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She advises health professionals to encourage women and women to find someone who they know and trust. She wishes there were more breastfeeding clinics.
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What would you like to say to health professionals?
I suppose I would say to encourage women as best they can to try breastfeeding, to keep at breastfeeding, to try and help them resolve problems that are bound to come up for a lot of women, not to think that it's the best thing to do is to, to give up. I mean I do know lot of people say that their health visitors have said, “Oh the baby's not gaining enough weight” and as a result they've given up breastfeeding and then afterwards they've regretted it, and wished that it hadn't come to that. And I'm sceptical that that's always the best solution, I don't think that, I think there's a lot of fuss about weight gain and in some cases it may be warranted but I think in a lot of cases it may not be and it's caused women a lot of anxiety and I suppose in the early days it would be good if there wasn't lots of conflicting advice, it would be good if you had someone that you knew and trusted that could help you and you didn't just sort of get one person coming in for two seconds and then another person telling you something completely different. I think there should be more Breastfeeding Clinics, if only there were. |
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Breastfeeding was a big part of being a mother and she wished that she had seen more women breastfeeding. For her, there was no substitute for hands-on experience.
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I wish I had seen more people breastfeeding, I wish I had known that the way you position them is important and the way you put their mouth to the breast is important, you can't just sort of put them on willy-nilly. I wish I'd known that it wasn't going to be easy straightforward, I mean I know for some people it is, but I would say the majority of people I know have had quite a lot of problems beginning breastfeeding. So maybe I wish I'd, armed myself in advance with a few books or maybe gone to some kind of breastfeeding workshop or classes or something. I really wished there'd been a Breastfeeding Clinic in London where I had my first baby, there is one where I live now, which has helped, helped me with my second baby, I should have mentioned that I, that I did go to see them and they were very good at telling you how to latch the baby on and encouraging you to keep persevering even if it was difficult. I think the encouragement and support from people who've breastfed themselves or who know, know a lot about it is one of the most important things. I wish that I'd had more family who'd breastfed or, more friends, I think if I had then I would've known what to expect a bit more with the first baby.
What would you like to say to a newly pregnant woman?
I'd like to say that if, once breastfeeding has been properly established it is the best thing, I mean it's enjoyable, the babies love it, it's a very good experience all round it really is a big part of being a mother for me. But it can be tough in the early weeks and to get all the support that you possibly can from people who've been there and who've, because I think there's no, there's actually reading books is fine but there's no substitute for hands on, someone who can actually pick up your baby and show you how to position it, and can also kind of hold your hand and give you that support and that encouragement to keep on going and not to say, “Oh well perhaps you better try a bottle then”, because once you start going down that road it's difficult to come back. |
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Her baby had not breastfed properly on discharge and it was only after readmission to hospital that she received the help that she required.
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What sort of help did you get at that stage?
I think a, a midwife sort of had a quick look at the baby, you know, and said, “Oh maybe do it a bit like this” or, but not, not a whole lot to be absolutely honest, plus I was on a high from having had the baby and, you know, I was medicated and, and so I probably wasn't, you know, it wasn't my main consideration at that point I was showing the baby off to my dad who'd come down to visit and that sort of thing, and I suppose it was only really kind of maybe that night when I started to really try hard to, to feed the baby, and I, you know, it doesn't, wasn't working very well and, I mean I, I know people sort of complain about having sore nipples and bleeding nipples and things like that but it, with me it was actually that the baby wouldn't even latch on at all, really. So there wasn't much pain it was just simply that she would just kind of go, “ah ah ah” like this and, and not really attach to me at all. And I was in hospital for five days in the end and, and I was worried about the baby having low blood sugar 'cause there was some sort of issue about this because I, had possibly been diabetic in the pregnancy and, so they were worried that the baby's blood sugar might drop, and so they were then wanting her to feed, and I felt she wasn't feeding properly and I was getting quite distressed about this, and worrying