The reason why this bothers me so much is that the writer is claiming a feminist stance: women should be allowed to choose what they do with their own bodies. I don’t argue with that. I do argue with making scientifically inaccurate claims in order to assuage one’s own or anyone else’s guilt. As I have said repeatedly, if we put all our energies into alleviating guilt, then we are never going to make any progress on this. I cannot reconcile a feminist perspective with ‘protecting’ women [and men] from the information they need in order to make decisions. It is a patronising lie to state that there are no risks associated with formula feeding [100 more links available should you need them]. Is it really feminist behaviour to prevent us from making an informed choice just in case our silly emotions should affect us; because we all know how hysterical we girls can get, don’t we?

Ah but there’s the rub. Many women don’t make a choice, never mind an informed one, about how they feed their babies. The Infant Feeding Survey tells us that 90% of women who stop breastfeeding before six weeks would have liked to continue for longer. Get that? 90% of women did NOT choose to stop breastfeeding. And if they didn’t make the choice, then guilt is not the appropriate emotion.

It makes me angry that the formula industry spends £20 per baby on promoting formula, and the government spends 14 pence on promoting breastfeeding. It makes me angry that any money at all is spent on promoting breastfeeding, when all the available resources should be directed towards supporting mothers to breastfeed, if that is what they want to do. And not if they don’t. Because there are valid reasons not to breastfeed, and they include all the complex psycho-social issues that have been batted around for decades, and they also include the bait and switch of ‘breast is best but it’s really hard and maybe you had better also give formula in case your breastmilk isn’t good enough.’

To me, arguing that being truthful about the risks of formula feeding is inherently shaming to mothers who do so, contributes to the concept that formula feeding is shameful. Is it not a horrible thing that women have the choice taken away from them, and are then made to feel ashamed of themselves?

Why not also read: Is breastfeeding advocacy anti-feminist? An essay by Katherine A. Dettwyler

When I talk about breastfeeding to an antenatal class, I know they expect me to idealise it. Sometimes I react against that and terrify them with too much reality. My aim is to be realistic, but more than anything else, to help them open up their minds to the idea that breastfeeding is complex and challenging AND rewarding, and that there are people out there who understand the challenges and don’t judge mothers for experiencing them.

Almost daily, I talk to a new mum who is encountering challenges. Sometimes it’s the same old story from three women in a row; those are the ones about weight gain, sleep, routines. The more unusual stories are often more harrowing.

The most common thing is pain, and I find that lots of the people I meet antenatally expect it to be painful because of a misconception that babies suck nipples. This is the myth we bust, if you’ll excuse the choice of word, with the use of a knitted boob. The nipple goes far back into the baby’s mouth and is not sucked, and should not rub on the gums or the tongue. Milk is extracted by a sort of gentle squishing of the breast tissue by the baby’s jaw, and this should not feel painful. Personally, I advocate an approach where mum lets baby find the nipple using his or her own feeding reflexes, because experience and my reading have shown me how successful that can be, and mums usually look comfortable like that.

But again, it’s not the only tool in the box, and some women do prefer to sit upright. I think there’s a psychological hit in imitating the position (bolt upright, knees at a right angle, baby across the chest) that most books describe as ‘right.’ Here at the coalface, I can tell you that the right position is the one the mother is most comfortable in.

Sometimes she will be most comfortable in a position that doesn’t require any connection at all between her breast and her baby. What a lot of mixed feelings that invokes for me, but it’s not my job to persuade her otherwise, and if she wants to tell me her story, I will listen and learn.

I feel much more strongly, as you know, about babies being left to cry. I could probably pin the entire downfall of society on the utterly flawed belief that babies need to exercise their lungs. Intuitively, and scientifically, I know that denying comfort harms a baby. So this is much more difficult for me to square with my NCT mother-centred training, and when a mum tells me her baby ‘needs’ to cry himself to sleep, I shudder (on the inside). How horrible that must be for both of them.

But what can I say? With breastfeeding, I can confidently and respectfully explain, for example, that there are no discrete substances called foremilk and hindmilk, therefore you cannot control your baby’s fat intake by somehow making him or her stay longer at the breast. (nb. that’s not the language I use in a counselling situation). In the case of crying, I can only listen, reflect, and suggest some reading material.

And then there’s all this stuff about birth that I’m just starting to learn about, and I read Ina May Gaskin and think “yes! of course!” and then I read some anti-HB stuff and worry that I’ve got it all wrong, because there are statistics and research that don’t support what I’m feeling. This is my trouble: I’m not sure I can ever categorically say ALL the research supports what I’m saying. I’ve passed my Understanding Research module and I know what confidence intervals and medians and randomised controlled trials are, but it always seems like someone else’s research might trump the studies I’ve got in my hand, and I just don’t have the confidence, myself, to decide.

Maybe I don’t want to be certain; I should just shut up and listen instead.

He had a go at grinding corn into flower, felt the weight of a shield and a sword, and speculated about where people cooked their tea when they had no cookers. He was even allowed to stand on a rampart and fling pointy sticks over the fence, which was pretty terrifying.

The guide did say that it was impossible to know how people with no written tradition would have lived, when all they have to go on is what they find in the ground: post holes and bits of broken pot. So I was very interested by her reconstruction of a wicker moses basket. Remember this is conjecture ^[1] about a culture from more than 2,000 years ago. That’s where the baby would sleep, she said.

And my inner mothering-nerd immediately kicked in: Really? Not in the bed with the parents?

She shrugged. Well, during the day he would have gone in the basket and been hung up on the wall.

