So here’s what I have learned about breastfeeding. You know, on my journey.
At First, It is Bloody Hard Work
I found breastfeeding in the early days pretty relentless. The first few weeks are a shock to the system anyway, and having a small human welded to your nipples for an apparent eternity is exhausting. ‘Feeding on demand’ does what it says on the tin and, during the first couple of months with both boys, I felt like a slave to lactation. With Henry, there were times when he fed for an hour and less than an hour later wanted feeding again . . . for another hour. I remember reaching the point of no return, the deliriously tired point where you laugh and cry at the same time, sobbing to James that the baby was on a bender (‘He’s binge drinking!’). On those days it was pretty painful, and I faffed around with nipple shields, creams and alternative positioning, reclining ungracefully on the sofa in an attempt to ‘bring baby to breast’ in all manner of interesting ways (remembering what I’d read in those leaflets I’d been given).
I saw a breastfeeding counsellor, who advised that I could try viewing each feed as the baby’s opportunity to have a three-course meal. Breast one could be his starter and main (to allow for two ‘let downs’) and, if he finished those, I could offer the second breast ‘as dessert’. This was actually really helpful advice, but I just wanted to scream at everyone. I wanted to mourn the loss of my existence outside of sitting on the sofa with my breasts out. I wanted to shout about how unfair it was that I never finished a meal unless James cut everything into fork-sized chunks and, when I finally did get a break for the jackpot of forty winks, it was invariably cut short by the phrase of doom: ‘I think he’s hungry again.’ Arghhhhhh!
It’s Also Bloody Handy
At many other times, the boobs were in favour. All hail the boobs! Because in my tired, dishevelled and frankly zombified state, those boobs were one less thing to worry about packing in the changing bag. Wherever we were, there was milk. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Hoo-bloody-ray. My boobs were like my weapon of choice, something always in my locker. One time, when baby Jude threatened to have a meltdown on a train, I unclipped my bra, literally shoved a boob in his face and continued to read Heat magazine while relaxing against the window. It is one of those vivid moments when I recall thinking, ‘Thank God for that.’ Another ‘breastfeeding is the bomb’ realisation came when, after switching to bottles, we found ourselves dangerously low on formula reserves one Sunday afternoon when all the shops had shut (‘You said you were getting some?!’) and, furthermore, when we totted up the £40+ it was costing us each month to buy our tubs of Cow & Gate. Breastfeeding is free, and if that doesn’t make it a little bit incredible I don’t know what does.
It’s an Interesting Experience …
You get told all about hand-expressing and breast pumps and the like at antenatal classes, but the everyday reality of these things turned out to be more hysterical than I could ever have imagined. I had a proper good bash at expressing the first time around because I wanted James to join in with some of the feeds. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy breastfeeding . . . though I didn’t much enjoy it. (I never cherished the feeds in the way I know some mums do, but I have long since made peace with my lack of moment-cherishing.) It was just that the prospect of breast milk in a bottle seemed like a win-win situation, and I couldn’t wait to crack out the pump and share the burden joy. Amazing things, those electric pumps, but Jesus Christ, it was all a bit ridiculous. I would sit on the sofa with one nipple attached to a suction cone (being milked) and the other nipple resting in a plastic shell (to catch the extra milk that was leaking from the neglected boob, which had not registered that it was the other boob’s turn). Having spent the previous three years financing agricultural machinery – parlours and robotic milkers aplenty – I developed a new-found respect for dairy cows through my personal experience of being milked while watching This Morning. James often joked about the regularity of boob exposure in the living room (‘There they are again!’), and he was right. It became so commonplace to have them out that, some days, I didn’t bother putting them back in.