about, you know, was the, was the baby going to, you know, collapse from dehydration or a lack of sugars or whatever. And I was I think, I was getting more and more het up really and then, eventually they were going to, they wanted to discharge me from the hospital and I wasn't really happy to go because I felt that the baby wasn't feeding and I wasn't really happy to go home knowing that I couldn't feed the baby and, and they kept saying, “Well why don't you just take her a little bottle of formula”, one of these little ones that the hospital had stocks of, and I, maybe, you know, I was being kind of over the top about it but, but I really didn't want her to, I think I'd read somewhere that there was a link between cow's milk and diabetes and there's a lot of diabetes in my family and I was worried about that so I didn't want her to have formula so I was determined to try and make this breastfeeding thing work. But it just wasn't, and she wasn't, and she was crying a lot and, and then she was sleeping for hours on end, I think probably because she wasn't getting enough milk, and I eventually I could feel my milk coming in but that was only because I had been expressing on a [sighs], big sort of, you know, metal breast pump thing from, that the hospital had given me and cup feeding her because it was the only way we could really get the milk into her, or, I don't know if we syringed it, no I think it was with a little cup, we sort of sat her on my lap and poured it into her mouth, 'cause she just wasn't feeding at all off the breast. And, and I actually remember saying to the paediatrician or, or, the day we were going to be discharged, I, we had a follow-up appointment on the Tuesday and this was the Saturday, and they said, “Are you ” I said, “it, if I don't, if the baby doesn't feed between now and Tuesday will she die?” and in retrospect I think that's very, really bad that I was leaving hospital thinking that my baby might die because she wouldn't have fed.
When I was about to go home I, I said to the paediatrician that I was worried that the baby wasn't feeding, well and, or at all in fact, I felt, and if by, and this was a Saturday, and if by Tuesday she still hadn't fed would she die? And they said, “No, no, no she'll be fine, she won't die”. But I don't think I should've discharged feeling like that about my baby [laughs], and to my knowledge there was no breastfeeding counsellor or anybody with that kind of role in that hospital at that time, whether or not that's changed I don't know. So I got kind of bits of help from various different midwives but, their, their advice tended to be a bit inconsistent and they were very, very busy and rushed off their feet and there were lots and lots of women in the ward and, all of whom had had caesareans and things like that and had, you know, they had to be attended to and, so I didn't really get a lot of help, and felt quite at sea really and [sighs], I remember worrying would my milk come in and I remember saying, I could feel this sensation of the breast getting a bit harder and hotter, and I, I remember saying to one of the doctors, “Would you feel the breast, will you tell me is this my milk coming in, am I getting any, am I getting any milk?” [Pause]. And they were a bit dismissive and they said, “No I won't feel” you know, and I remember changing the baby's nappy one day and the milk suddenly started dripping down on her and I thought, 'Oh the milk has come in' and I think that was from doing the, using the breast pump, that the baby hadn't stimulated it enough but expressing my milk and then feeding, cup feeding her had done the trick. So that was probably, I had the caesarean on the Tuesday and my milk came in on the Saturday, so at least I knew there was milk there for her to have if she could get on the breast, but the problem was that I had quite large breasts anyway, 'cause I was, you know, I'd put on a lot of weight in the pregnancy, and they did become absolutely enormous and rock hard, and, whether it was just the way I was, or whether it was because the breasts were very big or whatever but my nipples were very flat. And I now think that was probably why the baby, or one of the reasons why the baby wouldn't latch on because there was nothing for her to kind of get a purchase on. And I didn't really know if there was anything I could do about that and, I don't remember, I just sort of was trying to kind of get her on against this very hard, stretched surface, and she got so frustrated and screamed and screamed and [sighs], kind of went like this and, it was, it was really, really heartbreaking actually.
She was admitted to hospital yeah. And at this point I was actually thinking, 'You know, what does this say about me that I'm so determined to breastfeed that I, my baby ends up going in an ambulance to hospital or am I doing the right thing?' You know, would it be better for me to just say, “fine I'll just formula feed her, this is okay”, you know? Or is it, am I doing the right thing by kind of thinking, 'no I will try and find an answer to this?' And I, that was real lowest point I remember I was, you know, I was still quite sore from the caesarean and I just remember going to the shower and just thinking, 'I never should have had a baby, this is such a mistake what have I done?' you know? And I was really, really distressed.
