A fantastic breastfeeding campaign aimed at the social group least likely to breastfeed has been launched which focusses on breastfeeding being glamourous. Have a look at the Be A Star website and this wonderful Guardian article written by a very experienced NCT Breastfeeding Counsellor. Absolutely lovely 
…who has won a Nestle Children’s Book Prize but refused the prize money and issued a statement saying why.
For some women breastfeeding is really hampered from the start by apalling care from health care professionals. Sometimes women who have always assumed their babies would be breastfed, who have worked tirelessly before birth to secure the support they’ll need, who’s family are helpful, who really do not want their babies to have formula milk, sometimes these women do not succeed :-( It’s not because they’re one of the magic 2% who actually can’t do it, but because something hasn’t clicked into place in the early days. Here’s an example situation:
1. Mum has her baby, birth goes well
2. Baby isn’t interested in feeding for a few hours
3. Baby isn’t kept skin-to-skin which would make feeding more likely
4. Inflexible hospital policies mean that midwives get twitchy about the baby not feeding
5. Twitchy midwives who don’t understand how breastfeeding works decide that the baby needs forcing to feed
6. Midwives grab mum’s breast, and baby’s head and ram them together
7. Touching the back of baby’s head makes him pull his tongue in, rather than out where it needs to be to latch on well
8. Baby manages to get some milk so midwives are satisfied
9. The experience is upsetting and traumatic for baby and mother, and is also painful for the mother as the poor latch means that the nipples get damaged
10. Mum and baby leave the hospital - mum with damaged nipples, baby with bad breastfeeding technique and possibly even a phobia of breastfeeding (situation is even worse if baby has also been bottle-fed formula milk and/or if mum has been told to use nipple shields to help her nipples heal)
11. Mum is desperate to undo the mess created by the immediate post-natal care and gathers support around her again
12. Breast feeding continues to be agony. Poor latch and nipple shields means baby feeds all the time as feeding is so inefficient and ineffective milk-removal causes mum to get severe mastitis on day 14.
13. Only way to clear mastitis is to express milk and nipples are so damaged that mum decides to bottle-feed expressed milk until her nipples are healed enough to try feeding at the breast again
14. Mum tries extra skin-to-skin contact and ‘co-bathing’
15. Mum is spending so much time expressing so she doesn’t get mastitis, crying because everything hurts and worrying that her baby’s not getting enough milk and that she may never be able to get breastfeeding working, that she has spent no positive time whatsoever with her two-week old baby
These mums *cannot* bond with their babies with all these negative hormones racing around their bodies. Sometimes switching to formula milk is the only way for women and babies to relax enough to get to know one another. How do mothers weigh up the physical benefits of recieving breastmilk with the emotional benefits of enjoying the early weeks of parenthood and getting to know your baby? It breaks my heart. I’m so angry and furious that crap care means that women have to choose! They should be able to do both. Everyone should be able to do both! This is so wrong. Midwives need more time, more money and, above all, more bloody training!
Do you have to breastfeed in order to bond with your baby?
No
Is it easier to bond with your baby if you breastfeed?
Yes
Why?
1. Breastfeeding makes mothers release oxytocin which makes you feel loved up and happy. It’s what makes you want to gaze into your baby’s eyes while he’s feeding. It’s what makes you want to touch his feet and stroke his hair.
2. Breastfeeding means instant skin-to-skin contact. How much skin-to-skin contact would you have with your baby if you didn’t breastfeed? Way, way less. Skin-to-skin contact also causes the involved parties to release oxytocin.
3. If you breastfeed responsively, you tend to stay near to your baby for most of his early life so it’s easier to learn how to read your baby’s cues and moods.
So how else can you do this if you don’t breastfeed (or if you’re a father/grandmother/sister/brother/etc., not a mother!)?
1. Lots of skin-to-skin contact - if you let Dad’s job be bathing baby but tell him he has to get in the bath with the baby, that’s a wonderful way for Dads to bond.
2. Spend lots of time close to the baby - carry him in a sling as often and for as long as you can. And co-sleep with your baby. If you sleep next to your baby you up the contact time by about 10 hours a day!
Why doesn’t it make it easier for Dads/Grandparents to bond with their babies if they can feed them formula milk or expressed breastmilk from a bottle?
Because the bonding that happens during breastfeeding has nothing to do with the action of putting milk into the baby and everything to do with closeness and hormones.
Why does this man think that he needs to cut the cord in order to bond with his baby?
