Breastfeeding Utopia

Katie’s little boy, Dylan, is six weeks old and she’s just coming to the end of her “lying in”. She’s had friends over to cook and help with basic chores, her other half, Paul, has also had this time off work, she’s done very little except constantly breastfeed little Dylan and get out every day for some lovely fresh air with Dylan in one of his many slings. He feeds well, and is starting to get to that stage where he’s smiling at Mum and Dad… if they really work hard for it, that is!

Dylan sleeps long periods in the sling, and sleeps with Mum and Dad at night. He’s started to “sleep through the night”. Of course to Paul and Katie, this means that he goes upstairs with them at ten, feeds little and often in a state of light sleep and finally wakes for the day at about eight o’clock. He no longer has dirty nappies in the night so Katie just wraps him up in a huge bamboo nappy with a massive booster pad and he doesn’t then need changing.

Katie’s considering going back to work in about another six weeks. Paul is definitely going back to work.

Seven weeks later Dylan is starting to be much more interested in what’s going on around him. There’s the photocopier, which makes interesting noises, the computer, where Mum Katie is always typing away, the telephone, where she seems to speak to people who aren’t there… it’s most interesting.

Dylan sits in the sling for most of the day, apart from for nappy changes. Whenever Mum thinks he’s about to cry, she plugs him into her milk and away he goes. Katie tries to do as much moving around as possible, as Dylan likes the movement.

In a few months’ time she knows he will be big enough to play in the middle of the huge, circular, open plan office, designed specifically with babies and toddlers in mind. He’ll happily play away with toys and if he needs Mum… he will be able to come and get her. Often a toddler or child is seen rushing to Mum for a “comfort break”; a quick, five minute breastfeeding session to help with a banged knee, or a tired irritable infant. But for now Dylan sits in the sling.

Katie – like everyone, including Dad – works a four day week, nine until five, with an hour and a half for lunch. That’s enough time to enable her and Paul to get home for a meal with baby Dylan onlooking, catch up and give Dylan some Daddy time, and get back to work, as, like most people in breastfeeding utopia, they live locally to where they work; there are schemes in place to encourage this; it’s great for the environment but also great for family life and for children.

And with thirty holidays a year, Katie and Paul get ample time to spend as a family, including Dylan’s Nan, Gran, Grandpa and Granddad, not to mention various Aunties and Uncles (whether related or not)!

The great thing is, because Katie and Paul are happy and not at all guilty about the amount of time they spend bringing up Dylan, they work really hard and get so much done in the time they’re in work.

School doesn’t start here until children are seven years of age; by this time most of these children are at the stage of weaning, or have already weaned; until a child is seven here, it is welcome with its parent at work. There is more of a “creche” facility for the children over four here, with workers taking turns looking after the children, although they are of course welcome to return to their parent at any time. It’s still more often the mother who takes the child to work, as usually these children are breastfed, but because the Mum doesn’t have to choose between work and career… she doesn’t mind.

Jackie has a highly survival adapted baby called Rebekah. Jackie decides not to return to her previous office role but to take up a job as a shop assistant which involves a lot of time on her feet, walking around, as this is what Rebekah likes and what settles her when she’s in the sling. She takes a full year to look after Rebekah; Jackie would tell you that looking after Rebekah is a “job in itself”.

The year off work is of course paid at SNP (statutory nursing pay) which is the equivalent salary of what here would be about £18,000 (plus London weighting for those in the capital). That’s in addition to her maternity leave, which starts two months before her due date and during which time she receives full pay until the baby is born.

Sharon is due to give birth. The thing is, she just doesn’t want to breastfeed. That’s despite it being the cultural norm here in breastfeeding utopia, despite there being so much support here that it’s almost impossible not to be able to do it, despite breasts not being seen as primarily sexual objects here in breastfeeding utopia, despite all that… she just finds something strange about it.

It’s certainly unusual here. She has no problem with giving birth and other baby-related natural functions, just this. She just “has a thing” about breasts, in the same way someone in our world might “have a thing” about feet, and never want to show them, even on a hot sunny day.

