“Breastfeeding Comes Naturally.”
Intimate. Emotional. Rewarding. Convenient. There are plenty of words I could choose to describe breastfeeding my first daughter. But ‘natural’ isn’t one of them. As I learnt so painfully when I struggled to breastfeed my second and found myself paralysed with guilt.If breastfeeding works for you and your baby, then great. Stick your breast pads in your bra and go forth and lactate. But realise you’re one of the lucky ones. We all know The World Health Organisation recommends just breast milk for six months, but we also know that 80% of women in the UK who start breastfeeding have given their babies some formula by the end of the first week. The reasons are complex: but let’s start with the fact that breastfeeding is hard, resources are stretched and good support is lacking. At the same time, motherhood has been fetishised. The narrative that ‘breast is best’ has been so institutionalised, by antenatal classes and the NHS, that many mothers feel under immense pressure to breastfeed, even at the expense of their mental health.
That was my experience when I had my beautiful daughter in 2017. Her birth was complicated (what birth isn’t?) but far from complex. Sixteen hours after delivery, I was heading home. Sure, she was smaller than anyone would have liked and breastfeeding was far from established, but the postnatal ward was busy. She was my second child; ‘mum’ knew what she was doing, went the rationale from the overworked midwives. After two days of nonstop tears (mine as much as hers), the only thing I knew was that she wasn’t getting enough milk. Sobbing, I sent my husband to Boots for formula, bottles and a breast pump. ‘You did the right thing,’ I remember the health visitor trying to reassure the following morning, when I whispered I’d given her a bottle, a confession that felt like a failure. ‘But her temperature’s still worrying. I’m afraid I’m going to readmit you.’
Back in the scratchy sheets of a hospital bed, there was no discussion about alternatives to breastfeeding. I was handed syringes, to extract the drops of milk I was able to hand express from my breast. Suctioned up to a breast pump, I’d spend what felt like hours listening to the shhhhup-shhhhup of the machine, not daring to look down at the bottle. The inches of watery liquid I knew I’d see there were a physical manifestation of my incompetence. I tried nipple shields; allowed the lactation expert to contort me into positions that might help her latch on. I nodded when they told me she was tongue-tied and whisked her off for an operation considered so brutal they don’t let mothers watch. I spent a week doing a never-ending cycle: pump, feed, formula-top up on repeat. I did everything the medical professionals asked of me. But at no point did they ask how I was. Until one night I cracked.
‘I just don’t want to go on,’ I said flatly to my husband, who’d faithfully sat up all night with me, feeding me my oatmeal cookies, fennel supplements and gallons of water. Ashen, he called for reinforcements. My sister, an obstetrician, diagnosed me with mastitis. I went to the GP for antibiotics. I got a lecture. ‘Seven days of these and you’ll be fine. Every woman can breastfeed, it’s natural,’ the male, 50-something doctor told me, when I dared to say I wanted to stop.
I shouldn’t have needed permission, but that’s how it felt. Like I was giving up; when in actual fact I was fighting to make the right decision for me and my baby. I was mothering. That’s what persuaded me in the end. My sister, holding me in the hot shower as I screamed in pain expressing the blocked milk ducts, told me over and over again: ‘Parenting’s hard. There’s no playbook. But you have to look after yourself to be able to look after your child.’ I sobbed, not just with pain but with relief.
I’d love to say, it was plain sailing from that moment on. But parenting never is. Whenever she got ill, as all babies and toddlers do, I’d find myself blaming myself for not giving her enough immunity. Whilst I knew the logic of wellmeaning people who’d tell me things like, ‘No one asks you at a job interview if you were breast or bottle fed,’ it took time for me to believe it. Talking helped. Opening up and realising just how common this experience is. Naming the so-called shame takes away its power. And yet, when the guilt did start to fade, it was replaced with anger that I’d wasted those precious newborn months filled with angst rather than love.
But, boy, do I love her. She’s eight now and curious, eccentric, smart, snuggly. She knows the words to every Taylor Swift song. Meticulously organises her LOL dolls before she goes to bed each night. Likes to sleep in a shower cap, because – why not? She eats everything. Worries about nothing, other than when she’s going to be allowed a cat. She’s happy. So am I because I know I’ve done my job. And that wasn’t to breastfeed her. It was to be her mum.
Hattie and her daughter in those early motherhood days.
