What do you think made you think that you, maybe you couldn’t or you’d have problems, where did you get that idea from?

I think that when you are looking, when you do speak to people, anybody that’s had children, if they haven’t breastfed, which a lot of people that I spoke to hadn’t, they’ve always got a reason for it and it’s usually something like, ‘I couldn’t because I didn’t have enough milk’, ‘it hurt’, ‘the baby wouldn’t ever settle, ‘the baby didn’t like it’ you just, you hear more, you know, ‘I had cracked nipples’, ‘I was engorged’ and I think I’d, in my head had this picture of this horrible painful experience which it wasn’t something that you would look forward to when you’re having your baby. I wanted, you know, I wanted breastfeeding to be lovely and beautiful and, I’m an idealist I know I am and, I think that the thought of it being painful or, the baby not sleeping or, you know, nobody else being able to sort of participate in the care of the baby, all of these things, you know, they’re all reasons not to, if you like, so when you think about things like that you do start to think, ‘Oh am I going to be able to actually do this?’ you do, you doubt yourself. It’s not until you’re actually doing something and you’re doing it well that you realise you can do it.

So it’s a confidence game?

Absolutely yeah, you have to, you have to get confident before you’re happy about anything so, once you’re doing it and you realise you can do it that’s, that’s when you feel happy about something.

I know one thing we haven’t covered is, well weve kind of touched on it, is the father’s role in all of this. You’ve said how supportive he was, does he come from a breastfeeding background?

Well, apparently he was breastfed but his brother wasn’t, my mother-law is very helpful, very, very supportive but, you know, we have had, in terms of the support that shes given both of us, there have been times when shes said, ‘Oh don’t you think that, the baby should be on a bottle now?’ and weve just said, ‘Oh not yet well, you know, were seeing, seeing how we go. And the two of us were there with all of the children and one of the neighbours came in and, I started feeding the baby as you do and, it turned out that the neighbour’s daughter was pregnant and my mother-law and her ended up having a conversation about breastfeeding and my mother-law was saying how, even breastfeeding for one month gives them such a wonderful start and, I remember [husband] and me coming away and saying, ‘Did you hear what she said? Wasn’t that amazing?’ And I really think that, you know, considering to start with she wasn’t that supportive and he didn’t feel like, you know, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that, you know, he didn’t have any strong feelings either way about breastfeeding but he feels that sort of the attitudes within the family have changed a lot now. And he, I mean he is really, really supportive, he doesn’t, he never wants me to do anything that’s not right for me, he would never force me into doing anything, he would never make me feel guilty about anything, I mean he is so, you know, so amazingly supportive, he wants us to do, you know, wants us to do what’s right for us and for our family. But he, you know I think hes very happy and, he pointed out to us the other day, which I thought was really nice, he said that, as a result of this, my daughter who is seven will probably breastfeed, because this is her culture, this is what shes, shes now grown up with and that made me feel so proud [laughs] that, you know, one person, if seeing me breastfeed makes one person breastfeed then that makes me happy.

So are most mothers that you are seeing breastfeeding?

Majority yeah, majority first they do start breastfeeding and then afterwards they start, majority have a lot of pressure from the extended family, or some have pressures from their husbands.

Can you talk about that a bit more?

Of course, I’ve had so many cases when they’re breastfeeding absolutely wonderful, no problem whatsoever, baby’s fine, mum’s fine when they’re in the hospital and they go home and then afterwards when the baby gets a bit bigger then the mother-law wants to breast, mother-law sorry, wants to feed. So with breastfeeding that can’t happen so mother-law will go out and buy the milk, and the sterilising and everything, so shell make the milk and when the baby’s hungry shell start feeding the baby. And then the mum can’t, she can’t say anything then she has to go to the kitchen, then do the cooking and when the baby will cry the mother-law will say, ‘No it’s okay you do what you have to do I’ll feed her, or I’ll feed him’ and even with the husband the majority of the daughter-laws have them, if they are living with the extended family they’ve got older mother-laws or father-laws so even the husband will feel sorry for the mother, say, ‘Why should my Mum cook? Why don’t you cook?’, you know, ‘you just had a baby, doesn’t mean that you’re ill or, you know, anything like that, I can, Mum can look after whoever baby he or she so it’s a lot of pressure on a, especially young mums and mums who are, who have come from abroad or something, they feel that they have to or they feel they have to bottle feed they don’t have that confidence to breastfeed and even if they do breastfeed they’ll breastfeed when they go to their own room or at night, but in the daytime they have to bottle feed.

What can we do about that?

