When you're pregnant you go on fact finding missions. You quickly realise you know NOTHING about what happens to your body when pregnant, what happens during the birth, after the birth and how the hell do you look after a baby anyway?? You find these facts by enrolling in antenatal classes, talk to other mums and trawl the internet.
One hot topic is feeding your baby. "Breast is best" - all the emphasis from the professionals is that you should breast feed your baby. After all breast feeding is the most natural thing in the world - women have been doing it since time began. The way the information is delivered, in many ways, guilts you into breast feeding and basically sets a lot of women up to feel like failures. They're not. Breast feeding is HARD! It is incredibly hard for most women. Sure, there are a lucky few who give birth to babies who know exactly what to do straight away, but for the majority there is a steep and painful learning curve. And I mean painful!
First of all, let me explain what happened at the breast feeding class I went to. Jon and I had signed up to NCT classes as a way top find out all the info we needed and, most importantly, meet likeminded people living in our area. Unfortunately we also bought tickets to see England play at Wembley and that coincided with the breast feeding class. I had never been to an international football match so in this instance that took priority. The baby would take priority over EVERYTHING once it was born, so while it was still inside, I got to choose things for me instead. As it turned out the match was a shitty, boring 0-0 draw. What a waste of time - football is rubbish for the amount of 0-0 results it gets.
I did still want to go to a breastfeeding class though as it was something I was keen to do. Afterall it was being drummed into me "Breast is best". My NCT teacher kindly got me on a place in a class outside my area in Beckenham. Jon was on a shoot that day in Brighton and got delayed so didn't make it home in time for the class. This meant I had to go by myself into a room full of strangers and talk about boobs. I didn't know this before the class, but Beckenham is posh!! It was a room full of suited men and future yummy mummies. I felt vey out of place and quite frankly wasn't given a massive welcome. They were polite but not exactly friendly. Perhaps my attire of jeans, T-shirt and converse wasn't yummy mummy enough.
The class consisted of everyone saying what they're worries were. Everyone's worries were about feeding in public, (if only we knew!). We then looked at 100s of photos of women breastfeeding - the majority appeared to be African women in muddy villages but with happy smiles. I think this was to show anyone could do it and it was a happy bonding experience. We then got given a doll and practiced different positions. We learnt the mantra "Belly to belly, nose to nipple open the mouth and there we go". See - simple! The other part of the class was an explaination about the stages of milk and listening to the happy experiences our teacher had feeding her babies. With a class like that who wouldn't feel confident ready to give her baby the best start in life. Afterall, all I had to do was get the baby, belly to belly, nose to nipple and off we go. Simples.
Now the reality:
Pain, frustration and starvation.
It didn't matter how much I said "belly to belly, nose to nipple, open mouth off we go", Poppy hadn't been to the class. She didn't know what to do. On the rare occassions she opened her mouth and put it over the nipple she then failed to suck and would often just fall asleep. That's if I was lucky. Other times she got the nipple in her mouth and bit!! Now, pre baby I assumed they were gummy and had no way to hurt you. Oh how wrong I was. They have teeth. Those teeth may be beneath the gums but they are still sharp and you definitely still feel it. It is like having razor blades run over your nipples. And you can't bandage them up and let them heal over a couple of weeks. A couple of hours later you have to put those teeth back on your nipple. A nipple that is incredibly sensitive due to being red raw!
We were told baby should be fed every 3 hours. But as Poppy wasn't feeding properly it was ALL the time. It got confusing - I had no idea how much she was getting, so I ended up writing it all down. I found the feeding diary the other day. Here is an extract so you can see how difficult it was:
28th Oct (2 days old):
8.15pm Woke up, (Poppy, not me). Tried to feed. Not latching on. Changed nappy. (wee)
8.25pm-8.35pm Latched on. Had 3-4 teaspoons of expressed milk and some from left breast. Fell asleep - could not wake.
10.48pm-11.05pm Woke up. Tried to feed from right breast. Taking milk I could squeeze out but not latching on. Latched 1-2 times. Just wanted to lick!! Fell asleep.
11.12pm-11.30pm Tried left breast instead. Slightly more interest but still not latching on. Won't open mouth. Took small amount of expressed milk.
12.58am-1.25am Woke up. Gave her left breast. Latched on a few times but mostly wouldn't open mouth. Took all expressed milk (15ml). Fell asleep and showing no interest at all.
2.18am - 2.22am Woke up. Gave right breast. Almost straight away fell asleep. Could not get any action!!
You get the idea - this carries on for a long time. Note how short the periods of feeding were and how often they were. Also note the big secret you don't get told about which is a life saver to so many people. Expressed milk.
When the leaflets talk about expressing milk they talk about it at a time when breastfeeding is established - perhaps when you are returning to work. I hadn't bought a breast pump by the time Poppy was born as I didn't think it was something I would need for a while. Expressing milk was the only way I could get breast feeding established. It bought me the time we both needed to learn. It probably took a couple of weeks for me to feel as though I was feeding Poppy myself. If I hadn't been topping her up with expressed milk she would have starved. There should be advice on how to get by whilst trying to get established. The problem is none of the leaflets etc want to let on that it might not be easy - thereby compounding the feelings of failure women feel.
That first week was so hard and I had many a teary moment as I doubted my abilities. I was considering giving up and only feeding her expressed milk which meant signing up to a lot of time with the electric pump and feeling like a cow. Does that still count? Am I still breastfeeding if I do it via a bottle? And quite frankly if I found myself only giving her expressed milk, how long would it have been before I gave up altogether and went on to formula?
I'm a very competitive person and I believe that is the only reason I persevered and managed to successfully establish breastfeeding. I needed to win - I had to beat breastfeeding! Luckily I did and I'm thankful for that - but I really feel as though it was a battle and I put myself through hell just because of how I had been set up to feel like a failure if I didn't do it. If I didn't manage to breast feed her, I wouldn't be a failure. I would have tried but it just wasn't for us. That is how women should feel. As someone said to me the other day: "It's great to be pro-breast but stupid to be anti-formula". I truely believe the attitudes to feeding babies should be revised in this country. We should still be pro-breast, but it shouldn't be at the expense of womens self esteem.
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