For oh-so many, the image of a mother breastfeeding her child is one of complete peace. However, in reality, it can be difficult, painful and for some, simply not possible.
Unfortunately, every new mother is faced with the unfair stigma of ‘Breast Is Best’, and for those whose bodies will not allow it, is sure to be a difficult experience to overcome. For many celebrities, they have also struggled to feed their child naturally, proving that you’re not alone, and even those with resources at their disposal have trouble too.
With World Breastfeeding Week in our midst, it is so important to shine a light on how strong, capable and incredible all mothers are—with or without breastfeeding.
Below, we’ve rounded up 14 famous faces who haven’t held back when talking about how difficult they found feeding their child to be.
Chrissy Teigen
“The feeding schedule surprised me a lot,” Chrissy Teigen told Entertainment Tonight. “If you kind of do the math, you’re kind of breastfeeding for 10 hours a day total. It’s very loving and sweet, but it’s not easy. They just use you for your milk and you just feel like you are just a cow all day.”
Amy Schumer
“We had a lactation expert come over,” Schumer said on Dr. Berlin’s Informed Pregnancy podcast. “[Gene] didn’t latch and I just didn’t feel that push to make that happen. Then I pumped for, like, the first month…I was like, ‘This is not for me.’ I didn’t want to do it. Some people just absolutely love it and I’m so happy for them, but it was just bumming me out. … Once it occurred to me that I could stop, I was like, ‘I’m going to stop.’ And then every week I just took away one session of the pumping.”
Kelly Rowland
“I had my heart set on breastfeeding, but I wasn’t producing enough milk,” she told Parents Magazine. “I got down on myself, which I think was mentally limiting my supply.” Rowland also wrote in Whoa, Baby!, “All that gnawing at your nipples will take its toll!”
Adele
“Some of us can’t [breastfeed],” Adele once told an audience during a concert, as noted on Scary Mommy. “I managed about nine weeks with my boobs. … Some of my mates got postnatal depression from the way those midwives were talking. Idiots.”
Kim Kardashian
“The hospital suggested [nipple] shields to me, since at the beginning I found nursing super painful and difficult, so I took some home and never looked back,” Kardashian wrote on her website. “I find the baby feeds better, and it allows me to never get irritated nipples or anything because they’re protected by the shield.”
Jessica Alba
“I think what’s difficult about it is you’re tethered to the baby,” Alba revealed to SheKnows. “And babies… they’re not really on a schedule. They’re just growing and sleeping and eating, and we’re so programmed to have a schedule and kind of do what we want to do, so leaving the house when you have a completely unpredictable baby is, to me, what was difficult. It’s hard to leave the house. At home it’s easy, you’re just in pyjamas.”
Khloé Kardashian
“I had to stop breast feeding 😩😩😩 it was really hard for me to stop (emotionally) but it wasn’t working for my body,” Kardashian revealed on her Twitter in a string of tweets. “Sadly… I tried every trick in the book—water, special cookies, power pumping, massages etc. I tried so very hard to continue… I had a lactation specialist and everything 😩… It was so frustrating because for Kourt it was sooooooo easy for her to breast feed,” she revealed.
“My experience was very different… I fought and fought to try and continue but then when I actually stopped, I didn’t realise what a relief it was for me to not stress and worry anymore. Any sec I had of downtime I was stressing to produce more for the next feeding.”
Ali Wong
“Giving birth ain’t nothing compared to breastfeeding,” Wong revealed in her Netflix special, Ali Wong: Hard Knock Wife. “Breastfeeding is brutal. It is chronic physical torture. I thought it was supposed to be this beautiful bonding ceremony where I would feel like I was sitting on a lily pad in a meadow, and bunnies would gather at my feet while the fat-Hawaiian-man version of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ would play. No, it’s not like that at all. Breastfeeding is this savage ritual that just reminds you that your body is a cafeteria now.”
Thandie Newton
For Thandie Newton, she found breastfeeding to be incredibly difficult to juggle alongside her career, while speaking to Harry Connick Jr. regarding her show Westworld, saying, “I actually just had my son, Booker―he was maybe 4 months old―and the showrunners Jonah Nolan and his wife, Lisa Joy. I was talking to [them] on Skype. And we started our conversation talking about Westworld, the show, and it was going on quite a long time, and I could hear my baby out the door, and he wanted to be nursed”
“You know how it is, ladies, when your kid needs you, everything is firing up. And I said to Jonah, ‘Jonah, I’m so, so sorry, I’m going to have to bring my baby here’” Newton said. “And I thought: This is going to lose me the job. It’s gonna lose me the job! … My husband brought in the baby and I ended up breastfeeding my kid while talking to Jonah…and then, do you know what happened? Lisa came onto the screen breastfeeding her little baby.”
Hilary Duff
Taking to her Instagram, Duff opened up about what it was like to breastfeed her daughter, Banks. She revealed: “[I] felt so lucky to be so close to her and give her that start. I know many women are not able to and for that I am sympathetic and very grateful that I could. For six wonderful months.”
“But I needed a break. I was going to break. With the stress of a dropping milk supply and a baby that was getting bored or not caring about nursing when I was available to, I was sad and frustrated and feeling like a failure all of the time. When really I’m a badass rock star… I wasn’t myself at all,” she revealed.
“Something scary was hovering over my brain and my heart…the part of me that I know is smart and rational. The lows felt horrible…I am happy to say that I haven’t fed or pumped in three days and it’s crazy how fast you can come out on the other side. I feel fine and happy and relieved and silly that I even stressed on it so hard. Banks is thriving and I get even more time with her and daddy gets to do more feeds! And mommy gets a tiny bit more sleep!”
Angelina Jolie
“You think, ‘Ah, if anybody can do that, I can do that.’ It’s very hard,” Jolie revealed about breastfeeding her twins Vivienne and Knox, on British morning show GMTV.
“I stopped at three months, [it was] about as much as I could do. … There’s this football hold — it’s a lot harder than it looks in the books. I did that a few times. I would take turns. It just takes a long time.”
Zoe Saldana
“So ladies—moms… Breastfeeding moms. What do you have to say about pumping??!!!,” Saldana pondered on her Twitter, before adding, “#Breastfeeding #breasts hurting!!”
Kristen Bell
“I went from being an autonomous woman to essentially being a food truck,” she revealed on #Momsplaining. “Because that’s essentially what you are. Isn’t it crazy how much of your nipple and your boob has to go in their mouth? You gotta flatten it out and put half of it in their throat. And if the latch is wrong, game over.”
Amal Clooney
While many look to Amal Clooney as nothing but perfect, she is human, just like the rest of us. Opening up about breastfeeding her twins, Ella and Alexander, she revealed that its just as difficult for her, as it is for everyone else.
“When I was nursing, it was much more complicated, because there are two,” Clooney told Vogue U.S.. “I had all manner of weird cushions and pillows and machines.”
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