26 Nov

Fiona’s story of Breastfeeding Twins

As a mum of two already, I knew the benefits of breastfeeding and also of natural birth and wanted both for my twin delivery and well-being when they had arrived. We joined Penny Price’s ‘Having Twins’ classes and made some great friends and learned loads. One class was tailor made for feeding, it was totally un-biased and we all discussed several ideas, different bottles, sterilisers, breast pumps and all our options also having a long session with an NCT breast feeding counsellor who talked about feeding two and showed us pictures and ideas of how to try, should we wish to.

I think if the boys were my first pregnancy I would have taken professional medical advice about delivery and feeding which in my opinion now, would have been a mistake. The Royal Berks deliver 90% of their twins by C section and the research behind this (which I extensively trawled through) is that it’s ‘safer’ to plan and deliver twins by C section. Midwives are also out of practice delivering twins, the less they deliver the less experience presumably they get and it becomes a ridiculous ever decreasing circle. I was very stubborn throughout and insisted I wanted to deliver them and feed them myself but came across very negative medical professionals. As it was they were both breech throughout my preganancy. My Consultant told me that no.1 had to be head down or it’s a non-starter anyway. Harrison turned round and engaged the night before my section… Apparently an impossibility itself and “too late” to change their plans at the RBH. Obviously the Specialist had a round of golf booked at 2pm.

Once they had arrived at just before noon, Harry roared in indignation at being removed and then decided that he couldn’t be doing with this breathing lark, causing mild hysteria and a quick trip upstairs to SCBU. It took the staff about 5 mins to realise he was a total drama queen (like me) and well over four hours (paperwork and procedures) to return him to his anxious mother.

Alex latched on in ‘Recovery’, beautifully, encouraged by a smashing midwife and we admired him for what felt like hours. He had several snuggles and sucked away like he had done it many times.

At about 5pm we were reuinted as a family and I was relieved no-one had given, Harry any formula. He was quite wriggly but we had a go at double feeding. I had my best friend and fantastic doula Ailsa on hand and she propped me up in bed with two V shaped pillows and tucked a baby under each breast (rugby ball style) and we were all happy and comfy. It was frankly a euphoric moment and one I will treasure forever.

We slept like that, I had my catheter in still and a steady stream of drinking water, biscuits and my iPhone so why move? In the morning the midwife was amazed and asked me if I was ok and did I need any formula. We had had a good night, just the three of us. We all drank, snuggled, snoozed and updated facebook. Why would I have needed formula?

I stayed in the RBH for a week which is unusual but the boys weren’t putting on ‘enough’ weight … and I was encouraged many times to give them a bottle. I have to confess to feeling I would be a failure if I did. It got to a point where I just wanted to get my boys home and settle so I tried the bottled milk, I always fed them myself first and then topped up with a weeny dose of the stuff. It worked a treat and we trundled home like a travelling circus of bags, balloons, flowers, buggy.

We managed to breastfeed Alex and Harry for the first six weeks of their lives. I was lucky enough to always have Carl on hand to help, Ailsa my doula ‘extraordinaire’ and a huge circle of family and friends who cooked for us, walked dogs, got our shopping, did the school run and endless errands and jobs.

My advice to any Twin parents would be

  • To prepare in advance and do all the research so you know how to breast feed and where to get help if it gets tricky
  • To get hold of several pillows (V shaped are awesome) and take them into hospital
  • To remember you are not ill (and neither are they) so medical professional may not be the ideal source of advice. You are the parents and most likely your gut feeling is right; join twin clubs and make other twin parent friends and ask them what they have been through and tried.
  • To accept ALL help available
  • Cherish every moment, it’s a unique club and although its hard work I genuinely believe its not all that much harder than a single baby, just a million times more special.

NCT Breastfeeding Counsellors can support you with feeding twins. Call the NCT Breastfeeding Line between 8am and midnight, 365 days a year, on 0300 3300 0700

22 Nov

What does your NCT Breastfeeding Counsellor do for you?

