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I’ve only just regained sovereignty over my breasts. These days, they are mine alone and lead happily chaste lives, gently rounding out my shirts.

I breastfed my son until he was nearly four years old. No other aspect of my parenting has been so conflicted for me.

Breastfeeding has been: a source of great pride and sense of achievement; a physical expression of love; a miracle of nature that endlessly fascinated me; and an incredible frustration, with a fair dose of physical pain and discomfort, plus a trigger for relationship conflict thrown in for good measure.

Every choice I made in relation to feeding the wee man was instinctive. I read lots of books when I was pregnant (as I do about everything) and spoke to various friends and family. I knew that breast-feeding made sense to me, in the way that groggily trying to measure out formula in the heart of the night did not. I knew that my ability to breastfeed was in no way certain. Lots of women had shared their stories of breast-feeding failure, with all the good intentions in the world.

Maybe it was then that my subconscious whispered to me, “Not me. I’m doing it – and I don’t care who tells me otherwise.” Because somehow, through poor attachment and bleeding nipples and mastitis and 2 hour feedings repeated every 2 hours and jealous insecure husband and early teething and regular biting and being woken every 1 ½ hours (at the worst), somehow, I clung to the idea that I was doing the right thing, and it all made sense.

After the haze and pain of the first six weeks had passed, we settled into some sort of routine. Or rather, we settled into the certainty of a regular change in the wee man’s routine based on his changing feeding needs. By the three month mark, I had cracked it – I realised that to survive with some semblance of sanity, I had to lose any inflexibility I had, any preconceptions I had, and just roll with whatever happened.

My breasts were clearly not my own – they had a crucial role in my little man’s life, and they and my body also told me in no uncertain terms that his father should re-consider any thoughts of claiming them.