No one makes a fuss though, or calls her a bad mother. It’s understood that she just doesn’t want to and it’s rare enough that she, along with low supply Mums & babies with physiological difficulties that prevent breastfeeding, is able to get donor milk to feed her baby.

But we started with Katie. In a few years’ time she will go on to have another baby, Tanya, at home, just like Dylan, who weaned himself at four and a half when he decided he didn’t want milk any more. In fact that was the first she knew that Tanya was on the way, because Dylan told her her milk tasted funny. She will take the full eighteen months with Tanya (longer SNP with a second baby)  and then return to work, just before Dylan is ready to go to school. She hand expresses a little milk every time Dylan has a cold; she openly hoped he might return to breastfeeding when he saw Tanya at the breast but that didn’t happen, so she phoned one of the helplines to tell them her dilemma.

There aren’t as many peer supporters and breastfeeding counsellors now.  Knowledge of breastfeeding is everywhere and there aren’t many problems that other mothers can’t solve or support with. But the lines are open more for emotional support when children wean themselves, as some Mums still find this a little hard, especially if it seems to happen quite suddenly.

Katie gets a shoulder to cry on, and then goes back to her busy life with Dylan and Katie, and hubs Paul. She is happy. This is breastfeeding utopia.

About my previous post (“A little story”).

After a comment on that particular post I wanted to explain exactly what I was trying to say as – I didn’t realise when I wrote it – it might have been misinterpreted.

My gist was this: we’re often told that there’s only a very, very, very small percentage of women who “can’t breastfeed”; often 1 in 50 is quoted. People often use this “fact” as a stick to beat women with who formula feed their babies.

I was trying to write about the cultural reasons surrounding breastfeeding difficulties, so that the 1 in 50 figure (which I think is things like breast reduction surgery, medical conditions that stop a woman lactating, that kind of thing) is actually much, much higher.

For example, our culture (here in the UK) tells women not to share a bed with their babies, that this is somehow wrong or immoral. Not bedsharing makes night feeding a bit more of a hassle, so that some women try and night-wean their babies earlier than the baby is ready. Often this causes problems with the breastfeeding relationship and sometimes the woman even stops breastfeeding as a result of these problems. However, I wasn’t saying was that putting your baby in a cot is wrong, or that if you can’t breastfeed it’s your own fault for not bedsharing, or anything else along these lines!!

Another example was that our culture tells us that babies have dummies when they cry.  This causes problems; sometimes the baby gets confused with how to suck, doesn’t remove milk efficiently from the breast as a result and breastfeeding is compromised; sometimes the breasts aren’t stimulated enough as the baby sucks on the dummy for comfort instead of the breast and the woman’s milk supply isn’t as great as it could be and so on. However again I wasn’t saying that dummies are just wrong, or that if you can’t breastfeed it’s your own fault for using a dummy!

I just wanted to clear that up as I really do not want to come across as a judgemental person; if anything I was trying to show with that post the very fact that I don’t think we should be judgemental of women who are unable to breastfeed, whatever the reasons.

Until the information that is given to breastfeeding women by health care professionals and others is all correct, accurate and free of myths and cultural assumptions, until all mothers who want to breastfeed have access to accurate information and that information is readily available (no matter what her level of education, reading ability etc.), until breastfeeding is seen as a normal activity, until breasts are no longer seen solely as sex objects, until the stigma surrounding breastfeeding (especially in public, and with older babies, toddlers and children) has disappeared completely, until the formula companies have stopped shoving their erroneous information down our throats, until we stop forcing women back into paid work when they are breastfeeding, until women who do want to do paid work while breastfeeding are allowed to express milk or have their babies with them without any hassle and without having to fight for it, until practices (like Attachment Parenting, bedsharing, babywearing etc.) which help the breastfeeding relationship become the cultural norm, until it is considered a woman’s indelible right to breastfeed her infant should she wish, until all this happens I will not judge a woman for her infant feeding decision.

(And even if it does happen, I still won’t judge.)

Baby B’s first few weeks – part two.

Finally, I’d met someone who recognised that look of desperation in my eyes. Who didn’t tell me my baby was content, or wasn’t hungry, or just needed a dummy. Who saw that something was wrong, and that I needed it sorted out.