How could she know this? And does it fit with what we do know about baby management in ancient cultures. Pretty much the only thing we know for certain is that there were no manufacturers with a vested interest in keeping parents apart from their babies. There was no formula milk (there may have been wet nurses, but I’m not convinced this was a common thing at that time). There were no sleep monitors, dummies, pushchairs, automatic swings, car seats or any other place where babies could be left while mothers got ‘back to normal’ after giving birth to them.

What would normal have been, for women in a Celtic tribe? Going to the gym to get their figure back? Having lunch with friends? Sitting down with a cup of tea and a book for an hour? Or continuing to do the day to day things that contributed towards the tribe’s survival?

Until very recently (and currently, in some Asian and Hispanic cultures), new mothers would have had a lying-in period for days or weeks following the birth of a child. In China, new mothers ‘do the month,’ staying at home and being looked after by the women of their community. We are among the first generations of humans to become parents almost in isolation from a community. I conjecture^[2] that Celtic women would have been surrounded by a community of other women, who would have eased the transition to parenthood (which, incidentally, wouldn’t have been such a dramatic event in ancient cultures); and that after a lying-in period, the new mother would have strapped her baby to her front and got on with the chores.

[Just as an aside, I think we are believing that Celtic spirituality would have been largely about goddess-worship and veneration of fertility, so motherhood and lactation would be highly valued, in contrast to modern western society.]

So that’s item one for the case against the moses basket. Item two is the basket itself. Again, I conject^[3] that Moses’ mum^[4] didn’t have a moses basket to hand. I think there’s some story in some work of fiction about how she hid him for three months before making a basket and casting him into the river. It wasn’t a standard piece of baby kit back then, and I’m not convinced it came into regular use until much much later. I’m thinking Victorian orphans, also the early recipients of artificial milk; or whichever orphan babies were actually kept, as opposed to being exposed on hillsides etc.

My final piece of evidence is, you guessed it, breastfeeding. We have already established that baby would have been strapped to mother, because, as we have also established, the moses basket wasn’t around yet. The style of breastfeeding is very different in non-western cultures, and perhaps that gives us some insight into the way children would have been nursed in ancient Britain. We know that the human newborn needs to feed little and often, because that’s how his digestive system works best, and because he is growing (physically, socially and neurologically), very fast, day and night. We know that this little-and-often business establishes a robust milk supply; and also that exclusive, on-cue breastfeeding prevents conception, and therefore this would have naturally spaced out the pregnancies.^[5] Having baby strapped to mum is easily the most practical way to achieve this.

So my proposal is that Celtic villages would not have featured beautifully woven moses baskets with darling little blankets in them. And that it’s all very well having a conjectural reconstruction, with oodles of enthusiasm and imagination, but then you’re inevitably going to get some nerdy type coming in and saying that’s not what they would have done, whether it be the druid’s temple or the handspun fleece or the parenting style. Even archeologists are not immune to the marketing of the modern mummy.

1. I do really like this word, but also I’ve just finished reading Fermat’s Last Theorem, and there was a lot of conjecturing in that. [↩]
2. some discussion about use of ‘conjecture’ as a verb resulted in my decision to do so [↩]
3. this one I used for a dare [↩]
4. Jocheved [↩]
5. only where baby really is breastfed on cue, round the clock, and given nothing else. Please don’t rely on it and then blame me. [↩]

Fast-forward to the end of my training as an NCT Breastfeeding Counsellor, when a local Health Visitor approached me with the suggestion that we start a group, in conjunction with another organisation (Breastfeeding Network), at the local Children’s Centre. The CC were happy to provide a room on a Friday afternoon, and Breastfeeding Network trained some peer supporters, to help run the group.

For weeks and weeks, nobody came. There were usually more helpers than mums and babies, and it was disheartening, but we understood that it usually takes a while to establish groups like this.

Gradually it started to pick up. After about a year, we started a group on Monday mornings, at the same time as the Health Visitors’ Well Baby Clinic. This resulted in a huge increase in the numbers of mums and babies coming in, as the Health Visitors began to refer mums who were worried about things like weight gain and milk supply, or who were finding feeding painful. We often had mothers come back week after week, just for the company and ongoing support they received from us and from the other mothers at the group. This was the group we had always envisioned.

For two years, the group was run voluntarily by a student breastfeeding counsellor and myself, for some of that time running two sessions a week. When it was well-established, we approached the CC to ask if they were prepared to pay for the sessions. The fee that NCT would charge covered the provision of leaflets and resources, and paid for a qualified breastfeeding counsellor to be there every week. We had several meetings with the management at the CC, and initially they were positive about having a formal, paid arrangement with us. They agreed that the work we do is valuable, as were our specialist qualifications and our experience.

So we were sad and surprised when the final decision from the Borough Council was that not only did they not want to pay for the service (and never at any point did they tell us they did not have the money); but that they wanted us to stop running the group while they undertook a review of breastfeeding support across the borough.

Many of the people who have been to the group in the past have contacted us to tell us how important it was for them. Some told us that they would have given up breastfeeding if it wasn’t for the support of the group. So we are absolutely convinced that it is a valuable and important service. When I approached the local NCT branch’s committee to ask if they would be interested in paying for the service, they agreed without hesitation. The fact that most people on the committee have used the service at some point might tell you why.

The council behaved very badly towards us. We were so very professional when they told us to cancel the service, and asked service users not to make a fuss or go to the papers complaining about it. And then while I was away on holiday, a press release went out saying that they had had to close the Friday group because they couldn’t afford to pay NCT’s charges. The press release went on to state that the Monday breastfeeding support session would continue to run at the usual time. When I queried this, at our meeting, I was patronisingly dismissed as wanting to argue over mere semantics.

We asked them to explain the nature of the group, and they replied that they hadn’t said there was a group; they provide support by giving out the details of the other local groups (in other towns), and national helplines. When I asked how this sat with them having identified the need to reach out to parents who might be less likely to access the service, they just stuttered, and again told me not to be so silly.

