Maya

Brief Outline:

Based on hearing that there was a small risk of transmitting HIV through breastfeeding, Maya chose to formula feed. She felt supported by her consultant, who talked about how women have many reasons for not choosing breastfeeding, not just HIV.

Background:

Maya is Black Caribbean, and she and her partner have an 11-month-old baby.

More about me...

Maya was born in an east African country and came to the UK when she was around 10 years old. She describes herself as a “sickly child”. She believes she was most likely born with HIV. She grew up hearing stereotypes about people with HIV and “AIDS jokes” at school. At 13-years-old, she tested positive for HIV and started HIV treatment. Her nurse told her she could live a normal life.

Maya is from a large family, and one of her younger siblings was diagnosed with HIV and later died of HIV complications before Maya found out about her own HIV status. Her mother, sister and pediatric nurse were particularly supportive when she was a teenager.

Because of her age and when she was diagnosed, Maya has been familiar with the ways the BHIVA guidelines have changed over the last decade. She booked an appointment with medical team when she was thinking about becoming pregnant.

For peace of mind, Maya’s fiancé takes an annual HIV test; they have been together for eight years. Maya was told that breastfeeding was a personal choice, but formula feeding would remove all risk of transmission. A month before she became pregnant this time, Maya had a miscarriage and this made her and her partner want to focus on making safest decisions during her current pregnancy, so they decided to formula feed.

Maya’s baby was delivered by emergency cesarean section, and the exhaustion and recovery that followed made her feel quite relieved that she didn’t need to breastfeed as well. Maya found formula feeding difficult at first. For example, she worried that her baby’s milk allergy and eczema was due to being formula fed.

When family and friends, who are not aware of her HIV status, ask why she is not breastfeeding, her and her fiancé say that is what they wanted to do and do not expand any further. Maya is of Black Caribbean heritage, and that although there are cultural expectations to breastfeed it is less pronounced in her generation.

Maya received free formula milk through a local HIV charity that her HIV clinic referred her to. As well as formula milk, the charity provided her with bottles and a sterilising set.

Maya and her partner went to the medical appointments together. They had recently had a miscarriage, and with the Covid pandemic still around, their main priority was to minimise all risk for their baby.

I was so terrified because, prior to when I found out I was pregnant with my baby, a month before that I had a miscarriage. So, I think my anxiety was just so highly driven at that point, so I was just thinking ‘I do not want anything that has a huge impact on why this child wouldn’t be born.’ Or have any like huge complications so, and also, I guess from the trauma of having a sibling that’s passed away due to it, I didn’t, my life experience are like. Like the first part of my life experience of finding out that I had it wasn’t so positive. I just thought all of those reasons just contributed on when I thought “Do you know what? The safest option, the less transmittable option obviously is the best option for us.”

In terms of the little one I’d hope that he won’t have to go through those sorts of experiences and like you know, the research has shown that again, consultant showed us the percentages, the stories and stuff like when get to see like on the website, the pages where it shows how successful it is. Mothers who’ve had children and they’ve had nothing. So, I just thought you know I want to be one of those mothers that can say that you did everything and the tablets and making sure I’m doing everything right on my side of the body. Working with me, I can be one of them success stories as well that it’s not, not transmitted to him. So yeah, just wanted to make sure.

Maya and her partner wanted to choose the safest option for their baby.

Because like I said we, because we both attended that appointment. It was nice for us to both hear the same information, wasn’t me telling him. So, it be like on a biased affect. I think he just wanted the same outcome whatever is the safest option in terms of for our baby, not going to give him like slightly chance of getting it. I think that was that was one of our main, our main concern. And I think also just having the miscarriage, miscarriage happened beforehand. I think that influenced our decision hugely. Because again, we were like, we just want a very healthy baby in every shape, way, or form. How do, how do we receive, how do we get? And we knew that that was what it, the decision making are. It felt safer to do, in that sense of just got you know, especially with where our minds was at and Covid and everything, we just wanted the safest option.

Maya and her partner did not worry about formula feeding.

Yeah, we decided to formula feed straight away because we just thought there is, in our head we just said we just didn’t want to impose any risk, if there doesn’t need to be it like. Again, because I’ve come from a big family, one of my sisters she breastfed her first child, but then her second child it didn’t work so well, so she couldn’t breastfeed. It just wasn’t working with her body and producing the milk and everything that was happening. It caused so much more of a headache if she had chosen to formula feed her children. So again, like I know that within the formula, still got enough for your child even though that everyone says you know, breast milk’s the best milk.

But there is loads of people that do choose formula and I’ve had other friends that have had babies and again their choice is to formula, and their children have come out fine so that made me feel a lot better that you know, do everything like.

Formula feeding allowed Maya to share feeding duties with her partner, which was especially helpful while she was recovering from her delivery.

But a lot of people say that has a lot of pros to it in terms of like the father can connect with the baby also, in terms of like we can share, we can share the shift. Like the morning shift, the night shift. Because like a lot of mums have said like when they’re breastfeeding, it’s kind of just all on them because obviously the fathers can’t do anything. In terms of like especially like night feed. If they’re not expressing it through a bottle or in a formula they’ve not got to that stage yet. It’s only the mum that can do it whereas I was able to share that load in. My baby really connected with dad, because he had to do a lot. He had to do a lot of hands on the first few months because like I said I was just recovering.