I’ve been on a bit of a roller coaster ride for the last few years with my boys, and there were key things that could have made a difference along the way. And pretty much all of them revolved around listening. Very often, I mean I’ve been very lucky in many ways weve been under the care of great doctors, great nurses, but where things have gone wrong it’s when people have heard what they wanted to hear, rather than what I was actually saying. So for example, with my first son I, we were worried about the breathing from day one, they knew my husband or they were looking for the best they didn’t want to see it. I was actually, my baby was being monitored because I was worried about his oxygen levels. No one was actually looking at the trace and it was dipping into the eighties, you know, that was a case of people assumed everything was okay so they assumed everything was okay. But on the breastfeeding side my goodness it’s again, it’s anything is possible if you can support mums. Allow mums to do what they want to do, it’s not a matter of pressuring a mum to feed if they don’t want to feed, but if that’s something that she wants to do she needs all the help that she can get. I remember with warmth in my heart the nurses who brought me a glass of water when they saw me hooked up to the pump and realised I’d forgotten to bring a glass of water. I remember, I remember the nurses who helped me in the middle of the night trying to get my second onto the breast, but I also [laughs] remember being told that this is fine, theres no need to refer on, when actually unless it is one hundred percent your area of expertise, if you have any doubt in your mind then you must listen to the parents because my goodness, mums very often do their best, it was my breast, I could feel there wasn’t a suck, if Mum is telling you she can’t feel the baby attached, if Dad is telling you it looks a bit unusual at the back of the mouth, don’t say everythings fine, refer on. So I guess in terms of breastfeeding my feeling is never say never, anythings possible with the right help and the right support.

What would you like to say to health professionals?

To be a bit more clearer about their advice. To not to be so patronising because they do talk down to you and make you feel like, like what they say is the law you have to do it, and I think to actually sit down with you and read through the, the pamphlets that they give you, and explain to you what everything means, because most mums can’t read, that’s another issue as well you know. And they give you all these things and you’re like you’re just looking at it, most of my friends can’t read and they’re just looking at it and I have to read it to them and explain to them what they’re meant to do and how they should do things, theres not a lot of explanation you know, especially with the breast pumps as well, it’s not as clear as it should be.

I would like them to be like to be honest, like when it’s, especially from the, from the moment they are talking about breast is best and nah, nah, nah, I would like to have, to also talk about like sometimes it’s not possible. And make sure that people know that sometimes it’s not possible. Because I truly believe that it was, it was me choosing not to breastfeed like being, like chickening out because of the pain. And maybe the pain was part of the thing and it was something I was doing wrong.

And it wasn’t it was just I couldn’t physically do it. Then I would like them to be more open with persons like us. I know the target is to get as many people as they can to breastfeed but the hard thing, the ones that want to breastfeed and can’t. It’s hard, it’s hard to recover from that one. It’s – and you aren’t, you’re having these hormones all over the place [laughs] so it doesn’t help like if you’re having somebody bashing you because you can’t breastfeed. It would be nice if there is that kind of support as well, and there is some support for moms who are, who happen to have to give the babies formula. And there is more information about formula. If you look at, if you look in the GP practices you will find everything about breastfeeding, the type of food you have to eat and all sorts of literature, DVDs, leaflets, photos, photocopies, everything. When you’re trying to find information about formula, nothing. And then it’s kind of like you feel ashamed of asking as well because it’s wrong. It seems to be wrong. And it’s not wrong like how many children have grown up on formula and they are happy, healthy, successful and – I don’t know why do they have to like, it’s like a myth, it’s like I don’t know. It’s terrible.

Yes the only advice I would say is maybe to give more information about the breastfeeding for the young woman and even when they give the leaflet they should try to explain to the parents about it you know, because when they give the leaflet sometimes the parents will just chuck it in the bin, they don’t even bother to read it. So if you have a good idea

[Baby crying]

So it would have been a good idea when they give the leaflet to explain to the parent maybe to tell them to read and show them the address when they need help, you know. So when, because when they give them just a leaflet they will just chuck it in the bin they don’t bother to read. Sometimes it is not because they don’t want to read it it’s because they don’t have time or they’ll forget. In this country I realise that a lot of parents they have problems with forgetting, I have as well I forget things easily, yes so it would have been a good idea when they give them then they explain to them like if they need help this is the place you go or this is the number that you can call.

What would you say to other women who are experiencing this contradictory advice?