Through hard fundraising work and a local grant, the NCT branch is now able to fund two groups a week, keeping me nice and busy, and paying me to do the work. I’ve come in for some criticism from certain other breastfeeding support organisations, who believe that this should be done voluntarily. I disagree. I’m a qualified and experienced specialist, and I have demonstrable results. I make a commitment to be there at the group, and I work hard outside the sessions providing ongoing voluntary support. Time and time again I have had to unravel messes contributed to by the uninformed advice of unsupervised volunteers and people who are not trained in breastfeeding support, including midwives, health visitors, and children’s centre workers.

What is so frustrating is that it seems you have to be on the inside, where I am, to understand why this job needs to be a valued, paid role. You have to see the mothers who come to us for help, who want so badly to breastfeed, to understand what is happening to them, and to get some support and empathy, to ask how this can be such a low priority?

The things you’re expected to give up, on becoming a mother, include your pre-baby figure, your sleep, your ability to concentrate, your social life, your sex life, and your peace of mind.

The counter-argument to this is always but motherhood is so rewarding; see various mummy-bloggers’ cute anecdotes about hilarious nappy changes, first words, adoring gazes at 4am, and so on. While this is all very well, it does seem to relegate the mother’s enjoyment of life to a second-hand experience.

There don’t seem to be many sources that acknowledge the positive changes that motherhood brings about, specifically for the mother (and I’m not just talking about the oxytocin high of breastfeeding). Motherhood (and arguably, we could say ‘parenthood’ but I’m just writing about me today) can bring about huge personal growth. Understanding and accepting that you are such a key part of someone else’s world is a huge responsibility, and might be impossible for non-parents to grasp in its entirety; but when you take stock of the resources you didn’t know you had, the range of functioning you can manage on limited amounts of sleep, and the sheer protective strength you can find, all this adds up to quite a superhero status.

Motherhood can bring about a growth in understanding and empathy, especially in our relationships with our own mothers. We find out things we never expected to know about our own babyhood. For me a lot of things slotted into place when my mum talked to me about how she had felt, aged 21 alone with a newborn baby and a husband who – I’m assuming – was as emotionally disengaged then as he is now.

I particularly notice the contrast in empathy from other parents, compared with childless friends. Of course these are generalisations, and I have some wonderful childless friends who have been supportive and fun and great with Bernard. Those are the ones I prefer to spend time with, rather than the childless friends who assume I want a break from being a mother (how can I get a break from my own identity?), and that I am bored of talking endlessly about how wonderful my child is. Seriously, that subject can never tire for me, so forget it. Do you want to talk about your favourite subject all the time? I thought so. The people I tend to take a break with are other parents, who can share that feeling of enjoying the sense of freedom, while simultaneously missing the little ones. They don’t expect me not to be a mother.

Nor do you see, from the superficial coverage that is widely available, that all those sacrifices are rarely black-and white. Some of us like our new bodies; there’s a reason for being a curvy mama beyond mere indolence and chocolate biscuits! I have a far busier social life than I had before becoming a mother; and those shreds of my pre-baby social life that remain, are the ones I really value. And who expects their sex-life to remain static?

I don’t think motherhood in its conventional sense came very easily to me. But as far as my identity is concerned, it has made me feel better-defined, more purposeful and more confident. I know this isn’t every woman’s experience of motherhood; I was and am exceptionally well-supported, and that makes a huge difference. What I’m saying is that motherhood can be these things, and perhaps on International Women’s Day we should be calling for motherhood to be valued and supported so that for women, it is these things.

9th February 2011

Dear Ms Teacher

Nestlé box top scheme

I was sorry to read in the most recent newsletter a plea to parents to collect Nestlé box tops, and I wish to register my opposition to the Nestlé box-top scheme.

As the NCT Breastfeeding Counsellor for this area, I support the Nestlé boycott and I do not wish my son to be encouraged to ask for Nestlé products. Nestlé is the target of a boycott in 20 countries because of its unethical and irresponsible marketing of breastmilk substitutes.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF):

“Marketing practices that undermine breastfeeding are potentially hazardous wherever they are pursued: in the developing world, WHO estimates that some 1.5 million children die each year because they are not adequately breastfed. These facts are not in dispute.”

Monitoring conducted by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) shows Nestlé to be responsible for more violations of the marketing requirements than any other company. Nestlé is excluded from the relevant ethical investment lists produced by FTSE4Good because of these activities, which contribute to the unnecessary death and suffering of infants. Instead of making the required changes to its marketing policies and practices, Nestlé embarks on public relations exercises, attempting to improve its image. The box-top scheme fits this pattern.

If Nestlé really did care for children, it would stop its aggressive marketing of baby foods. And it would stop promoting unhealthy cereals to children. Nestlé makes much of its Shredded Wheat, even advertising it claiming “You’d never add salt. Neither would we.” But most Nestlé’s cereals do have high levels of added salt, according to Food Standards Agency definitions. The sugar content has also been criticised. It is not appropriate on health grounds for the school to encourage children to consume these products by promoting the box-top scheme, and goes against the school’s healthy eating policy, whereby you explicitly discourage unhealthy snacks, crisps and chocolate in the children’s lunches.

I would like to think that the school will look at the wider picture: what does a commercial relationship with the world’s most boycotted company teach the children? Nestlé’s generosity amounts to a penny per serving (much less than this in practice as many box tops will not be redeemed), so you could ask children to put by a penny each breakfast to send to the school, whether the breakfast is cereal or something healthier.

