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.

Honestly, I don’t know where I stand on this.

However “it was possible that the reason for this symptom may not have been intolerance but overfeeding,” the researchers said..

So, about 2.5 years ago, I signed up to train with NCT as a breastfeeding counsellor. I was full of passion and ideals and that sort of thing. I thought I knew a lot about breastfeeding. I wanted to help people.

I had no idea it was a 3-5 year counselling diploma, with a whole bunch of essays to write and lots and lots of books to read. I was actually quite pleased when I found out. I never even considered training with anyone other than NCT, even though I do attribute the breakthrough in confidence and competence that kept me breastfeeding to La Leche League. Again, I realised later that this was very much the right choice. The NCT culture is more suited to the way I want to work; very much person-centred and realistic. I am talking now about the way the Specialist Workers (teachers, counsellors) operate, not necessarily about people’s perceptions of local NCT branches. Quite another animal.

Having finished all the work a few weeks ago, and submitted my portfolio, and received a letter saying by the way, you passed, yesterday I received my Licence to Practise. Which means that tomorrow may well be my last tutorial, and the knitted boobs are goodbye presents for the girls in my tutor group. They are teaching aids, souvenirs, funnies.

Although I will join a supervision group in a few months, I am going to miss the support from my tutor group. Once one becomes a Toddler Feeding Weirdo, there are few people left with whom one can be entirely congruent. I don’t want to alarm people, put them off by seeming extreme. I do want people to know, because I would like it not to be seen as an odd thing to do; and the more people who talk about it, the less weird it gets.

So anyway, my tutor group. Pretty much the only place I can complain about morning feeds without being advised to stop feeding. And I can talk about our ongoing sleep problems to people who will empathise and not judge. And I can use words like breast and nipple without making people uncomfortable. And so I wanted to say goodbye with a breast.

Once I get my L2P, I will be allocated a supervisor, and have someone to talk to about all the things that bother me, that are too big and personal to raise in my tutorial group (which will anyway no longer be there as a source of support for me).

Perhaps I will also have the confidence to deal face-on with situations that make me uncomfortable at the breastfeeding drop-in I help to run on a Friday. Like Health Visitors advocating cry-it-out for an 8 month old baby, despite the fact that research shows that stress and distress in infants have an actual physical effect on brain development. Surely to goodness, healthcare professionals should keep up to date with evidence-based information? Don’t they have a basic obligation to do no harm?

Or the untrained peer supporter from Another Organisation who, in two hours, barely paused for breath. She has a lot of information about breastfeeding, but no listening skills. She is 20 years old, enthusiastic, committed to breastfeeding, and absolutely destroyed the calm and accepting group dynamic with her personal recommendations and advice.

Or, on a lighter note, the moment on Thursday evening during my talk with the mums-to-be, when one of them asked me how long I had breastfed my baby for.

I shall be teaching just such a class as this on Saturday, in my final few weeks before qualifying as a full-blown Gestapo Lactivist Cow.

I shall be taking along my drum and making sure the mums know that I’m only prepared to support them if they try really, really hard. If those nipples ain’t cracked, you’re clearly not committed to the cause.

Daisy Goodwin’s article is one of many to be expected during Breastfeeding Awareness Week. Why do you think that might be? A 2006 study reported in The Ecologist showed that companies spend £20 per baby on promoting their products, and the government spends 14p per baby promoting breastfeeding. But that’s not even half the point, because speaking as a nearly-breastfeeding counsellor, I’m not about promoting, I’m about supporting.

So I am hacked off already, and it’s only day one, with accusations that we promote breastfeeding without providing the necessary support – the whole point of what I am doing is to provide the support; and that we make out that breastfeeding should be easy and natural (or you’re doing it wrong) – see my posts during July 2006 for proof that I know that’s not true; and that we think less of mothers who do not breastfeed.

What’s that F-Word? Failure. You didn’t hear it from me.

Just a shame that the article is illustrated by a picture of a poorly-attached baby, which would be causing some discomfort for the mother, and ineffective milk removal by the baby.