That’s where basically where we come in, that’s where we come in, lot of support, lot of home visits, a lot of contacts, a lot of phone calls and speaking to the families, I have spoken to mother-laws, I’ve spoken to extended families and every and they understand, they understand perfectly fine and I think even though I haven’t spoken to this Mum, the particular Mum I’m talking about with her mother-law there and her husband there, and mother-law she said, ‘absolutely fine she was up for it she said, ‘If she wants to breastfeed she can breastfeed’ but I think also, also what it is, the daughter-law she feels bad, she feels guilty so she says, ‘Okay then I’ll, you know, that’s fine, no problem’ then shell say, ‘okay then I’ll give both, I’ll start mixed feeding and that’s what we do, we give a lot of help and a lot of support, make sure that just breastfeed exclusive for six months then when you start weaning your baby, I don’t say, I never to bottle feed never, I said breastfeed for two years and sometimes, the majority of times I do bring religion into it, maybe sometimes I shouldn’t but I feel, I feel if you’re, if you’re really a practicing person and if you’re fasting for the month of Ramadan, and if you’re praying five times a day, and if you’ve done Hajji, and if you’re following what it says the Koran obviously it says all the good stuff then why shouldn’t you be breastfeeding for two years which it says clearly, because it’s a man made, it’s a God given thing which you should be giving.

Can you talk to me about Ramadan and breastfeeding?

Yes definitely, Ramadan it comes once in a year when all the Muslims are supposed to fast between dawn and dusk, it’s a spiritual thing it’s keeps, it keeps away from bad acts, bad speech, bad stuffs that we do night and day, watching TV, dinner

Yes four of them to have babies and to have cracked nipples so. I love breastfeeding and being in, being a Muslim we are advised the Prophet, our Prophet May Peace be Upon Him, advises mother’s to breastfeed. We were taught it had links with children’s IQ, when you breastfeed, the more you breastfeed the higher their IQ so probably that is why most of the Muslims maybe will tell you back home maybe they breastfeed for 16/18 months, some 20 months.

So I love doing it [breastfeeding] in a way it’s cheaper, it’s less time consuming than bottles and stuff like that you have to sterilise, you have to do this, so basically apart from, with the religious perspective I would say and then been convenient and cheaper and stuff like that make me to carry on breastfeeding.

No I am from Colombia, and in my country I don’t think there is, a doubt that what we have to do as women, is to nourish our babies, and I, I think I was very preoccupied not to have any milk because unfortunately for my sister-law she couldn’t breastfeed her baby because, I don’t know why but she didn’t really seem to have much milk, and I was really, really concerned and I was like begging and praying, ‘Please I want to have milk because I want to do that for my baby’ and fair enough hes been very healthy, very alert and it fills me with happiness.

Well thank you that’s lovely. Is it the norm for people in Colombia to breastfeed? Do most women in Colombia breastfeed?

I think most of Colombian women do that, I don’t think there is a question of, no, I’m not thinking about breastfeeding or, no it’s completely different, and their reaction, I mean kind of the effect, the reaction people have here, it was very surprising to me, because people thought that I was, kind of a more sexual thing or also outsider’s opinion has a lot to do with what you actually do with your baby or not, and I don’t think theres that factor in Colombia, just nature is there you go and use it basically.

So it’s just assumed that you will breastfeed?

Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone like, thinking, ‘I might or might not do it’ it’s just there.

Right. How old were you when you came to the UK?

I came to the UK when I was, I married when I was thirty-one, so it was effectively four and a half years.

Right so you had most of your life

In Colombia.

‘in Colombia?

Yeah.

And you saw women breastfeeding there frequently or not?

Having said that, and although it’s part nature, and we do it normally, I don’t think we do it in public that much, I don’t remember my Mum having done it in public, she was always covering herself. And, and I see her point I mean, I don’t mind to breastfeed my baby where he needs to be breastfed, and if hes hungry and you have the right to go to a restaurant, my baby has exactly the same right, and I’m there so. But I try to be private, because it’s a very private thing, and I don’t think anyone else could possibly share it, the affection we exchange at the moment of feeding, and as I said before sometimes it’s sore and it’s been a year and now that hes got teeth it’s kind of going back to the beginning, and theres like ‘Oh but it’s still, the easiest way to get a smile from me, even when he bites me and when I said to him in Spanish that I love him when hes eating and he had to let it go to laugh and look for me again and eat, as something that it has to be mine.

So that’s an emotional response?

Yeah very much so. Yeah I can go to tears.

And how long did your Mother stay?

A month, for a month she stay here for a month.

