Interview 18

Age at interview: 34

Brief Outline: Bottle fed first baby; breastfed second (6 months, enjoyable, copious milk supply) and third for six weeks (difficult, unsettled).

Background: This 34 year old, British woman had a 1' year old daughter (breastfed for six weeks). She also had an 8 year old daughter, not breastfed, and a 2' year old daughter who was. A medical secretary, she was married to a self-employed gas heating engineer.

More about me...

With experience of both breast and bottle feeding, this woman is in a good position to be able to make comparisons. She says that she was young when she had her first baby in a large hospital and that breast feeding didn't occur to her as a possibility but now she wishes that she'd 'had the sense' to breastfeed. She didn't think her breasts were for breastfeeding and it was not something that was right for her at that stage. She was absolutely dismayed to find a student midwife giving her daughter her first bottle feed. However, six years later, she had a completely different experience in a small birthing unit with a natural birth, immediate breastfeeding, supportive health professionals and a very helpful friend. She says that breastfeeding was much easier than bottle feeding, particularly in the night and when going out and that her breastfed babies gained weight much more quickly than her bottle fed baby. She thinks that breastfed babies are more relaxed and calmer. Her third baby, however, was not satisfied at the breast. The baby was a fussy, finicky feeder and this woman thinks that she didn't have as much milk as with the previous child, even though the baby's weight gain was fine. Because it was a busy household by this time, she thinks that she wasn't eating and drinking enough. She recommends that newly pregnant women think very seriously about where they want their baby to be born as that experience will 'secure the bonds for perseverance and happy breastfeeding.' She urges the government not to close the small maternity units.

The times when her baby had a growth spurt and fed frequently were when she lost confidence and...

And kind of realising that, you know, at certain points apparently the baby has a growth spurt and the feeding patterns change, or your milk patterns change.

Can you describe that in a bit more detail? What is a growth spurt? 

It's suddenly you think you're relaxed with your feeding pattern and suddenly it all seems to go wrong and you're like why what's, what's different? And it kind of, emotionally, again you feel like, 'Oh I'm going to give up, I'll just put them on bottles, they're going to go on bottles eventually anyway' and there's certain, I always found there was certain hurdles two weeks, four weeks, six weeks that I would feel like, 'I'm going to give up, it's going wrong' and then this friend would remark, 'No that's normal at about this time the baby's demand for milk is changing and stick with it for another couple of days and you'll get back on par again', and it was that kind of.

So how did you know that you'd reached a growth spurt? 

The, it was just kind of a, a change in the, the feeding pattern, you kind of feel like, 'Oh actually it's starting to work now.' I was starting to feed and, and feed well, and the baby's taking the milk well and then the baby settles and the baby sleeps and it doesn't have too much wind, and then you have breathing space for an hour before you feed again, and you just kind of feel like you're cracking it and then suddenly it all goes to pot and, and you're kind of back, you kind of feel like you're tearing your hair out and baby's just having little drib's and drab's and you're not sure whether to go on the left or the right side and, you kind of lose control of what's going on again and you kind of think, 'Oh this must be it, it must be time to stop now.' You kind of lose your incentive I think because you've had it good for a few days, you kind of then everything goes, goes wrong and that's as my friend told me maybe she was just fooling me and just trying to give me confidence to carry on but that, that, those were times that, when I presumed the baby's, is demanding more milk because it, it needed more milk and I just went with the flow so I just kind of went with the flow and I guess that's what they called 'feeding on demand', but it can be quite draining when, you know, literally you, you feel like you are just continually feeding the whole time. But I think if you, I was fortunate with my, the first child that I breastfed I was fortunate in that my daughter, my elder daughter was at school my husband was self-employed so he was taking her to school in the morning and some days we just stayed snuggled in bed and she just fed when she needed to feed and we slept and dozed when we, you know, when, when it was right and that, that really helped I think just to, I mean I was lucky enough to be able to do it, so that really helped build a good bond and feel relaxed and comfortable with the breastfeeding.

She had a very supportive friend. Without her she would not have continued to breastfeed.

I had a very, very supportive friend, and there was no way I would have continued had it not been for her, she was a great advocate for breastfeeding herself, she'd had immense problems herself and had gone to La Leche for help, and, and had made it her mission to encourage me to breastfeed, and help me because I think she'd found it so difficult herself. She'd come round with lunch and cook me lunch and, you know, just sit and talk and make me realise that it was difficult but how well I was doing and really, really encouraging me that I was doing well and it seemed that every time I felt like I wanted to give up she'd be there at the door, with lunch and I mean a really, really fantastic supportive person, really helpful she brought cushions round to help me position, she'd come round and get the baby and position it for me and said, 'No do it like this, and do it like that' and just try and help and, I kind of think perhaps took, you know, the role that a La Leche counsellor would've done had I, you know, had that initiative to do that but I didn't need to because I had this really supportive friend. 

She did not consider working and breastfeeding. Giving up breastfeeding was an emotional time for...

Can you tell me why that was happening, why the bottles were coming in at this stage?

