Breastfeeding support group

Went to the support group at Whiston today as usual; I could feel a cold coming on but I thought, “all these breastfed babies… they can fight off this cold quite easily if they get it!”

K couldn’t come because she was having a freezer delivered, but all the other “usual suspects” were there.

Baby B was in a bit of a funny mood today; on and off the boob like a fiddler’s elbow!

Oh, T was there again this week too.

When baby B was about ten weeks old, T was the first person who actually sat down, listened to me, and agreed with me that there was a problem with his latch and that… with a bit of help… we could fix it. The feeling of relief I felt on meeting T was absolutely immense.

I wonder if it’s time soon to do the story of baby B’s first few weeks?

The No Cry Sleep Solution – Elizabeth Pantley

Ah, I love this book. Absolutely love it. Not so much because the solutions in it work (slowly, and with some trial and error) but because it’s written with such care.

Granted, some of it is a bit “home-baked apple pie and Thanksgiving turkey” (the author is from the US) but in the main, it’s just lovely.  It’s also totally non-judgmental. It talks about the pros and cons of pacifier (dummy) use; about ways to get bottle-fed babies to sleep; it does not just concentrate on co-sleeping and even has a section on how to move a co-sleeping baby into its own cot / its own room.

To be fair, some of the chapters are perhaps a little long-winded; some of the information seems to be repeated later on. But in the main it’s a lovely read.

But does it work?

Well, the gist of this book is that there seem to be two schools of thought when it comes to sleep. One is to put up with the night wakings until your baby sleeps through the night by him/herself, and the other is to let baby cry itself to sleep (cio – cry it out), either completely, or by using the “controlled crying” method (a variant on cio). Basically, Pantley was knackered but didn’t want to let her babies cio; however she did want some sleep.

The entire idea behind this book is to help your baby change its sleep associations and gradually, and gently, and without any crying, learn how to settle itself to sleep (and in the process, awaken fully less often).

Her methods do take time and patience. But they do seem – so far – to work. (And when I say works, please remember this caveat.) I co-sleep with baby B and although the night wakings don’t bother me, at about six months dh and I decided we wanted our evenings “back” and wanted to put baby B to bed a few hours before we went up. Baby B however had other ideas; he woke up persistently in the evenings, so it was up and down stairs all evening.

A few weeks of Pantley’s ideas and we actually get a few hours of dh & dw time in the evenings; baby B usually wakes up when we come to bed and enjoys about ten minutes of time having a feed, and a little Daddy cuddle before he goes back to sleep.

So when the time does come to move baby B to his own bed I’d certainly employ Pantley’s ideas again.

I think as with any parenting manual you take what you need and leave the rest. I certainly couldn’t be doing with worrying that baby B is getting three hours nap time every day!  But yes, if you’re struggling with a non-sleeping baby but don’t want to let baby cry, I’d definitely recommend this; it integrates nicely with AP principles but also more culturally “traditional” ideas of parenting too.

What worked for me – part two; sleep

In the early days, before I had discovered co-sleeping, baby B slept beside the bed in a Moses basket. And of course I got very little sleep. I had fallen into the trap of obsessing about how much sleep baby B got; how long were the night time stretches? Any longer than the night before? Any sign he’d meet that oh-so-important milestone, “sleeping through the night” any time soon?

What helped me, apart from taking him into the big bed and never looking back, was not to think about how much sleep baby B was getting but rather to think about how much sleep I was getting. If I could somehow manage to get eight or nine hours in a twenty four hour period, I knew I’d get through.

Of course, sometimes that meant going to bed much earlier than usual; eight or nine o’clock on some nights; sometimes it meant catching up with sleep during the day on the very rare occasions that baby B would take a nap longer than 45 minutes.

But as soon as I took the focus off his sleep, and onto my sleep,  it didn’t seem to matter that I was sitting up on the rocking chair at four in the morning trying some pretty harsh breast compression in an effort to get baby B to take just a bit more milk to get him to sleep just that little bit longer.

And when I started co-sleeping, I was getting almost eight hours’ sleep every night; occasionally I build up a little bit of a sleep deficit which is solved easily by just going to bed a little bit early once or twice a week.