Because he’s bonkers? I have never seen any research linking cord-cutting to bonding. I have seen research linking early skin-to-skin contact between a father and his newborn baby with bonding. It also helps with encouraging early feeding behaviour and helps the baby to regulate his temperature, heart and respiratory rate and his hormones. This man shouldn’t be having a go at the hospital for not letting him cut the cord, but should be ensuring that they’ll let him take his shirt off and cuddle the baby the minute he’s born. Even better than that, he should be campaigning for there to be double (or at least twin) beds in each room and for policies that allow the father to stay the night with his new family. If he’s that worried about bonding then they should have their baby at home - way better chance of bonding at home than in the harsh environment that is a hospital.
Breastfeeding
A healthy newborn baby knows how to breastfeed. He is expecting to spend the first few days lying on his mother’s tummy skin-to-skin. He knows that if he doesn’t feel right, nine times out of ten, suckling will sort it out. He instinctively starts to sniff to smell where his comfort is. The little raised dots on the areola secrete a substance that smells like amniotic fluid - the first thing he ever smelt as he took his first breath and inhaled what was coming off his skin. He starts opening and closing his mouth to see if the n ipple is close enough and if it isn’t, he starts to bob his head up and down, using his feet to push him up if he needs to move up, and using his hands to move him sideways if he needs to move sideways. When he finds the n ipple, he comes in chin first, as he will have to reach up for it. His tongue will come out over his bottom lip. He will take more of the ‘chin side’ of his mother’s areola into his mouth than the ‘nose side’. The n ipple will go far into his mouth. He always takes a good mouthful because everytime he lifts his head and opens his mouth, gravity pulls his head down quickly, before he closes his mouth again. After a day or two of this, he and his mother start to experiment with other positions. They both know what it feels like when he’s latched on well and they both know what they’re doing.
For some reason, in our culture, we only allow babies to feed like this for the first feed they do post-birth. Then mother has to ‘learn’ how to do it sitting up or lying on her side. Her baby does the same things. He sniffs and tries to move around when he wants to suckle but he has to wait for his mother to pick him up and undo her clothing so he’s already a bit miffed by the time he gets anywhere near the b reast. Sometimes he’s already crying and if he’s brought to the b reast with a mouth wide-open from crying, his tongue is up on the roof of his mouth and nowhere near the right place to be able to breastfeed. His mother is told to hold his head. This means that he (a) can’t move it around enough and (b) tries to push back against it as he has a strong reflex to flex his neck when the back of his head is touched. If his mother’s been told to hold him so that his head isn’t being touched, at least he has free movement. It’s likely she’s been told to hold him ‘nose-to-n ipple’ which is helpful as it makes him have to reach up for the n ipple, but of course he’d be doing that naturally if he were being fed naturally. His mother’s probably also been told to ‘wait for the gape’ - to wait until his mouth is open wide - and then to bring him onto her b reast swiftly. Of course mums are not as fast as gravity so usually the baby’s mouth is closing as he reaches the b reast and he only takes a small amount of b reast into his mouth.
If he is lying on his mother, skin-to-skin, for prolonged periods of time, a baby will snack, very frequently, and doze. He’ll get plenty of colostrum. He won’t get too full or too hungry - he’ll be just right the whole time. If the baby gets put down and only fed when he cries, he’ll get hungry, then full, hungry, then full repeatedly. It’s unsettling and his heart rate and breathing rate won’t be very stable. He may not get enough milk to keep his blood sugars up and he may get sleepy and drowzy and his cues to feed will come further and further apart which leads to even lower blood sugars and the risk of dehydration.
Everytime we interfere with the natural interaction between a mother and her baby, we risk creating problems that can have dire consequences or at least will make the early post-natal period pretty stressful and painful.
Note: Apologies for writing anatomical words with a space in the middle, but some freaky site has picked up on the post because of the word ‘n ipple’.
There is so much to rant about with regard to this series. However, as I don’t have much time now as my bed beckons, the thing I want to rant about the most tonight is the continuum concept mum with the ‘colicky’ baby who only calmed on being at the b reast and seemed to want to feed continuously. This baby was not colicky, he was not attaching well at the b reast! Lots of babies feed frequently in the early weeks. It’s physiologically normal because babies often don’t feel ‘right’ (cold/lonely/tummy ache/hungry/frightented) and breastfeeding ‘cures’ most of those problems. However, if you have a baby that is feeding frequently and his mother is finding breastfeeding painful then it is very, very likely that he isn’t latching on well enough and is having to feed more frequently in order to get enough milk over 24 hours.
