Interview 38

Age at interview: 26

Brief Outline: Breastfed - almost exclusively, only just beginning solid food at one year. Sleepy baby with jaundice, occasional blocked duct. Baby shares mother's bed. Support group important.

Background: At the time of interview, this 26 year old, single, White British woman, was breastfeeding her 1 year old daughter. She was a trainee accountant.

More about me...

This woman comes from an area where breastfeeding is not very popular (someone even told her that it was not natural), so she goes regularly to a Sure Start group called Breast Mates for support. She has gone from receiving support and encouragement to being able to offer them to other women. She has lost contact with the friends that she had before she became pregnant 'because they think it's a bit strange breastfeeding [and being] tied to a baby', but has made new friends through breastfeeding and other groups. She has also used the internet for information about breastfeeding and to join web-based mothering chat rooms. As a single mother she has found herself under quite a bit of pressure from various quarters to introduce a bottle, to have her baby weighed regularly, to introduce solids, to get her baby to sleep through the night and to go back to work. She resists the pressure by having 'faith in breastfeeding' and just doing what feels right for her and her baby. Grace is almost exclusively breastfed at one year old and her weight does not follow the weight charts. She says that Grace will decide when she will wean.

She advised all women to try breastfeeding and not to buy anything for it except perhaps a nice bra.

What would you say to a pregnant mother then?

What would I say? I'd definitely encourage a pregnant mother to try breastfeeding. I think everyone should try breastfeeding. I'm becoming more and more staunch about that as well, because the more you read about breastfeeding the more you find out about it and your baby and you follow this path of breastfeeding, the more amazing you realise it is, and how terrible the breastfeeding rates in our country are. And we, we sugar coat facts a little bit as well, but we say that your baby's at lower risk of such and such, like lower risk of obesity if you breastfeed but you don't hear, see on bottles you're increasing the risk of your baby being obese if you give your baby this bottle. And I'd also advise a new mum, that you don't need to buy anything at all for breastfeeding, if you really want to splash out then buy yourself some nice breastfeeding bras with clips, but you don't need anything else. You don't need to pump yet, you can get that six months down the line when you go back to work. You don't need any of the things that people try to sell you. Breastfeeding's free and they're just trying to cash in on it, because if you choose to breastfeed then formula feeding companies lose a lot of money. Because formula is expensive and then the bottles, the steriliser's, the colic drops, all sorts of things can then be sold on to you, whereas if you choose to breastfeed, you're really saying, 'Don't need to spend any money this year, or this six months.' because some babies might wean before six [laughs] and count the solid food before six months.

She loved being a mum so much that she delayed her return to work for as long as she could.

I'm going back to work soon, so, I was originally planning to go back to work at three months, because I thought I'd be bored, and I've just loved being a mum. Nobody ever said to me, 'You might just really, really enjoy it, and you might just find yourself and have a brilliant time.' And that's what's happened. So, and there was quite a lot of pressure, when I was pregnant, as if like a single mum with a career, or trying to build some kind of career, there was quite a lot of pressure to either not have the baby or then to go back to work quickly. And so I'm quite glad that things have turned out the way they have, it went from three months to six months to nine months to a year. And now I've finally set a date, at about sixteen months, when Grace is sixteen months I'll be going back to work two days a week.

I kind of hear a little bit of a reticence still about that.

There is a bit of a reticence about going back to work, I've got to work because, I've got to earn money, and one day, at the moment I live with my mum, but one day we want a house of our own, and we want nice things, and so I've got to, I've got to work, I've done the sums and I've got to work two days a week and so, Grace will have to understand that I'm trying to provide a better future for us, and there's nothing I can do about it. If I could wave a magic wand and win the lottery I would and I would never work again because I'd spend the whole time looking after Grace. But I can't, and there's lots and lots of women in that position so I've found a nursery that I like, I'm never going to think, 'Yeah this is brilliant, and it's better for Grace to be in here than with me', but sometimes you've just got to get on with it and, and find the best you can for your child and then think, 'Well they're going to have to, at least in the short term, go to nursery', and do everything to make them happy.

