Interview 37

Age at interview: 27

Brief Outline: Unsatisfactory hospital experience with first baby; other two were home births. Regrets stopping breastfeeding her first child to go back to work. She didn't do that again.

Background: At the time of interview, this 27 year old, White British woman was breastfeeding her 6 month old daughter. She also had a 7 year old daughter and a 4 year old son, both breastfed. She was a psychiatric nurse and her partner was a journalist.

More about me...

Not convinced that she could breastfeed, this woman didn't make her decision to try until after her first baby was born. Most people to whom she had spoken had excuses for why they hadn't been able to breastfeed and she had a “picture of this horrible painful experience” in her head. Being an idealist, she wanted breastfeeding to be “lovely and beautiful” and the baby sleeping peacefully. She thinks that the best support you can get for breastfeeding is from somebody else who is doing it or has done it. She learned from her first baby and was much more confident with the others, “just feeding the baby when the baby needed feeding”. Apart from slightly sore nipples and mild engorgement at first, breastfeeding her first two was relatively straight forward but the baby was sleepy and slow to gain weight so she woke her for more frequent feeds for about a week. She also took fenugreek capsules and drank fennel tea to encourage her milk supply. Her first child slept in a Moses basket beside the bed but the other two slept in the family bed. She thinks this is especially important for the baby because she doesn't have the time for her that she had for her first child. For this reason, the evenings and nights are a special time for them and sleeping together cuts down the exhaustion. The family moved house between her first and second child and she found it much harder away from the support of family and friends so she joined a National Childbirth Trust coffee group to make new friends.

Having the midwife 'shove' her breast into her baby's mouth did nothing for her confidence in being able to breastfeed.

I decided I wanted to have a home birth when I was pregnant with my son because I’d had quite a difficult experience giving birth to my daughter and then I’d had not the very nice experience in the hospital afterwards and I just felt that I didn’t want to go through that again. I’d read quite a lot on home births and just decided that I’d like to do that if I could, and I was so lucky that the midwife I had was wonderful. I was so nervous about going to see her and talk about it, and when I went to see her she said “I’d be delighted to deliver your baby at home” which is exactly what I wanted to hear. And he was born at home, he was born in my bedroom on my bed [laughs] where he duly spent the next two years of his life. And it was wonderful and it was actually quite a dramatic birth because he came very fast but apart from that, you know, everything was great and yeah I wouldn’t have changed it at all. I wouldn’t have changed anything about my son or this baby’s births at all and they were both born at home.

 

So when was your son put to the breast first?

 

He was put to the breast about, less than an hour after being, after being born something that I sort of felt, something that I'd read that breastfeeding you need to get it established, you know, try it within the first hour and it can make such a difference. And he fed for about fifteen minutes, my only, the only problem I had with, with the first feed that I had with my son was that the midwife, she was very hands on and I think it was just her style and she was lovely, she was a really nice person, but I laid on my side and she literally lifted up my breast and sort of shoved it [laughs] in the baby's mouth, and the baby fed fine and I can't complain at all about how it went but I just felt that was a bit too, personal, which probably sounds ridiculous because the woman had just delivered my baby [laughs], you know, we were on a personal level but that was my only, my only complaint was that I felt that, I wished she'd just sort of left me alone to do it myself, not only for, you know, not that I felt that she did anything wrong in any way at all but, also for getting my confidence, if she could have seen how I'd done it, she could've then said, “Yes that's good” and I would've been confident for once she had left. Whereas I didn't have that, although we were lucky we didn't have any problems, and the midwives were very supportive and they came back every day for the first week or so and things, things were fine so I was quite lucky, I think I was very lucky.

She has grown more confident about breastfeeding in public with each baby and has had only positive comments.

I'll feed the baby anywhere and everywhere and in front of anybody I don't think there's, there aren't many people who haven't seen us, seen us feeding, I'm not, I'm not a shy person, I never have been. And as I've had each of my children I've become less, you know, when I had my first and possibly my second I would use mother and baby rooms and things that there were in the town. I don't think I've even been in one with this baby we will feed anywhere and everywhere. And I've never had a negative comment, I've never had anybody ask me to stop feeding, I've never had, I've never had any surprise looks, well certainly not negative surprise looks, you get a lot of, I get a lot of positive looks, I get a lot of, particularly old ladies coming up to me and saying, 'Isn't that wonderful' and often you get, I get comments that, from places that you don't expect them, when my granddad was in a hospice, he was in a four-bedded bay with all older males and I sort of, you know, said, 'Does anybody mind, or would you like me to pull the curtain round?' And I ended up with all of these older males having a conversation about how wonderful it was, and how it's the most natural thing in the world and there's not a more natural sight ever than the sight of a baby feeding at it's mother's breasts and, I've been so lucky I think, I've never had a negative comment and that's been, that's been wonderful. I don't know how I would deal with one if I did but I feel, I feel so, so lucky and, we're very confident and, I don't know. 
 