And then there was The Incident. A particular breast-milk-expressing episode that neither of us has quite recovered from. I woke up one morning with breasts that were more than a little bit engorged – they were like lumpy boulders. I started to feel all hot and bothered, fearing that mastitis was approaching. Usually, when lumps and bumps developed I could ‘sort myself out’ by kneading my boobs gently with my fingers to clear what I assumed were blocked milk ducts. Sometimes, the relief of the next feed would be overwhelming and my boobs would be ready to explode by the time the poor boys copped a mouthful. On this particular day in 2012 I knew I had gone past the point of self-rescue and, after trying and failing to ‘massage out the lumps’, I called James up to the bedroom for what has definitively gone down as the most interesting moment of our marriage to date.
He found me sitting on the bed in just my pants, surrounded by towels and warm flannels, with boobs to rival Katie Price’s in her Jordan heyday (albeit lumpy and slightly inflamed).
‘You’re going to have to hand-express me.’
[Face of disbelief.] ‘You’re shitting me?’
‘No, I actually need you to hand-express me. I can’t get the right angle to massage both boobs in full, and the pump won’t attach now they’re so massive. It’s really hurting.’
‘Fucking hell. Right.’
And so it came to pass that my husband sat behind me on the bed and milked me. In a completely non-sexual way (because there is nothing sexy about lactationfn1), it gave me the greatest sense of relief I’ve ever felt. We drenched at least two towels in breast milk before admiring my back-to-normal boob structure, high-fiving and heading back downstairs for a cup of tea. That’s marriage right there, for better or for worse.
Bitty Fashion Is Not Always the Tits
Many breastfeeding mums do a sterling job of looking glam all the time and manage to dress like they haven’t given up on life. I do think that finding trendy, boob-accessible stuff on the high street is getting easier (dungarees are now in fashion, for starters), but I’m not overly imaginative when it comes to fashion, and there were times when I just wanted to choose an outfit without easy boob access in mind, when I fancied wearing something other than loose tops, wrap dresses, button-down tunics or jumpers with ‘secret’ feeding panels (there is no secret: I can spot a JoJo nursing top a mile off) or when I was fed up with leaking breasts and the risk of waking up in a wet T-shirt because a breast pad had got sodden or dislodged between night feeds. I had almost forgotten those moments of midnight breast leakage and wardrobe agonising until my friend texted me mid-feed to tell me she was fed up with squeezing her oversize boobs into ‘bitty fashion’(!) and ‘smelling like an old fridge’. She’s a keeper.
Sometimes, It Doesn’t Work Out
There’s an awful lot of pressure on mums to breastfeed. In light of all the benefits, I understand why encouraging mums to do so is really important. Sometimes, an expert pair of eyes is helpful in assessing the baby’s position or to offer advice around greedy-baby syndrome (I think the technical term is ‘cluster feeding’ and the explanation is always a growth spurt). Sometimes, just a boost is welcome, somebody to say, ‘Keep going, it gets easier!’
But I have also read messages from mums so desperate to carry on breastfeeding that they have cried through the sheer pain of feeds, continuing with bleeding nipples and an inadequate milk supply because the thought of ‘giving up’ is somehow worse. As if they have been told, ‘Keep going, it gets easier!’ one too many times and have started to wonder what not keeping going would mean. What it would say about them and their maternal capabilities.
I vowed to give you my honest experience of parenting, and I don’t think breastfeeding should be an exception, though, for some reason, I feel like there is an elephant in the room as I write this, shaking his trunk at my blasphemous suggestion that breast isn’t always best �
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I honestly would recommend breastfeeding. I have lived it, and I am a fan. But if you are reading this and the bad stuff has struck a chord in any way, I just want to put it out there that it is absolutely not the end of the world if it doesn’t work out, if you need/want/have to formula feed instead, because how your baby is fed does not determine your parent-awesomeness rating. Sometimes, mums deserve the best option, too. I’m pretty sure even the elephant would agree with that one.
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‘I have loved, carried and nurtured this baby inside me for nine months, I have spent every moment of my life thinking about him since I knew he was on his way – take your vitamins, don’t drink, don’t smoke, eat right, exercise, do what’s best for baby, best for baby, best for baby, best for baby. I have done what is best for baby!!!’