And who introduced me to the breastfeeding support group at Whiston Hospital.

But before that happened, dh and I nearly split up, and mil’s taking baby B so I could “rest” rapidly became mil taking baby B so I could do the housework. In fact, when she returned one day and found me on the internet (Kellymom, or Mumsnet, trying to get breastfeeding support as usual) she actually told dh that I was taking the p- out of him and was lazy. Dh told me this and said, “and you won’t listen to me, but you normally listen to mil, so if she says it, as an independent observer, maybe you’ll think she’s right and more needs doing round here?”

(Dh has since apologised for that attitude I hasten to add!)

So I had that going around in my head; baby B still cried all the time and I succumbed in the end to Prozac.

K helped me attach baby B a bit better; she helped with my positioning so baby B’s lower arm was tucked under my boob. You’d be amazed at the difference this made, but something still wasn’t quite right.

At eight weeks old, I took baby B to the support group. N was on holiday. Another midwife was running it. I told her his latch wasn’t right. “That must be annoying,” she said. That was it.

The desperation was growing worse and as I was just starting on Prozac,  my mental state was growing worse too (Prozac, like many SSRIs, makes things worse before it makes them better). I woke up in the night even when baby B was asleep with a tense feeling in my stomach like a panic attack. I was terrified he might never feed properly and I would have to switch to formula. I can’t tell you why that terrified me so much but it did, it absolutely horrified me; I felt like it would destroy me.

At nine weeks of age, baby B met T. I’ve mentioned T before. T was wonderful. She was running the support group in N’s absence again and actually took me seriously.  We had my boobs out trying all sort of positions, sandwiching my areola and shoving it into baby B’s mouth, rugby balls, cross cradles, cradles and the like. It still wasn’t perfect but it was much better. I practised all through the week, just me and baby B.

Some time in these few weeks, I can’t remember exactly when, I got a sling after advice on Mumsnet. I could now carry baby B and get out and about, whereas before he would scream and scream in a pram and every five seconds I was stopping to pick him up, rock him, then put him back in the pram, walk another five seconds, pick him up… you get the picture.

That helped too. And then, when baby B was ten weeks old I met N. And you know what? I can’t even remember what she did exactly. Some stuff on positioning, helping me by suggesting I pull his chin down when latching him on, but nothing huge. But just knowing that there was a support group where an “expert” actually resided, just knowing that I would be able to breastfeed my baby, made a huge difference.

Of course to dh and mil the difference was the Prozac kicking in; my depression had been affecting baby B and that was why he’d been crying.

And after week ten, things started to get easier. I started co-sleeping; by accident first; I fed baby B lying down and fell asleep myself; when the sky didn’t cave in I did it more and more often. By the time baby B was three months of age things were much better.

It took mine and dh’s relationship until baby B was about five months old to recover; mine and mil’s still isn’t right. But my relationship with baby B, the most important one of them all, is absolutely wonderful.

Friday’s support group

On Friday I went as usual to Whiston Hospital with K in the morning and had a whale of a time. Baby B was my demo model as I was called upon to demonstrate feeding lying down, and babywearing.

I hadn’t known I was going to be asked to demonstrate babywearing, but coincidentally, K had asked to borrow one of my slings, as she is going to try out wearing H, so I had my red padded ring sling with me. I also had my purple pashmina (to show K the power of a SPOC*) and my black canvass pouch sling.

So there was I wandering around the room with baby B in various different positions in different slings; I also got to carry one or two of the adorable newborn babies, aww. Hard to believe, even now, only seven months on and with baby B being a slow gainer, that he was ever that little.

One lady came who looked desperate; I remember that look.  Her baby would not settle, cried a lot, liked to cluster feed and she was getting no sleep (hers was the lying down demo). I gently suggested safe co-sleeping, not just at night but also during the daytime naps. It gets me every time that I talk about it that people say, “but… is that okay?” I sometimes wonder if by okay they mean safe, or morally okay, or GP recommended or what exactly they mean.

