We came home two days later because the baby just wasn’t very well, and once, once we got home I think, once you’re back in your own environment and, you know, things, things do change, you know, once, once you’re home and you’ve got support from your partner twenty-four hours a day, which you don’t have while you’re in hospital, I think that makes a big difference because inevitably the problems that you have are in the middle of the night when all you want is your partner there to put, to put his arms round you and tell you you’re doing okay and, and of course that’s the time when they [health professionals] can’t be there so. That I think being at home and having that support makes a big difference and, you know, you, it is hard work when you first have a baby you need to sleep, you need, you need to rest and, you don’t, I don’t think, get the proper, I don’t think you get proper quality sleep while you’re, while you’re in hospital, I don’t think you can ever properly relax, you have to be confident that, you know, if you’re not there next to your baby that whoever is is somebody that you entirely trust and, that’s, for me was only my partner so, it made, it makes a big difference once you come home and you’ve got other people there to, to help you and, you know, make you cups of tea and [laughs].

So you got a lot of support from your partner once

Yes.

‘you came home?

Yeah, yeah.

Anybody else?

Various people within my family gave the general support that they give, that they could give but I don’t think anybody felt in a position to help with feeding, you know, that was kind of, all that’s your area and that’s, I mean I’m not lucky enough to have my mum that lives nearby, I never have, and, you know, telephone support is, it’s one thing, she came over when the baby was six weeks old and that, that made a big difference, and shes done the same whenever I’ve had any subsequent children, but, I found the support that I’ve sought out myself through the people I’d, people I’ve met in the NCT have been, have been great and I don’t think theres any, any better support that you can get than, than that from somebody else who’s either done it or is doing it, so I found the sort of coffee mornings and things like that once I, once the baby was, you know, a few weeks old and, you’re able to get out and about, that was, that’s been a great support, when I’ve had all of the children it’s been, it’s been immense, just to be able to talk to somebody else that’s going through it, and you do find that as your confidence grows you’re probably not so much getting the support from them, as supporting them but you don’t even realise that at the time, you know, I think they, just having a conversation about breastfeeding I think, is for both of you just to hear somebody else saying, ‘Oh I’ve done that’ or, ‘Yes and weve been there it does make a big difference so that’s where most of my support has come from, is from, from others that I’ve met.

And finding out that what you’re going through

Yeah.

‘is normal?

And that somebody else has been there and done that or, it makes a big difference. Yes, yeah, I think when you have more than one child you find that you have so much else to think about, [baby coughs], and not having, not having sort of friends and family on the doorstep makes, makes a big difference, and when, when we moved we were quite, I felt quite isolated when I had my son, and my daughter was, three and a half, three years and nine months old when I had, when I had my s

I had a very, very supportive friend, and there was no way I would have continued had it not been for her, she was a great advocate for breastfeeding herself, shed had immense problems herself and had gone to La Leche for help, and, and had made it her mission to encourage me to breastfeed, and help me because I think shed found it so difficult herself. Shed come round with lunch and cook me lunch and, you know, just sit and talk and make me realise that it was difficult but how well I was doing and really, really encouraging me that I was doing well and it seemed that every time I felt like I wanted to give up shed be there at the door, with lunch and I mean a really, really fantastic supportive person, really helpful she brought cushions round to help me position, shed come round and get the baby and position it for me and said, ‘No do it like this, and do it like that’ and just try and help and, I kind of think perhaps took, you know, the role that a La Leche counsellor would’ve done had I, you know, had that initiative to do that but I didn’t need to because I had this really supportive friend.

Did you try to meet other mothers who are breastfeeding or mix with other mothers?

I did because, for only because I was seeing the lactation nurse and it was like a open like clinic and all the mothers who was having problems would come in so you, I used it then as like my postnatal type therapy thing and we used to talk to each other and wed have a coffee or a cup of tea while feeding and trying, and then the lactation nurse would come round and see if we was alright and, and then see if weve got any ideas and that’s the only way I met them but there are groups around that you can go to but because I was going over there twice a week to get my positioning right I never got a chance to go to the other places but hopefully next time round, now I’ve got a bit more knowledge of breastfeeding and what to look out for if their attachment is bad, then perhaps if I did need to go and see a lactation nurse again I’d be in the earlier stages rather than the later stages so I won’t have to be going over there for so long, and I probably would go to, like other places to meet mums and that.