I for one would be more than willing to donate a book each term, rather than have Nestlé benefit from this free advertising directly at our children, and I feel confident that if other parents were aware of the global and local effects of their unethical practices, they would probably agree.

I have enclosed some further information. You can also look at http://www.babymilkaction.org/, and finally, I would be more than happy to come in and talk to you about this interesting subject!

Yours sincerely

Karen
Mother of Bernard
NCT Breastfeeding Counsellor

It may sound deeply obvious, but having a baby is a massive life event. It impacts on the couple as a couple and as individuals. Anthropologists have observed some interesting stuff about how the behaviour of men and women towards each other changes following the birth of a child; new mothers have a deep evolutionary need to remind our partners that they are responsible for us (for example, compulsively addressing him as ‘daddy’). Sorry, Old-Fashioned Feminists, but evolution takes thousands of years, and human behaviour (and biology) still works as though we live in clans with defined roles. My point is that pressure on a new couple to behave as if nothing has changed jars with our instincts and with the reality of life with a new baby.

Consumer-driven Twenty-first Century Western society, of course, has all the solutions for this. New parents can buy whatever they need to help create distance between themselves and this utterly dependent small creature: mechanical rocking chairs, under-mattress breathing detectors, artificial milk; there’s really no need to be at the beck and call of a baby, and it doesn’t do it any harm, does it?

I hate to talk about benefits and disadvantages. I prefer to talk about normal behaviour, biological expectations, and so on. Nature is very clever. Here’s an example: skin contact stimulates the release of oxytocin. What is oxytocin? It’s a hormone that makes you feel good. Remember orgasms? That’s oxytocin. Touching releases oxytocin; holding hands, kissing, nibbling someone’s ear, that all releases oxytocin. When your child grazes his knee and you kiss it better, that releases oxytocin. Oxytocin helps a woman to labour, and releases milk to feed her baby. Cuddling a newborn baby releases oxytocin. For both parties. Wrapping him up in a blanket and leaving him to cry himself to sleep in another room releases adrenaline, which suppresses oxytocin. For both parties.

Last week a couple came round for some help with feeding. It took a while to get mum and baby comfortable, but eventually we found a way [no surprises to anyone with any breastfeeding knowledge: mum reclined, baby self-attached]. The baby fed. Mum said: why does it make me feel so…. good? That’d be oxytocin, along with relief from anxiety and a sense of satisfaction.

Now, you may argue that it’s not my comfort zone that matters here. If a mother is struggling to feed her new baby, she should not have to make the effort to trek across town with all that newborn paraphernalia and nonsense, especially in this cold weather. She should be supported in her own environment, enabled to get comfortable in the place where she does most of her feeding. My only argument against that is that sometimes a change of scenery can really help. Oh, and it allows me to see people at random times like 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning, having parked Bernard in front of the telly with a piece of toast.

I’ve only started doing even this level of one-to-one counselling quite recently, when a new dad phoned me early one morning saying that his wife had been in tears all night and they just could not feed their baby. Come now! I said, and rushed into the shower.

It is probably the one time in the week when I can genuinely tell someone to stay as long as they like, because we have nothing better to be doing. I can make everyone a cup of tea [and toast too; when do new parents get their breakfast, otherwise?]. I can offer her the Famous Magic Chair of Relaxation [so named by a satisfied client]. She can talk about the birth, and what it’s been like, and how tired she is. She can cry [I have tissues]. They usually bring their partners, and the partners chat with Bernard or peruse the books, and listen and watch and support. After a little while, the baby opens its dark little eyes, having been snuggled up in a car seat, cosily asleep. I ask the mum if she thinks the baby would like a feed, and a few layers of clothing are removed from both parties, and we get them comfortable together.

So far, these visits have been largely successful. Do you know why? Because in this environment, everyone calms down after their awful night/traumatic birth/hideous first week. They feel listened to, not just given yet more conflicting advice. They feel cared for and cared about; and really all I have to give are time, tea, and the Magic Chair.

At first we regularly had more volunteers than people coming along for support. In fact, we seemed to be providing a different sort of support than we had anticipated, because the mums coming along were often mothers of older breastfeeding children, who also wanted to play with the marvellous facilities at the Children’s Centre. The CC staff objected to this arrangement; in their view, breastfeeding support was something that new mums needed, and in a way it’s true, because if you are still feeding a toddler or a preschool age child, you tend to have got through the worst challenges and found your own support networks. But then, there is absolutely no overt support available for women in that situation, so I like to think that we did some good while we were waiting for our ‘real’ clients to come along.

Now we have two groups a week, on a Monday morning and a Friday afternoon. We have fewer volunteers, and more mums dropping in, and it’s getting to be a problem. Sometimes I am on my own with six or seven mums and babies to see in two hours. Worse, sometimes my unqualified colleague is on her own with six or seven mums and babies to see in two hours.

And those six or seven mums will almost entirely be from the same demographic: the NCT mums. This is partly because of course I tell clients about the group at antenatal classes, but also for some reason the CC just doesn’t seem to appeal to a wider social group than this. Cynically, I suspect that the Health Visitors might only signpost those mums to us who they consider really want to breastfeed (it’s an established fact that in a neighbouring area, the midwives selectively tell middle class mums about NCT antenatal classes, and bundle the proles off to the NHS classes. Did you know that if you’re on a low income, you can get up to 90% off the fee for NCT classes?)

What would be really nice, would be a budget from the CC to raise the profile of the group, to reach out to a wider demographic, and to train up some Peer Supporters. Peer Supporters are mums who have breastfed their baby, and have received some training in listening skills, breastfeeding knowledge, and IMPORTANTLY boundaries. They would give us an extra few pairs of hands on Mondays and Fridays, and perhaps we could extend the service to the places we know that new mums do go.