When I first was, was admitted and I was waiting around one of the nurses said, “Oh I don't think anatomically you'll be able to breastfeed 'cause your nipples are too flat” and, and she actually said, “oh I had the same problem with my son and I never breastfed” and at that point I thought, 'oh God so I've got an anatomical problem have I?', and it was really only the next day when finally they obviously took me seriously.
Footnote: Flat and inverted nipples are not a barrier to breastfeeding as a baby feeds from the breast not the nipple. A woman may require skilled help with correctly positioning and latching her baby (see 'Resources'). |
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She was relaxed about weaning but does feel a bit guilty about weaning her first baby to get her periods back so that she could get pregnant again.
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What I have had is that kind of comment that sounds friendly and well-meaning along the lines of, “Oh are you still feeding that? when are you going to wean, when are you going to?” it's almost like people want you to give up, I don't know why.
How do you deal with those sorts of comments?
I've just tended to say, “Well I'll just see how things go” and, you know, there's no particular reason to do it now and I don't want to cause a lot of distress to the, the baby when, or the toddler when, when they're obviously wanting it and enjoying it still and it's not really any big deal to me to I mean as I've said the only time when I thought, 'Right I'm really going to wean this toddler now' my first daughter was when I wanted another baby, and I know this is not the case for all women but I hadn't had the return of periods at that point, I imagine because I was breastfeeding, and so I thought, 'Well I want a sibling for the baby so'.
Were you aware of the contraceptive effect of breastfeeding at that stage, did you know anything about it?
I realised, yeah that breastfeeding was going to suppress my periods for at least for, for a short while but it carried on and on and I didn't, and I suppose that was the reason I didn't, they didn't come back for as long as they didn't, but I was still feeding a lot at that point, I mean that it wasn't just one feed a day I was still feeding six times a day or something probably, on and off.
Okay so how did you handle the weaning?
I think it was, it was something she didn't want to do so there was a little bit of guilt, I felt a little bit guilty doing it and I was very much saying, “Well you're a big girl now” and, you know, obviously by this point she was also drinking all sorts of things and eating everything and, you know, and I really got the feeling that it was more for comfort than for nutrition at this point, so I think I just sort of distracted her really, when she would come to feed I would say, “How about a story?” or we would, you know, get up and off the sofa and go and go off and do something and, but I remember our last breastfeed quite clearly and I, you know, I feel sort of quite, you know, emotional when I think well that was the last time that she fed.
Did you cut out one feed at a time or anything like that?
I don't think it was as kind of planned as that, I suppose by that point she was more snacking than having really great gulping feeds apart from at bedtime when she still would, and no, first thing in the morning actually was the biggest feed for a long while and I think it was when I got rid of that one it's almost like all the other ones fell away by themselves.
And any problems with milk supply at that stage as you're slowing down?
I think I must have been cutting down gradually because I didn't find any engorgement or mastitis or anything then, it must have just sort of happened quite slowly and without any kind of massive cut off. |
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She had an abundant milk supply, frequent bouts of mastitis and occasional blocked ducts. She discusses the symptoms, solutions and causes.
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What didn't go smoothly was that I did get mastitis six or seven times.
So can you describe mastitis for me?
It usually started with a little red patch on my breast that would be kind of hot and, and a bit painful to the touch and then quite quickly I would develop a sort of flu like feeling, a fever and shivery and really feeling quite ghastly actually. And it would usually be when I was very tired, run down, it would, always seem to happen on a Friday evening or so when I'd had the week with the baby on my own and [partner] had been at work and also it was, I suppose related to the breast not draining very well sometimes, I seemed to have a lot of milk and the baby wasn't very efficient at, at suckling even though we'd sort of managed to get by.
So what did you do when you noticed these symptoms?