I think you have to find one person you, you respect and you trust, and perhaps stick to one, one version of things, but I think what would be, so much more healthy for the professionals that deliver advice is that they could say, ‘There are many ways to do this. I’ve had so many times where this one person delivering the advice would tell me, ‘This is the way you should do it, like this, like that, like this, you know, your position must be like that, baby must be like that, and that this is the way to do it, there is no other way. It seems that, you know, each person has got their own ways and they want you to, to just stick to it, in fact there are many ways to do things and it would be healthier if they could just say, ‘Well try this and for a period of time and if it doesn’t work well do something else.

I was very uncomfortable with one thing as well when I had advice, I went to a breastfeeding clinic and there was, I suppose when you, when I had the breastfeeding clinic you quite, you need help and I think breastfeeding can be very emotional, there is a lot of tension, if it doesn’t go well it’s, it’s very difficult on the mother I think, and the thing I found very difficult is that I arrived at this breastfeeding clinic and you had all these women sitting in a circle and, you know, really trying their best to do the positioning and, what I found amazing is that nobody asked me how old my baby was or how I was feeling, you know? Before they started saying, ‘This is wrong you have to do this’, so it was very clinical in a way, there was no, I think breastfeeding is very emotional as well and this is a big part of it, you have to listen to the story of the women breastfeeding, so that you can understand, you know, perhaps their emotional state because it really will affect the way she is positioning her body and, you know, how she would relate to that baby. So if there is a problem, I don’t know, is that, you know, one mother might think it’s because of her and her technique, one mother might think it’s her baby not doing it right and it’s possibly a number of things but, you need to listen to the woman before you start giving this technical advice, it’s not a technique it’s an experience to me, and very much I found the advice I got was really, sort of heartless and a bit cold and very hard because you already feel like you are doing something wrong, and very much the advice I got just, you know, highlighting what I was doing wrong and, just being given a set of things to do, but it was actually quite disheartening in a way, because you had confirmation you were doing something wrong and I don’t know, you know, you would wish somebody to sit with you for about half an hour and not be given a list or, you know a drawing or something, so perhaps there should be more, more time and more attention given to the history of the woman and her baby. I was really disappointed and I think they’re doing a really great job and it needs to be there but they need more money and they need more time, because at the moment I don’t think that the advice or the way it’s given is possibly not, not great, could be improved upon, and it’s very much the experience of my friends that have been there too, you arrive there in a very needy state and what you get is even more of a, ‘Come on do, do this better’, you know, it’s, there is not much time given for the care of the woman. I think, and that was really disappointing, and I know they’re doing their best and I know they have a lot of women coming to them and they’ll need like, two or three of them running this clinic, and so they’re, they’re doing their best but there should be more, you know, funds and more time, more people. I think what I mean to say is that in giving advice to a woman b

Anything you’d like to say to health professionals?

Well I was just a little bit annoyed at the with my first one about the intervention I think it was a little bit too, I think they were a bit too quick to give them formula milk, or to offer a bottle in hospital and I was, when I was in that ward with another lady with my second son I saw she was having the same sort of problems as me, I overheard anyway and they were offering, you know, lots of pipettes and cups and stuff and I don’t know I just, it’s really hard to know who knows what’s the best to do but I just do worry that they, the pediatricians think about the baby’s health first but not the long term problems with the mother and feeding. And I mean giving formula on the first night I thought that was a bit crazy, I don’t know, on the first day I don’t know why they were topping her up with formula because I thought I had quite a lot, I don’t think they had much they didn’t get much colostrum anyway early on, and she was taking, you know, anything I was expressing lots of colostrum, you know, and I thought that would have been enough really. I mean that was, that wasn’t very good really I was a bit annoyed about that. Other than that I think that the whole country just needs more, I think people are still very funny about people breastfeeding in public and, I don’t know the country still needs a lot, a long way to go I think before it’s really established and I’m talking about general middle class sort of people like, you know, most of my friends and they don’t like feeding in public so uneducated people whose parents didn’t breastfeed I mean I don’t know what chance they’ve got of really feeding to be honest. They probably give up straightaway after they left hospital, which is quite sad, especially if they, you know, I think to keep going for six weeks through all the problems you really need a lot of support and if you haven’t got the support there it’s not going to happen I don’t think, it’s a problem. It’s funny that something that’s supposed to be so natural is so hard early on, I didn’t realise it would ever be quite so hard, for me, I think some people will find it easy but I didn’t.

What would you like to say to health professionals?