Suki, Cirencester
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fn1 I should note that data captured from my blog regarding search keywords (i.e. what people have searched for before being referred to my blog) did, worryingly, point towards an underground subsection of the great British public who do find lactation sexy. I’m pretty sure the person who searched ‘lactation fuck breast milk shower’ would have been disappointed by my blog post.
Shit, I Need Some Mum Friends
When Henry was born I didn’t have much of a friend network. My school/uni/work friends were yet to birth any babies (the carefree bastards) and I was over a hundred miles away from my sister, who, at the time, had ‘just the one’. (I’m surprised I never punched anybody who used the phrase ‘just the one’ before Jude joined the party – ‘just the one’ was bloody hard work and, at times, that was one too many for me to cope with.) Even travelling up to see my bestie, who found out she was pregnant just five months after I did, required a four-hour car journey. Hardly ‘pop round for a cuppa’ territory.
I couldn’t risk being shipwrecked alone on Parent Island. From the moment I confirmed my pregnancy hunch by peeing on a stick prior to jetting off to that shitty Kos hotel (I’m scowling, if you’re reading this, James), I knew I’d have to make new friends. The prospect of making ‘mummy friends’ filled me with dread. I have always felt intimidated by large groups of girls and, at work, I naturally formed my strongest bonds with male colleagues. So, aside from my school- and uni-friend gems, most of the new friends I had made in my early twenties were male. Superb for nights out and banter and chats about online-dating woes (theirs, not mine). Not so great for chats about episiotomy stitches and nipple cream. Shit. I was having a baby and needed to find me some mum friends. Where should I look?
I’d heard that one of the best ways of finding a Mummy Wolf Pack was by signing up for NCT classes. My sister had done it, and I’d read about the groups – you meet other mums-to-be with similar due dates at local classes and then regroup once all your babies have landed. Somewhere along the line there is a Facebook photo of all the babies lined up on a picnic mat with the caption ‘The NCT crew’ (possibly accompanied by awkwardly crouching dads who have also been dragged along). It sounded just the ticket. I needed some NCT buddies in my life. But, alas, when the time came to sign up online, there wasn’t a group in my local area. Bollocks and arse. No NCT?! This meant I would have to make pals the old-fashioned way. I would have to fly solo to some baby groups and hope somebody wanted to be my BMFF (Best Mummy Friend Forever). Our bog-standard (and free) antenatal classes were more functional than they were social. In addition to watching the doll-in-the-birth-canal demonstration we mostly passed around those giant salad-server-type forceps and chatted about maternity pads. We smiled kindly at the other parents but there wasn’t a list of email addresses circulated and a ‘February-babies reunion’ diarised at a local farm park. I was quite sure I’d never see those people again. I would instead have to make my own way to mum gatherings and ask people for contact details – which sounded much like professional networking events I’d been to, only with fewer skirt suits and more maternity leggings.
By the time baby Henry arrived, I was mentally prepped for this New Friends task. Four weeks in, when James had returned to work, I decided I would venture out to a few groups and take it from there. A baby group . . . a breastfeeding group . . . a ‘stay and play’ session after baby clinic . . . Hell, I’d try them all! There was nothing to lose. Anyway, I did it. After at least two hours of frantically getting ready to leave the house each time (‘You better not have done another poo – Oh, for fuck’s sake!’), I went along to these groups with a smile (and the baby). At times, it was a little daunting. Particularly bursting through the double doors of the local town hall with the pram, parking it up and realising people were already mid-conversation. Daunting that I would have to wade in through the sensory baby toys, plonk myself down next to somebody and hope to fit in. That, by and large, there would be no men there and I would have to dip my toe into the female-only environment of cups of tea and chats about painful milk let downs, totally obliterating my comfort zone.