Providing breastfeeding support ticks so many boxes for the CC, and yet there is never any money. This (and the last) shortsighted government would rather allocate budgets to cure than to prevention, as it were. There is, for example, money available to tackle obesity, and there are studies showing that formula fed children are more likely to be obese. But it is very hard to find the words to explain what to me is an obvious conclusion, without provoking a knee-jerk reaction about guilt and/or choice, which hinders an open discussion.

So there you have it. We will continue to talk to the CC management, who will tell us how much they would like to give us some money, but they don’t know how much they’ve got to spend, and anyway there has just been another change in management so we have to wait until things have settled down. We have had this conversation three or four times in the last two years. And we will continue to provide the service, voluntarily, twice a week, because what else is there to do?

8am and my mobile rings. It’s the partner of a mum I met in a class a few weeks ago, baby came ten days early and she’s finding it a challenge. He says she has been in floods of tears all night, and I have nothing better to do at this time on a Saturday so I invite them over. I quickly do yesterday’s washing up, and then dash into the shower and get dressed.

Simon, Ann and baby Joseph turn up 45 minutes later and I make them some tea. We talk. I have no magic wand but I do hear what she’s saying. I have my theory about what’s going on, but it’s not helpful for me to be yet another expert with all the answers, so I mainly just listen, nod, grimace occasionally, offer a couple of tentative suggestions, and make more tea. The baby grizzles a bit, and she slouches back with him vertically on her body and lets him latch on by himself. I so rarely see this, and it’s a fine example of allowing the baby to use his own reflexes to get himself on in a good position. He has a really good feed and goes to sleep on her chest.

This is such a good time of the week to do this. During the week I’m either at work, teaching, or accompanied by the Small Boy. In the evening I’m either teaching or zonked on the sofa in front of the telly. The most active thing I do on a Saturday morning is hit refresh on Facebook a few times, and maybe do the washing up. I should open a drop-in group at 8:30 on Saturdays at my house.

Ann and Simon leave, and Pete emerges to make me a latte (he is the barista as well as the martini king). We all wander into town to do some chores, then have pasties for lunch. Straight after lunch I have to switch into active mode, put on some make-up and load my teaching kit into the car. Make sure I have the key for the venue, fresh milk, enough biscuits, and my flip chart pad. Kiss goodbye to the boys (I think they are going ten pin bowling) and head out.

Every venue has its own challenges, and I teach in a lot of different places. Today’s is a relatively easy one: one key, an alarm code, digital door locks. A hot water boiler which is always nicer than kettles, and mugs are provided so I don’t have to take my own. The chairs are dreadfully scruffy, but comfortable; and the decor is vile but at least an improvement on the church hall where I stand in between two posters about Jesus.

Five minutes before the class is due to start, no-one has turned up. Rationally, I know I have the right time and place, but until clients appear, I doubt myself. I have dragged all the chairs into a horseshoe shape, set out the refreshments in the kitchen, placed an array of useful and interesting leaflets on the table near the door, and spread a load of A4 photos of breastfeeding mothers on the floor in the middle of the horseshoe.

At last the group starts to trickle in, and soon I have a full class, minus one of the dads who ‘had to work’ (for which read ‘preferred to watch the football because he thinks breastfeeding has nothing to do with him’). They potter about getting drinks and chatting, and eventually sit down. An expectant hush descends. Literally expectant. There are eight bumps in this room (not counting the dads).

One guy continues texting through my preamble, the health and safety stuff about the venue, my introduction, the blah about evidence-based information and non-judgemental support. We turn our attention to the pictures on the floor, and they each choose something that strikes them. Texting guy picks up the one nearest to his feet. We start to talk about the pictures, and lots and lots of interesting stuff comes out at this point. Themes emerge; some groups are more positive than others. The unaccompanied mum makes a snippy, judgemental remark about the mum in her photo, who she considers to be over-exposed, feeding her baby on a bus. They all agree that they don’t like the idea of breastfeeding in public and we talk about that for a bit. More than once they tell me breastfeeding is difficult and painful, but you have to persevere. Someone makes reference to Little Britain and I notice that I have finally reached the point where I don’t feel the need to pretend to laugh.

Over the course of the three hour session I talk about how breastfeeding works, and how babies’ behaviour helps to facilitate it. When I talk about how the fat concentration of the milk increases gradually during the feed, snippy woman is shaking her head, because she’s read something different in ‘What To Expect.’ She interrupts me with a lot of questions, and that’s a good thing because the group starts to discuss how all this conflicting advice makes it so hard for them. When this peters out, I let them have a break. It’s hard to sit still for such a long time when you’re 35 weeks pregnant, and texting guy probably wants to make a call.

At one point I get the men to teach the women about good positioning and attachment, using my floppy doll and the ubiquitous knitted boobs. This group does it well, with a couple of helpful ad-libs, but mainly sticking to the script. The women have been doing another activity, but I notice that they are usually talking about prams by the time I get back to them after talking to the men. One mum uses her phone to film her husband and his artificial knitted bosoms, and I wonder idly whether this is going to end up on YouTube.

After this comes my favourite bit of the session. There is a real challenge to make those babies real, not theoretical creatures who will behave as predicted by Gina Ford. So we talk about what the babies are experiencing in the womb, and then what it’s like for them after they are born; what do they feel? What do they need? I slouch on my chair with the doll vertically on my body, just like Ann did with Joseph earlier this morning. When I see the mums cradling and stroking their bumps, I know I’ve got their attention.

Finally, I get out the bag of mystery items, and this usually mops up the rest of their questions, like can I have a glass of wine and eat soft cheese again? Will spicy food upset my baby? And when do we need to wind them?

