We, I had real problems with [laughs] with weaning my little girl because she wouldn't take to a bottle, I'd made a mistake in that she hadn't really had a bottle for the first five months of her life, because I'd not got on with expressing the first time round, the second time I didn't really bother very much. And circumstances hadn't arisen where I was away from her, so she was exclusively breastfed for five months, and then being the personality that she is wasn't about to just suddenly transfer to a bottle thank you very much because it suited me [laughs], and we had real battles with her for probably about a week trying to get her to literally take a teat into her mouth, which was very frustrating because I was approaching the point where I needed her to because I wasn't going to be there all the time. So that's a lesson that I've, I learnt from my experience with my little girl that it can be very useful to at least expose your baby to a teat early on so that they will take breast and bottle without all this screaming the house down for hours on end [laughs].

What did you do, and how did you?

I tried everything, I mean I must have bought so many different makes of teat thinking that maybe one would be more palatable than another, none of them were. I mean I remember horrendous times when I left her with my husband and expressed milk in a bottle thinking if he gave it to her and she was really hungry she would take it and she just wouldn't, she's a very determined little girl now, we now know [laughs] she's two, but it's amazing that even at that tender age she showed those traits.

So it wasn't what she wanted to do at all?

Absolutely not. and in the end what broke the cycle was that one night she woke in the night wanting milk and I was determined that I wasn't going to give her the breast, it was about six months and it was at the point where I wanted to stop her night breastfeeding anyway. And so I had a night where it was a battle of wills really, and it was the only way to do it and eventually she was so hungry that she did eventually take the teat, and from then on she was okay with it, but it took a very unpleasant sort of set of, incidents like that, distressing for both of us [laughs] to actually persuade her that that's the only way she was going to get the milk, so I would certainly not go down that road again [laughs]. I think this time I'm, you know, I'm going to make sure that the baby gets a bottle of expressed milk sort of early on, though probably once breastfeeding's well established, just sneak the odd bottle of expressed milk in, to make sure that they have felt it in their mouth and realise that they can still feel fulfilled from having milk that way.

What happened to your milk supply with this sudden, dramatic weaning?

I'm not sure it was sudden and dramatic, the weaning itself wasn't particularly sudden I did it gradually as I did with, with my older child, it was just that the milk would be through a bottle instead, to try and introduce the bottle.

So you were expressing to put milk in the bottle?

So I almost had a two stage weaning process. The first stage being to get her to take milk from a bottle and the second stage being to then reduce my supply once she'd accepted the bottle.

And replace your supply with infant formula?

That's right.

Where do you think this idea of expressing breastmilk or needing to express breast milk to put into a bottle and feed that way comes from?

Where do I think it comes from? I suppose it's a convenience thing more than anything, I mean if you don't want to, if you don't want your child to have formula milk and yet there are circumstances when you physically can't breastfeed them.

Such as?

Such as if you want to have three hours to yourself during that first few months, just because you need some time, or you have to go back to work early, then I suppose the idea of expressing milk comes from, from there, that actually you can still give your baby breastmilk even if you're not there but only by manipulating the process.

So you don't, can't think back to when you first heard about manipulating the process or it perhaps being a possibility or a necessity?

I can't, I don't think specifically I can remember when, I mean I've certainly read about the potential benefits of being able to have a partner give a feed late at night, so that you can get to bed by nine and maybe not have to get up till two, with them giving the sort of eleven o'clock feed, and if you are determined not to give your baby formula milk then an expressed feed at that point is often spoken about as a sort of common sense thing to try and achieve.

Spoken about by whom?

Well spoken about, there's quite a lot of things in books around breastfeeding that talk about that. And in sort of newborn baby books, you know, caring for a baby, in sections on breastfeeding and, and so on, and sleep that, that will come up quite commonly I think as a topic. And I know it does work very well for some people, but I used to look at mums with envy in some ways who sat there feeding from one breast with milk pouring out of the other one, which they then just harvested, collected and could put in the fridge for a full feed next time and I would just be amazed because I was always the sort of person who I produced enough but, to get any more than that was like trying or squeeze, really took hard work and so different people are built in different ways, I certainly wasn't one of these people who could just provide copious supplies.