She was self-conscious in hospital and came home early so that she and her baby could spend...

So the first time the midwife attached Grace for me, and it just felt like I was a bystander watching, this woman kind of shoved my baby on my breast and it's quite, it really was like a shove and it worked and Grace sucked for about ten minutes and then she fell asleep.

I get the sense that you didn't quite like that.

I didn't like that. I'm quite self-conscious and I didn't like people messing with my breasts and things, and I was quite nervous as well, and I didn't, I like to sort things out in my own time so I, I've discharged myself the same day, the midwife was really supportive that I just wanted to go home. They wanted to see Grace feeding before, she went home but I couldn't do it in front of them, I was shaking and I was nervous and like the baby doesn't know what to do, a newborn doesn't know how to feed and you don't know how to feed, you've got to learn together and so it was only when we'd come home and I explained this and they said, 'Well as long as she is feeding' they told me to look out for their ears wiggle and they get, like you can just see there that they, that they're sucking and not just their cheeks going so that was like the advice I was sent home with, and so I went home and I sorted it out myself, just sat in bed with my baby and spent some time getting to know her and just doing it, I don't know, at our own pace with no one watching, so that we could mess it up and it didn't matter.

That sounds like a very special time to me?

It was really, really nice and, I look forward to doing that again with another baby and I think I'd be more confident to that, and to say to midwives, 'I'm just not, not happy with people watching me do this to start with, I need to sort it out first' and then just ask for help.
 

The irony of being asked to move to a changing room when she was breastfeeding next to a super...

What's your experience been of feeding in public?

The, one person in a well known shop's lingerie department came up to me and said that I should be doing it in a changing room and I was sat right next to this super cleavage push-up bra, and I was thinking, 'how bizarre that I shouldn't be feeding my baby here because you don't take your clothes off to breastfeed, you just like discreetly attach them', if you've got a hungry baby that wants feeding it's so easy, that just, it makes it ridiculous to have to go somewhere to feed your baby the whole point of breastfeeding is it's easy, it's quick, and it's natural.

And you do it wherever?

I do it wherever, if it would be acceptable to bottle feed a baby then I'd breastfeed a baby so, if it was somewhere like toilets I'd think it was pretty disgusting to bottle feed a baby in toilets so I wouldn't breastfeed Grace in there unless she really, really needed just a little bit of comfort, but yeah I'll feed her wherever.

Few people in her area breastfeed because the knowledge has been lost. Support groups help but...

This area there's not a lot of women breastfeeding and I think that's why Sure Start set up the Breast Mates that really does help, improve the breastfeeding rates and keep these people breastfeeding. I think I'd have given up breastfeeding if I hadn't have gone to this group because I would've felt that I was the only one, and occasionally I do and people can be quite subtle about being not supportive about breastfeeding and they can just say like, 'Oh you're breastfeeding are you?' and then the next question will be, 'oh I don't expect your baby sleeps through the night then' or, 'I don't expect you can do this' and then just kind of almost blank you, and I do go to some groups where I'm the only woman breastfeeding, and sometimes I feel a bit self-conscious because it's human nature to feel a bit self-conscious. And I've just, I've had friends, I've made friends there, it's just we don't talk about breastfeeding or bottle feeding and we don't get into that whole debate because I don't want to offend people for their choices.

So it becomes a taboo subject when you're with a group that doesn't do what you do you just don't discuss it?

I just don't discuss it because I have been in situations where I've bit my tongue and someone's said something, like, 'Well I weaned my baby at three months I was putting rusk in their bottle and they slept through the night' and it made me, quite aggressively to me, as if to say I'm doing wrong by not doing that, and I've thought 'should I speak up and say, 'Well that's really damaging to your baby's health and I care more about my baby than to do that', or do I just let it pass and we'll carry on talking about toys and nappie's and various other things' and so it's easier to just let it pass. Which isn't very socially responsible, because if people keep doing that then breastfeeding will still, will always be the underdog.

Why do you think people in this area don't breastfeed? 

