Tuesday I am no longer going to St Albans every Thursday, to sit in an empty room for a couple of hours. Now I go to Radlett, near Watford, on a Tuesday. I work alongside the Health Visitors and have seen more mums in my two sessions there than I saw in four months at St Albans. It takes me a bit longer to get to and from, though, and this week the M4 was hideous.

Back via Sainsbury, but I realise I have forgotten both shopping list and shopping bags, so I wing it. Still spend silly amounts of money. Have you noticed how much food costs these days? I also purchase books: one Julia Donaldson book as a tombola prize for the school fair, one book to donate to the school library, and a Lego sticker book for Bernard, to cheer him up. I thought I had a half hour shift on the Breastfeeding Line, but I’ve been double-booked with someone else and I’m quite happy not to do it. I sit on my bed and read a book instead. Half an hour of peace!

Bernard comes home in a happier mood, he got to read today and he loves the Lego sticker book. While he’s playing with that, I write a book review for my Doula blog. We have toad in the hole with roasted cauliflower for dinner and the boys are much more satisfied with that. However, Bernard spots the tombola prize and is most upset that he is not allowed to keep it. Pete says he cried at bedtime; I avoided this by being out teaching an antenatal breastfeeding class, in the church hall on the other side of the railway line. It’s nice to be close to home and not get back so late.

Wednesday Bernard sleeps in until nearly 7am; school is making him very tired these days. Very tired and very sensitive. I take the tombola prize into school a few days early so it isn’t lying around the house torturing us all. I have about half an hour to kill before a small group of mums and babies arrive at the house for an Introducing Solids workshop, so I sweep the floor. The workshop seems good, but I’m never very confident with these. More than ever, mums want precise how-to instructions when it comes to starting solids, and I want to convey that it’s okay if everyone does it differently. A mismatch.

After lunch it’s back to the next town for a Bumps & Babies group, where I am the BFC In Residence. We have a talk from an Early Days leader, and the mums grumble about being too tired for sex. The ED leader tells me I always seem very calm and lovely. Ha. We’re supposed to finish at 2.30 but it’s nearly 3pm by the time I’ve kicked them all out and I have to race home for school pick up.

Wednesday is swimming day, so that’s another reason why it’s nice to have the car this week. Bernard enjoys swimming lessons but his teacher upset him in some way this week, probably by getting impatient with his bimbling about, from the few details I can glean. I give Bernard his tea as soon as we get home, and Pete and I make a pizza later, and drink beer and eat chocolate and do all those indulgent things that are allowed on weeks when we only have one night in together.

Thursday Bernard sleeps in again. So do we. Rushed breakfast, Pete takes the boy to school. I have few plans, for once. Walk to the post office to collect a parcel and post another parcel. Meanwhile Pete is talking to a plumber who has come to look at the leaky water tank in the loft. I do not like this sort of job, as I have no confidence with the teeth-sucking adding on of extra costs business that always seems to occur. Pete sorts it all out and then goes off to work. I can finally tackle the mountain of email that has been building up all week, type up my book review, and organise my diary a bit. I have a two-hour counselling shift over lunchtime, and then a bit of extra free time because Bernard has a french lesson after school.

This brings me up to date. We’ll be having tuna and pasta for tea, and I’m teaching in the next town this evening.

Friday Going to see my doula client in the morning, probably a bit more light housework and listening. Then down to Basingstoke for a meeting and a conference call as part of the Introducing Solids training team. Then home in time for school pick-up and straight out for our weekly playdate with Alice. Bernard will have tea there, Pete and I later, watching Waking The Dead with some beer.

Weekend Our only plan for this weekend is to give the wall a second undercoat, and buy some plywood. There might also be a curry on Sunday lunchtime.

I found the tone of Parenting Without God to be rather obnoxious, which considering my own position on its subject matter and the fact that I’m a Dawkins fan, is really quite something. It is littered with ‘of course’ and ‘obviously’ and ‘fortunately,’ which makes it sound arrogant and judgmental. Friends who have recently accused me of being the same should note that I am nowhere near the end of the spectrum.