I mean my experience with health professionals has, has generally been supportive around breastfeeding, I must say that I didn’t turn to health professionals for support in my situation because I had more significant people in my life who I had relationships with, my sisters and my mum, my sisters mainly, who could provide instant support or words of encouragement or advice at any time of day or night, in a way that just isn’t possible from somebody who you’ve only got a professional relationship with. So it wasn’t that I didn’t trust or value the professionals point of view it was just that I had people whose opinion I valued more. I found it very difficult to take advice from people on breastfeeding who’ve never breastfed, and I do think theres an issue with that. Because you can read however many books and leaflets you like and know the physiology of the breast and the developmental benefits and so on, but if you’ve never actually done it for weeks on end, I find it very difficult to understand how you can provide real support. And so on a couple of occasions with health visitors I had who had no children for instance, that their, their words fell on deaf ears really, they didn’t bear any validity for me because I just didn’t feel that the person could possibly have an idea what they were talking about. So to health professionals I would say that if you’ve got experience that can really be helpful to share, but if you haven’t got experience of it then maybe it’s best helping the person to find a more appropriate person to advise them really.

I work in hospital and theres a lot of, theres not enough support for the mums, theres not enough support. I’ve had so many mums crying because I only work for three days if there was a, for instance there was an, I’ll give you an example, there was this mum, she couldn’t speak English, she was born and brought up in this country, she works and everything. She had her baby in the weekend on the Saturday but we don’t work on the weekends so we didn’t have the chance to help her and support her, and she told, she honestly desperately told one of the midwives to help her but they said, ‘We don’t have the time were busy, we don’t have the time we can’t help you’, and I think she did ask a few people and no one helped her and it was her first time, it and she didn’t have family close by, her parents were abroad, she didn’t have a close relative, people who would be able to support her. So she was literally in tears, then when she started finally getting there then the doctor said, ‘Baby’s not putting enough weight on’, and then she was in more tears. And then the doctor said, ‘Look we just bottle feed’, because she was in hospital for a week, she wanted to go home, she was desperate to go home, the baby wasn’t putting no weight on. Baby, actually baby was, but baby, after the baby was born baby was really small and they presume that if you formula feed baby’s going to go big, and the doctor said, ‘If you bottle feed, baby will go big and you can go home. Simple, and she was like, and I was there and I said I honestly, I did, honestly said to the doctor, ‘Mum wants to breastfeed, if mum said she wanted to bottle feed then that’s something, but she really wanted to breastfeed, I think what you’re trying to do is like put her down, shes in distress anyway, shes in distress and shes she just wanted the support, the encouragement and then she would have been okay, that’s all she needed the support and the encouragement. And after me going in helping her and supporting her even from now I’ve gone to see her at home a few times, she still talks about how awful time she had in the hospital. So the health professionals weren’t helpful, they didn’t support her which she really needed and after, us, as a breastfeeding supporters coming in weve seen an increase in breastfeeding, weve definitely seen an increase in breastfeeding. We will, honestly this is the honest truth, we will have the midwives coming to us and asking us to go and see this, her mothers, while they won’t, even though they’ve had all this training, they wouldn’t go and help they say, ‘No I’m busy’ but when you go round the corner just, they’re just sitting there having a cup of tea and chatting away. And it’s just so sad because they’re health professionals, some of their mums would not even take our word for it they think, ‘No they’re the midwife, they’re more important than us’ but they should be, that’s what midwifery, all the midwifery you are delivering baby but also customer service, we should be helping supporting mums that’s what midwifery’s about, postnatally and antenatally and we get a lack of them, I’ve had so many complaints from so many mums.

Is there anything you’d like to say to health professionals?

Consistent advice would be great, I know it’s hard but if everyone was singing from the same hymn sheet it would make a world of difference to a lot of mothers, that’s what I feel. Having my midwife on holiday during my first pregnancy, disadvantage that I didn’t get one person to look after me for my first ten days, advantage I saw five different midwives I think in that period of time, who gave me different techniques of breastfeeding, but the disadvantage was that I never got the same information each time, very confusing, there should be something out there to say I don’t know [laughs] some leaflet that as a pharmacist in their store could keep or would be given out in the Bounty packs consistency of advice that’s so important because it is confusing as it is being a new mum. I mean breastfeeding is probably just one of the parts theres everything else to do. I remember when my first baby was born just looking at him and thinking, ‘It’s been about ten hours, I should change his nappy now, I haven’t got a clue how to?’ And just carried on looking at him and waited till the midwife came around and said, ‘Could you give me a hand? What should I do? Should I get water? Should I use wipes?’ I never even thought about those things before baby was born, it was just one thing you just thought you got on with and did but I was just terrified of doing my first nappy, so there are a hundred and one things going round, if the advice about breastfeeding was the same from everybody it’d make it’d be one less burden or one less stressful thing you wouldn’t have to think about, that would be the best thing.