A little story, or, why women can’t breastfeed.

In the beginning, every baby was fed with its Mum’s milk. As baby grew teeth, and started to become curious, it would take with its hands whatever foods Mum and Dad had in front of them, but still had Mum’s milk for its main food. Eventually, as baby turned into a child, it was able to eat more foods and the amount of Mum’s milk it had lessened until one day, the child no longer needed Mum’s milk.

All that was needed for baby to get to Mum’s milk was for baby and Mum to be close to each other all the time.

Baby slept in the same bed as its Mum and Dad for as long as it wanted. Baby was carried around everywhere, normally by its Mum so it could be close to the milk, but also by Dad, Gran, Grandad, Aunties, Uncles and friends until it was old enough to crawl. Even then it was still carried around often, either in its family’s arms, or tied to family members with a simple cloth.

There was sometimes a baby whose mother carried it into the world, but then left the world herself. These babies were fed milk from other mothers and carried and cuddled close to the milk just like all the other babies.

Over time the world changed; walking was no longer the only means of traveling distances; gradually family members lived further away from each other. Many of the babies with no mothers were sent to live with each other, to be looked after by people who usually had no milk of their own.

They were fed on milk from other mammals or other foods and they often left the world almost as soon as they’d arrived.

Clever people realised this needed to change. They took the milk of a cow, added things and took other things away and made it easier for babies to digest. More of the motherless babies that would have died now lived!

Other very clever men realised that they could make money from this changed cows’ milk. However, what mother would buy it when she had her own milk?

They lied to mothers and told them that this milk was more “scientific” and better for their babies than their own milk! They were very clever men though, and many of the mothers believed them.

They invented a fake breast to carry this changed cows’ milk and eventually, this was how most babies were fed! With fake Mum’s milk in a fake breast! Really!

Mums and Dads didn’t need to sleep with their babies any more because the babies didn’t need Mum’s milk in the night. Instead, babies slept in separate beds, often surrounded by wooden bars.

More clever men knew that new babies needed to suck throughout the night, but they knew that they couldn’t leave the fake breast with the baby all night; they invented a fake nipple!

Babies now slept in separate beds, surrounded by wooden bars, sucking on a fake nipple, and given a fake breast full of changed cows’ milk if they were hungry when they awakened.

Clever men realised how many things they could sell to women if they just used the right words and all of these things were heavy. Too heavy, in fact, to carry if mothers were already carrying a baby!

So they invented a wheeled carriage with space for all baby’s things. And because babies no longer needed to be close to Mum’s milk, they too could travel in the carriage!

So babies slept in separate beds, surrounded by wooden bars, sucking on a fake nipple, given changed cows’ milk from a fake breast if they were hungry when they awakened; when they woke for the day, they were put into a wheeled carriage and pushed along with all of their things.

Clever men also realised that often the changed cows’ milk wasn’t enough for babies and they needed other foods before they had time to develop the skills to chew; they mashed food up into a pulp and fed it to babies on a spoon.

Very quickly, these things became normal; as normal as, in the beginning, it was normal for babies to be close to their Mums and their milk. It was just what happened to babies.

But some Mums worked out that their own milk was much better for their babies than the changed cows’ milk.

And yet, when they tried to feed their babies, strange things happened. Baby sucked in a strange way and hurt Mum’s breast because it was used to sucking on a fake nipple. Baby did not gain weight because it was not at the breast often enough. Baby would cry in its wheeled contraption because it liked the smell of Mum’s milk and wanted to be close to Mum’s breast. Mum got very tired from walking to and from the baby’s bed in the middle of the night. Baby took less milk than it needed because it was eating pulped and mashed food early on.

And when this happened, what did the clever men say?

“We told you all along. Mum’s milk just isn’t good enough. Babies should drink our changed cows’ milk. Your baby will then gain weight, stop crying all the time, your breasts will stop hurting, you will not be tired in the night as your baby will start sleeping and you will be able to control the amount of food your baby has.”

Reluctantly*, the majority of these Mums stopped giving their babies their own milk.