But I did it, and I’m bloody glad I did, because those groups were a godsend (and, one time, I genuinely needed a chat about painful milk let downs). I didn’t struggle to make small talk with these groups of mums, as I’d feared, because it’s almost impossible to run out of conversation when you are accompanied by a small person. A baby is the best prop ever. Ask ‘How old is she now?’ or ‘Have you had her weighed today?’ and you’ve banked an hour of chatting about the birth and feeding and what percentile she’s on in that little red book. You interact behind the comfort screen of your babies, laughing at their windy smiles and cursing their poo schedules. Hey presto, all of a sudden you’ve found another friendly face to stop and chat with in the Spar when you’re out and about trying to get the baby to have that goddamn nap.
That hour of tea and sympathy outside the house was priceless and gave me the much-needed motivation to get dressed and not stay indoors watching Homes Under the Hammer for the fifth consecutive day. The other mums were all really nice. But I still hadn’t sussed out how to take it to the next level. I needed to be braver. I needed to entrap some friends I could meet up with outside the organised breastfeeding cafés and baby-clinic sessions. Friends who would pop round for that quick cuppa. Friends I could text when it kicked off at 3 a.m. and I needed to hear somebody else say, ‘It’s been a bit shit here, too.’ I needed emotional support above and beyond the weaning small talk.
As it happened, a chance meeting one evening on our (then) housing estate was a real turning point in my New Friends adventure. Said encounter stemmed from a bit of a dark place. By ‘dark place’, I mean James had returned from work that evening to find me once again in tears, snivelling about The Chase. (To be fair, it was the only programme I’d attempted to watch that day and, with Henry being a total arse, his screaming over the cash-builder round was the straw that broke the mummy camel’s back.) I handed the baby over and stormed out of the back door. It was one of those moments where I wished I’d picked up something warmer to wear, but having just made a dramatic exit it would have looked a bit crap to pop an arm back round the door for my fleece. So I kept walking. And, eventually, after an hour angrily striding around the countryside, muttering, ‘I won’t put up with this shit,’ I felt calmer and decided to head back to check on the boys.
Just a few hundred yards away from home I bumped into a girl I was sure I had seen both at the antenatal classes and in the waiting room of the midwife’s clinic. She must have had her baby by now. She was putting out her recycling and looked more than a bit pissed off, so I pottered over. ‘How’s it all going?’ I asked her. I wish I could remember her exact response word for word, but I can’t. However, it must have been something along the lines of ‘Pretty horrendous’, ‘Awful’ or ‘I’ve had just about enough,’ because I distinctly remember thinking, Thank God for that! Not thank God that she was having an awful time of it, but thank God that it wasn’t just me. That somebody else was saying, ‘Jesus, what have we done?’ The relief was overwhelming.
Perhaps
I wasn’t broken, after all. Perhaps there were others like me having a shit time of it, too. Perhaps I was normal. I felt like a weight had been lifted, like I had somehow shaken off the loneliness that had been making me feel lost and more than a little bit sad. I loved her instantly. We stood for a good few minutes describing all the ways our lives had gone down the pan, and it was such a release. We agreed we would meet up, not at a baby group but at one of our houses. I think it was my first agreed ‘play date’, and I remember the joy of suspecting I had found someone like-minded. That I would have some proper company. I returned to James and (a still-screaming) Henry with the biggest smile I’d had on my face in weeks. I series-linked The Chase after that.
Hundreds of play dates (and some quality moaning) later, and the relief of opening up that friendship has never left me. We spent hours discussing the perils of no sleep and bonding over the fact that we both missed our pre-baby lives. We dreamed of work nights out and beach holidays, and it was our safe space to admit that away from any judgemental glares. But by the time Jude came along we had moved away from the area (and ironically downsized from that dream family home we could no longer afford – expensive things, babies) so I could no longer drop in for cheese on toast (with ketchup) and a moan about the kids when they both refused to nap. (Oh, how I miss her, though we are still in touch.) It was back to square one, and I was once again tasked with making a new set of mum friends in a new area. FML.
The Unmumsy Mum Page 4