a mother. Also, God planted a mission in my heart after I succeeded in achieving my breastfeeding goals for each of my sons. At first I didn’t understand why I had to go through many tests in my breastfeeding journey, especially with my eldest son. Looking back however, I realized that God allowed me to experience those tests because He will eventually use my passing of those tests as my testimony to inspire and empower other moms in their breastfeeding journey.

 

Thus, a dream and a mission were planted in my heart. That God-sized dream was to write and publish a book that will help moms like me to win over their breastfeeding challenges. It was a dream that consumed me with passion for I knew firsthand how difficult it is to persevere in this noble path. I was very grateful to God and to the people who have helped me in one way or another to succeed in this journey. I wanted to pay it forward. I wanted to move from success to significance. I didn't want to be content with enjoying my success and the fruits of my decision to breastfeed my kids. I want to help other breastfeeding moms to be successful as well.

 

By the grace of God, that God-sized dream was fulfilled last year and the paperback edition/print book for BREASTFEEDING: A Journey Worth Taking was successfully launched January of this year. (You can read about the launch of the paperback edition here.) Aside from sharing my own breastfeeding success story, I also featured the breastfeeding success stories of moms from different walks of life — stay-at-home moms, work-at-home moms, moms working outside the home and mompreneurs. My goal was to help each reader find a story she can relate to and inspire her to persevere as she faces her own challenges. I discussed breastfeeding basics also, which I thought would be most helpful to first-time moms or first-time breastfeeding moms. It's not a technical book. It's a breastfeeding book written by a breastfeeding mom for fellow breastfeeding moms. I wanted it to be very easy to read and understand.

God has moved me though to keep going in this mission. A few months later, I embarked on making an eBook version of my breastfeeding book to be available on Amazon so I can share the inspiration to more families and make a difference in the lives of more children.

 

I made it my goal this year to release the eBook version of BREASTFEEDING: A Journey Worth Taking before World Breastfeeding Week 2014. Moreover, I scheduled a 3-day book promotion to make the Kindle edition of my book FREE for download on the first three days of World Breastfeeding Week 2014 as my way of supporting it. This is my gift to moms as we celebrate World Breastfeeding Week this year. (Click here to download my gift to you, your FREE copy of my eBook.) This makes this year's World Breastfeeding Week celebration memorable to me. A couple of weeks before the release of my breastfeeding book's Kindle edition, I found out that the theme for this year's World Breastfeeding Week is Breastfeeding: A Winning Goal for Life! My heart skipped a beat after I read this in their website. I felt God affirm me that I made the right decision to work on this book project and to schedule my 3-day book promotion on August 1-3. I was excited to help more breastfeeding moms become winners for life!

 

Photo from my book's Facebook Page.

It's now day 1 of World Breastfeeding Week 2014! My hope and my prayer is that in my own unique way, I would be able to inspire and empower moms all over the world to win over their breastfeeding challenges. I hope that by reading my book, more families would choose to take this path. 

 

Let me close with these lines from my breastfeeding book:

 

Breastfeeding can be challenging.

But in spite of the humps and bumps
on the road,

breastfeeding is a journey
definitely worth taking!

 

HAPPY WORLD BREASTFEEDING WEEK! 

P.S.
I'm linking this post to the #WBW2014 Blog Carnival hosted by 5 Degrees of Chaos and Handbag Mafia. Hope you can visit the other blogs who joined.