Despite being titled ‘Parenting Without God,’ the book has a far broader scope than parenting, and covers a number of issues (such as breastfeeding, for example) where one’s religious stance is surely irrelevant.

The useful parts of the book are those chapters looking at distinguishing fact from fiction, explaining death, and coping with the inevitable Christian influence of school. Even so, the book provides few helpful suggestions, and the scant three paragraphs on Father Christmas consist of little but ranting and anecdote. I can read my own blog for that.

The author clearly states that the book is not based on studies or research, but on her own practical experience, and this is very clear throughout.

The basic tenet of the book, that parenting should be honest and reasonable, is of course sound; but I find myself feeling affronted on behalf of non-humanist parents at the suggestion that these values are not compatible with religious belief. Furthermore, I know of plenty of non-religious parents who still allow their children to believe in Father Christmas; even for Christian parents, this is largely a secular and cultural tradition, and the book does not acknowledge either of these possibilities.

I do not feel that Parenting Without God added anything to my understanding either of Humanism or of parenting. There is very little in this book that the reader could not get from a more general parenting book such as ‘How to talk so kids will listen’ (Faber & Mazlish) or Sears’ ‘The Discipline Book.’

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

Every week I drive to a town 90 degrees around the M25 and sit in an empty room for an hour and a half waiting for women to bring their babies and get some support with breastfeeding. More often than not, nobody comes. The area has a low birthrate and no parking.

This is not, for me, an ideal time to knit. I like to knit in company, or at least on a train. Knitting doesn’t absorb me enough to be the only thing I am doing. So a few weeks ago I started writing.

I took a decision I made a few years ago, and thought about what would have happened if I had taken the opposite decision. So yes, in some ways it is autobiographical in places, and I’ve written in the first person, in what I think is similar to my blogging style. I write for lots of different things: NCT newsletters, a reflective journal, stories for Bernard. I think blog-style is the most entertaining and readable.

Having started to follow the what-if path, I have basically just indulged in ranting about some stuff, and in granting my central character some experiences that I never had (but know lots about). They say you should write about what you know, so I’ve written about motherhood and relationships, because that’s what I know. Sometimes I read a sentence back and have to unformalise it, because it sounds like something I would say in an antenatal class. Ideas for characters come from real people, but they are not real people. That sounds like a disclaimer, but actually it’s just background.

And then I just scribbled, and scribbled, and scribbled. It’s still going on. Longhand. In notebooks. I don’t know what I will do with it when it reaches the end.

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.

But the fact is that once a baby appeared on the scene, it was so much worse, because my nights were perpetually broken into unhelpfully small chunks. Now, at five years old, Bernard sleeps through most nights. He sometimes wakes once, and usually comes through to wake me up when he does; he hasn’t yet figured out that he just needs to go to the toilet and back to bed, and he’ll soon drop off again. I take him back to bed and tuck him up, and he drifts back to sleep. I return to my own bed and lie awake. Some nights this happens two or three times, some nights not at all.

In low moments I blame myself for his inability to get asleep. I hear so often in antenatal classes the concern that if one comforts one’s child to sleep, they will never learn to go to sleep by themselves, and on the surface it looks like that is exactly what has happened here. I helped him to get to sleep by breastfeeding him for such a long time, and then by staying with him until he fell asleep, that he cannot do it by himself.

And yet, in not-so-low moments, I wonder if that’s the true picture. My mum says I was a great sleeper as a baby. And then she adds that she did leave me to cry sometimes. And she seemed to have forgotten the difficulty I had getting to sleep as a child, until she came to stay and saw Bernard doing exactly the same thing: appearing on the stairs ten minutes after lights out, whining that he can’t get to sleep. So he and I were parented to sleep in completely different ways, but have very similar sleep patterns. My dad has chronic insomnia too, and that makes me feel absolved^[1].

