Yes my son, who's my first child was really, really straightforward, really easy to breastfeed, just kind of one of these children that went on, you know, drank it, put on loads of weight, drank loads of milk, was really easy, had absolutely no problems at all with him and I fed him for a year and a half in fact he wouldn't, he'd never take a, he was one of those horrible children [laughs] that would never take a bottle 'cause you know even of expressed milk, he just wasn't interested but he, he was fed for a year and a half so he was really, really, really straightforward.
Did you feed him on demand or to a schedule or?
No just on demand I just fed him when he was hungry and he was great really because he fed quite, especially when he was little he fed a lot during the day so I'd kind of be feeding every hour or so during the day.
Was that a problem for you?
No, well it wasn't a problem for me because I didn't have bottles to make up, you know I didn't have to worry if I wanted to have a snooze I developed the skill of feeding lying down, so we could both kind of have a little sleep, it was very nice but he was really good at night as well, he fed, he went for sort of four or five hours, more or less from two, three weeks old in the night so, he was fabulous [laughs]. Really, really easy feeder and just you know gained weight and was a bit of a superstar really, and so I have to say I did I found it you know fairly easy.
Did you know much about breastfeeding before?
I did, and I suppose I felt quite strongly that I wanted to do it and I felt it was the best thing.
Because?
Because of the health benefits and because basically almost like a laziness thing of the fact that it's just, it is so much easier than making up bottles, sterilising and all the stuff that goes with it and basically you kind of, I know people say, “Well then it's got to be you, it's got to be you”, but I think as a mother if your baby wakes in the night, you're going to wake anyway, so, you know you kind of think, you might as well, you know, I think had I bottle fed I think I'd probably have been awake even if my husband was bottle feeding until he'd gone back to sleep. The other thing I think that was fantastic for me about breastfeeding was this sort of the comfort side of things, which you don't get with a bottle and the fact that if your baby is ill, even if they have got gastric illness you can still breastfeed them whereas obviously you can't do that with bottle and it's such a comfort and it's useful if they are grisly or if they're tired or if they hurt themselves, just stick 'em under your jumper and plug 'em in and it's like magic really, just like magic and that's I don't think when I started I thought to myself, “Oh I'm going to feed for you know for a year and a half”, but it was just kind of one of those things that I just carried on doing, and it was interesting because one or two of my friends I thought, once my son was walking were a bit like, “Oh, are you still feeding” you know found it a little bit uncomfortable, but I think when it's your child and they just grow up day by day, you don't think, 'Oh they're a toddler and I'm still feeding him', so, yeah, I found the whole thing just really easy and by the time I kind of wanted to move on and maybe leave him for a little while at sort of you know five, six months, obviously he was starting to wean onto foods then anyway so you could do that but also he wouldn't take a bottle so he went sort of straight to a cup, an open cup and that was and that worked really well so it didn't mean that I was you know tied to him the whole time I could leave him but he just you know. |
Ah! Yes my daughter, my daughter has Down's Syndrome and so when she was born, we kind of got the diagnosis a couple of weeks after she was born but she was a nightmare to feed [laughs] an absolute nightmare and I was almost, when we had the diagnosis I was almost relieved because I thought, 'Right, okay, this is why she's not feeding very well', it was tough and I have to say I am so pleased that I'd fed my son first because I think I would have, I think I would have given up and I, because what I had going for me was I had the belief, I can, I know I can do it, you know, it's her not me, I know I can make enough milk, I know what I'm doing, I feel very confident in myself and I think it must be really hard if you have a child like that as your first child because it's horrible. She was very floppy, she had really poor muscle tone in her mouth and so she just didn't have the coordination to suck, she just couldn't do it so I remember the midwife coming round and I was trying to feed her and I said, “She's just chewing, she's just chewing, she's not sucking properly” and the midwife said, “Oh, you haven't got her on right you know, blah, blah, blah, oh it's yeah you're not holding, you're holding her head that's why she doesn't like it.” And I just said, “No there's something wrong, it's her, not me” you know, I knew there was a problem and she, then we, you kind of get into this cycle of they don't feed and then children with, babies with Down's Syndrome as well are very sleepy, they sleep a lot and so of course they don't feed very much and then they sleep for long periods and then they try and get a little bit of food into them and then they sleep and then they lose weight and of course then you have the weight police coming round weighing your baby saying, “Well you know this baby needs a bottle”, but I was just, I mean you could say bloody minded and I do remember one