At the end of a session, I’ve achieved my aims if I have demystified breastfeeding a little bit, and conveyed how much support there is out there. If they like me and remember me and call me when they need help, so much the better.

Texting guy helps put the chairs away for me while I pack up my stuff, and everyone leaves, usually saying thank you, probably relieved that it was reasonably interesting and entertaining, and not after all a completely tedious way to spend their Saturday afternoon. I put the mugs away, set the alarm code, and head home.

Bernard and Pete are playing on the PS2. Bernard wants to show me his new racing car and I want to collapse on the sofa and wind down. At least it was only one session today; sometimes I have two groups in one day, and have to concentrate very hard. I give Bernard a boiled egg and soldiers for his tea, and he demands jelly, which I don’t have. It’s his new favourite thing, so I probably should have anticipated that.

After tea, we play ludo until bedtime. While Bernard is having his bath, I send off my invoice and email today’s group with my phone number and useful website; I like to keep on top of the admin. I sit with the boy until he’s asleep, which is pretty much 19:40 on the button, every night. I read a book, he whines and pesters for a bit and then goes quiet. I switch his light out and go downstairs to find that Pete has the takeaway menu ready. I pick up my knitting, he opens a beer, and the opening sequence of True Blood starts to play.

However, Ms Question was coming at it from quite a different angle to Ms Big Picture.

Ms BP was aware of baby’s communication skills, feeding cues and so on. She knew that you don’t just feed when the baby cries. And when I asked what the baby learns about his or her parents, when the parents respond to early hunger cues (rooting, sucking, lip-smacking etc), she quickly replied they learn to trust you. Normally I have to spell that out.

Ms Q was convinced that at some point I had told her she must record the length of her baby’s every feed.

The thing about breastfeeding is that the milk production system is dynamically stable, provided you don’t mess with it, and you ensure it’s operating effectively. The system has all these different elements that facilitate its stability and effectiveness, and when these elements are undermined or misunderstood, that’s when it goes wrong. Sadly the culture we live in is big on the undermining and misunderstanding of breastfeeding, and that’s why the majority of women stop doing it before they feel ready.

Here are some of the indredients in the recipe for no-big-deal breastfeeding.

1. A newborn baby has a stomach capacity of around 5ml. A teaspoon of colostrum (the kind of milk you have when your baby is first born) is therefore big enough to fill it. It is likely that the tiny tummy will both fill and empty quickly, and therefore need to refill frequently. (Undermined by the idea that colostrum is insufficient therefore artificial milk needs to be given, therefore breastmilk production system insufficiently stimulated).

2. Short frequent feeds stimulate the milk to change from colostrum to mature milk, which happens over the next days. (Undermined by the idea that baby’s frequent demand for the breast indicates a problem with breastfeeding, when in fact it may be normal, or it may indeed indicate some problem that could be dealt with. Offering artificial milk does not deal with this problem).

3. Newborn humans are highly dependent and inherently appealing. In cultures where ‘lying in’ is practiced, the newborn’s needs to be close with his or her parents are naturally fulfilled. (In cultures where governments spend 14 pence per baby on promoting breastfeeding, and baby milk manufacturers spend £20 per baby on promoting formula, such as the UK, we have tended to forget about the baby as a person with needs, and started to cast it as a demanding creature that makes its mother’s life difficult). A baby who is kept close to his or her mother is likely to feed little and often, stimulating the milk supply and growing well.

4. When the change in the milk occurs, around day 4, there will be a lot of milk in the breasts. This is called engorgement. It is what it sounds like. It is important to get this milk moving out of the breasts, using baby or pump as necessary. That’s because milk contains something called Lactation Inhibitor, and if the milk remains in the breast then the LI informs the body that milk is no longer needed. Milk production then decreases or ceases. It’s also because the baby needs to feed on the milk.

5. Breastfeeding should not be painful. Pain indicates a problem. The majority of the time, the problem is something to do with the way the baby is held, or the way the baby attaches at the breast. The majority of the time, such a problem can be dealt with by giving careful attention to these things, finding a way to make mother and baby more comfortable. If the baby is well-attached, the mother should feel no pain. If the baby is well-attached, then he or she can feed effectively, giving the correct level of stimulation to the milk supply, keeping mum from getting engorged, and consuming enough milk to sustain his or her own growth and development. (Undermined by the phrase of course it hurts, what did you expect? leading mothers to persevere through pain and misery to the point at which it becomes unbearable, and they stop.

6. Newborn humans may be highly dependent and helpless, but they do have the ability to signal when they are hungry (see above), and stop feeding when they are full. Therefore it should be possible to feed the baby on cue, for as long as he or she needs to feed, without pain, and for breastfeeding to work. (Undermined by pressure from ourselves or others to be in control of the chaos, to get back to normal, to have a life, etc etc etc).

I see a big circular diagram with lots of arrows connecting all these things together. The challenge for me is to convey to pregnant couples that for breastfeeding to work well and fit easily into one’s life (an oft-stated aim), it is necessary to optimise all of these elements. I fear that what this comes across as is an edict that you have to Give In To Your Baby, otherwise you are a Bad Mother Who Never Really Wanted to Breastfeed Anyway. Our modern culture clashes horribly with the needs of a breastfeeding mother&baby. I can understand how hard it is for so many of the women I meet, coming from Important Jobs and busy lifestyles where they are used to having control and predictability. Many work until very shortly before the baby is born, and it seems to me when I meet them in classes that the baby is still very abstract, and their idea of what life is going to be like is unrealistic. Perhaps we should be encouraged to stop working a good month or more before the due date, and spend that time hanging out with new mums (Hm, isn’t that what NCT Bumps and Babies groups are for?). Initially this would be disastrous because all they would hear is the horror stories, but perhaps slowly an understanding of the necessarily fuzzy boundaries of new motherhood might develop.