Leaving Bernard to cry himself to sleep clashed with every maternal instinct I have. The ensuing comments, which I hope do not appear, telling me that some babies ‘need’ to cry themselves to sleep, will make me reflect on how society undermines maternal instincts. Babies in non-western societies don’t appear to ‘need’ to cry themselves to sleep; how is that possible? Not only does it clash with my instincts as a mother, it also clashes with my knowledge as a breastfeeding counsellor, that leaving a baby to cry is not emotionally or neurologically healthy. Here is a well-referenced article that can give you more detail on that.

I am satisfied that I didn’t cause Bernard’s sleeping issues by parenting him to sleep. If I take a long term view, I can see that his sleep has improved gradually over the years, and the way Pete and I parent him has changed in response to that, not the other way round. We have met his needs, and his needs have changed. In the last few days we have seen another step forward at bedtime, as well as consistent night-time dryness: both things that happened when he was ready.

1. thanks Pete [↩]

The stairs are often frustratingly Escher-like, with impossible turns and doors that I knew I could go through earlier but can’t seem to manage now. They often lead to attics, sometimes to underground corridors.

Sometimes I’m viewing the house, looking for somewhere to live. I remember a dream about house-hunting in Leeds, where we decided to live in a house chaotic with piles of books and papers. I am rarely alone in these expeditions, but I don’t know who the other person is. Sometimes there are already people living in the houses, and I know they will have to leave.

Some of the houses seem familiar, or I know my subconscious is basing them on places I know. The main model is the family house in Grasmere, with its dramatic staircases and disappearing doors. A Victorian Gentleman’s residence, the house was carved up 40 years ago. My great aunt still lives in the front part of the house, and for a while my grandparents owned the east wing, so I can remember glimpses of the changes, particularly a plastered up doorway that would have connected the wings, at what is now the top of the cellar steps. A huge wooden staircase was installed at the back of my grandparents’ part of the house, and the corridor must have been sealed off. In my dreams the house is whole, and sometimes I discover passageways and rooms I have never seen before.

I’m now living at my 29th address in 40 years, and I’ve had two periods of living in a hotel. We’re coming up to our fifth year in this house, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever stayed in the same place for such a long time.

It’s been over ten years now, and this internet thing completely changed my life, as those few remaining Rise readers who remember this place in 2003 will know. I was chatting before I was blogging. Then I was blogging, mostly about car boot sales and newly acquired html skills.^[1] At that point, it was mostly Real Life people who knew about my blog,^[2] and I didn’t have a clue that it could ever be any other way. I remember a blog^[3] about some students who lived across the world from each other, and had fallen in love, and opened a paypal account for people to stump up for their airfares to visit each other. That was the first time I heard of paypal. I don’t think it turned out very well in the end.

Some of the people who I count amongst my favourite Actual People Who I Know, were bloggers from my first couple of years of blogging: Hydragenic and Turquoise immediately spring to mind. During the whole year-in-hungary debacle, my circle of blog friends grew (and came to be known as the ghouls as everything collapsed around me). My ex blamed ‘people in chatrooms’ for our relationship’s demise, and it was much more complex than that^[4]; but the fact that I had a group of friends that did not include him was very hard for him to understand. They helped to keep me sane.

The chatrooms dropped right off as the blog circle got stronger; and by the time I came back to England, alone, I had broken that habit. I felt very much part of what we were then referring to as The Blogosphere, along with a whole raft of others, including the mysterious petedotnu, who I met in a comments box belonging to the aforementioned Hydragenic, or Mr Hg, as we like to call him. Mr Hg invited me to London to a blogmeet, I met oodles of lovely bloggers, most of whom I’m still in touch with, and looked up into the eyes of a very tall man who introduced himself as Pete…. petedotnu.

Pete and I spent the next three years socialising like mad with other bloggers. I’m not going to name anyone else because the chances are I’ll miss someone out and offend them. As I’m writing, I’m remembering all sorts of madness, online and off, mostly around the theme of cocktails (and cocktail sausages). When I moved in with Pete, I left the majority of my old ‘real’ life completely behind. I’m not in touch with anyone from school, university, or anywhere I’ve worked before moving here. In retrospect it feels like it was the biggest party of my life.