Her emotions at hearing her baby's cry over the telephone translated into the physical experience of let-down.

Have you had a let-down when you've been out in public or somewhere else where the baby's not with you?

I have yes, particularly to start with I don't get it so much now that she's, that she's six months but I did used to get it quite a lot whether the baby was with me or not, I would be feeling a let-down. I've never been one of these people that it's been triggered by seeing other people's babies, or hearing other people's babies cry, but there was one time I was in [Supermarket], I was visiting my parents and we nipped to the shops to get some photographs developed, and I left the baby with my partner and said to him, 'Phone me when she starts to wake up and I'll come back'. And when he phoned we were in the queue, at the till, and it was a really, really long queue and I could hear the baby in the background, I could hear her crying, now I'd heard probably four or five babies around [Supermarket] and none of those had had any effect, I could hear my baby down the phone and there was milk everywhere, the milk just started flowing and I had to abandon my stuff in the queue, well I left it with, with my dad and just had to go home because there was just milk everywhere so, that was probably the worst one. I've had a few minor ones but that was probably the worst one, and I think that was because I could hear her, I could that was what she wanted and, you know, you're a mother and you can feel it in your tummy that your baby's crying and she needs you and, you know, nobody else could give her what she wanted and it was just I had to get back as soon as I could and by the time I got back my t-shirt was drenched so that was the worst let-down I ever had away from her. 
 

Support from her partner made a big difference but the best support was that which she sought from other breastfeeding women.

We came home two days later because the baby just wasn't very well, and once, once we got home I think, once you're back in your own environment and, you know, things, things do change, you know, once, once you're home and you've got support from your partner twenty-four hours a day, which you don't have while you're in hospital, I think that makes a big difference because inevitably the problems that you have are in the middle of the night when all you want is your partner there to put, to put his arms round you and tell you you're doing okay and, and of course that's the time when they [health professionals] can't be there so. That I think being at home and having that support makes a big difference and, you know, you, it is hard work when you first have a baby you need to sleep, you need, you need to rest and, you don't, I don't think, get the proper, I don't think you get proper quality sleep while you're, while you're in hospital, I don't think you can ever properly relax, you have to be confident that, you know, if you're not there next to your baby that whoever is is somebody that you entirely trust and, that's, for me was only my partner so, it made, it makes a big difference once you come home and you've got other people there to, to help you and, you know, make you cups of tea and [laughs].

So you got a lot of support from your partner once'

Yes.

'you came home?

Yeah, yeah.

Anybody else?

Various people within my family gave the general support that they give, that they could give but I don't think anybody felt in a position to help with feeding, you know, that was kind of, all that's your area and that's, I mean I'm not lucky enough to have my mum that lives nearby, I never have, and, you know, telephone support is, it's one thing, she came over when the baby was six weeks old and that, that made a big difference, and she's done the same whenever I've had any subsequent children, but, I found the support that I've sought out myself through the people I'd, people I've met in the NCT have been, have been great and I don't think there's any, any better support that you can get than, than that from somebody else who's either done it or is doing it, so I found the sort of coffee mornings and things like that once I, once the baby was, you know, a few weeks old and, you're able to get out and about, that was, that's been a great support, when I've had all of the children it's been, it's been immense, just to be able to talk to somebody else that's going through it, and you do find that as your confidence grows you're probably not so much getting the support from them, as supporting them but you don't even realise that at the time, you know, I think they, just having a conversation about breastfeeding I think, is for both of you just to hear somebody else saying, 'Oh I've done that' or, 'Yes and we've been there' it does make a big difference so that's where most of my support has come from, is from, from others that I've met.

And finding out that what you're going through'

Yeah.

'is normal?

And that somebody else has been there and done that or, it makes a big difference. Yes, yeah, I think when you have more than one child you find that you have so much else to think about, [baby coughs], and not having, not having sort of friends and family on the doorstep makes, makes a big difference, and when, when we moved we were quite, I felt quite isolated when I had my son, and my daughter was, three and a half, three years and nine months old when I had, when I had my s

She thinks that breastfeeding her children changed attitudes within her extended family and she and her husband believe that their daughter will also breastfeed.