I went to bed really, I felt so horrible that's all I could do and I think I took, ibuprofen or paracetamol or something to try and bring the fever thing down, and then just trying to get the baby to feed as much as possible off the breast which had the mastitis. And then when she wouldn't I would express or if, or if she'd already fed and was full I would express, I had a little hand pump and I remember sitting in the bath 'cause hot water was really helpful and putting a, a kind of hot flannel and, and it would sometimes come out that way, and sometimes I would see [pause] one of the things I found helpful was to sit in the bath and, and put a hot flannel on top of the breast and, and often just the warmth of the water would make the milk start to flow, and I remember kind of seeing it kind of swirling around in the water and knowing that it was coming out. And so, and oh, and sometimes I think I had a hot water bottle wrapped up in a cloth or something and put that on, and I did notice sometimes that I had like a little white blob on the nipple, which reading up about it seemed to be that that was sort of dried up milk that was blocking one of the, the holes, and sometimes if I could get that to kind of go then that would, that would relieve the blockage and then.
How did you get that to go?
Once, I'm sure this is probably not very good I popped it with a sterile needle that I'd burnt in a, in a flame, and then whoosh all this milk came out and it, and it went down. And I just think just a lot of expressing sometimes kind of helped them to, to pop as well. And I did also have antibiotics on occasions as well because sometimes it just wasn't going with the kind of measures I was using at home.
So you didn't always use the antibiotics?
The first, no I didn't, I sometimes did and I sometimes didn't.
How long did you leave it before you decided you needed antibiotics?
I usually left it about twenty-four hours or so I'd say.
So if you had no improvement within twenty-four hours…
Yeah.
…you knew you needed antibiotics?
I think that's what I was tending to do yeah. I mean I've actually had it with each baby in fact, all three of them, and for instance with the most recent baby I've had it three times in, about the space of, five or six weeks. And the first time I got through it with no antibiotics, the second time I did take the, some antibiotics because of, it wasn't going after twenty-four hours, and then I was still on the course of antibiotics when I got it the following weekend, in a different breast, so then I switched to a different brand of antibiotic, a different type of antibiotic and then it did clear. So I don't know to what extent it would have gone anyway and whether the antibiotics really did help but, I suppose it reassured me that if there was going to be some horrible infection there then it would clear it up.
So this is happening on both breasts, it wasn't always the same breast?
I've had it on both breasts.
Both sides?
Yeah, yeah. It would often be where the corner of the baby's mouth tended to be so I sort of felt it because the baby was suckling here well and probably with the top lip it was massaging the breast a bit but on the sides where the corners of the mouth were it wasn't doing very well so it would often be that. And I think sometimes when I was lying down in bed maybe the, the breast got a bit compressed or something and that might have had an effect I think.
Have you worked out any strategies to try and prevent it?
I always make sure now that my bras fit well, that they don't, they don't dig in at any place because I think that, one, one time I got it when I'd walked home I had a quite an ill-fitting bra and I had a shoulder strap of a carrier, of a bag and I think that might have had an effect, but actually I can honestly say the thing that has been the most consistent precursor to it has been being run down and tired, that's always been the case whenever I've got it.
Did you talk to anybody about it to try and find out what you might do?
Well with my subsequent babies I was much more clued up about breastfeeding and things surrounding it, probably 'cause I'd had such a bad time the first time round I made sure that I kind of read about it and I got involved with La Leche League and as a result I, they had a huge amount of knowledge about what to do if you encounter problems and so, when I had my second baby and I had mastitis again this time I, I spoke to one of the so called leaders, one of the women who runs the, the groups and she had like a book and she also just had a lot of personal knowledge about it and so they'd said, “Oh you can try this, you can try that, and cabbage leaves to kind of cool the breasts down and”.
Can you explain how those are used to me please?
Look well, I think they're just, they're quite a good shape 'cause they fit nicely round your breast and you can chill them in the fridge and then apply them to your breast and, and they, they seem to work to kind of like reduce the inflammation a bit and make you feel a bit more comfortable.
So you've used them and you found them effective?
I found the, the kind of, yeah the coldness, I mean in the way that heat seems to make you feel better, the coldness also does, and, and also they were able to help me latch the baby on better 'cause I still think that was a problem in the early weeks as well. All three times actually, maybe 'cause my breasts are quite large and the baby's at that stage very small, but.