Just kind of I wanted to have just a little bit more, have, you know, have a night out and someone be able to baby-sit, and just have a bottle just for that odd occasion, and also, I think because I was going to be going back to work so kind of feeling that it was the right thing to do start to gradually introduce bottles and not just be one hundred percent, it was kind of like I'd cracked the breastfeeding thing, it was working really, really well and now it was to gradually to take steps to sort of, like the transitional progress over into bottle feeding, because it was kind of imminent me going back to work that that would have to happen, in no way, shape or form did I think that I could possibly return to work and continue with full breastfeeding.

What made you think that?

I don't know I just, to me it wasn't, it wasn't something that I could even consider I don't, to me it just wouldn't, the two didn't work, to me the whole breastfeeding experience was being relaxed, being at home with my child and being there for my child, and I kind of think if I couldn't have done it that way then it wasn't the right way for me, you know, and it was kind of the weaning stage and introducing, you know, the beginnings of weaning so it all seemed to be the right time to gradually, not give up completely but to, to gradually start changing the pattern of things, and the fact that I was able to express milk so easily it was still my milk, but she wouldn't take a bottle, she would not take the bottle, it was horrendous we tried for weeks and weeks and weeks, we tried every single different teat, every different kind of bottle, we couldn't get a bottle into her, it took weeks and weeks and weeks, and in fact I think it was finally when I actually had to go back to work that it was a case of her having to take a bottle that eventually we just persevered and I think it was my husband's grandma that got her in the end, to take the bottle so, that was, that was. I have a friend who actually did breast and bottle right from the start and that kind of looking at her and the way she coped that, that was a good thing and that worked for her and obviously it was quite an emotional time for me because I enjoyed breastfeeding and my baby was telling me that it loved breastfeeding, yet it was other issues and other factors telling me that you had to have a plastic teat put in your mouth and learn to suck on that [laughs], I mean it was, you know, it was a difficult time but ah, not nearly as difficult as getting her to breastfeed in the first place so [laughs], I, yeah it, it kind of all happened eventually, it all coincided with weaning and me finding out I was pregnant again and probably I think I gave her a last breastfeed about six months, and that was when eventually I was, I was doing it so little that my milk just naturally dried up anyway, so she would just have a little suckle and then she'd have to have milk, formula milk afterwards anyway so it kind of just then I realised that that was it and you know, it sort of stopped then.     

The first time she had engorgement she expressed and had an abundant milk supply, the second time...

My middle-age daughter there's a six year gap from my first girl and I had a very, very natural, lovely birth with her it was very, very, very relaxed it was at the local birthing unit which is five minutes down the road, so it was just such a very calming nice experience that it was just very natural to put the baby onto the breast and they encouraged you to do that, they didn't whip the baby away and do all the tests and things she literally came up and started suckling straightaway which was just, just perfect and it sort of set the precedent then of that that's how I wanted to continue and that's what I wanted to do [pause]. And I kind of I think I stayed in hospital for about three, two or three days and came home so not enough time for the milk to really come in properly, I didn't have any problems initially in hospital when I got home I think probably the first or second night of me being at home, my breasts completely, completely engorged they were like baseballs. The baby couldn't even go on to the nipple because it was so hard and rounded, I guess my emotions and the baby blues all kicked in at that time and I was absolutely defeated, we were up literally sort of every thirty minutes every hour the baby crying I couldn't settle didn't know what to do I got myself in a complete state in the morning had actually got some formula milk and a bottle and was ready to kind of that was it and give up but phoned the birthing unit and they said, 'Come in, you know, spend the day with us, we'll get you back on track we'll sort you out' and it was fantastic, I went down, spent the day in the day room on the they called it the daisy cow the pump, electric pump you know drawing the milk out getting, getting me more comfortable again. And that kind of, then from then on I came home.

Did you take any painkillers or anything for that pain?

Painkillers? I didn't no, I didn't because I didn't think to, once I'd got I realised I could express milk which I didn't, you know, everything else that's going on new baby once I realised I could express the problem, the problem was okay. And I again it was at the local birthing unit that I had baby number three very, very quickly I hasten to add, I think she was fifty minutes from start to finish and the mid, the midwife had just turned up just in time to break my waters for me so that she could be born which was quite scary. Completely different birth, a very intense, birth, very, very quick and very sudden, not relaxed at all after the baby was born she was kind of, it was sort of, it wasn't the same ambience, the lights in the room were bright and it just didn't feel as relaxed and as calm but she came up and she tried to breastfeed, but wasn't interested, I think completely shocked from the birth, and I decided to stay in hospital for a week because obviously having a one year old at home, and I knew that the engorgement process would happen again and how painful that was and I kind of wanted to wait in hospital for that all to be over and, in my mind I thought I was going to go home with the breastfeeding pattern all sorted and everything hunky dory, so I stayed, I did stay in for about a week and, I had help through the night on the, the dreaded night when the engorgement came in and they had me in baths and, trying to do anything but extract the milk so that I wouldn't get this whole excess flow of milk all the time which is what I'd been told had happened last time because I was extracting so much last time, that's why I was always in abundance so, so this time I tried not to express any milk which kind of, made the milk supply a lot less I think and, in a way it was easier when it used to spurt out 'cause [laughs] 'cause you knew it was always there, so, they were, they were a bit worried actually when I was in hospital because the baby really wasn't interested in feeding