You’ve already said that she held your hand when it was sore, she rubbed your back and she told you how to position the baby.

Yeah.

What else did she do?

She was here. And, you make me cry again, because, I hadn’t seen my Mum for two years and she was here doing everything, everything for me, for us, and in the m

I mean my mother-law hadn’t breastfed either of her children purely for the culture I mean both children were born here but in the environment she was in and the culture at the time it was like well bottle is easier I mean this is a good thirty years ago and breastfeeding wasn’t so hot a topic as it is now and for her right from the beginning she was, ‘Well don’t worry’ and there was a lot of support there but no nobody said to me, ‘But you’re a failure or’ [laughs] or used those such words, it was just myself.

This notion of expressing so that your husband could give the baby a bottle, where did that come from?

Just from, just I think it was just a personal choice knowing it was available to do and the personal choice that it’d be contact time for my husband or for mother-law or father-law to have that time with baby just to keep breastfeeding longer, more than anything else, not that we didn’t have a huge social life as such beforehand but it gave you a bit of a break, of knowing that yes I can go out and have dinner and watch a film or go out for a whole evening to somebody elses house and not have to go upstairs to breastfeed and miss out on what everything is going on downstairs, knowing that you had the opportunity to take a bottle with you but it was still breastmilk.

So if you had gone out in the evening to friends and taken the baby’

Yeah.

‘you would have had to go to another room to feed?

Yeah.

Why?

I wouldn’t have felt comfortable breastfeeding in front of other males except for my husband in our country culture it wouldn’t be deemed acceptable, not at all and I wouldn’t feel comfortable breastfeeding in front of say my brother or close male friends that I have or my father.

Even in your own home?

Yes.

You won’t breastfeed in front of your father?

No.

Or close male relatives?

No.

So you go out of the room?

Or they go out of the room. We have separate lounges anyway so it was never a huge issue at home I mean I have my brother-law who lives here as well and as soon as it would be time for breastfeed I’d either go nip into the other room or they would say, ‘Do you want us to go?’ so it wasn’t, it wasn’t an issue but there was no way I was going to breastfeed I didn’t feel comfortable breastfeeding in front of other males.

But in front of women relatives it was fine?

Yeah, that was fine yeah totally fine, yeah.

During breastfeeding, whether it’s traditional it’s not quite the right word we have a very strict diet during breastfeeding it might be what you’d say an acquired taste [laughs] first few days it’s very, very, very bland foods.

Such as?

Oh actually the first five days it was just a mixture of finely ground nuts made in milk, a spoonful of that in milk and that was the diet for the first five days nothing else.

Why do you think this is, what’s the reasoning behind that?

It depends who you speak to, I think the only reason that I can go with would be something simple, I thin

You told me that you are, your background is Jewish?

Yes.

Does that have any, any impact on breastfeeding? Are there any laws or beliefs, cultural beliefs, lay beliefs?

I think it’s, it’s a very pro-breastfeeding culture. I don’t know anything, I think I know for example for very religious women in very religious communities, they go to a special house for the first few days after they’ve had their baby, very much like our mums did in the U.K., everyone was in hospital for five to ten days post baby, these days you’re churned out after a few hours, but in that, in those special houses they get a lot of support and a lot of breastfeeding support. And interestingly I’m now training to be a National Childbirth Trust breastfeeding counsellor and theres a group of counsellors and trainee counsellors in my area and I think were all Jewish [laughs]. So I think maybe it is something part of the culture but not explicitly so. I mean certainly a lot of my Jewish friends have breastfeed, have breastfed but then I’ve enjoyed breastfeeding but then I’ve also got Jewish friends who haven’t. So I don’t know that theres a particular issue one way or the other but it certainly is within religious communities it’s very much, even though there are modesty issues within Orthodox Judaism, breastfeeding isn’t part of that at all as in, you know, it would, I know that I have breastfed in the synagogue, not during the service but somewhere discreetly but not completely hidden away. It wasn’t actually during a service it was in a festival there was a party going on for kids and I just went off into the corner and I felt comfortable doing that. So certainly in my synagogue it’s very much natural and theres not an issue around it.

And are there do and don’ts?

Not that I am aware of, not that I’m aware of. Well I am an Orthodox Jew but there are always different levels and different degrees and there are many, many, many more people who are much more religious than I, I don’t cover my hair, I don’t wear a sheitel [wig], there could well be things I don’t, don’t know about, but I don’t think so, I think it’s known to be natural and good for the baby, good for mum, so I thinks it’s supported.