With the paper form, I would usually get a 90% response rate, and very rarely would any of it be useful. When they leave the session, people usually say thank you, and often a couple might remain to tell me that they found it useful or enjoyable. No-one has ever stayed behind to tell me that they didn’t like it. So in-person feedback is not useful in a learning sense, but at least makes me feel good.

Electronic feedback, usually a few days after the session, gives the respondent time to think about how they found the session. They have probably talked it over with their partner. If something bothered with them, it will still be bothering them, and I give them the opportunity to let me know about it. I suspect that the electronic feedback is skewed towards the negative; either that or I’m really not very good.

Of course I take negative feedback to heart; wouldn’t you? Sometimes I feel it is justified, but also that the element they didn’t like is justifiable; for example the complaint that I don’t answer direct questions. The first is true, as long as I have time to facilitate a discussion: I would rather the group figured out an answer for themselves, than simply sit in front and dictate to them. It’s not really the NCT way, is it? Plus, the ‘right’ answer for one family may not be the right answer for another. So take co-sleeping as an example; most parents-to-be will categorically state that they will absolutely never ever ever EVER have their baby in their own bed. Yet the statistics contradict this: 50% of parents admit to sharing a bed with their baby at least once in the first six months. So even if they think right now that it’s irrelevant and I should just tell them not to do it because that’s what FSID says, perhaps it really is worthy of some discussion? So the question comes: Why would we have the baby in bed with us? and my answer will always by: What do you think? Why do people do that? What are the benefits? What are the risks? How might it impact on breastfeeding? I answer a question with a load more questions, and it irritates the hell out of some people, but I stick by it.

Sometimes I get feedback that is justified and that I feel bad about. This has happened a couple of times recently with relation to one particular activity I do, where I get the dads-to-be to teach their partners the principles of good positioning and attachment. I show them, explain it, give them scripts and props to use, and – crucially – encourage them to stick to the script. And usually it comes across really well, because the group takes it seriously (but not too much), and pays attention when I tell them how it works. But once or twice it has completely bombed, the group of dads has been giggly or tried to ad lib, and the whole thing has been jumbled and confusing.

Inevitably, the feedback then says that I didn’t do a very good job of teaching them something as important as how to position their baby at the breast. Mums-to-be sometimes say they would have liked an opportunity to try it themselves (I try to remember to tell them that there is no point trying this with their massive bump in the way.) I am wondering now if this is usually worse when I only have a small room, and it’s too noisy to explain the activity properly, but no I don’t think it’s that because I had an awful room the other day in Windsor, and the best performance ever from a group of dads (they juggled with the knitted boobs). Sometimes I get to the explanation and then the dads say what do you want us to do? and then I know it will be bad, because if they didn’t listen to the first instruction (I’m going to explain it all to you, and then your job is to convey it to them), then they didn’t pay attention to the explanation either.

One thing I have started to do is recap the whole thing after the dads have finished, although last time I did this, they had done a perfectly good job and I felt like I was patronising them and suggesting they hadn’t done it well. One thing with teaching people about breastfeeding is that you become hyper-aware of the danger of undermining people’s confidence. So maybe I need to decide on a class-by-class basis whether a recap is necessary (In fact they always get a recap, but because it comes maybe 15 minutes later as part of the next segment of my session, perhaps they don’t quite notice that I’ve done it). The trouble is, recapping material that has already been covered uses up a chunk of my time, and I rarely have time to spare.

And then last week, along came some feedback that made my jaw drop: that I was aloof and seemed bored with the material.

Seriously? Those who know me in a non-BFC context may be able to see aloof; but in a breastfeeding context, really, aloof? I find this so difficult to get a grip on. Either the respondent doesn’t understand the word aloof, or they must surely have misunderstood some other element of my performance that day: tiredness, being slightly under the weather, and finding them a fairly heavy-going group, perhaps. Sometimes it’s like that in an evening session, it’s late in the day, I fail to get a spark off them. My questions hover in silence and I have to step in and answer them myself. I don’t think I am bored with the material, but sometimes I am disheartened by a group whose agenda focuses mainly on expressing and what gadgets to buy, as that one did. It doesn’t give me much to work with, when I know I have to convey the mechanics of milk production whilst also conveying that for newborn babies milk=love, safety, health and well-being, and not just food, which explains away much newborn behaviour. Perhaps my internal sigh when someone told me that fathers are disadvantaged in bonding, because they don’t breastfeed, was not as internal as I thought.

I have been saying for weeks that I need a break, so I can come back with a fresh approach and not feel so jaded and cynical; but that isn’t going to happen until December. Next August I will be taking a much longer chunk of time off, for precisely this reason. I am leaving this post with no conclusion, but at least I have reflected on what I can do better and maybe I’ll write that one sometime. Work isn’t busy…

We talked about how my body doesn’t make milk anymore because your body doesn’t need it. I said I understood that you do still need the cuddles, and we’re having a cuddly bedtime story instead. You said my dressing gown is very snuggly.

I don’t know whether it’s a good or bad thing that this happened just before I go away for a training weekend, and will miss you for three bedtimes in a row, the longest we’ve ever been apart. I know you are better at going to sleep for daddy when I’m not here, and you’re old enough to understand that, just like the Owl Babies’ mother, I will always come back (you do think a lot).

Breastfeeding you has changed my life.

When I meet mums-to-be, I remember my pregnant self and my determined focus on breastmilk, the product. I simply had no expectation of the process. No experience, no understanding, no conception of what it was like to hold a baby in my arms and feed him from my body. I knew that not all mums manage to breastfeed, and assumed that they just didn’t want it enough. That’s not true, by the way.