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 theres 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.

What would you like to say to health professionals?

I think be a bit more supportive. I found that more with the health visitor and doctor really that they want, one minute they was like really for me breastfeeding and then the next minute, perhaps it was, but I felt they was against me a little bit because of her weight wasn’t coming on and that, and they referred us to the consultant and stuff, that they need to decide whether they believe in it or not first before they voice their opinion rather than, just saying, ‘Oh breastfeed’, because generally it’s what they should be saying to you, but if they don’t believe in it then sometimes it can come through or if they’ve never done it themselves.

Mmm.

But I just think perhaps it was because of the weight they was concerned, with the weight rather than the actual breastfeeding, they wanted to make sure that she was fine which is, is fair enough because she is the most important one and they didn’t want her health to suffer from it, which in the end we did have to give her some bottles. But not for very long, we did go back to fully breastfeeding again then once shed put a few pounds on, she was a bit more stronger then and she wasn’t feeding for as long either, so shes only taking a half hour to feed and she was feeding every three hours which was a lot better for me because I was a bit more energetic then, wasn’t so worn out. And I just, I think there should be more training then with midwives with the breastfeeding which I think is starting to come in a bit more now, they are starting to do a lot more with it because they are, the government are trying to push for mothers to breastfeed. I think there should be a lot more nurses like the lactation specialists because shes just the only one for our County for like the whole of the County so, and shes just run off her feet sometimes and like shes only there for people that have problems. But I think there should be an opening somewhere for people to go, and, to speak to somebody like her even if they think their feedings fine, just to still go and just to check that it is fine, just to have like a check to make sure that they are, baby is attached and they are feeding well, rather than just getting, getting longer down the line and the problems starting to build up and then going to see somebody and I think perhaps if we saw, if the mother was interested in breastfeeding like from birth then, perhaps if we saw somebody on a maternity ward like the day after baby was born or whatever, have like a lactation specialist just to give us some hints and show us some positionings and that or just have somebody to come home with us [laughs].

Is that what you mean by being more supportive?

Yeah, just having somebody there on the ward because I did feel on the ward after I’d had the baby the midwife sort of left you to get on with it a little bit and they’re so run off their feet as well that I didn’t like to keep saying, ‘Oh can you come and help me with this. And ‘Baby’s not feeding very long and that and, perhaps even if like auxiliaries or something took an opening in, into just learning like the different ways of positioning which I know that some hospitals are doing that now, in this area which is I think will be of benefit to mothers, breastfeeding mums in hospital, just to have that little bit of support at the very beginning rather than having the problems and, and then going about them then when their baby’s like a month or two old when the baby’s already, it’s quite hard to get them out of the habit then, whereas if you catch it in the early days they’re still learning so you can adapt it, adapt it to them then.

Does being a pharmacist, has being a pharmacist made any difference to breastfeeding?

No.

Did you learn anything about breastfeeding in your pharmacy training?

I learnt the basic as in it’s best for baby, that’s the advice that should be given. I remember learning more about formula milks as a pharmacist a whole training package, which milk when kind of thing but being a pharmacist went out of the window when I gave birth. It meant nothing, I don’t think I trusted my instincts as being a pharmacist for the first for my first child I remember ringing colleague pharmacists one who’s which is a best friend of mine just double confirming, ‘I can give Calpol, can’t I?’ just wanting the reassurance what I was doing was okay second time round I have to say I am a lot more confident I know things are ok I’m not so hesitant about doing anything as much as I was first time round but being a pharmacist went out of the window [laughs] it didn’t mean anything.

I’m a doctor.

Just muse with me for a little while about the training you had about lactation as an undergraduate.

I had remarkably little training about breastfeeding when I was, when I was training, in fact I, you know, I learnt all the physiological mechanisms of breastfeeding all the hormonal things that went on and so on but nothing about, you know, even why it was important actually in, we probably had like five minutes of a lecture saying, ‘Oh yes it’s important for mother-child bonding and it’s, you know, good nutritional value, etcetera, etcetera, but that was probably about it, and certainly nothing about how to breastfeed or how to teach somebody to breastfeed, we were given to understand that it was all very straightforward.

So this training did not prepare you for your breastfeeding experiences?

No, not at all, I don’t think it helped at all, in fact I think it was, it was negatively helpful in fact it, it made me think it was a lot easier than it was, and it just didn’t prepare for it at all.