So one of the things you found helpful was cabbage leaves, anything else?
Just making sure you don't go too long without feeding as well that's the other thing, I mean, I would find that if I did for any reason have to go a long while without feeding the baby that the breast would get very full, and I could feel it becoming uncomfortable and I knew at that point if I left it much longer there was a good chance that something was going to happen and that, and in fact I did occasionally have a blocked duct without getting the full fluey thing and, and then I knew to try and massage it and to express and to feed the baby as much as possible, I mean that was the main thing 'cause it, it was obvious the baby was the best one at sucking out anything that was there and it was only the expressing that was kind of like to add to that when the baby was asleep or so.
What did you do with the milk that you expressed off in this situation?
I froze some of it and some of it I just chucked away [laughs], I sometimes thought I should've donated it to a milk bank but I sort of had so much, it seemed like that my problem was actually having too much milk for whatever reason, that I, that I couldn't, sometimes the babe, this was I mean, I actually think this is one of the reasons I had mastitis as well is that for whatever reason in the early days my body over-produces the milk and, 'cause the baby kind of goes and starts spluttering and coughing and, can't deal with it. So, I mean I've got friends who've had problems with feeling like they're not producing enough milk and, and that's been very worrying for them, and I've had the opposite worry of that I'm producing too much and the baby can't cope with it and it's not draining it off properly and it's all banking up in my breasts and going sort of stale, you know [laughs] so.
Did you work out any ways of dealing with that large supply?
It always seemed to settle down to some extent of its own accord, partly I think 'cause the baby got bigger and was able to suck more and wanted more, partly maybe the breasts somehow get to know that they shouldn't over-produce, in the early weeks, all three times I have to say it's been the toughest thing for me that, that I haven't really been able to, in any way reduce the supply, I don't know if there is a way of doing that other than to just feed the baby when I've felt that they were getting overfull and express if necessary, if the baby didn't want to, to suck. But, I sometimes wondered if eating a lot late at night had an effect 'cause I seemed to notice that like once I had a massive pizza and then in the middle of the night my breasts were enormous and I, I have noticed this effect but I've never read about it anywhere before that, it's almost like if you eat a lot at bedtime then you, overnight when you make a lot of milk anyway it's like it goes into overdrive but that's just my own personal [laughs] observation.
It might be a useful one. Presumably you were feeding through the night as well?
Yeah, yeah I was feeding through the night.
At the stage of your first mastitis bout can you remember how often you were feeding?
I would probably feed through the night every two hours or so, so quite frequently, although I did notice this last time with my third baby that there was one night where for whatever reason he just slept for four, or five hours on the trot and that was one of the days when I woke up feeling like mastitis was coming on and it was.
Right so missing a feed was a bad thing to do…
Absolutely.
…for you?
Yeah especially if it was at night time when my breasts were at their fullest. |
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Her baby was having just as much breastmilk as ever plus some solids. Her day became more structured after introducing solids.
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I started my daughter on solids when she was about seven months old, which was later than a lot of people did because the recommendation then was four months, but by then I think I'd become so interested in breastfeeding, having had so much difficulty in the beginning and realising that it wasn't at all the easy natural thing that I had expected it to be that I'd actually ended up reading, I'd got a really brilliant book, presumably I can't plug books on this [laughs].
Yes you can.
It's called, “Bestfeeding” by Chloe Fisher well she's one of the authors there's several authors and this was a really comprehensive book with tons of really useful information, anyway so I got very interested in, in breastfeeding as a whole subject, and one of the things that I had read was that in fact they thought it was better to wait to introduce solids at six months which now has become the official guidelines and I think at the time I must have got it off the internet or something. So I did wait until she was fully six months and a bit more in the end, before I did.
How did you know she was ready for solids?
