Five months ago, Anna Young had a baby. Five days ago, Anna Young completed a half marathon. That’s 24 kilometres and I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
Anna shared her achievement on the Facebook page, Occupy Breastfeeding, telling fans of the page that she stopped at the 12 kilometre mark to express milk for her baby.
Anna breastfed her daughter at 4:30 in the morning before she left for the race, pumped half way through and then breastfed her again after she finished.
“[Occupy Breastfeeding] and Le Leche League motivated to me find a way to run my race and take care of my daughter. #normalisebreastfeeding.”
Sarah Hosseni reports for ScaryMommy; “Races like [these] that typically start pretty early in the morning which could leave a breastfeeding mom in quite the predicament. You don’t want your supply to be impacted by not nursing or pumping for a long stretch of time and you definitely do not want to deal with engorged boobs. Seriously, the pain is like no other. So what do you do? Skip the marathon? Find a place to pump on the sidelines? Or just pump and run? Young chose the last.”
ScaryMommy also says that Anna used a hand pump to express during the race, making her efforts all the more extraordinary – seriously, have you ever tried to use one of those things?
Responses to Anna’s post were overwhelmingly positive, one commenter summing it up like this; “You go mum, I bow to you.”
What did you do while you were breastfeeding?
Featured image via Facebook/Anna Young.
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Top Comments
Wow, kudos to this woman, dedication! I imagine it would have been amazingly uncomfortable to run with engorged breasts, and yeah, she could have stopped, but if she can multitask and pump like that and is comfortable doing so, more power to her.
Also, um, a marathon is 42kms, not 48kms... So a half marathon is 21kms.