You and me, we didn’t find it easy at first. We found it desperately, devastatingly difficult. We were a mess, but lots of people helped us, and eventually it resolved itself, somehow. I can remember setting a date to stop by if it didn’t get any better (which I think would have been about 16 weeks, but I’m not really sure). Your dad said he had always thought we would just breastfeed for a year and never need formula; he was very matter-of-fact about it, and I was quite taken aback at the time. (Usually, men say things like whatever decision you want to make, I’ll support you, which is incredibly unhelpful).

Anyway, the date passed without me noticing, just like your colic disappeared without me noticing; and one morning I observed that there was some sort of pattern to our days, and neither of us was crying quite so often. It was like we’d been struggling along against the current, and finally emerged into calm water.

At six months I decided you would start stopping. I needed you to take a bottle when I went back to work, so that’s what you would do. I still had a lot to learn about babies and their personal timetables. You didn’t want to eat solid food, you wouldn’t drink from a bottle or a cup, and you certainly weren’t interested in stopping breastfeeding. We wasted an entire box of formula, I went back to work, and you obstinately waited until I came home and then fed pretty much constantly until I went back out again. Over and over again, I realise that life is much easier for all of us if I don’t try to impose adult rhythms on you, constructs and expectations that are meaningless to you. Sometimes it’s hard to see the world from your perspective, but when I do, it makes a surprising amount of sense.

You were 8 months old when I started training as a breastfeeding counsellor. As my tutor said, already statistically insignificant. Breastfeeding by then was my most powerful parenting tool, and one of the few ways I had to get you off to sleep. The more I learned about it, the happier I was to keep on doing it. I didn’t plan this from the start; we just gradually evolved into a breastfeeding pair who were in it for the full term. Or possibly, I evolved, and you were always that way inclined.

There are some memorable moments that I want to record here for you.

At one point during those first difficult weeks, I went to see a LLL leader who sat with me so patiently, and talked to me about getting the position right and waiting for you to open your mouth properly wide. That was our first non-painful feed, and you came off the breast drunken and sated. Although we still had a lot of pain over the next few weeks, just knowing that was possible kept me going.

Hot nights sleeping with you on the spare bed at our old house, you feeding all night, me giving up on the nipple shields because it was too much hassle to sterilise them every time you took a break.

My stepdad parking himself on the sofa for about a week, just after you were born, and saying that lad loves his groceries, doesn’t he? every time I fed you.

Feeding you on the beach in Cornwall, under a sarong, on a sandcastle island made by Pete. At 14 months, that may have been the last time I fed you in public.

A couple of times you’ve had stomach bugs, and couldn’t eat anything. Milk was the only thing you could keep down. Goodness knows what I’ll give you next time.

Once you fell over and banged your knee, and mama milk was the only thing that would help. Afterwards you told me that when you drink it, it goes down into your legs to make them better. You also once told me that milk comes from cows, and I drink it with my head, and it goes into you.

We may never talk about it again. You seem pretty sanguine about the whole thing, and I’m kind of glad it’s happened in this low-key way. Thank you for the experience.

Mama.

I still come home buzzing, almost every time. There are some classes that leave me feeling dissatisfied, but my feedback tends to be positive, so hopefully the clients didn’t feel the same way. I love a group that is reasonably well-informed, interested in the science, and laughs at my jokes.

I would never have imagined that I would enjoy standing up in front of a group of strangers for two hours, and talking. Actually I do try not to do all the talking; I am supposed to facilitate discussion. I have been getting better at doing that, to the extent that I now find we’re still yapping one hour into the session, and I have to shoehorn anything we haven’t covered into the bit after the Positioning & Attachment segment, which is long.

I have said that the clients seem to be satisfied, but I know that in fact they would like more time. They want to cover topics that I can’t fit into my slot. Breastfeeding is too big a subject to do justice in two hours. I should do an activity that helps them to identify sources of support; this is usually the first one I drop when we start running over time. And as for problem-solving, I don’t even plan that in anymore, unless I’m lucky and I’ve got a rare three-hour class. Surely those are two things that people want to get out of the breastfeeding class?

In fact they don’t really know they need to think about support. And I do at least give out contact information, lists of helplines and drop-in groups. Do they absorb it? Do they even remember where the leaflet is, after they’ve had their babies? I tell them to stick it to the fridge, but I can’t make them – they get handed so many leaflets during the months of pregnancy that I don’t blame them at all for bunging them all in the recycling.

And we do cover problem solving as part of the discussion, but when it is woven into the general chit-chat, they don’t know we’ve done it. They can’t look back and remember a specific activity covering that subject, so they think it didn’t happen. Yet pain is one of the first things they mention when I ask what they know about breastfeeding, and we talk about what sort of pain you might experience, why, what it means, what you can do about it, and where you can get help. But you can’t please all of the people all of the time: last week’s feedback asked why we had to assume things would go wrong.

A year ago I was a little overwhelmed by the massive ignorance of the group about what life with a baby would be like. I knew that I was once in their shoes, but I felt daunted that my task was somehow to transcend the birth barrier and help them to get their heads round what to expect when you’re no longer expecting. I don’t feel that anymore. We have good discussions about it, and I try not to answer all their questions. I sometimes think that a good prop would be a ball of string and a pair of scissors.

My knowledge has grown so much since I started teaching, and my confidence, and the fluidity of my performance. It does feel like performing, and I love an appreciative audience. There are nights when they just don’t bounce, they don’t give it back to me, and that can be much more of a struggle. I know I still have a lot to learn. By the end of February, I will have completed the number of teaching hours that BFCs are normally expected to reach in five years. The most important thing I have learned in this time is how much I still have to learn.