I hadn't felt she needed them beforehand was the main thing, there was no sign that this baby was desperate to eat food, but I felt, my own point of view, that once she could sit up on her own that was quite an important thing, I didn't want to be sort of feeding her in a bouncy chair, I felt that she should be able to sit up on her own and by seven months she could. Plus, I suppose, she just seemed that much older and able to sort of manipulate objects better and I felt that, you know, putting a spoon in her mouth she wouldn't just sort of poke it straight out like, she would have done as a very small baby when, because I tried having a, I tried using a dummy on occasion and it just come, got poked straight out and so they, they didn't, it's as if they didn't want anything in their mouth, and then by seven months everything was going in the mouth, they were exploring and, she was exploring and, I felt she was ready for that and I remember once I gave her a bit of papaya or something to lick and she seemed to be quite excited by this when she tasted this fruit that she hadn't tasted before and I thought, 'Oh maybe, maybe she would like some then'.
What sort of things did you give her?
Pureed pear, mashed banana, one of my friends suggested something of mixing avocado with banana which sounds absolutely disgusting but it's really, really nice and sort of creamy and really quite yummy, so she liked that, and I suppose pureed carrots.
So did you set up a pattern of feeding, did you breastfeed and then give her a solid feed, or did you give her solids and then breastfeed, or did you do them at separate times, how did you do that?
Initially breastfeeding was still very much her main source of food and I never felt really that I reduced that very much, maybe it was, very subtly reducing and I didn't realise but it felt as if she was having just as much milk as ever plus some solids. And we probably just started by having one meal as it were a day and then it was two and then eventually she would be having three. I mean I quite like the fact that it introduced more, a bit more of a pattern to the day, because I think before I'd very much fed on demand and there wasn't, I hadn't said, “Right I'm going to feed on the clock at this time and that time” and so the, our days became a bit more structured after we introduced solids, but she was still feeding a lot and at that, actually at that point she was still waking at night for feeds as well.
Footnote: The book that this woman refers to is “Bestfeeding: Why Breast Feeding is Best for You and Your Baby” by Mary Renfrew, Chloe Fisher and Suzanne Arms (Third edition published by Celestial Arts in 2004) |
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Becoming parents was a big learning curve. She thinks that a young baby develops a very strong bond with its mother and that the bond with its father develops gradually over time.
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What's your partner's role in all of this?
I think if, for him it's been a big learning curve just like it has been for me, I mean I think he went into fatherhood not knowing anything about breastfeeding and not really having any, assumptions about it I think, but he was very supportive of what I wanted to do and I think he, obviously felt that breastfeeding was the best thing for the baby as well. But I think when, when we had this disastrous situation with our first baby it made us both feel that this was something really important and that we really wanted to make sure that when we had future babies that, that we were able to for them to be breastfed if we could.
I've had other people say to me that they're quite keen to introduce a bottle early on so that the father can feed the baby as well, do you want to comment on that?
Well we haven't used a bottle, I mean we did actually try with the first baby once we knew the breastfeeding was okay and it wasn't going to be a problem any more and she just wouldn't take it and we, so we just gave up and, and I, I actually, no I must have tried it on each baby occasionally and it's never managed, I've never, they've never taken it, so, but they've never really needed to either. And I don't think a father feeding a baby from a bottle is the only way that a dad can bond with, with the baby they can cuddle them, they can talk to them, they can sing with, to them, they can take them for a walk in the pushchair, there's so many different ways, I don't think feeding is the only way, plus I've always found that once they do become about one year old suddenly they're talking, they're, they become so interactive it's like a whole new world opens up and they really start to notice dad in a big way then as well and, so, I think when they're very little there is a really strong bond with the mother and they, the bond with the father gradually develops over time and gets stronger and stronger and stronger until, you know, at the age of five or something there's not much difference between the parents. But I don't think my partner feels that he's missed out at all. |
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Her attitudes towards her breasts have changed since she has breastfed three children. She is proud of the nurturing that she was able to do with them.