Why do you think it’s important to talk to other mums?

Because you get their experiences and as a mother sometimes when especially when you’re like off on maternity leave from work so, you’re, you’re not having much social contact with other adults so it’s a good thing to interact with the persons of your own age and you get to know their experiences, some of them, like not all the mothers over at the lactation group were first time mothers they were like, they were fine like with their first child feeding but with they’re second child therere having a bit of difficulty so they can tell you what they found out on the first child, like with like teething gels for instance and teething powders and stuff it, it wasn’t just all around breastfeeding it was general stuff that we used to talk about, even if it was just about a good bottle of wine or something like that and, not that you drink much with breastfeeding anyway but it’s just for an example [laughs], but it’s just nice to have adults to talk to not just to be stuck in the same four walls day in day out, pulling your hair out then, and it was just good to communicate with people and it, it helps you then, as BT say it’s good to talk so [laughs], it’s yeah I think definitely.

Did you have friends who were breastfeeding at that stage while you were pregnant?

I came to [this town] only when I was pregnant and actually I met all my new friends in this new town when I had my baby, so when I was pregnant I actually didn’t know any women in this area and nobody breastfeeding, so I came to it, and then once my baby was born I sort of wanted to be part of a group so I made sure I contacted a few sort of people and did it.([laughs] this is my baby wanting to feed [laughs]).

So what sort of groups did you get involved in?

I contacted the NCT and I met five other women that had children of the same age, so same sort of you know, they were about, I think they were about five weeks when we met for the first time. And I, I also exercise when I was pregnant, I went to antenatal aqua-natal exercise, sort of exercise in the water, and because I went very early in my pregnancy I did several groups so actually I knew probably about twelve, fifteen woman that had done the exercise classes and we kept in touch as soon as we had our babies we exchanged, you know, sort of the opinion, the happy or even, the news anyway [laughs] and we meet regularly since then actually I am still in touch with those woman so their children are about two, two and a half, three years old now and we are still meeting up regularly, so.

What is it you get from those sorts of groups?

I think meeting up with them, we, we share the ups and downs about being mothers, about, you know, breastfeeding and when it’s difficult you do need to talk to someone. and when you become a mother you just, you, it’s difficult to say, I mean I stopped working and that was already quite a big change for me, and you will suddenly become a mother, you at home a lot, so and you don’t exchange very much with the outside world so you don’t engage in a job and you very much go to the shops to buy some food and buy some nappies and then you come back home and, you know, you go to the parks, to the swings and things, but it’s very much a world within the world sort of thing, so it’s very important to be able to talk to a woman that might have the same levels of tiredness [laughs], because we are all tired all the time, and, and just being able to share the experience is important, yeah, so we giggle a lot about what we do and we just relax and, and we share, you know.

We have in, it’s very interesting in my group, we talk about, we all have breastfed our baby and we all very, very different women, we all have very different professions, very different personalities and in fact it’s very interesting that weve stuck together because were breastfeeding and because we have children I suppose, because we are so, in the spectrum of personality we probably would have never jammed together outside of this experience, so the group is so important, I, in fact I don’t know why it’s so important, but it has put together some people that would have never, never, you know, decided to spend time together, so it’s bringing things into people that they don’t know about and you explain something that is so special that it, it just changes you start relating to people differently and you start making friends with people that you would have never looked at before. It’s, it brings something, different into you. In fact once, I think once you’re a mother you’re a very different person, and that’s what I discover still, and the way I look at women nowadays is very different from, you know, the way I perceived them, or understood them before. Motherhood is very challenging and in a way there is this great conspiracy [laughs] that, you know, you are just going to have a baby and it’s easy, in fact you, it’

Sometimes your friends and family who are so well meaning, they turn round and say, Oh, you know, it doesn’t seem to be working out the breastfeeding. You know, then, s hes not feeding very well. Or, Look at her on her growth chart and that, her weight’s so low she should be up here, you know, this is the average up here, she needs to be up there, it’s not working out, why don’t you just give some formula, you know, it’s ever, so easy, you just go down the supermarket, buy it, and just, just give some formula. And it’s so hard because you’ve just spent your, another night of being up, every hour, every two hours, you’ve just done a feed and your nipples are so sore and it is so tempting, but just stick with it because breastfeeding is one of the best experiences I’ve ever experienced and it took a long time for us to get with it but now that we are I’m hoping to go on a lot longer.

