Charting every minute I spent breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is recommended as the best way to feed your baby for at least the first six months of its life, with a variety of benefits for both mum and baby. At the same time, breastfeeding rates in the UK are amongst the lowest in the world. However, breastfeeding is *hard*. I recorded every minute I spent breastfeeding and track my story with data below.

I spent 482 hours breastfeeding over the first 7 months of my baby's life

I spent more time breastfeeding in the first few months

That's equivalent to 20 days solid, and an average of 2.5 hours per day! As the graph shows below, there were large differences in how much time I spent breastfeeding each day for the first month, before gradually reducing that daily time between months 2 and 5. By month 6 my baby was fighting all but the first feed of the day (so I stopped all others), and stopped altogether when I got ill after 7 months of breastfeeding.

There's a lot of fluctuation in how much time I spent breastfeeding during the first month

What chaos! A few things jump out at me from this; having a baby is a complete physical and mental shock. I was totally unprepared for breastfeeding and had no idea how long I was supposed to breastfeed for. As a result there's a lot of fluctuation in duration in the first couple of weeks.

On day 23 I called the NCT breastfeeding helpline asking for support to increase my baby's breastfeeding, and decrease her dependency on formula which we were asked to give her from day 5. The jump on day 24 is evident and on day 25 I spent the most time breastfeeding - a whopping 7 hours, 38 minutes!

Charting all my feeds

After two months a pattern in feeding times emerges

This is an insightful graph! I can see:

• How chaotic the first 50 days were with no routine and feeding at all times of day and night! After this, a pattern for feeding times forms
• At day 89 there seems to be a step change and my baby wakes for a feed after 6am for the first time – result!
• Around day 150 feeds get shorter and I continue breastfeeding for only the first feed of the day.

Summary

It has been fascinating to look back on my breastfeeding journey with the benefit of hindsight and to see some of the high- and lowlights I remember, but without the emotion I attached to it at the time! To do this analysis I downloaded my data from the Baby Tracker app, and produced the code here to analyse it.