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I think my attitudes to my breasts have changed since I've breastfed, especially now as I've fed three children for as long as I have done. I think that when I was younger I did see them purely as sexual things that gave me pleasure, that gave my partner pleasure and I suppose like a lot of young women, I wanted them to look good in nice bras and you know have a good cleavage and all that, and actually you know, I do now see them as having a kind of dual role, they are something that has really been a big part of bringing up my children, they have nurtured them and it is quite an amazing thing when you think that you've literally kept another human being alive with something from your body. And I think in the early days of having my first baby I thought that this was maybe a big responsibility and was I up to it, but when I realised that I was, it became something I was very proud of, so now I'm very proud of what my breasts are able to do, just like any other woman's breasts, but you know, the fact that they have fed a baby.
I think my sex life has been the same and I don't think he's felt, you know, deprived or, I think the only other thing was in the early days when we first had a baby, firstly your very tired anyway and that sort of thing puts a bit of a dampener on things but I think that there's some kind of hormonal thing that goes on and it means you're slightly less interested in sex, your libido goes down anyway, but that does recover. I found round about the seven, eight month mark that I've felt more or less back to normal again. |
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She had a caesarean section with her first baby and a water birth with her second, after which she found breastfeeding easier.
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I went for an ultrasound scan which estimated the baby was going to be ten and a half pounds or, four and a, four point six kilos or something. And they said “right you, you really can’t have this baby naturally, or at least you could but it’ll be dangerous so you have to have a caesarean or an induction tomorrow, but we recommend a caesarean”. So I hummed and hahed for all of one evening, I was really kind of put on the spot and went for a caesarean, so I had an elective caesarean, I didn’t have any labour at all, so I think in retrospect that wasn’t a particularly good start for things because I, I’d felt this was a bit sprung on me and I hadn’t expected to have to have a caesarean and I, certainly hadn’t expected to-to not have any labour at all, I mean one minute I was pregnant, the next minute a baby was pulled out of me and, you know, and then so they put the baby with me about, once I’d been sewn up and, sort of moved out of the operating theatre in to a kind of side room, they tried to get the baby on the breast, but it wasn’t really successful, I mean I don’t, I don’t think I really knew what to expect, you know, what it was for a baby to latch on I didn’t really know, but I got the feeling it wasn’t really working exactly.
With baby number two, I’ve felt two things about that baby that when I was pregnant that, one that I did not want to have another caesarean as a matter of course, and secondly that I wanted the-the breastfeeding to go better this time and not to have all the kind of traumatic stuff about, you know, that we’d had with the first baby. So I was quite determined to have a natural birth and, for that reason I didn’t want to have the baby at hospital in the end and I had midwife, midwifery care rather than just consultant care that I’d had with the first baby. And, I think the support that I got from them helped me to feel more confident about breastfeeding as well when the baby arrived and in fact I did have a, a vaginal birth with the second baby, and that went really smoothly and it was a really much better experience than it had been first time round. And so when I had a water birth and I, when I’d had the baby the first thing I did more or less, once the baby, you know, had kind of opened her eyes and, was put her on the breast, and she just took it better, I won’t say perfectly, but she kind of knew what to do, whereas the first baby there’d been a big gap between when I’d had, when she’d been delivered and when, I’d actually first tried to feed her, plus it was not in a very nice environment the first time it was in the kind of brightly lit on a hospital trolley, whereas the second time it was, the lighting was dimmed, I was in a pool, I was just with two midwives and my husband, and it was a much, much calmer nicer atmosphere. And I also think my nipples had [laughs] been slightly pulled out or protruded, or whatever you wanna say, because I’d fed the other baby for as long as I did and I think that helped too. Also I knew better about how to position a baby and that sort of thing, and my midwives were really, really helpful this time. So she just kind of worked it out quicker and I was more confident, although I won’t say it was perfect because when I got back home I, I’d, ‘cause I didn’t have a home birth I had her in a birth centre, I still had problems thinking that, you know, the latch wasn’t quite right and, I was still a little bit worried so I, this time I thought ‘right I’m gonna get somebody who knows what they’re talking about round to my house’ like I had done the first time, so there was a woman in the local area who, who was a, ex-midwife and a breastfeeding counsellor and she came round and helped me. And, and so, it was kind of, it-it wasn’t without it’s problems but it was a lot smoother and I think I had mastitis on day eighteen,[sighs] but that was the only time I got it with that baby and after that it was plain sailing
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