Remember these things: Mouth WIDE open Chin tucked into the breast More areola visible above baby’s mouth than below Baby’s head in line with its body (i.e. not turning to the side) Baby’s body tucked close up to mum’s (like a cuddle) And relax.

But then, I never imagined I would be breastfeeding a nearly-three year old, either.

I am only teaching the breastfeeding session, and can only teach three classes prior to qualifying (in the next six months, I hope). I was nervous, especially when I received an email from the antenatal teacher who is leading the course, telling me: They put on their agenda that they would like to cover bf, they also put bf support, expressing, pumps and bottle feeding and which is the best formula to use! – so, lots of potential for hijacking the class there. I prepared my answers on formula, but was never asked the question. I think it would take a more belligerent group of people to bring the matter up.

I didn’t tell them until the end that it was my first class, although I did let on that I’m a student. They seemed happy; in fact they gave me a round of applause and I felt all touched. They asked all the right questions, and gave all the right answers. (Like, me: How do you know when your baby is hungry?; them: crying; me: no, crying is a late hunger cue. Let’s talk about other cues. The first cue that your newborn baby is hungry is that it’s awake… How lovely of them to have read the script, I thought).

It went well. And next Saturday is my assessed class, so that had better go well too. Four more assignments to finish and I’m away!

We know from the infant feeding survey that you were already “statistically insignificant” in breastfeeding Bernard when you started training [when he was 8 months old] and the numbers of peers will have shrunk considerably now he is over 2 years old.

What a nice way to be labelled a freak. Meanwhile, Alice announces that she plans to feed young Norris, now 9 months, for as long as he wants. But that she will not be a toddler-feeding weirdo like me, because I am strange. She goes on to point out that when we encountered toddler-feeding weirdos at a La Leche League meeting back in the early days, I was as alarmed as she was by the whole idea.

How things change. But in defence of my u-turn, I know a lot now that I did not know then, and I could not in good conscience do this any other way. Also, the alarming woman whose toddler was on and off her knee for slurps throughout the morning was at a LLL meeting, and if he can’t help himself there, what is the world of extended breastfeeding coming to?

In a very non-baby-led way, we now only feed at bedtime and the crack of dawn (or somewhat before). He lost interest in daytime feeds a long long time ago, but I actively discouraged the nights at the point when I could no longer stand getting up every couple of hours. Now that he has taken up permanent residence in my bed, I’m not sure much has improved in terms of sleep, but I keep telling myself that a need that is fulfilled goes away.

In fact, according to a discussion on the NCT Breastfeeding Counsellors’ egroup at the moment, one of each is more than enough, as NCT policy is to provide evidence-based information, and these books stray so far away from this approach that we cannot give an implicit NCT seal of approval by keeping them in the branch library. I am therefore faced with telling the local committee that I intend to remove The Contented Little Baby, The Baby Whisperer, and all the mush-based weaning books that contain meal planners starting before six months, and are therefore more than five years out of date, according to current official guidelines.

The committee, lovely though they are, includes at least one person who is going to object to the idea of removing the choice. Some people like Gina. Some people retain their sanity because of Tracy. And the NCT is supposed to support All Parents. And because it’s me who has to raise the subject, it can be dismissed as the lunatic rantings of a boob nazi (a term which I find deeply offensive).

And in fact we’re not taking anyone’s choice away, as these are the best selling parenting books in the country, and readily available in the town library, the independent bookshop, WH Smith, and the charity shop that I took all the multiple copies to. We’re simply saying that the NCT won’t offer these as good recommendations about how to care for babies, because they contradict current understanding of attachment theory and neurological and physiological development.

The knee-jerk response to this is actually not to blame the mothers who stopped before six months, or indeed who never started (although those mothers perceive blame anyway, because feeling guilty is what parents do); but to blame healthcare professionals and volunteers for failing to provide adequate support, to blame employers and economics for forcing women back into a workplace ill-equipped to facilitate breastfeeding; and to blame “society” for disapproving of breastfeeding in public.