But sometimes only disadvantage is when you go out, your children will cry and you don’t want to breastfeed in public except if you have places where they said, you are welcome to breastfeed, you can do that or you have to get the baby big scarves and put the baby in the bust but still sometimes you feel like you’re, maybe you’re disturbing other people and making other people really uncomfortable because they don’t want to see that. Although they are not even seeing you or the baby is under you but you just feel am I doing the right thing and then you’re just like.

Okay you feel kind of pressured not to do it?

No, no ,no it’s not pressure but you’re just thinking somebody next to you might be like really uncomfortable because he knows what you’re doing, you’re breastfeeding your baby, do you get what I’m saying because I, I would, I love it in a way but I’ll tell you the truth sometimes I find it really irritating to just see the breastmilk like going out or something, do you know what I’m saying, I feel that my breast is my personal, do you.

Yes okay.

So sometimes I find it like why should I be bringing it out, but because as I told you I felt it’s the right of the child to have it, I shouldn’t deprive him from his right.

Yes.

So I have two mixed feelings.

Okay that’s very interesting.

Yes, I don’t really, really like, you know some mothers would say it’s really enjoyable that attachment connection and stuff like that but I personally would tell you I just, to see a woman bringing out her breast and feeding is just irritating to me.

Oh in front of others?

Yes even my one, to bring it out and others will just like it’s not comfortable it’s so uncomfortable for me to view.

I know about breastfeeding from my mother, I think. I think everything in Thailand may be in like tradition, in my country. Like learn from a relative or something like that, like that. Mother and may be I in my career, I am pharmacist in my country, I like as a health professional, so I think breastfeeding is very better than the other food for my children.

You talked about the hill-tribes?

Yes.

And the women there not having very good food?

Yes.

But they still breastfeed?

Yes in my country, traditional in my country, I think it different from British because British is like the high education, high in education, high income no breastfeeding, but in my country it is low income, low education go to breastfeed because in my country may be, may be, a lot like expensive like the powder of milk and like the, because, it is if expensive may be in low income have a problem to buy it, but in my country as well, and everything, like the advertisement in the television about the bottle of milk about the, like the a lot, if you go to my country you can see a lot of the, like the powder of milk for children, a lot.

You see it advertised a lot’

Yes a lot.

‘on television.

And you have like a promotion if you health professional like me and like my husband. You can have like free of bottle milk and free of powder of milk to try, to try, two or three bottle.

Free samples.

Yes free sample, it’s good, it’s good for.

What do you think about that?

At first I didn’t think, I don’t think anything when I didn’t have like pregnant but after that I pregnant and I try to like the breastfeeding, I didn’t like to get it, collect it to my house, I think it’s like the nature, it’s easy way, it is not like the pay for or buy it, is a free, it’s good, but I think it’s have a like a struck in my opinion in my attention to breastfeeding, if I have a bottle in front of me, I think this is easy and everybody in my house, is very, this is easy, make my son grow like breastmilk right, I think it is a problem if I have, if I have it in my house.

When you said you tried to do what was normal, do you mean you tried to bring your baby up like a western person would, rather than traditional Thai methods?

Yes, because in my country if the baby just born you should to stay in the home, long, and one month and you should keep warm in your body and the baby like the, like you use to hold him with the blanket.

So you wrap him and keep him warm.

Yes, wrap him and keep him warm in here is like the freedom and take him in the sleeping suit or something like that, in my county no, you should to like hold him and wrap him with the blanket and something like that and you should to wear the hat and wear the glove, everything for him, to like the warm, keep warm all day, all night, or something like that and his mother as well, you should to like hold hat, with a sock or something like that.

So mother and baby are kept very warm?

Very warm.

And they stay at home for one month?

Yes, at least one month, it

I’d like to just talk a bit more about different cultural practices and

[Mmm].

‘I’m trying to get what you know and understand of

Yeah.

‘and your experiences in the Middle East’

Yeah.

‘compared to your experiences here. In the hospital, were there any major differences that you would put down to culture?