Were there other people that you got help from?

No just the breastfeeding counsellor really, I didn’t really, groups weren’t really that helpful, everybody else bought formula feeds, you know, I was one of the very few people that do breastfeed and people sort of look at you strange, and even on my board at the moment that I’m on, everybody’s given up because it was too hard or, you know, and I’m thinking, ‘Well I’ve had a baby that screams for three hours every night, I’ve got two other, hes not sleeping, I’m the one that should be giving up not you lot’, but people do, they give up very, very, very quickly they find it’s very, very hard and think well bottles are easier but they’re not.

Have you had pressure to give up?

Yeah, my Mum, she doesn’t want me to do it.

Tell me about that.

She spent, when I had my daughter, she spent the first four days saying, ‘Oh it’s no good, no good, give her a bottle, give her a bottle yeah she was really trying to pressurise me in the first four days, and I just.

How did you cope with that?

Ignored her, but it was really hard to ignore what I thought I was doing best she didn’t, and it was really hard to ignore her. But again it just, I think again that could have contributed towards my postnatal depression because again I was concentrating on so much to try and block her out, to try and get baby to breastfeed, I wasn’t concentrating on what I should have been concentrating that was just me and baby, I was concentrating on everything around it, which you, you know, you can’t do.

Was you mother a breastfeeder?

No, she didn’t breastfeed any, ‘Couldn’t be doing with that’ she said. So I said to her, ‘It’s different people, different, different attitudes’, you know, ‘I want to do, I had a lot of health problems with my son’, I didn’t want that for my daughter, I wanted to bond better and well I did everything I was meant to do for my daughter so, I said theres, the, you know, the pros outweigh the cons, and it’s a lot easier so. And I can see why people are so opposed to it, because it is hard and nobody tells you, it’s the whole I think, it’s the whole wedding concept, you think the marriage is going to be the best thing ever and you think it’s going to be all easy, but when you actually get married [laughs] it’s not easy [laughs], it’s an uphill struggle, and it’s the same with a baby you go into the same thing having a baby, you think it’s all going to be lovely, you have this lovely baby that sleeps all day, you don’t, it’s hard work everything you’ve got to work for and people don’t want to work for things nowadays they just want it all given to you and that’s, that’s why I think people unfortunately, marriages fail and babies don’t get breastfed, sorry but I think it should, that’s what I think, you know. And it is hard, you know, people are, you know, I’ve been told by my doctor, the paediatrician, my health visitor, a registrar that I should top up [2nd son] with formula and then he will sleep through the night. And when you get told by four people who are meant to be supporting you to top up your child with formula you think, ‘Well maybe I’m doing something wrong and you need an extra drive to, for yourself, to push you through and say, ‘No actually, I’m not going to do what you say, I want to, I want to do what’s best for my child’, but it’s really difficult when you don’t get no support, really difficult.

How do you deal with that advice that goes against what you want to do?

Swi

No, as it became more and more painful I became less and less keen to feed and, it was so much so that I was just putting off feeds for as long as I could and every time she cried I thought, ‘Oh no it can’t be that shes hungry it must be something else and, you know, maybe shes wet or, maybe she just wants a cuddle and she can’t possibly want to feed, I really don’t want to feed her’ and so sort of extended to about four hours and a couple of times, even five hours just because I really was not happy to feed just ’cause it was so painful.

What sort of help did you get at that stage? Did you tell somebody that you were experiencing this pain?