I don't know why people don't breastfeed in this area, it's really difficult that, it's not just my generation, lots of these are like third generation women that have been bottle fed and I read on the internet somewhere that if monkeys don't see other monkeys breastfeeding they forget how to do it, they don't know how to do it, and I think that, that's something that people try but they don't have much success and there's no one there to say, 'Well this is how to do it' or, 'you're doing well' or, 'it is difficult to start with' and alright there are easier options, if you want you can give your baby a bottle and go away for the weekend or go to Lanzarote for a week, and that's always there, people are quite willing to say that, but very few people are brave enough to say, 'But women are meant to breastfeed their baby, and babies want to be breastfed and breastmilk's the best thing for your baby' so and, it becomes ingrained in the community that every one of us sees people bottle feeding and so it's just become acceptable and the norm and then anything else is strange.

How do you think that might be overcome?

I don't think we'll overcome it in this country as things stand. Things, breast, people breastfeeding and every person that someone sees breastfeeding may inspire someone and encourage someone and like breastfeeding support groups I go to and the promotion they're trying to do is really good, and breastfeeding awareness weeks are really good. But until there's some, more kind of unpleasant changes for the formula milk industry there's no, I don't think that the trend will be reversed. If all of a sudden no formula milk could be advertised and you had to ask for it over the counter, and every supermarket and every petrol

Breastfeeding did not change her figure too much but it changed the way that she thought about...

I think it, breastfeeding's not changed my figure too much. It's changed the way I look at my figure, I'm not that bothered any more, I'm probably about a stone and a half heavier than I used to be, I used to be very thin and now I'm quite conscious that I don't want to follow these diets that I used to follow, that I've got to have a nutritionally balanced diet, for Grace's sake as well as mine. But I'm quite comfortable with that, it's almost like my body now does what it's meant to do. Breasts are designed to breastfeed babies and that's exactly what my body's now doing. Occasionally, Grace went through this phase of having a night time booby and a daytime booby, and one would swell up like during the day and one would be really small, and they'd be quite lopsided, and I just kind of laugh at it [laughs] it's not worth getting upset about, in fact I quite like it, I used to think it was, it was quite sweet that Grace had decided which one she'd feed on during the day and which one she'd feed on during the night, and that was the result [laughs]. But I miss sometimes having nice matching underwear, because I've got breastfeeding bras on. You can have matching underwear if you want it's just not as easy to breastfeed because you can get bras that clip down and they are, they are nice to have, they're not essential and you can make them yourself, but they are if you can afford to splash out on one or two, and they are nice. 

She always took her daughter off and repositioned her if breastfeeding hurt. She wished she had...

I know because when you're first there you're my first week there, I'd never been out on my own completely with Grace before and I'd never fed her in public before, and I sat there shaking with all these mums whose babies would latch on and just seemed to, they seemed so relaxed and happy doing it, and I sat there, and Grace flipped off and this spout of breastmilk came flying out and I tried to cover it up, like desperately, and now I see mums with their new babies with breastmilk shooting everywhere and you just smile because you can remember doing it, and it still happens now, and now it's just like, 'Oh well' just wipe it off of whatever it's landed on but, when it, when it first happens it's amazing how self-conscious you are about it because you're not confident and you're not sure your baby's latched on, and then you're just conscious of everyone else looking at you, even if it's other mums, and you think how well they're doing it and their babies know how to latch on and you're there trying to get your baby to latch on, and I used to run through, for about three months I used to say, 'Tummy to mummy, nipple to nose and Grace knows what to do' and I used to just cross my fingers that she'd do it properly.

And she did?

She did yeah, I never, I never had sore nipples because I never put up with her latching on wrongly, I used to take her straight off the minute it hurt, the minute it was uncomfortable I used to take her straight off and put on again, and so she's never really experienced what it's like to try and get milk out of a breast because she's latched on wrongly.

Was there a trick to taking her off?

Yeah I find if you lick your finger so it's wet and just slide it in, in your nipple, like just down the side of your breast, it breaks the suction, it's amazing how strongly they suck, if she misses the nipple completely she get, I get a love bite on my boob.