In terms of culture, well having babies in the Middle East, in Oman, was very much women’s work and so there tended to be an awful lot more women visitors. Breastfeeding would only really be done in front of husband, you know, it wouldn’t be acceptable if, I mean you just wouldn’t get visited as a post-natal woman by a close family friend who happened to be male, that just didn’t happen. But breastfeeding was very much the norm and if you asked a woman when she was pregnant, you know, Will you breastfeed?’ shed look at you as though you were daft and said, Well of course. You know, so it was very much the norm and artificial feeding really in the hospital I was in was only for medical indication so having, having spent quite a few years in the Middle East you then come back and you see all the advertising for baby milk and things like that, and it is, it felt really strange to walk into somewhere you know, like a, a high street chemist or whatever and see all these tins of baby milk because it wasn’t that common to see it in the Middle East it was in a special part of the supermarket and you’d have to go and look for it rather than it being sort of staring you in the face. So breastfeeding was the norm, having said that, women spent much more time in the home. So, me going back to work when my, in the Middle East, when my first baby was three months, old was relatively uncommon. And I think that probably helped, you know, there wasn’t this pressure to get back on to the, almost like a treadmill of life as there often is in, in the U.K. so that helped I think, probably women to, in the Middle East to breastfeed from much, much longer, and my understanding is that it’s almost, breastfeeding is mentioned very positively in the holy Koran and, you know, it is considered as standard to feed your baby for up to two years, so it’s all kind of inextricably tied up really, breastfeeding, faith and also quite a lot of government pressure as well to breastfeed in the Middle East because they see it as good for the health of the nation, as much more positive reinforcement of feeding your baby.

So you said when you left the maternity hospital that was it, you were on your own?

Yeah.

What’s your sense of how other women would have been?

Well as an Omani woman you would have had an extended family, so for example, I have, I still have friends who are Omani, and I do know that they would have left hospital and have gone to their mother’s home, they would have stayed there for up to forty days, and then not come back home to the, the husbands home, the family, the marital home until that forty days. And for that forty days while they were with their mum, their mum, their sisters would have basically looked after them, the mum herself, the mother of the baby feeds the baby, theres no domestic work to do, you wouldn’t think for a minute of going into the kitchen to make a meal for anybody. It was, I think that was probably really crucial, husband would visit, the mother’s family home, so his mum-law’s home, and but hes very much a visitor, and hed go after his allotted time and go back home and, you know, there was this huge famil

It was a German Public Hospital that they have a sort of agreement if you like with the British Forces overseas so the majority of the nursing staff spoke English. The set up over there is second to none, you could quite happily eat your dinner off the floor it’s spotless and clean. The maternity ward has a separate nursery at the end with trained breastfeeding nurses that, that run the nursery so that if you, they don’t in Germany encourage the child to sleep with the mother in hospital, they go to the nursery so that mother can have a good night’s sleep. And they had a special breastfeeding room, you know, to express in or to feed your babies and the nurse is constantly on hand to help to show you how to, how to feed, how to hold them, how to get them to latch on, and if you had any problems, you know, with blocked ducts or anything at all they were there twenty-four hours a day on hand to, to help you out. It was terrific, until you left, you know, you came home and you felt, you know, a bit more isolated.

So did you set up some sort of a routine in the hospital?

Yeah you do, you have to work around their shift patterns if you like and also allow for the doctors making their rounds, so there were certain time when, when nursing staff were changing over shifts that you couldn’t go because they obviously have to have briefings and, and things like that, and also we were very lucky in that our girls were only in there because they were, they were simply early and thankfully there was nothing wrong with them, whereas there were other babies there with, you know, significant problems which, you know, were far more important than ours. But yeah you sort of, they, they worked on a four hourly feeding pattern so we made sure that we were always there at the four hour point to feed, either breastfeeding or with bottles and just stayed all day virtually.

So was your daughter fed between those four hours at all?

No they’re very regimented in Germany and they were fed every four hours and that was it, and during the day they didn’t cry for feeds in-between so I only hope that they didn’t during the night as well. But I mean when, when we brought her home she, she was trained, you know, I can’t think of any other way to describe it and we just carried on in exactly the same fashion and I didn’t need to feed on demand, I just fed at seven o’clock in the morning, eleven o’clock in the morning, three o’clock in the afternoon, seven o’clock in the evening and, and, you know, so it went on.

And nothing at night?

Through the night as well, just on that same pattern, yeah, seven, eleven, three. Yeah.

What sort of support did you have at that time?

In Germany? I had the support whilst I was in the hospital of the, the nursing staff there and when I got back home it’s a very similar set up to the UK, you have a health visitor assigned to you, I had a midwife assigned to me, but I don’t know I suppose they’re there if, if you want them, they were, they were very helpful, my health visitor was lovely and she would call me regularly especially when Amy was still in the Kinder Clinic, and they’re very encouraging but they weren’t very what I would call hands-on, you know, I can remember speaking to the health visitor and breaking down in tears and saying I’m having trouble expressing and I’m worried about breastfeeding and, and they would just say things like, Well it’s okay. You know, Just keep trying and, and it will come. And you think well no, you know, I need you to be a just a little bit more specific than that, and in the hospital, you know, we actually had nurses t