The right accessories

One of my favorite cloth diapering retailers, Cotton Babies, also sells other natural parenting goodies. They are currently having a big sale on nursing tank tops, which are a really handy thing to have around if you're breastfeeding. They are really easy to wear under absolutely anything, and look fine by themselves, and open in very clever ways so you can nurse your baby super easily, even in public. Thak said I could buy a couple of them. They're on sale for 50% off, so I thought that was a good idea.

That's when it occurred to me. One reason breastfeeding has always been so hard for me is because I've never had the right stuff. It's really hard and also painful at least at first, to maneuver regular clothes, regular bras, and a new baby, without trying to flash the entire world. Even doing this in a car outside of the mall will get you strange looks. (Ask me about it sometime. By the way, thank you, people of Savannah for being so NOT supportive of breastfeeding, by gawking and giving disgusted looks. It definitely made it that much easier. Right...) Anyhow, I talked to Thak about it, and he said absolutely. This time, I will have the right stuff. No more crappy ill-fitting nursing bras that make me just end up wearing my regular ones instead. This time, I get the right stuff. It doesn't have to be a ton of stuff, and it doesn't have to be the most expensive there is, but it has to be the right stuff.

It also occurred to me that I tend to stick with things a lot better if we've spent money on it. Cloth diapering was a good example of that. I told myself that in order to recoup our initial investment (in other words, the point at which our cloth expenditure would equal what we would have spent on disposables to that point) was six months, so even if I hated it, I had to cloth diaper for six months just so we didn't lose money. Of course, I never hated cloth diapering. I loved it from day one. How could one not? Cloth diapers are soft, fluffy, and adorable. I do think that applying the same logic to breastfeeding will be an effective tool for me, though. Each nursing tank top, at its sale price, costs just slightly more than a can of formula. A can of formula lasts about a week for a young baby. So basically, if I buy two nursing tank tops this week, then I have to nurse for two weeks to recoup that investment. Then say a month or two from now, I buy one of those hot sexy nursing bras they sell in England (no, really, the Brits actually make sexy nursing bras, and they have cheap US shipping!) and it costs me the equivalent of 3 weeks of formula. Adding the two together, that gets me just over the month mark before I'd recoup my investment, and I hate wasting money, so that's a tactic that would work. I figure by the time I buy at least a few things (like I said, not a ton, but enough to get by), I'll be committed to at least a couple months just by the investment. That's enough time to actually get over the initial hump, and past some of the pain, and maybe see it get a bit easier.

I think this can work. Really, it has to work. I'm just trying to find ways to give us the best chance.