On becoming pregnant, I started noticing that some people also blogged about parenthood. Who knew? It had gone completely under my radar until that point. The focus of my circle shifted a bit, but a core of friends remained. Most of those are friends I’ve made through blogging but also met in real life, and chatted with on some sort of instant messenger, and now tweet at.

But the other thing that happened when I was pregnant, and more so once I became a parent, was that I met Real Life people too. Other couples on the antenatal course, mums at the baby clinic, NCT branch committee, people who shared a childminder with me, friends of friends of real life friends, students in my breastfeeding counselling tutorial group, more NCT volunteers, qualified breastfeeding counsellors and antenatal teachers, upwards of 20 parents-to-be per week in antenatal classes, mums at the drop-in groups, parents in the playground, and so on. Real People. Who know me. And if any of those people were to write a paragraph describing me, I don’t think anyone in the blog circle would recognise it.

Last year Pete, Bernard and I went for a pizza in Zizzi’s in December. Four other tables had people I had met in antenatal classes or at the drop-in. I feel more observed offline than on, because this is Karen as a Grown Up, and it Matters. Online friends are my family, I can relax and be silly and serve imaginary cocktails. Try explaining that to someone in the branch fundraising team, while we’re planning whether to use sponsor forms or justgiving.com for the sponsored toddle in August.

This is one of the several reasons why I stopped using facebook, which was cluttered with people who know me for real. I find it too easy to drop my guard and behave like erzsebel when I should be being Karen.

1. there was a marquee tag I was rather pleased with [↩]
2. the umbrella stand [↩]
3. damn the pacific [↩]
4. after all, he broke my arm [↩]

Another issue I have with them is that from the rigid Gina Ford to the gentle Caroline Deacon, they all make you feel responsible for the fact that whatever you are trying to achieve is not happening. And if it is working, then the author gets the credit, rather than your effective parenting, or indeed your child’s own development.

Whether it’s potty training or sleep or weaning or tantrums, the chances are your child will naturally move on when he or she is ready; hence the Attachment Parenting mantra, ‘this too shall pass.’ Sometimes time and tolerance are the best tools at your disposal. Allowing your child to develop according to their own timetable helps them to do so with confidence in themselves and trust in you.

Whichever parenting manual you pick up, you are likely to feel that you are somehow doing it wrong. Tracey Hogg made me feel I was over-attentive to my son; Dr Sears made me feel I wasn’t attentive enough. There is a safe middle ground for all of us, and what we need as parents is the confidence to follow our instincts, to respect and respond to our children’s needs, and permission to get it wrong sometimes.

Perhaps in order to gain confidence and understanding, it’s worth picking up a book about babies’ normal development, rather than a how-to manual that might turn things into a battle. Whatever you are reading, it’s worth considering whether the author is stating fact or opinion. If advice is supported by evidence, you should see a reference section showing the sources of the information.

Here are a few of the books I’ve referred to or thought about when writing this article:

‘About’ Books
What Every Parent Needs to Know: Margot Sunderland
Why Love Matters: Sue Gerhardt
Babywatching: Desmond Morris
The Social Baby: Lynne Murray & Liz Andrews
The Baby Book: William & Martha Sears
The Fussy Baby Book: William & Martha Sears

‘How To’ Books
The Contented Little Baby – Gina Ford
The Secrets of the Baby Whisperer – Tracey Hogg
The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Elizabeth Pantley
Babycalming: Caroline Deacon
When Your Baby Cries: Deborah Jackson

Top row: Conrad’s socks, wipes [for ice-cream], tissues, leaflets from various attractions, wallet stuffed with receipts, half-knitted socks, spare cloth shopping bag, knitting pattern.

Middle row: Sticky organic sun cream, bookmark, paper napkin, shells and a stone, sore throat lozenges, anadin, party invitation, colouring picture and some crayons, keys.