These factors do play a part, particularly where the people supporting mothers in the early days with their newborn babies fail to help, and put the blame on the mother by telling her she will never feed, because her breasts are too small, her nipples are the wrong shape, she hasn’t got enough milk, etc etc. A mum I’ve been supporting, despite having such copious milk that she was able to hand-express it prior to giving birth, was then told that she couldn’t feed because she had inverted nipples. One wonders why she had never noticed this before. A few days later another midwife advised her that that was rubbish; in fact her child doesn’t latch on because she has a tongue-tie. But what a great way to make the mum feel responsible for not being able to feed her baby, just because the original midwife couldn’t find a way to help her.

But there are deeper reasons, higher barriers, which are much harder to tackle, not least of which is the guilt that makes open discussion so difficult. But most mothers are not responsible for the difficulties they encounter in breastfeeding, and therefore it is inappropriate for them to feel guilt. Anger, sadness, and more anger, and perhaps acceptance that they can’t change what has happened, but not guilt.

“Guilt is only appropriate when, with full knowledge and free consent, you deliberately chose something detrimental to your baby for some trivial selfish reason.” – Maureen Minchin

The very existence of artificial milk undermines mothers’ belief in their own abilities to feed their babies. The fact that we believe we must have our babies weighed and checked regularly erodes our confidence, and allows an opening for doubts to creep in, widened by the conviction that artificial milk will cure all ills: it will make your baby sleep [research does not show this]; it will help your baby gain weight [so will effective breastfeeding]; it will resolve lactose intolerance [just plain nonsense; what do these people think the sugar in cows' milk is?].

Added to this is the assumption at policy-making level that there is a widespread need for artificial milk, which at its worst has prevented – in America – publicity about recalls of faulty products. Apparently it is better to maintain the status quo, avoid panicking parents, than to tell people the truth about the nature of the food they are giving to their babies. Surely they have a right to know?

Meanwhile the subtle negatives about breastfeeding appear in literature from supposedly pro-breastfeeding books (What To Expect When You’re Breastfeeding… And What If You Can’t?), to apparently supportive retailers (Boots’ nipple cream advert offers the information that the worst thing about breastfeeding is the inevitable sore nipples, therefore all mothers must need to buy their cream, which cures it. Wrong. No cream will cure pain that is caused by incorrect positioning of the baby at the breast; but correcting the positioning will); to – of course – the babyfood manufacturers (Aptimil follow-on milk, for “when you decide to move on from breastfeeding” – as apparently we all should do before one year, when a child can drink unmodified cows’ milk). The prevailing mythology is that a breastfeeding mother needs to eat more (500 calories extra per day is normally quoted), implying that breastfeeding takes something out of you.

The pressure to get our babies into routines that are usually incompatible with breastfeeding, which works best when the infant is fed on cue in the early weeks; added to the insistence that mothers need to be separated from their babies for their own sanity, and the idea that fathers and grandmothers can best bond with the new baby by being involved in feeding, makes a recipe for inherent difficulties. Routines, separation, and messing with the milk supply by expressing milk or giving the odd bottle of artificial milk are all contributory factors in mastitis and in perceived or actual loss of milk supply.

Finally, the pervasive images of bottlefeeding make that the normal way that people expect babies to be fed. The Richard Scarry book that I bought for Bernard, having enjoyed it myself as a child, shows one newborn being bottle-fed on her (rabbit) mother’s lap in hospital, and one naughty wakeful child being bottle-fed by her (doggy) father, to get her back to sleep. Meanwhile, how are breasts portrayed by the media in general? As sexual objects belonging to men.

Each of these points deserves far more than a paragraph in a blogpost (perhaps one day I will find the right PhD opportunity!), but surely even this brief outline of the huge barriers to making breastfeeding normal demonstrates one of the most important things I have learned over the last few months: that mothers themselves are the last people to blame for low breastfeeding rates.