The End.

If there’s something that I’ve learned about motherhood, it’s that it teaches you to stand up for something that you believe in. It’s taken nearly four years, but I can honestly say that I am completely confident in the mother that I am to my two little girls.

If you would have asked me that a year ago, I probably would have tried to dance around the question. Maybe it’s having a second child or maybe even the tough side of New York City rubbing off on me (people here really aren’t all that mean, just determined,) but I have no shame in the way that I have chosen to raise my daughters. I make the choices that I do simply because that is what is best for them. One of those choices includes breastfeeding them.

When I had Harlan I was so scared and embarrassed when it came to breastfeeding. If people ask me if I was doing it I’d say yes and steer the conversation a different way. I didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t want to do it in public. It gave me more anxiety than I ever thought that it would.

Fast forward two years later when Avery comes along and I realized that juggling two kids in a big city meant that I needed to get over my fear and do what I needed to do. Which most of the time was breastfeed Avery. So I did. Anytime and anywhere.

I was always very vocal about my breastfeeding journey. I wrote several stories on Babble about it.

I loved it. It was special.

A couple of weeks ago Avery suddenly stopped nursing. It was the end.

Just like that. No more.

In order for me to deal with the unexpected pain from her sudden disinterest in it, I wrote about it just like I always do. It helps me cope just to get the words out there in the open.

To my surprise, a week later, I got an email from someone at Babble that The Huffington Post would like to cover my story. I was so excited that they wanted to feature something so personal to me.

And then today I get an email showing me this.

And that’s when I started to cry. Not tears of sadness, but tears of joy. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in this journey, it’s that breastfeeding is powerful.

Breastfeeding is life changing.

This is coming from a mom who was embarrassed by the single thought of breastfeeding, to now gladly speaking out about how incredible it is.

We live in a society where breastfeeding can be viewed as sexual, gross, or explicit. But that’s changing. And we are the ones that are changing it.