Bottom row: Pencil case containing useful things such as moleskine notebook, pens, my ID badge, and usually my phone; receipts and train tickets; sweeties, two packets of sugar and two sachets of brown sauce; Bernard’s purse, green sparkly thing from the top of an ice cream, my phone, two sunhats.

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. [↩]

• They’ll all be fighting over her, won’t they? One girl and seven boys in our antenatal group.
• You can’t dress him in pastels! I most certainly can; he’s three weeks old.
• Here is my gift. It is a pack of bibs that all say “trouble” and “naughty boy” and “scamp” on them.
• School is boring, isn’t it? Seriously, why would an adult say that to a curious, bright, enthusiastic child?
• Who’s your best friend? All groups split into factions. Make sure you pick the right one, kid.
• Eat it all up like a good boy and then you can have some pudding. Plenty of research supports my decision to allow him to control his own appetite, and not learn that pudding is a reward. It’s a good theory, anyhow.
• Be a good boy so Father Christmas brings you lots of presents. Don’t get me started.
• Train sets are for babies. Have this toy gun instead.
• You don’t need to be breastfeeding anymore! circa 12 months old
• Ugh, nasty broccoli!
• Eek, a spider/bee/mouse! I tried so very hard not to pass my phobias on to him. It really sucks to have had this completely undermined by a childminder.

You mean like swans?

No. Swans and gooses are just ducks. They are not birds.

Yes, they are birds. Owls are birds too.

No. Owls are not birds. Birds can only come out in the day, and owls come out at night.

What are they, then?

Swans and gooses are ducks, and owls are not birds.

But we looked at the Observer Book of British Birds, and it had swans and geese and owls in it. So they must be birds.

No. That book is wrong.

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?

When I originally stumbled across the website, it was Hannah’s gallery that really attracted me, and I fell in love with one of the images of butterflies. I used to have a watch on a bracelet a bit like a charm bracelet, with little silver butterflies dangling off it. It sounds pretty but it was annoyingly jangly, and when I waved my arms around, as I do, it occasionally snapped. I got fed up of having it repaired. On the whole, I like bracelets but I don’t like either the jangly noise or the clunky interference between wrist and desk. Having seen Anna’s fabulous birds, tattoed on her wrist, an idea began to form.

It’s not my original tattoo idea, the one that has been brewing for seven years. No, that one is still in the kettle, as it were. It’s a sort of tester tattoo. At least, tester insomuch as I knew I definitely wanted this. I feel very safe, while at the same time somewhat living at least within comfortable walking distance of the edge, with my pretty little wrist tattoo of butterflies.

The thing I was most nervous about was the thing that makes me hate hairdressers. The feeling of being nowhere near as cool as anyone else in the building, in their opinion. I didn’t want to feel that. But I thought, you know, it’s taken me forty years to get really and truly happy with who I am. Forty years to know who I am, and be happy with it. If they don’t think I’m cool, I don’t think I actually care. I sit in front of groups of strangers several times a week, talking about breasts. I can handle one tattoo artist in an enclosed space, if I’m armed with a cup of tea.

And that’s why butterflies. Pete recently told me I was more socially confident than him, and that really surprised me. I don’t think of myself as confident, I’m not good with strangers, I get all tongue-tied and shy. Except I don’t anymore. I talk to strangers all the time. I listen to them, too. When I look at myself through the eyes of other people, I no longer see the person I was ten or twenty or thirty years ago. I see someone other people like and respect, and whether that’s cause or effect, I like and respect myself.

Hannah had a fab new tattooing device, and a new shade of purple she had never used before. She had also just returned from Borneo where she saw lots of butterflies, and claimed to have a head full of them. Her workspace also featured a lot of butterflies (and skulls, and octopi). It’s good when something as momentous as your first tattoo feels like it’s happening at exactly the right time.

As for the pain. Well, she did say the new device was more gentle than the standard needle thingy, and it’s an established fact that I’m no wimp; but I would not describe the tattooing process as excessively painful. Certainly no more painful than a nettle sting, with a nice after-buzz that has sadly faded now. Oh well, roll on the next one…