really traumatic afternoon when the health visitor had come round and weighed her and she'd lost weight again, I mean she took six weeks to reach her birth weight so, which is not unusual in a baby with Down's Syndrome, a breastfed baby with Down's Syndrome, but because they are few and far between the statistics aren't really available but it's not that uncommon when you speak to people. I can remember my father was here and she weighed her and I can remember him saying to me, “Why don't you give her a bottle, do you want her to die?” And he is such a sweet man, he was just so worried about her because she wasn't, you know she didn't, she was a bit sickly and I said, “No, don't worry dad, if it gets that bad they'll section me and take her off me.” So but, I have to say, my health visitor was fabulous because she was really supportive the whole time you know, “You're doing the right thing, if that's what you want to do you carry on doing it”, sort of thing which is not necessarily everybody's experience, but she was fab so what I did was and it was, it doesn't sound like much now but you know at the time it was oh it was such a trial, I tried to feed her, I kept putting her on and kept putting her on but then I expressed, and I used like a little, I couldn't get her to take out of a cup it just went everywhere, I used like a little medicine syringe and I filled it up with milk and then I'd, and it just took forever, it was so tedious and I can just remember at night time, she didn't wake at night so I had to wake her so I had to set an alarm clock, then I had to wake her up which is a feat in itself, you know, cold water and ice on her back and things just to try and keep her awake. So get her awake and of course it's easy to wake for a baby but it's horrible to wake for an alarm clock, it just doesn't seem right and then I put her on and she'd, “nm ar ar” [slurping noise] go back to sleep again and I can just remember sitting there sobbing you know because I just couldn't get, and at night I think it' everything seems worse, doesn't it? So, that was, that was really tough but I was just like, “I'm not giving, you know, I'm not giving up”. The turning point really for us was my health visitor's suggestion again, she'd come and weighed her again, lost weight again and she said to me why don't you do a baby-moon weekend which is this idea where you stay in bed for a whole weekend and all you do is you lie there with your baby and every time they move you feed them basically, so you feed them as much as you possibly can. Somebody else brings you meals, somebody else, and because my husband was very supportive he said, “Yeah come on then let's do it”, and so I did that and for two days I just stayed in bed, sounds really lazy, she was like five weeks old, I stayed in bed with her, just did that and then she'd weighed her on the Friday and then she came back on the Monday and she'd put on an ounce and it was like ah! halleluiah! you know and so that really was the turning point and then she, it was kind of and also I think that those two days for her was almost like a learning experience as well, it wasn't just the milk going in, it was like right this is what you do, this is what you do, over and over and over again in close succession rather that having gaps between and so then she, then she fed.
So you were putting her to the breast…
Yes, every time she sort of murmured or did anything constantly, constantly, constantly every sort of twenty minutes, yeah.
…and allowing her to suckle for as long as she would?
Yes, yes.
Were you using the syringe at all?
No, no, no, then I was just, I was just, but just concentrating just on her and nothing else you know, because it's when it's your second child as well you end up rushing around and she did sleep, and she was, as a baby it was so easy in that respect, you could go anywhere she'd just sleep the whole time, so it was easy to forget about her because you were I was dealing with my three year old and it was always easy just to leave her and then you know, but that was the real turning point for her, but I have to say she was never the feeder that my son was, she was always, she put on weight but she put on weight slowly, she's still you know not short for her age but very thin for her, well not thin but you know she's slightly underweight for her age and she just you know, that's just her and I fed her for sixteen months as well and again she would never take a bottle but I think I shied away from the bottle idea completely because I'd had such a trauma getting her to breastfeed that I just thought I'm not, forget it, it's not you know, she's little for such a short length of time, I'm just going to do this now that I've got her sorted and we'll just worry about the rest later.
So once you got her to the breast and sucking, she was sucking, correctly. Did you know when she took that up, you could feel the difference?
Yeah, over that weekend, that she wasn't just chewing and it wasn't dribbling in which is what was happening before, I mean I was kind of getting my let-down reflex when it was all coming out and then it was just basically it was just dribbling into her mouth, she wasn't, there was no milking going on, you know, you could and you know when a baby's attached and it feels good and you know that it's right and it was just over that period of time that weekend that I thought yes she's got it now, it's clicked, finally clicked after, but it was a long five weeks really.
And then did you feed her exclusively?
Yes.
For how long?