I did, I came home from hospital quite quickly which in retrospect perhaps wasn’t a good idea I, it had just been very crowded, very busy and noisy and I didn’t really have very much help in the hospital because the midwives were completely overrun that day, very, very busy delivery suite, so I came home after about ten hours and, maybe if I’d stayed in hospital for a bit longer maybe things would have quietened down and there would have been the midwives available to help me in the ward, but I just wanted to get home at that stage. Once I got home I had my mother-in-law at home with me and she was very supportive but unfortunately she hadn’t had very much experience with breastfeeding either, shed had trouble breastfeeding her baby so and she had forgotten what she had learnt so she, she was supportive but couldn’t actually offer much practical help. The midwives came home to visit me every day for about two weeks and I found them kind of variably helpful, some of them had obviously had children of their own and knew what to do and sat with me and showed me how to position the baby but quite a few of them had never had children and knew the theory of it but couldn’t actually help practically. I mean they knew about as much as I did really ’cause I think it was very easy to read a book and say oh nipple to nose and you know, make them gape and so on and so forth but unless you’ve actually physically done it I don’t think you can teach somebody else to do it. So I found that a bit frustrating, and I thought, I didn’t really realise what other resources were available to me for help so I just thought all I had were these midwives and, and I’d see a different midwife every day so I was getting inconsistent advice and it was all really frustrating and stressful on top of the, you know, the tiredness and the soreness, and just the stress of having a new baby so I found those first couple of weeks really awful. At the end of that I discovered that my local hospital had a breastfeeding clinic and I went along there and they were incredibly supportive and very, very experienced and, and, really a help to me to get things back on track.

Two questions, what did you do about that inconsistent advice, how did you deal with that, in the first couple of weeks when you were seeing a different midwife every day?

It was very hard to deal with so many different opinions from so many different people and I kind of just decided which ones I thought were the most sensible and went with that and tried that for a, maybe forty-eight hours and then if that didn’t work pick somebody elses advice and go with that, but it was really hard and, the days just seemed like a haze now because, you know, there was just so much information being thrown at me and not all of it was very useful and, and I felt like I was being, I was a complete failure actually because all these women were saying, ‘Oh well you know it’s all about the latch, it’s all about this, it’s all about that’ and I tried so hard to do everything that they told me to do and I just couldn’t seem to do it and I found that really upsetting.

In my opinion, and they should let people know because a, I felt, I felt betrayed when you look at the, at the literature, [crying] at the videos, at everything, everyone is like happily. Oh, yeah, you just pull it out, I go to the park, I breastfeed. It’s like a happy moment and everyone talking about the bonding. And I couldn’t, and I couldn’t – and it made me feel really bad. So I, I still, I still, it does, still makes me sad as you can see. And yeah, I wish they could show the both sides of the coin, like, yes, it’s nice, yes, you bond, but if you can’t then they should give you more support, like, yes you can’t do it, it’s not the end of the world, it’s normal, it can happen. Because that’s another thing, they don’t tell the, it, it doesn’t say anywhere that it can happen.

Actually, this is my baby. And I think that was, it, that was what I think eventually kicked in, was that sense of, Hes mine. And I’m his mum. And I do know best. And I am actually going to stop, I’m going to take every bit of information I’m getting and pick out the bits that work for me and for my baby. And I think it was when I had that, I’m his mum and I’m going to do what’s right for him, that I think actually, that changed my attitude completely. Rather than feel like a failure, I was like, The way I’m not going to feel like a failure is if I’m going to take control of this situation and be his mum. And I think, that’s what I kept thinking. All these other experts aren’t his mum, you know. I’m his mum. And so it’s, you know, that I’ll sort it out. And I think it was at that point that I, that things, I started to make more pragmatic choices on, on how, you know, how I was going to feed him. And he got to be a lovely baby after that.

The Health Visitor comes and comes and has a look at it when you are at home, especially when you are a first time mum, they come, oh, I think I must have had four visits I think. I think it was about four visits. Lovely health visitor but she again, like the, the nurses in the hospital said, Hes a premature baby. It’ll happen. Just keep trying, just keep pumping. Just keep going. I mean you’re giving him breastmilk, that’s great. Just keep trying with the breastfeeding. Try every feed. And again pressure, Try, keep going, keep going. And again all the health professionals, incredibly pro-breast feeding and again I have to say my attitude was as well if I can do this, I really want to, do want to get him to breastfeed. But, you know, having to be up every four hours and pump and, and feed the baby and try the breastfeeding every time you were feeding was getting very stressful and I was getting quite stressed about it and you know the health visitor came, she tried to give me some lessons. She tried and couldn’t get the baby to latch on at all. Oh, no don’t worry. Well try again in another week when hes a little bit bigger. It was always, When hes a little bit bigger, when hes a bit stronger, it’ll happen. It’ll happen. But in the meantime do, do your expressing because you’re feeding him breastmilk and you must do that. You must have breastmilk for six months. Hammered in to you every single time you saw any health professional.