In fact if you’re not used to sleeping in a bed with a baby, daytime naps are a great place to practise! Just feed lying down, and as you lie there watching your baby suckle away you feel peaceful and just a bit sleepy and baby’s eyes close and…. Zzzzzzzzz…

I remember that look though. Reminded me to get around to writing the story of baby B’s first few weeks… soon, I promise!

But yes, Friday I thought went quite well.  Two pregnant ladies came too; I discussed feeding in public with them and how it is possible to be discreet… if you want to, that is!

*SPOC – simple piece of cloth; you can carry your baby in pretty much anything if you’re inventive enough!

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.)

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?

Breastfeeding utopia – part two

Picture the scene. A game of football; children of infant-school age, about five or six, playing happily with jumpers for goalposts. Suddenly a little girl falls over and scrapes her knee. She runs off crying to Mummy who is sitting by watching with friends. A quick suckle, and a few moments later, everything is all right again. She runs back to the playing field and the game resumes. Move along, move along, nothing unusual to see here.

Move to this world’s equivalent of Mothercare. Sign in the window shows this world’s usual baby-related icons; teddy bear, breastfeeding symbol, sling. The shop sells these items of course, plus extra king size, extra low beds.

Take a walk along this high street and go into the café. Oh look! There’s a breastfeeding room; you get some in the real world as well! No, hang on, it’s just a breastfeeding chair, one of those comfy rocking chairs with stools and breastfeeding pillows. In fact there are quite a few of them. But they’re just out amongst the normal chairs. What does that sign say? “New Mum? Newborn baby? Need a hand? Take a seat and cushion and put your feet up while feeding your baby.” Of course, in this world, it doesn’t need saying that Mums are welcome to breastfeed anywhere they want to.

Of husbands and partners – smiling and carrying on.

I’ve had my pie.

I’m going to do another post at some point in the future about baby B’s early days and the support I received from my own dh.

But to answer my own question from earlier – what do you do? – I can only say what I did.

I ignored my dh.

Unfortunately, this meant doing almost everything myself.

I put baby B to bed because I would not let him cry himself to sleep. I used cloth nappies and did all the changes, washing and drying myself, because I didn’t want to use disposables. I carried baby B everywhere with me in a sling because he screamed and screamed and wouldn’t settle in his pram. I carried on breastfeeding, point blank refusing to use the cartons of ready-made formula that I had cried my eyes out buying (and still have in my cupboard! I wonder if the cat would enjoy them?) even though it hurt, and even though baby B would not settle. I slept in the big bed with baby B myself, because it made breastfeeding so much easier; dh ended up relegated to the spare room.

I did give in on the dummy (although he was eventually weaned back onto comfort sucking at the breast) and I did give in on the night away (pushing it back to once a fortnight and expressing like a mad thing throughout the night).

But you know? Something happened to my dh.

He watched me, and watched how easily baby B settled with me. Once he saw how easily baby B settled in the sling he had a go himself. And after a few times, he quite enjoyed it.

Once he saw that I was not going to let baby B sleep alone, and that if he wanted to share a bed with me ever again it would be sharing a bed with us, he came back into the big bed (which meant much less room – we need a bigger bed really but have pulled the cot right up to the bed and pulled the side down… most nights I end up in the cot but there you go).

Once he saw how happy and healthy baby B was, thriving on exclusive breastfeeding, he stopped pushing the formula. In fact, now when we go to the supermarket he says of some products, “can we get that? It’s not made by Nestle is it?”

And once he saw that cloth nappies aren’t actually that much more difficult than disposables he started to change more nappies, and the other day even put some in the wash.

So now, when he comes out with things that are, how shall we say, not particularly AP friendly, I just smile and carry on doing what I’m doing.

Because I know that eventually, when he sees how smoothly everything goes, he will come round.

Sometimes you have to show, rather than tell.

Of husbands and partners

Wouldn’t it be just fantastic if husbands and partners thought exactly the same way as their wives & partners about childcare and baby “rearing”?

Wouldn’t that just be lovely?

But it just doesn’t happen very often. So what do you do?

What if you want your baby in the room – the big bed, even – but your dh doesn’t like it?

What if you want to breastfeed until your baby / toddler / child decides to stop but your dh thinks it’s weirdy?