Why didn’t anyone tell these Mums that all that was needed for a baby to get Mum’s milk was for a baby to be close to its Mum and her milk all of the time?**

—————-

*Nine out of 10 women in the UK who stopped breastfeeding before their baby was six weeks old did not want to stop. This is a shocking statistic.

**Of course there are medical reasons why women are unable to breastfeed and no I’m not going to add the usual “though this is incredibly rare” caveat because it’s hard to know where a medical reason ends and a cultural reason starts. This little story is obviously very simplistic and is to illustrate just a few of the cultural reasons that make breastfeeding difficult. (Of course, the one I’ve not covered is separation at birth and highly medicalised births. Another time, perhaps.)

Peer Counsellor session on cultural awareness

This was Monday’s session; remember a few weeks back I talked about how I wished we could have spent more time on “breastfeeding management” (how to check a latch is right, how to spot a tongue-tie, that kind of thing) and how I thought this could be done if one or two other sessions were shortened?

Well, this was one of the sessions I think could have been shortened.

It was common sense really. “Never assume anything about someone else because of the way they look / act / sound / seem. Never let your gut reaction to a person get the better of you; you may respond strongly (negatively or positively) to someone based on your previous experiences with or thoughts on similar seeming people but don’t let this get in the way of providing the service you’re there to provide.

“Okay, now you’ve got that… let’s check some latches!”

It’s not that I don’t think it’s an incredibly important issue; I do, but I think it might have benefited from a bit less chitter chatter and a bit more laying down of common sense ground rules.

Leaflets for Gran and Nan?

The “Get Closer” campaign contained three leaflets (booklets, in the style of a women’s magazine); two for Mum, and one for Dad. They were full of “true life” stories; the bit I liked most was the Q&A session, like an agony aunt page.

E.g. ‘Q: “My Mum says bottlefeeding was good enough for me, so why should I breastfeed?” Kelly from Fingerpost. A: “If your Mum knew just how good breastfeeding was she probably would have tried it too”‘ or something along those lines.

I wonder if it might be an idea to have a leaflet for another helper, who is more often than not the mother or mother in law?

Q: I bought my daughter some lovely dummies for my grandson, but she didn’t want them. I feel a bit hurt; why throw this back in my face? – Olive from Parr.

A: Dummies were invented for bottle-fed babies originally; babies have a need to suck beyond their need for food which was provided with a dummy. Breastfed babies, however, can suck for both food and comfort at a breast. In essence, a dummy is a fake breast; why would your daughter need one when she has the real deal? I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt you. Why not suggest she thread the dummies onto a safe plastic ring and let baby play with it as a rattle?

Q: My granddaughter is five months old now and my daughter-in-law still hasn’t given her any food! My babies started on solids when they were three months and I’m worried my granddaughter will get hungry! – Elsie from Whiston.

A: Experts have learned that a baby’s stomach is designed to process only breastmilk until about six months. Giving foods too early – even “just a tiny bit of cream from that cake” – can cause stomach problems in later life. But don’t worry about your granddaughter being hungry; breastmilk is actually very high in calories compared to the baby purees on the market and indeed, any solid foods.

Q: I keep offering to take my granddaughter for a night to give my daughter some rest but she says no, she wants to breastfeed her. I thought you could pump milk for someone else to feed in a bottle? – Brenda from Thatto Heath
A: It is possible to pump milk, but it can be quite difficult and take a long time to get even an ounce! This certainly wouldn’t help your daughter rest. Also if you take the baby for the night, she would most probably have to get up and pump anyway so her boobs didn’t get too sore. I’m sure this is not what you had in mind! If you want to give her a rest, why not offer to cook a meal, or do some chores for her? She can lie down and feed the baby while you do this and rest this way.

Q: My daughter-in-law is always sitting down in front of the telly to breastfeed the baby. The house is a tip and my son is at work all day to come home to a mess which isn’t fair. Surely a baby doesn’t need feeding this often? – Vera from Eccleston

A: Breast milk is very high in calories but also digests very easily. Breastfed babies need to suck for food, but also for comfort; they often have huge growth spurts too which mean they need to feed more often. Babies need at the very least eight feeds in twenty four hours, but more often it’s twelve or more feeds. Don’t forget, your son doesn’t have to do any of the night feeds or even get up in the night so it works itself out! If the state of the house is upsetting you though, why not offer to tidy it yourself? And though the house is messy, your grandchild is happy and healthy and well-fed, which is the most important thing.