She was, I didn't wean her until she was six months onto foods, solids, I think my son I did earlier but the advice has changed hasn't it? and also because I mean all the things that count for breastfeeding with a child with Down's Syndrome count a hundred times over so we've got the things like protection from infection so important because children with Down's Syndrome have got disordered immune systems so they very easily get ill, development of facial muscles, now I now have a child who has her speech, everybody who assesses her says her speech is higher than they would expect for her cognitive level and nobody can tell me but I am convinced that the reason for that is that I breastfed her and that the muscles in the face here, I've got a friend who's a speech therapist and a breastfeeding counsellor and she said it, you know, that really makes a difference. So that really helps children with Down's Syndrome and glue ear, yes she's got glue ear but she's still got quite a lot of hearing and again I'm sure if I hadn't of breastfed her that would have been a lot worse, so because I was aware of all this I kind of thought right I am going to do this exclusive six months feeding and not introduce anything else just because, you know and also it was partly just I'd struggled so much, I was going to make the most of it, because it was such a, well I felt it was a trauma, you know looking back it probably, it was a relatively short time but it just seemed so difficult and I mean the other thing that I think went in our favour greatly is the fact that [daughter] my daughter was born at home, so normally when a baby's born with Down's Syndrome they're automatically given an NG tube and tube fed and I've known people who've had nine and a half pounders with Down's Syndrome and they're still NG tube fed, so go figure, but anyway that's what happens, and so we managed to escape all that kind of hysteria at the beginning and because I was a second time mum and I was very sort of right this is what I'm doing and my health visitor was so fab I think we kind of managed to keep away from too much interference so I really think that helped. I do remember going to a paediatrics appointment when she was about two months old and this very sincere young paediatrician said, “And how much, how much milk is she drinking?” And my husband and I looked at him and went, “What do you mean, well she is breastfed, I have no idea how much she's taking”, and he couldn't cope with it. But, so for me I suppose I kind of, not went the other way but I was like right that's it now I'm going to make sure she is exclusively breastfed and that's it so, yeah.
What would you like to say to a mother who has just had a baby diagnosed with Down's Syndrome?
About breastfeeding or?
Well!
About anything?
Breastfeeding in particular but anything in general.
Breastfeeding in particular I think you've got to, it's like all these things, you've got to do what you want to do now, you know some people don't want to breastfeed period and that's fine but I would say as I would say for any baby but particularly with a child with Down's Syndrome, it is so, it makes such a difference for them, more so than with other children to have that start, I mean it is so, so, so important for them to have that start and I've known people have experiences, of you know, I knew somebody who didn't, really was struggling with breastfeeding with a baby with Down's Syndrome, she expressed and bottle fed for the first ten weeks and then she managed to get the baby to go back to breastfeeding, which is amazing, absolutely amazing, really oh, you know, really take my hat off to her, so it is possible, it is possible and I think the thing is if you want to do it then you have to accept that it's going to be tough, but that six, seven weeks down the line, you know things will start to look better and it is worth, for me I think it was worth it for that period of time of, you know hard work and also you have to be prepared to bat the professionals off a bit and just know, that it's not unusual for a child with Down's Syndrome not to make their birth weight until six weeks after they were born, and that it is not unusual for a normally developing child not to make their birth weight until four weeks and I know they don't like that either, but not all babies are like my son where they've made their birth weight and another pound a week after they're born so just be prepared to say well look, and there are also which not everybody knows and but they are available, there are special weight charts for babies with Down's Syndrome that take that into account. The ones your health professionals give you there are special inserts to go in the red books and my health visitor didn't know about this until I found out about it so that was really helpful, because they do put on weight, breastfed babies put on weight slower than the normal ones, and then if you've got a breastfed baby with Down's Syndrome I mean it does look awful on the chart but actually you can get the charts, but again what you have to bear in mind with a Down's Syndrome child is that most babies with Down's Syndrome are bottle fed therefore do put on weight relatively more quickly than the breastfed ones so, but yeah I'd say to anybody just stick with it. The difficult thing is because again we've talked about breastfeeding having lots to do with emotions and psychology, when you have a child with Down's Syndrome you're dealing with a lot more as well and I think that makes that, it's doubly hard then because you've got doubts and worries and you know you're kind of going through a bereavement then anyway and so it can be, I can see why people say, “Well, I'm not going to worry about this, this is all too much so I'm just going to you know whatever give them a bottle whatever” but you know I mean the bottle feeding's not always straight forward either, quite often you know you have to get a special bottle with not just a hole but with like a cross so it comes out a lot quicker, because they don't have a suck for anything, not even the kind of really front of the mouth suck for bottles, so, yeah, but my advice would be to stick with it. |