What if you love carrying your baby out and about in a sling, but your dh thinks you should have a pram or pushchair?

What if you want to use cloth nappies, but your dh prefers disposables?

What if you think expressing is a faff and a hassle and you don’t want baby to have formula but your dh wants baby to spend a night a week at his mother’s house?

It’s a difficult one, but I’m sure it happens to many Mums. (Possibly Dads, too, the other way around.) What do you do? What do you do when you really don’t feel you can possibly compromise on anything that is so important as the way you bring up your baby?

Answers on a postcard please – I’m off to eat a pie and will try and come back and tell my story “how I dealt with dh’s rather different views” later.

Breastfeeding Utopia – part one

If we lived in a world that was truly supportive of breastfeeding, what would it be like?

Here are just a few scenarios I could see happening in this breastfeeding utopia.

Scenario one

Antenatal class, second session. Held not in a hospital, but in a local cafe or pub. A woman walks in with a piece of old cloth for each expectant Mum in addition to newborn-sized dolls for everyone.

“What are we learning today?” one asks.

“I’m not sure. You got your list?”

Another pregnant woman pipes up, “yeah, here we are. Hands-free nursing.”

“Ooh that sounds exciting!”

The woman, who has brought her own nursing toddler with her, shows all the women how to tie the knot tightly, how to check baby is at the right level, how easy it is to walk around nursing baby… just then, all eyes turn towards the window.

“There’s an example,” says the mentor. Two women walk past wearing slings, one of the women has a baby in hers, contentedly nursing away. (You can see a lot of breast, but no one bats an eyelid. That’s normal in this world.) The other woman is actually using her sling to carry shopping and a child, probably about four years of age, walks along beside her.

“You can of course buy a nice fancy sling if you want, you don’t have to use an old piece of cloth,” she says, smiling “and when your babe is no longer ‘in arms’ you can use it like that woman, to carry shopping.”

Actually, even as I write down this scenario, I start to think, “surely if this was breastfeeding utopia, these women wouldn’t even need this class? It would just be something that women know, just like women in this real world learn how to feed baby a bottle at a very young age.”

Maybe this is breastfeeding utopia, first generation?

Anyway scenario two.

A playgroup, in which little girls – and boys – are playing with dolls.

“Dollie hungry,” says one girl, and lifts her top to put her doll to her chest. All the other children follow suite, even the boys.

Scenario three

From outside the room, you can hear laughter and friendly chat. It’s like any other work canteen or break room. Actually, not quite. There’s a whirring sound, like an electric motor, from inside.

Let’s go inside and see what’s going on.

Women in suits sit round, eating their butties, sipping coffee (oh, what’s she drinking? Ah, I see, fennel tea) and chatting. And expressing milk. This must be an expressing room for work out of the home Mums.

No, hang on. They’re not all expressing. Three of the women aren’t, anyway… and who is that, in the corner? Oh gosh! It’s a man! In fact, now I look around, there are quite a few men. As many as there are women. And none of them look askance at the expressers. In fact – hang on a minute – I was right all along.

It is just a work canteen, where women just happen to be expressing milk for their babies. This is just normal.

(Perhaps a few generations down the line in breastfeeding utopia, the women have their babies with them in work?)

Scenario four

Millie’s baby never put on much weight; in fact he even lost weight several weeks running. After several sessions with her GP – who is, of course, fully trained, as is every GP in this world, in breastfeeding – she was diagnosed with a very rare condition; not enough milk.

She gets a free supplemental nursing system on prescription.

What should she supplement with? The supermarkets do of course sell totally unbranded infant formula milk which has gone through rigorous testing to ensure it has as minimal a risk as possible to infant health, although of course it’s not human milk, and it does still pose a risk.

Hang on, no, that’s not right. Although that’s a scenario that’s more acceptable than the one we have now, this is breastfeeding utopia.

She gets a prescription for human milk with which she supplements her own feeds. All supplementation is of course at the breast.

Millie’s baby grows happy and healthy.

What happens when he gets to a year old?

Her prescription doesn’t run out just because she “can” give him cows’ milk. It continues for as long as she and her baby wish to carry on nursing.

Ah, lovely. Pity this is the real world.