Breastfeeding Broke Me, But Hearing Other Mums’ Stories Helped Me Heal, So I Photographed It (6 Pics)

I was convinced I was the only one struggling.

Years passed, and I grew into my work as a photographer. I specialise in maternity and newborn portraits, and slowly something surprising started to happen during my shoots. In those quiet moments between feeding and settling a baby, mothers began to open up to me.

“I thought it would be easier.”

“I still feel like I failed.”

“No one told me it could be so hard.”

I hadn’t asked them to share, but maybe they felt in a safe space and they did. As if they’d been waiting for someone to say, “You’re not alone.”

I realised I wasn’t the only one who had cried while feeding. I wasn’t the only one who had felt like my body was broken, or who had secretly thought about giving up. I wasn’t the only one who had carried a hidden weight of guilt and shame.

So I started to listen more. And then, I started to document it with a personal project on breastfeeding.

Each session became more than a photoshoot. It became a conversation. Some mums breastfed for years. Others tried once and stopped. Some pumped for months. Some stopped because of pain, some never really started. All of them felt something powerful and many had never told anyone how deeply it had affected them.

I wanted to give those stories a place to live.

I created Milk Tales: A Journey of Motherhood and Breastfeeding to honour those voices. The book is a collection of real stories told through portraits and reflections, raw, joyful, tearful, quiet, fierce.

It’s not a guide. There’s no advice. No right or wrong. Just truth, stories, experiences.

What surprised me most is how much creating this helped me heal. I had carried my own story like a secret. But hearing these women speak and seeing their strength reflected back to them in portraits, softened something inside me. It helped me rewrite the narrative I had held onto for too long.

That I wasn’t broken.

I wasn’t failing.

I just needed to know I wasn’t alone.

The book will be released on 1st August, during World Breastfeeding Week, but it’s not about sales. It’s about space for truth, for emotion, for connection.

I hope that another mum, somewhere, will see these stories and think, “Oh. It wasn’t just me.”

Because it never was.