We wanted to share an honest and unfiltered view of what a day in the life of a mother committed to breastfeeding her toddler (yes, toddler!) looks like. The decision whether or not to breastfeed is a personal choice and we honor every mothers’ decision. But we know that breastfeeding is a choice that involves your whole person and most of your waking hours. We wanted to create a video to honor this commitment and to highlight the tremendous work that goes into breastfeeding.
We created this video during Breastfeeding Awareness month to highlight and truly feature the work of breastfeeding. Our goal for this piece was to create a moment that every breastfeeding mother could relate to so our strategy for the creation was to work to cast a mother who was willing to be completely open with capturing her full and real experience. The strategic choices not to edit, not to “curate”, not to filter, but rather to simply be a window into this world allowed our brand to somewhat ‘disappear’ and allowed this one woman’s story to be shown.
Key features of this video were to edit the piece to ensure we were able to show her whole experience and to deliberately balance the amount of video time given to the various elements pulling on her attention: her other children, her household responsibilities, her time with her partner and the fact that the demands of her hungry child never turn “off.” Lighting choices were shot to be intentionally imperfect and as real as possible.
The strategic choice allowed the viewer to become immersed within these moments as opposed to having them filtered through rose colored glasses. This creates authenticity because the physical labor of breastfeeding and caring for a child is happening right before your eyes.
This touching video received over 1 million views across our social media channels driving user engagement and audience growth targets for our company. But more importantly, it reached our audience emotionally in exactly the way we’d hoped. We wanted to ensure that breastfeeding mom's experiences were seen and were highlighted. We wanted to showcase the tremendous work, love and labor that goes into a mother nursing her child. Here are a sampling of comments from viewers:
I was tearing up watching this. I really felt you in this, mom. It’s so wonderful and hard and great. All the mundane moments. ❤️
That woman is a god damn hero
I feel seen.
This hits right in the feels ❤️
This is beautiful! 😭❤️ crying as I watch this!
Wow this is beautiful. Really brought insight to the demands of breastfeeding. This touched me, thank you
This is my liiiiife ❤️😍🙌
Thank you to whoever made and posted this video! This is the most realistic “day in the life of a mom” I have ever seen online! So accurate!! It shows the good and the bad. This video shows a woman taking care of her family and also making a little bit of time for herself while also keeping up with the house chores. 👏👏👏👏I salute this mom and all other moms out there. Now that I’m a mother I understand. ❤️
