This week is National Breastfeeding Awareness Week, when we celebrate the wonder of mummy milk.

If you're pregnant and planning to breastfeed, then good for you, you'll be giving your child a precious and unique gift. But I think that sometimes when breastfeeding is depicted as this magical union, it's easy to forget that for many women, it doesn't come as easily as we expect.

Nobody wants to endure bruised and bleeding nipples, or the pain of thrush or mastitis, and it can come as quite a shock if you do.

The other surprising element about breastfeeding is how often you have to do it. Every book I read before I had my first baby spoke about feeding every three hours. But newborn babies need feeding much more often than this. It can take a while before feeds are spaced out to anything approaching three hours. So a new mum can quite easily feel like a non-stop feeding machine.

Don't feel bad if breastfeeding doesn't work out for you. It's a skill, and some people take to it more easily than others.

And if you're having problems but want to continue, get as much support as you can from your health visitor or organisations such as La Leche League. Talk to other mums around you about their experiences too. Once breastfeeding is well established we tend to forget about the problems that can crop up early on, but if you ask your friends for support they'll give it.

How did you get on with breastfeeding? Did you take to it easily or was it harder work than you expected? Did you continue or switch to bottles? Leave a comment below