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 we've 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-in-law is very helpful, very, very supportive but, you know, we have had, in terms of the support that she's given both of us, there have been times when she's said, 'Oh don't you think that, the baby should be on a bottle now?' and we've just said, 'Oh not yet we'll, you know, we're 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-in-law and her ended up having a conversation about breastfeeding and my mother-in-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 he's 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 she's, she's 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.
 

She regrets weaning her first baby to return to work but says that she will not make the same mistake again.

I breastfed my daughter until she was, I think she was about fifteen weeks old and it, we didn't have many problems, to start with once the first few days were over we got established into quite a good routine and then when I had to start thinking about going back to work and, just other people looking after her I felt I think that I needed to, you know, start giving her, giving her bottles and, that was just, it was a natural progression at the time, but it is something that I regret now I wish I'd carried on feeding it, now I know that in fact life would have been far easier if I had carried on feeding her. The first, we didn't have that many problems, and once we got, once we got the first, first few days, the first week sort of established there weren't that many problems we just, you know, we, we plodded along and then as, you know, this starting to, needing to go back to work thing and then, you know, starting the baby on solid foods and just various things happened and, once you got to that, that stage we, we stopped, we stopped breastfeeding and in some ways that was a good thing for us, I had to go back to work, she started sleeping through the night, you know, in some ways that was, you know, it was right for us at the time, but it is something that I regret and, something that's made me even more determined to, to feed my subsequent children for longer because I then, I started to get, I got jealous when I saw people breastfeeding their babies, I got, I felt like, not that there are any signs of this, but I felt like, you know, the baby wasn't getting the best and, you know, but this was all after I'd stopped breastfeeding, if I'd thought about it more, I would have, I would have carried on, but, you know, you don't have, you know, you don't have the support that, I didn't have anybody to say to me, 'Well why don't you try this, why don't you try expressing milk' that wasn't something that I ever tried. Whereas I now know that, I now know that I can express milk it's not, because I'm breastfeeding I don't have to be at home all the time, it doesn't mean that nobody else can ever feed the baby, I now know that if I want to go out on a girl's night out without the baby I can, and I can leave milk and it's not a problem, at the time, at that time I didn't know that, so if I felt I was, I was going out, I had a hand breast pump that I tried to express milk with and it didn't ever work, I found it painful, I found it uncomfortable and I never got, I never got any milk. so once you've tried that a couple of times and it doesn't work and it hurts you, you don't try it again. So when I started needing to leave the baby I was starting to leave a bottle of formula with her, with whoever was looking after her and, it moved on from there and, then the baby started having solid food and so we stopped and that was that, at the time it wasn't a problem and I probably didn't even regret it as much until I had my subsequent son and it was only then that I realised what I'd missed out on the first time round. And I think it was that, you know, the reason that, giving baby formula milk didn't even cross my mind until he was far older than my daughter was anyway.

I can hear the regret obviously it's very, very strong.

Yeah.

How do you deal with that? How do you come to terms with it?

My way of coming to terms was it, with it was by not doing it again. that was my, the only thing I could do, I wasn't going to beat myself up about it and I can't, you know, at the end of the day I had a happy healthy baby and I can't, I can't complain about that, and everybody, if ever I did feel down, if ever I'd said, 'Oh I wish I hadn't stopped' that's exactly what everybody would point out to me is, you know, it's you that's feeling this not the baby,

She began to question herself and her milk supply when her baby gained weight slowly and got help from a breastfeeding counsellor and reassurance from a paediatrician.

What made you worry that you didn't have enough milk for this baby?

I've got, polycystic ovaries, which, I'd read that can affect your milk supply and I'd had a friend who had quite, terrible problems with milk supply. and then when she was, the first twelve or, sort of twelve or fourteen weeks of her life she didn't put on as much weight as the health visitors said she should, she wasn't following the correct line on her chart, in fact this was about, this got to, it was about six or eight weeks and she'd not really put on any, any weight at all, although to me she was fine, and I was happy with how she was doing she, the health visitor said that she wasn't putting on weight at the right rate. This made me start to feel that perhaps, perhaps I wasn't making enough milk, although I've since learnt that, that wasn't, that wasn't the case at all. I worried about it, we did have a phase when she was, I couldn't tell you exactly, but around sort of two, two, three months where she started sleeping a bit too much for a baby for her age. Going large, long gaps between feeds and I was a bit worried that, well I wasn't really worried, but I did contact, I contacted an NCT breastfeeding counsellor, who was absolutely brilliant and said that sometimes, sometimes baby's who, who aren't getting quite enough milk they sometimes don't have, you know, enough energy and they can become sort of more lethargic. And she suggested something so simple that I was amazed that the health visitors hadn't suggested when, she said that if I felt the baby wasn't getting enough milk, or if I felt the baby was sleeping for slightly too long then, wake her up and feed her [laughs]. And looking back now it seems so basic and why on earth was I getting referred to consultant paediatricians for a baby that was failing to thrive before attacking the basic, the basic options of, you know, maybe feed her a little bit more and then she might put on a bit of weight? So we did that for, I think two days, woke her up, I was waking her up every two to three hours.