That mother was wincing as she leant into her baby to feed him - it hurt her. If breastfeeding hurts, then baby isn’t latching on well enough no matter what it looks like. If I had a pound for every mother who’s told me ‘it hurts, but I know he’s latched on ok because the midwife/health visitor say so’ I’d be a rich woman. It doesn’t matter what it looks like. It matters what it feels like. If a baby is latched on well, no matter how often the baby feeds, or for how long, it won’t hurt. I can’t re-iterate it enough because this is not just an issue of mothers’ n ipples. Mothers sometimes say to me ‘I’ll just perservere through the pain’, which is very noble but ill-advised. Babies who aren’t latching on well are not just damaging their mothers’ n ipples but are likely to not be removing the milk effectively which means they may not be getting enough, that they are not stimulating their mothers’ milk supplies enough and that they may not be draining their mothers’ b reasts enough which can cause problems like blocked ducts and mastitis.
So the continuum concept mum who had a ‘colicky’ baby probably would have solved all her crying baby’s problems by getting some good breastfeeding help (ie. not the continuum concept mentor who appears to know very little about breastfeeding support) and getting her baby latched on well. In addition, by not doing so, she risks her baby not getting enough milk; her n ipples never being comfortable while breastfeeding; problems with blocked ducts and mastitis; and her milk supply dropping over the next few weeks. Please, anyone who is breastfeeding or knows someone breastfeeding, who is reading this: Don’t put up with sore n ipples or any other signs that a baby isn’t latching on well! Get help, and get good help asap! Please! That’s all.
Read it and weep: http://www.extrahandproducts2.com/
So depressing I can’t even bring myself to comment about it 
The editor of Good Housekeeping magazine says this in her Sept 07 editorial:
“[my bra buying experience] came hot on the heels of a law being passed to protect breastfeeding mothers in England and Wales (Scotland has gone further: it is actually an offence there to ask a breastfeeding mother to stop).
I’d also read that the number of breast enhancement operations int he UK increased by 30% in the past year - and just as much among older, educated women as young wannabe Jordans.
Fertility symbol, baby nurturer, secondary sex characteristic, female shape enhancer - the female bosom seems to mean different things to different folks. I, for example, don’t really mind seeing women sunbathe topless on a Mediterranean beach, but I hate the same sort of thing on men’s magazine covers in my local shop. It seems to me that it’s all about context.
As I’ve formerly breastfed three babies, I might be expected to support the new law. But, on examination, I’m deeply ambivalent. Discreet, low-key feeding in a public place has always been tolerated, but in-your-face, milky-breast-baring is not the same thing at all. I don’t care how many women say they think it’s fine; we have to take on board that, because breasts are associated with sex, breastfeeding does make many men uncomfortable.
Agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear what you think. Let me know at
I have responded with this:
”Dear Louise
I am emailing in response to your September 2007 editorial, about the importance of protecting the right of women to breastfeed in public. Breastfeeding is an important issue not just because it’s the done thing to do, but because of its implications for individual mothers and their babies and its wider implications for society as a whole. Formula feeding increases the risk of so many short-term and long-term illlness to both babies and their mothers, that the impact on the health of our nation if all babies were breastfeed for as long as mothers and babies wanted to could be great. As many as 9 in 10 mothers who stop breastfeeding before 6 weeks did so sooner than they would have liked to. Some women stop breastfeeding because of the fear of doing so in public, and some women sadly do get harrassed for breastfeeding in public.
Our society is so used to formula feeding that breastfeeding is no longer considered normal and the impact of this formula feeding culture is that few mothers get the support they need to be able to continue breastfeeding for as long as they want. For this support to grow, breastfeeding needs to become a normal thing in our culture and that will only happen if more women do it, and if fewer breastfeeding mothers are sonervous of breastfeeding their babies when they need to (including in public) that they hide it from the world. The more breastfeeding is seen, the more it will be considered normal, the more women will succeed and the healthier our babies (and their mothers) will become.
For more information on the wider social and political importance of breastfeeding, may I suggest you read The Politics of Breastfeeding by Gabrielle Palmer?
With best wishes”
As I signed it as a Breastfeeding Counsellor, I didn’t want to fan the flames too much, but what I would like to have added is this:
“Besides, since when did men’s sensibilities become more important than the nutritional and emotional needs of a baby and his or her mother? Why are you worried about how some poor little man feels just because he believes wrongly that breasts are primarily for sex and might get a bit upset seeing a baby using them for what they were designed for yet you’re not worried that the alternative would be a hungry, emotionally distressed baby and an upset, embarrassed mother? Aren’t you getting your priorities mixed up here????”
I get so tired of the ‘breastfeeding in public’ debate. It’s just such a non-issue. Baby cries, mother feeds it. That’s all there is to it. If you’re upset by it, then don’t look. Simple! Oh yes, and maybe go away and examine why you are feeling upset by it and deal with it…it’s not the mother’s problem!
Rant over…thank you!
