You spend nine months preparing for it, reading the books, going to the classes, seeing the posters. Breast is best. The best start for your baby. You read the research, learn all about colostrum, fore-milk, hind-milk , breasts filling, engorgement, mastitis, which product is best to rub on sore nipples, how to get your partner involved - it all fills you with awe. You hear the horror stories from your friends - cracked and bleeding nipples, milk drying up, babies starving because the milk isn't enough, not being able to find anywhere private and being thrown out of cafes and restaurants for performing a perfectly natural bodily function. But you set your jaw, determined to be the best mother possible. Determined, not matter how hard it may be, to breastfeed.

Sound familiar? I'm sure it does. It was exactly how I felt - only I had the added bonus of being a midwife, an expert on breastfeeding, having shown hundreds of people how to do it. How hard can it be, I thought, watching my belly grow and my breasts sag like huge watermelons in a shopping bag (never overestimate the power of a maternity bra - scaffolding couldn't hold my boobs up for long). No sterilisers for me, no bottles and stashes of formula for safety's sake. I would breast feed or die in the process. After all, for what other reason had I been carrying round these two huge mounds for the last fifteen years. A natural process. Easy as pie. No problem.

Except I overlooked a few factors. Like how babies insist on coming in the middle of the night - and you haven't slept for at least three nights because you've been 'niggling', and you're already exhausted after a humungous bout of house cleaning brought on by the nesting instinct, such that even the cat runs away at the sight of the Pledge can. The floors are clean enough to eat from, you've swept the ceiling at least three times and polished the toilet seat. You can barely walk from fatigue but there's not a germ left within spitting distance. Then the labour starts.

At the end of all the pain and grunting and pushing and swearing and tearing, you're presented with a squally sticky person whose entire world is now centred on you, and you've gone from a previously successful, perhaps professional person into the biggest role of your life. Mother. And for the breast-fed infant that means only one thing. You're a walking, talking, loving milk-bar. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no sick leave, no holidays, no time off for good behaviour. No back ups to give you a break, an hour off. You're it.

So there you are, exhausted, wondering what the hell hit you, and it's feeding time. The nice midwife kindly helps you to feed, perhaps with a vice-like grip that propels your tender nipple at great velocity into the wide open mouth of the infant you hardly know yet. Or perhaps more gently, with lots of explanations that are completely lost on you at this stage. Turn his head this way. Relax. There, you're breastfeeding. And the tiny bundle of joy clamps down on your nipple with the force of a jack hammer. While they scrape you off the ceiling, you watch with joy and love as your child suckles happily. Oh good, you think. He's here. I can rest. Just feed him when he needs it, change his nappy and clothes, bath him occasionally. How wonderful. Every time he's hungry I can just flop out a boob and he'll be instantly satisfied.

Which is true, of course. But what nobody warns you about is that for the first few days that's all you do. Feed. He wakes up, you leap up, change his nappy as he screams blue murder at you for daring to make him wait two minutes for his gourmet meal. You fix him on, wonderful. Then he needs to be burped, settled. Finally he is calm. You try to put him down - he cries. You pick him up again - he cries some more. Finally you hand him over to husband/partner/sister/mother/man who came to read the meter and say, "you settle him down while I have a rest." You make a cup of tea, or a phone call, or go to the loo. Come back, pick up your book, and "Waaaah!" It's feeding time again.

And then come the nights. Perhaps you're lucky, and he slips into a nice routine, feeding every three hours or so, between which you pass out, dead to the world, dreaming dreams of nappies and prams and Winnie-the-Pooh nursery sets, waking gently to his insistent cries, and after each feed he too passes out and leaves you in peace. How wonderful.

Perhaps not. Perhaps yours will be the one to get colic, to hate being put down, hate lying on his back, want to feed all the time and never let go of the nipple, until you feel like a cow whose udders have been stamped on, and every time he wakes up you've only just fallen asleep, and every time he latches on you scream with pain and wake the neighbours. Then you find yourself nodding off in the middle of a feed, a nap from which you are woken by your husband/partner/man who came to read the meter with sleepy complaints because your other breast has been pumping milk in sympathy and has just soaked him, the bed and the bedclothes. Then the baby has a dirty nappy and that needs to be changed, or possets all over himself and needs clean clothes as well. And then another feed. At last he sleeps happily beside you, and you're just dropping off when said husband/partner has to get up for work. With your eyeballs half-way down your cheeks, looking like something that has just been dug up, you crawl downstairs to face the housework, the washing, the shopping for more nappies and clothes because you simply haven't got enough to cope with the seemingly endless changing. Baby happily asleep now, you drag yourself from room to room trying to remember what it was like to have a brain that worked, and try to smile and be cheerful when the phone rings, and not to be sarcastic as you answer the polite queries with "Sleep? What's that? Yes, I'm fine, just buried alive by washing". You try not to care when you've finally bundled sleeping baby into his pram for a quick walk to the shops, only to find that two great wet circles have appeared on your blouse - if only someone would invent breast pads that actually work!

Then you finally get to the shops, complete with baby, dry blouse, nappy bag, pram toys, but minus brain, sanity, makeup, smile, and trudge around pushing a pram designed to make shopping trolleys look user friendly. After getting doors slammed in your face as you try to maneouvre the pram inside, having to back out of shops where the aisles are too narrow for the pram, cursing at shops where the baby department is upstairs and there's no lift (!) and eventually loading the pram with shopping so now you resemble a galleon in full sail, little darling decides it's feed time again. You struggle into a café with waitress service and almost faint at the thought of a nice cup of tea. You unwrap baby from some of its layers, and carefully drape a big shawl over one shoulder. It's a bit awkward getting the positioning right, and you end up exposing yourself several times before finally latching the baby on but then at last, yes, he's feeding, your tea arrives and everything is fine.

Except for the old woman two tables down who starts a diatribe about "carrying on like that in public", the two teenage boys at the next table sniggering because they actually saw a breast! and the waitress who won't look at you but is so red in the face you could fry an egg on her left cheek. Then the manager comes over and suggests you would be more comfortable feeding the baby in the toilet, all the while not meeting your eyes but directing his words somewhere in the region of your chin. You look at him and think - I have two options. Burst into tears, and add a red face and a runny nose to my list of embarrassments, or give this man a piece of my mind, or at least what used to be my mind before I had this baby. You choose option B.

"No thank you. I would prefer to finish my tea here, not in a toilet, and I'm sure my son, if he could speak, would say the same about the nice warm milk he is drinking. "

Although he cannot actually see your breast, the manager can imagine it underneath the camouflaging shawl, and that is enough to give him the shakes. Also, your post pregnant bulk puts him off man-handling you out of the café, so you finish your tea in peace, un-latch baby who has fallen asleep with a full tummy, and set off again, deliberately forgetting to pay.

Weeks later, you smile as you remember this. The smile is for the haggard you who still had a reply for the ignorant little man in the café, despite the lack of sleep, and for the waitress who had no idea how to deal with you. It's also for all those people in the café who saw who carrying out a perfectly natural function without embarrassment, never once feeling the need to retreat to the toilet to give your son his lunch. It's also for the smug feeling you have now that the colic has gone, the nights have become easy and the days run like clockwork. And you still don't have a steriliser, or need to make up bottles, and when he wakes up you're able to latch him on with one hand, then eat a sandwich, read a book, watch tv and talk on the telephone all without batting an eyelid. Your nipples no longer resemble minced steak, your belly has disappeared and you've found that cut up terry nappies make great breastpads. You sleep when he sleeps, and can manage a nightfeed and change without really opening your eyes.

You're breastfeeding!