These would be just a few of the general concerns that the leaflet would raise but it could cover many common questions that all relatives and also new Mums ask. Just a thought!

Of husbands and partners – something only he can do

In my last post I asked the question of how we counteract the idea that a non-lactating husband or partner can only really bond with the baby when they are allowed total care of the baby, including the feeding.

It’s easy to give pat answers like “he can bath baby, change nappies etc”. But none of this, really, gives the same feeling of bonding as having complete and utter charge of a tiny little thing, having to make every single decision and carry each one out.

I had been pondering this for ages and had been going round in circles. And then I got back from breastfeeding support group and handed baby B to dh. “He needs his Dad now,” I said, which means, “he needs you to take him onto the rocking chair and get him to sleep in that way that only you are able to“.

And then I had a lightbulb moment. It isn’t about trying to make the Mum and Dad have exactly the same experience of the baby. Mum has something that she, and only she, can do. Breastfeed the baby. And although I find it comforting to express occasionally so I always have a few ounces in the freezer “just in case” (if something dreadful happened on my driving lesson and I couldn’t get back for ages, or even like the other week when I couldn’t stop vomiting) it’s not like dh and I share the feeding in any way.

Why not look for something Dad, and only Dad, can do, in the same way?

In the comments section under my last post, Half Pint Pixie (blog on the right under personal blogs) talked about her dh being able to settle baby to sleep through his warmth, in a way she couldn’t.

Dr Sears writes of the neck nestle, a type of babywearing only Dads can do.

What else do Dads have that Mums don’t? Deeper voices; Dad can sing to the baby to settle him/her. Big hairy chests; Dad can snuggle baby onto his warm fuzzy chest and rock the baby to sleep, skin to skin. There must be more things that need a uniquely fatherly touch… and it’s not just about being male. Each individual will bring to babycare something unique; something only they can do.

My dh was always better at burping baby B in the early days when he had lots of wind. Don’t know what it was but he just had a knack I couldn’t learn. Dh is better at cooking than I am so baby B’s solid foods are almost exclusively dh’s.  (And with baby-led weaning that means delicious steaks, chicken in a leek sauce, con carni…)

I think this could be something that counters the “men must give a bottle to bond” argument. Only women can breastfeed, but only men can Dad-nurse.

It’s about finding that one thing – or more – that only they can do.

Suggestions for Dad-nursing?

Of husbands and partners – “he needs to feed the baby so he can bond”

Often you hear “so my dh / dp can bond with the baby” given as a reason to formula feed the baby.

Often you’ll hear breastfeeding Mums either joke “if Dad wants to bond, he’s welcome to change nappies / calm baby when baby screams / settle him at night” or suggest more kindly “why not suggest he takes over bathtime?”

But why must a man feed the baby so he can bond anyway? Why is the act of feeding a baby with a bottle such a wonderful bonding experience?

I gave this rather a lot of thought after baby B and I were ill. I was being constantly sick and was unable to have baby B near me (because I would have been sick on him!) but luckily there was some EBM in the freezer and dh fed him from a cup.

And dh did say it helped him bond with baby B.

Why, though? I tried to get to the bottom of it. Was it the act of holding a plastic cup to baby B’s mouth? Was it watching him gulp down (and/or spill)  the milk? Was it the knowledge that he was providing nourishment for baby B?

Apparently it wasn’t any of these things. It was simply that when he was able to feed baby B, he was solely responsible for him. Completely and utterly responsible. He had to do everything… and was also able to do everything.

Dads of formula fed babies have this situation right from the beginning. And I think that is the reasoning behind the idea that formula fed babies bond better with their Dads.

So how do we overcome that? How can we give Dads that feeling of bonding that comes with having complete care of a baby? Expressing milk so that baby and Dad can spend long periods of time together is one possible way, but expressing is such a faff for many women, and besides, especially in the early days, time when Mum is not feeding the baby at source is time when her milk supply is not being built up how it should.