You know you have these baby’s café for people who are breastfeeding and they have issues with the breastfeeding, and they give support to the people who is breastfeeding I think they should, they should also give support to the people who hasn’t been able to breastfeed or the people who chooses not to breastfeed because as soon as you say you’re not breastfeeding like – I had this experience actually last week. I went to this baby café with a friend who had a baby and shes breastfeeding and I was, I put my name on the list and then they completely ignored me because I wasn’t breastfeeding. But they could have come to me and say, How are you feeling? Is the formula working? Is there anything we can do? Because I got so many questions about formula as well. Which one is the best formula? Which one do you recommend? Which one is, is do you think is, is better for a baby this type, that is a really hungry baby. Nobody gives you support, it’s like, Well you’re on your own now, you’re not breastfeeding? Well, pfft, see what you do. It feels that way and even like when I went to the café and I saw this lady, the lady that I went to workshop, she came to me and say, You’re not breastfeeding, awh And it’s like, What awh? Don’t, don’t treat people like that. Like why would, why would you be like, awh [laughs]. It’s no, it’s not something to be sorry about it like you should

I don’t know, there are so many questions I had and the fact that I felt ignored, I didn’t feel like – like, brave enough to approach the lady who was leading the café and ask them these questions. But it is a mother and baby place regardless if you’re breastfeeding or nothing, the support should be given. It’s kind of like – This time I haven’t felt so much because I think I’m standing my ground more into the bottle feeding my baby. But the first time, I, there was, every time, people ask me, Oh, are you breastfeeding? and I say, No, no I couldn’t. Oh. And it was this, ooh, this sense of like I was wrong. I was a wrong, a bad mother because I wasn’t breastfeeding. But nobody ask me before why not, or just accept it, it was this judgment thing, this judging. I felt completely judged all the time, [laughs] because I wasn’t breastfeeding, but if you can’t, you can’t.

Quite surprisingly for me, the first time I actually really struggled with establishing breastfeeding with my first baby. Second time round I found establishing breastfeeding and keeping it going much easier, it, struggling first time round came as quite a shock because I just thought Well it’s easy to breastfeed, I’ve helped probably hundreds of women breastfeed over, over many, many years and it, looking back on it I think it was because I was living about four and a half thousand miles away from my family, I had all the kind of.

So why was that important do you think?

I don’t, isolated I think, I had never really appreciated how important it was to a, a young mum with a baby being, having support of close family and friends. My husband and I were both working abroad, my husband worked long, very long days, and I would get, I was on my own for sixteen, eighteen hours a day with a young baby on the ninth floor of an apartment so, a very nice apartment but, you know, I had a caesarean section, my husband went back to work I think, probably day three or day four, and after that I was on my own. And being the Middle East where we lived there was no community midwifery service, so once you left the hospital that was it. And, I just really, I struggled with many aspects of baby care although I was competent before I had my baby, in caring for a baby, you know, baby bathing and that kind of thing, and breastfeeding I just found very difficult. But I think it was, it was part of the whole life picture that was going on at the time. I think, you know, it all kind of knitted in together really the, the isolation that I felt and or the sheer loneliness.

Do you want to go into that a little bit more because I gather you were in the Middle East?