Yeah.

And it's really painful it's almost like a little hot burn on your skin and you just, it's, I was so surprised by how strong the suction was. I think things, if I'd have known what I know now then, I'd have had a really good nose, I'd have tried to find someone who was breastfeeding, and really looked closely at the baby and looked around their breast and looked underneath to see the baby's lip. And quite a new baby so, 'cause they, they tend to latch on differently to an older baby, like Grace will, has her own way of sucking now and it's, it's bigger and so it's less squashed up whereas a newborn baby does look a bit squashed sometimes as they latch on. So I think I would have tried to find someone and they do have, at our Breast Mates group the new mums are happy to let, like expectant mums have a good nose and I think, I would have asked someone to do that, to just have a look at what a normal latched on feeding would look like.

And what would a normal latched on feeding look like?

Well, their ears wiggle, and the bottom lip curls under and you can just about see it but not, it looks different to how you describe a bottom lip curled under, and, they just, the look like they're big long feeding strokes but also it doesn't hurt and that's the main thing, I think if it's hurting there's something wrong and there's so much help out there. If, I know people that don't come under the Sure Start programme that I go to that feeds my breast, that funds my breastfeeding support group. La Leche League's really good and I go there every now and again just to meet other mums but I don't use that as a support as much because I've got my weekly support, but they have people on the phone there if

Her one year old daughter was not very interested in solids. She ignored inappropriate advice...

A daughter.

And how old is she?

She's just gone a year old now.

And is she breastfed?

She's purely breastfed, she doesn't eat any solid food at all at the moment.

Right.

In fact, she won't even touch solid food.

Right, and I saw her she's a bonny baby.

She is. Full of beans. 

Exclusively breastfed?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exclusively breastfed at the moment.

Right.

I tried weaning her at six months and followed all the advice about puree and then finger foods and she went from trying tiny bits to now if there's food on a plate she'll either push the plate away or tip it over, she doesn't like to be near food.

So she's just not interested in this at all?

She's not interested at all which, is quite worrying at times, but the more I've read about things the more I've, I look at her and I think she's just not ready, and she'll eat when she is ready, sometimes she'll look at other children eating and that makes her interested in food, and so I try to just let her see children eating as much as possible and I'm sure she'll eat one day.

Has anybody said anything to you about this?

Yeah I've had a lot of advice about this, that my health visitor is quite worried about it and Grace has been referred to a paediatrician. I've had lots of advice from them from giving her a bottle of formula feed to try and break the cycle of her enjoying breastmilk, and I don't agree with bottles of, because, I used to, but since I've been breastfeeding I've become, I've read more about breastfeeding and I've become more and more into breastfeeding, and the more you read about it, the more you find out, the more amazing you think it is. So I didn't want to give her a bottle, so I just said, 'Oh she won't take it' and they actually said, 'Put sugar in the bottle.' And so I thought about this and I spoke to my breastfeeding support group that I go to and everyone was horrified and said, 'She's got teeth, if you start giving her a sugary bottle there's no goodness in it that she's not getting from breastmilk it'll just have, give you a baby that's addicted to sugary bottles instead of breastmilk.' So I ignored that, then I was told to just stop breastfeeding her altogether and that she'd eat when she was hungry, but I decided to ignore that too, which completely goes against the grain. Before I had Grace, I would have followed to the letter, anything that a doctor said to me, because I wouldn't have even thought to question it. But, with a baby you just have this instinct of what's best and what, you know best for your baby, and so I thought about it and decided that. Once I was ill, I had food poisoning and I was really dehydrated, I just couldn't keep anything down and I knew I didn't have any milk, and Grace just sat beside me for a whole day on the bed, there's no one to take her so she just sat next to me and played and I think she knew that I was ill, and she didn't eat all day and my mum came and offered her food, but she wouldn't, she was wasn't interested, she wouldn't even take water, so I thought if I stop breastfeeding I'm just going to have a screaming child and not a screaming child that eats.