I don’t have an answer just yet (although it’s my project for the next day or so) but just wanted to raise the question.

A formula for prejudice

As a member of the Facebook group “hey Facebook! Breastfeeding is not obscene! – official petition to Facebook” and amongst the comments in reply to my article in the F word, “when did it all go so tits up?” I read statements along the line of, “I think it’s obscene to bottle feed, actually”, “I can understand the women who give up because it’s really difficult, but those who don’t even try?” and “I really struggled with breastfeeding, cracked nipples, mastitis, engorgement and I carried on; I think women who don’t are just lazy,” or “there’s actually plenty of support out there; look how many books and web sites there are about breastfeeding; there are even manned helplines!”

I wanted to counter some of this prejudice tackling just three of the issues that often get raised.

1) Prejudice against women who “don’t even try?”

We live in a bottle feeding culture. It’s the culturally normal thing to feed a baby formula from a bottle. Breastfeeding in our culture is seen as something that, yes, is “best” but, largely, unobtainable. If you’ve never seen any of your friends and relatives breastfeed; if you sign up for your free cuddly cow and are sent mailshots like this one and assume that breastfeeding is painful; if you see breasts as very private and the thought of “getting ‘em out” in public horrifies you; if you assume that formula is a very, very close second to human milk anyway; if you are given talks by a formula company representative at your antenatal classes on how to make up bottles… and more… if all this happens, you just assume bottle feeding is normal. Of course you aren’t even going to try breastfeeding. So let’s stop this prejudice against women who “don’t even try“.

2) Prejudice against women that gave up early on, from women who struggled but continued.

If you struggle in the early days, as often happens, you may well fight an uphill battle to keep going. If you kept going, it’s likely you had at least one of the following; you finally found an HCP who was supportive of breastfeeding and who sorted out your latch; you learned of the disadvantages of formula feeding from the internet or other sources; a supportive partner or relative who was happy to take care of the housework while you and your baby practised breastfeeding; access to books on the subject; access to the internet; sheer bloody-mindedness and stubbornness and a feeling that there must be help out there somewhere and you are going to find it; knowledge, from the internet or other sources, that the HCPs who give you terrible advice are actually wrong…

All of this assumes you have access, somehow, to a source of information or support somewhere. Many women don’t. They give up, usually in the first six weeks when breastfeeding can be difficult if mothers are not given the right information.  All it takes is one HCP to tell you, “some babies just can’t breastfeed” in the middle of the night when you’re struggling. If you don’t have someone you can text, in tears, to ascertain whether or not this is true, for example… you’d give up, wouldn’t you? So let’s stop this prejudice against women who “give up… even though I didn’t!” Yes, but you probably had some support, somewhere.

3) Prejudice against women who give up for seeming lack of support.

This to my mind is a continuation of (2). People say, “but there’s loads of support out there!” In a town with an average reading age of twelve who can read the leaflets that are hard enough to find anyway? How many people have access to the internet in the first place? And how many have knowledge of how to use it to gain accurate information rather than coming up with a formula company web site by mistake?  How often are antenatal classes cancelled, or don’t even cover breastfeeding anyway? How well are the helplines publicised in places where pregnant women might think to look? How often do Doctors’ surgeries display leaflets from formula companies rather than breastfeeding support groups?

Yes, there is support. But how do you know where to look if you don’t even know that support is out there in the first place? And how do you know it is out there if you don’t know where to look? So let’s stop this prejudice against women who don’t manage to find the support.

And anyway, isn’t it actually a woman’s right to choose how she feeds her baby? I just believe it should be a fully informed choice with lots of support and help.

Breastfeeding in different situations – peer counsellor training session

Today we discussed different situations in which women wanted to continue breastfeeding. Just a few examples; babies with special needs, contaminants in mother’s milk, mother and baby separation and many more.

It was more of a sit and chat session this time; interesting but I think the majority of us knew much of what was being taught; it was a matter of getting it out of our collective memory onto the flip-board.

The one thing I would have liked to learn much more about was relactation; is it just a simple matter of putting baby to the breast constantly [would that be enough?] or is more involved [SNS, pumping when baby not feeding etc]?