Like many women, I had positive expectations about motherhood. I attended a Yoga Birth club and learnt how I could ‘breathe out’ (ha!) my baby. We went to antenatal classes and NCT sales in a rosy glow of how prepared and informed we were. I read about baby-led feeding and weaning; I considered the debates of scheduling versus going-with-the-flow. We even both work with children as our actual professions (albeit, ever so slightly bigger ones).
I never in a million years expected to find breastfeeding so hard.
I remember being confused why a whole antenatal class was dedicated to the topic. Baby sucks, burp baby, swap sides and repeat – it’s not that complicated, right? Women all over the world do and have always done it, in fact ALL ACTUAL MAMMALS that are and have ever been do it. Why on earth are there TWO 24 hour helplines for women struggling with feeding?
I later phoned both of them.
With baby number one, we had an emergency C-section. Baby sucked and sucked till I bled, but neither he nor the midwives seemed to be able to get any milk out of me. He was jaundiced and they gave him formula. On day two he was diagnosed as tongue tied but the first appointment to have it cut wasn’t for six weeks and in a different county. When we were discharged, my supportive husband dashed off to rent an NCT pump (the first of four different pumps we used!), stocked up on formula, and contacted private lactation consultants about the tongue-tie op, whilst I sulked in the disappointment of a body that couldn’t give birth properly or apparently nourish our child, and then to boot became quite poorly with what, several samples later, I was told could well be C difficile. More on birth stories here: https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-birth-stories
The first few weeks were not the joy I’d hoped for. Of course, I adored our newborn, but when people asked me, “Are you enjoying being a mummy?” I felt like I had to smile whilst dying inside because my life had become a miserable cycle based all around milk. Day and night it went like this:
1) Attempt to breast feed baby (this may or may not work).
2) Eventually give up and top up baby with bottle of formula.
3) Burp and attempt to settle baby (not an easy task)
4) Pump for 20 mins per side to try to increase flow.
5) Sterilise bottles and pumping equipment.
6) Begin the sorry cycle again three hours later (bearing in mind stages one to five could often take as long as two hours).
There was not a lot of time for sleep. I HAD to catnap in the day because I only really got to catnap in the night. The sw-swoosh, sw-swoosh of the electric pump was the round-the-clock background track to my waking hours.
Naturally, it was all I could think about. If I wanted to leave the house for more than an hour or so, the pump and all the stuff had to come with me. I saw health visitors, a doctor, attended breastfeeding clinics, and googled and googled solutions. One health visitor suggested I keep track of milk output so I could monitor if things were improving. The unintended consequence was that when my husband returned from work and asked how our day had gone, I answered him purely in numbers (“Well at 9am I only got 10 ml out, but then at 12 I pumped 15ml from one side, but then at 3…”) There was finger-feeding, syringe-feeding, cup-feeding, lactation-boosting foods and herbs and drugs, weekly trips to the local breastfeeding clinic. It went on and on. And in one moment of despair I phoned first one then the other of the 24 hour helplines.
What wonderful women! How precious to be willing to be disturbed at any time by some mad crying woman and her upset baby. It was the lady on the second phone line who suggested the supplemental nursing system. It was a game-changer.
I’m guessing most people won’t be familiar with this strange bit of equipment, whereby there’s a bottle you wear round your neck with tiny tubes coming out which you masking tape to your nipples, so that baby can breastfeed and get a top-up simultaneously. The idea is it increases baby’s willingness to suckle and eliminates the need for a separate bottle. And then you gradually reduce the amount of formula in the bottle, or gently slide the tube out of baby’s mouth, until the baby is solely breastfeeding.
It’s not equipment for the faint-hearted or dignified. It’s impossible to set up discretely. It very frequently leaks. But in my experience, it got the baby on the breast and off bottles, and so it was worth it. And a real bonus was it meant I could cut back on the pumping.
I gave myself targets and deadlines: “If you can just make it six weeks then you can stop.” But by then things were going better so we didn’t stop. I remember our first formula-free day – what a victory! And slowly, slowly we got there, and I emerged from the madness, and could leave the house without my kit, and I didn’t have to pump or sterilise anything anymore. Hallelujah!
Through all this, one big source of comfort was a friend who’d had a baby just before me, and whose story was opposite but equally if not more horrifying, and included having to wear a nappy on each breast, squirting her husband from across a room, and a lanced infected abscess. There is great comfort in shared misery. An older lady from church told me that she breastfed her first who is currently in rehab, but didn’t manage with her second who has a successful career. What reassurance in other people’s stories. I really really feel for friends who have had babies during lockdown and struggled with feeding and couldn’t get to see lactation consultants and couldn’t even go to groups or clinics to trade notes on how miserable things are. I send them long emails of sympathy and unsolicited advice and breast pump reviews, lucky them.
Would I do it again? Probably. It was important to me, and we went on to have a successful feeding journey for over 15 months, and then I had positive feeding experiences with the next two boys. It’s lovely and it's bonding and I hate the faff of sterilising things. The first boy went on to have some health conditions and at least my conscience is clear that I worked my very hardest for him in his early nutrition, otherwise it would just have added to the mum guilt.
But it robbed me of the joy of early motherhood. I felt like a failure before I began. Sleep deprivation is actual torture. My husband would definitely say that he lost me for those first few weeks. So when other mums have babies and are having trouble with feeding, I am always ready to share experiences and tips but also very ready to say, it’s ok to stop. If feeding is miserable, then it could well be better for mum and baby just to be grateful for formula. Don’t let yourself tip over into the madness.
So I look at dairy cows with new found respect. It’s amazing, what they do, and it’s not as easy as it looks. They often get mastitis (which I also later got, NINE times?!) which makes you feel rubbish. And they do it so uncomplainingly, whereas I cried about my pump to anyone and everyone who would listen.
So, much respect to the cows, to the pumping mums, and in fact to all parents who are doing their best to make sure their little ones are well fed, in whatever form works best for their circumstances. No judgement – those long-suffering bovine make it look easier than it really is.
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