I was, yeah, I was, working in the Middle East and, it just felt, I was very far away from people that were, you know, my family, my sisters, my mum-in-law, who I’m very close to and, my husband now reflects back and says, you know, that he wasn’t able to support me because of the fact that he worked so hard and such long hours. And until then I guess that, [oh] I hadn’t really appreciated how important it was for example to have the support of a community midwife or a health visitor because there was nothing, if you had a problem you, you went to see a paediatrician. And I found an excellent paediatrician but you couldn’t go and see him every five [laughs] minutes or, you know, when you felt a bit lonely, that wasn’t his function and, so, I did struggle with breastfeeding. Having said that, looking back, I did do it albeit for a short time, I fed my first baby exclusively for six weeks and then kept it going with expressing and giving some artificial milk, and some breastfeeding for, I think a further three months so I did try and I’d, I hang on in there and actually looking back now at a, you know, her paediatric charts and things, she gained weight and she did well, so, despite the, you know, the sort of difficulties around my home life, I suppose I did it in some shape, although it wasn’t as good as I would have liked it to have been.

What sort of help did you get after the second one, other than from health professionals?

Odd, my Mum-in-law was just, well no shes not just down the road, shes twenty-eight miles away but I treated it as though it’s just down the road [laughs] cause shes always up and down the road in her car. My husband was able to work more flexibly, he had, although he was up in London, hes got fab employers and, and they sort of, you know, working from home one day a week wasn’t a problem. And he was just able to be home more, he didn’t do the sixteen, eighteen hour days that he ha

Yeah I, I’m involved in breastfeeding peer support groups, it all sort of started with my health visitor because I breastfed [daughter] for, I breastfed my daughter for twenty months and, we didn’t, because we didn’t really have any problems I was of the mind that, ‘This is really good, this is great, you know, why isn’t everybody doing it?’ I couldn’t quite understand, you know? It’s so easy, I went on holiday so much in her first year excuse me. We, when she were nine week old we went off to London and to see, to see family and do a bit of sightseeing and such, so easy, you know, breastfed on the tube, it were great. I’ve never seen so many newspapers go up in front of faces in my life but, it were fantastic, it were just so easy and I thought, ‘How come other people aren’t doing this?’ And so I’d got like a little bit of a, I were thinking about, about it, and, I went to like a local sort of council forum meeting and my local hospital did a presentation on applying for foundation status, and one of the things that they talked about was that this area has the lowest, one of the lowest breastfeeding rates nationally, so again I were thinking ‘Why?’ And I were getting a little bit sort of fired up about it, you know, what’s, what’s going wrong round here? But I’d not really done, I’d not said anything to anybody, and then the health visitor said to me, just because I think I’d breastfed for longer than what most people around here do, said to me, ‘Would you be interested in starting a group with me? I want to start a breastfeeding support group but, you know, it’s not something I want to do, I really want to get mothers involved and, you know, I know that you, you’re breastfeeding and, so would you like to get involved?’ and I said, ‘Well actually yeah because I been sort of thinking about this sort of thing and how I can get involved. So we started and the first week there was me, the health visitor and one lady came, and she came in and she sat down and we started to talk and her little girl was six week old, and she was already worrying about returning to work, and so we just got together and I had a look on internet and looked at rights for breastfeeding mothers returning to work and, and the week after we met again and we looked through all this stuff and she went, ‘Oh that’s really good’, and I thought, ‘Oh that’s nice, ’cause she, she feels happier now and together weve all been able to do that. Well within a month we had ten ladies attending. And the health visitor said to me, ‘We need to do something really, and, and maybe publicise this and, you know, put a few fliers out. And, so it started to grow. Then, they started to ask us about peer support training, and so the health visitor started to look at it. Now at the same time because the area which I, had gone into is the, is the next village to me because that’s where my doctor is, in my village I live in a Sure Start area and my local Sure Start had decided to run with La Leche Leagues peer counsellor programme, so they’d put a little advert in the newsletter and I saw this and thought, ‘Oh yeah I’d quite like to, to do that. So I, I applied and, I did the training, so I became a La Leche peer counsellor, and I, it were just a, it were a turning point in my life. I sort of, I found this, this group of, of women that came together and along with them and La Leche League I suddenly thought, ‘Yeah this, this is me. At first some of the things I couldn’t really relate to, because, you know, they might, it might talk about the use of dummy and things, and, you know, the area in which I lived they’re used a lot. And I thought it wasn’t something I’d done, my daughter had not had a dummy, but that’s only because shed refused when I had been trying to put it in her mouth in a moment of despair. So there were some things that I, I sort of struggled a little bit about it, but as I got more involved and as my daughter got older and I became