Night and day?

Yep night and day and, that week she put on about six ounces so, and from there on in she was great, it only took two or three days to get her, you know, back to, back to herself, so and she's not, not had a problem ever since and has put on weight at a wonderful rate so. But I did have a worry, at the time when, and when you think there is something wrong with your baby and when you've got somebody saying to you every week, 'Oh she's not put on enough, how long was she feeding for?' and, you know, you do start to doubt yourself, and this was the first time and, you think, 'My third baby I shouldn't be having these problems I should be' and to some extent I think that the health professionals thought that, 'It's her third baby she's done it enough, she doesn't need any kind of support, we can, you know, we're better off channelling our energies somewhere else'. So I was pretty much sort of left to it, but as I said, I spoke to the NCT breastfeeding counsellor and she sort of said, 'Well let's get back to basics here, what are you worried about?' and I said, "Well I'm worried that, you know, she's having these really long sleeps in the day, you know, sort of five, six hours sometimes' and she said, 'Okay have you tried waking her up?' [laughs] and I thought, 'Well there's, there's an idea'. And once we started that it was absolutely fine, and she's put on weight. Although, I stopped going to get her weighed, I decided that.

So you were saying that something just as simple as feed her more often, wake her up and feed her more often?

Yes I think that when, when there is a problem, which, which there was, it was a problem, the, your instinct is to look f

She described having her first baby in a Moses basket beside her bed but subsequent babies slept in the family bed.

I don't know how I managed the nights [laughs] to be honest to start with, I remember one of the first nights, about night three, three or four, I remember deciding that was it, I can't do it, I felt the baby wasn't getting any, any milk, I felt like I was starving the poor baby and, I knew the midwife was coming to visit me at some time between ten and twelve a.m. the next morning and believe me I was counting down the minutes to that visit, and when the midwife did come in the morning it, it was just a positioning problem but, and she was great and just helped me, you know, hold the baby at a slightly different angle and the problem was resolved, but in the middle of the night it felt like a lot more than a positioning problem, it felt like everything was going wrong, it felt like I, how could I be a good mother if I'm starving [laughs] my baby which is, which is, at the time because it was the middle of the night and because you're completely irrational at that time, because you've had no sleep and, you know, you feel like a complete and utter failure, yet the next morning once, you know, once we'd got through the night and that, my husband didn't go and buy a bottle of milk which I was very close to telling him to do, you know, once the midwife came within sort of an hour of her going I felt like the best mother in the world [laughs] so, you know, it's, it's the full spectrum of emotions and I think the lack of sleep has, has such a big, a big impact on everything to do with having children especially feeding them.

Did you have the baby in the room with you?

Yes I did.

In the early days I'm talking about. 

Yes, yes my first daughter was in the Moses basket next to the bed she was in with us until she was about six months old and she always slept next to the bed she didn't ever sleep in the bed with us. I think that was a lot to do with having, maybe read a little too much [laughs] and, with subsequent children and, with my six months old she slept in the bed with us which I think is why we've sa, no, no problems at all with breastfeeding [laughs] with this one.

Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit more?

In terms of her sleeping in, in with me now?

And no problems why.

I think I don't know if it was because she was the third child I just relaxed so much more with her and started to appreciate the time that I had just with her, because when you've got other children, or other things, or jobs, or anything else you don't have the one-to-one time, I don't have the one-to-one time with my baby now that I had with my first daughter because I have so many other things to do. So I found that, you know, night times and evenings are sort of a real special time when it's just the two of us and we can just relax and, the night time feeding is exhausting if you have to get up, lift the baby up, sit up, prop your pillows up, get comfortable, change the nappy, all the things that I did with my first daughter, this baby doesn't get her nappy changed in the middle of the night unless she absolutely needs it, I don't even turn the light on when she wakes up [laughs], I don't think I even wake up most of the time now, I just, I lift my nightie, latch her on and go back off to sleep and, it makes such a difference, you wake up in the morning not feeling like, for all you probably have fed three or four times in the night, you don't feel like you've been up three or four times in the night and it makes a difference for my partner too, because he can just sleep all night, he barely knows that, that we're awake, I mean he will wake up and, you know, 'Do you ne