Sometimes I think I have the best job in the world. I meet parents-to-be at the most exciting time, towards the end of pregnancy, and help them to think about what they want for the first days and weeks of their babies’ lives. I find the subject of breastfeeding endlessly fascinating, and could easily fill twice as much time as I usually get to spend with parents antenatally. Since I qualified 3.5 years ago, I have learned so much from the people I work with, and I like to think that my approach constantly evolves and improves to take account of the different decision-making processes used in different families. I have grown to be more accepting of different styles of parenting, and to value parenting in itself, in all its different facets.

At the moment I am very busy facilitating breastfeeding sessions on antenatal courses in Wokingham, Twyford, Reading, Bracknell, Crowthorne and Camberley, and sometimes as far afield as Marlow and Slough.

For the last four years, we have had a weekly drop-in breastfeeding support group at Brambles Children’s Centre. This started slowly but has gone from strength to strength. We see around 350 new parents a year at the group, and have a great working relationship with the Health Visiting Team, who work across the corridor from us at the baby clinic. Unfortunately the Children’s Centre management has decided to close down the group, choosing to direct their funding towards more targeted and measurable working. We are not yet sure if this will involve NCT, but it’s certainly very sad not to be working from Brambles anymore.

I also host the Bumps and Babies group that meets on the first and third Wednesday of the month at the Bradbury Centre in Wokingham. Every other meeting has a speaker or an activity, but the group mainly has a social support function, giving new mums the opportunity to get out of the house and meet people. I’m there to provide breastfeeding support if it’s needed.

Breastfeeding Counsellors can work on the NCT’s national Breastfeeding Line (0300 3300 0700) listening to and supporting mothers and fathers across the country. I usually do three hours a week on the line. I also get local calls from parents I have met on antenatal courses; most days there is at least one call, text or email, and sometimes these turn into home visits. All of this part of my work is voluntary. You may also have seen me on Facebook on the NCT page and Wokingham Gossip Girls, just reminding people that support with breastfeeding is available.

When I started my training, my son was eight months old and not taking well to solid food, so introducing solids has always been a subject of great interest to me. I run Introducing Solids Workshops locally, and I’m part of NCT’s Introducing Solids Team, developing our policy, working on the website and information centre to communicate about the subject, and delivering study days for other Breastfeeding Counsellors to be able to run workshops.

People ask me if this is a full time job, and I can honestly say that there isn’t time for much else, although it isn’t full time paid work. I’m very lucky to have a supportive and understanding partner, as well as support from the local team of antenatal teachers within NCT. Sometimes my job is hard work, frustrating and draining, and it feels like you’re carrying the weight of parents’ disappointment and anxiety; sometimes you don’t do anything at all and not doing anything works for that family; and sometimes it’s the most satisfying and interesting work I could ever imagine doing.

[This post is a description of one working week. These are my views and my words, and I do not speak for or represent NCT]

07 Nov

Book Review: Confident Birth, by Susanna Heli

Confident Birth is an attractive book with a well-argued premise that empowering women with confidence in their own bodies and a good understanding of what happens during birth is a deeply positive move. Heli asks why we should be so afraid of childbirth, when maternity care has never been better; perhaps a quick dip into Birth & Sex would provide some insight: Kitzinger points out that we may have medically safer outcomes, but the psychological experience of contemporary childbirth may be something to fear. Heli focuses on the modern expectation of painless instant gratification in a consumer society, and explores the role of pain in labour, to help women develop tools and strategies for listening to their bodies and making positive decisions.

The first section of the book explores our attitude to pain and childbirth, with some exercises for the pregnant women, and short birth stories to illustrate her points. The second section offers four tools for coping with pain in labour, and the third section offers useful guidelines for the support person.

Confident Birth is aimed at the pregnant woman who wishes to prepare herself for a positive experience of birth. It uses language of empowerment and trust in the body and the instincts. It skirts the mystical, and while occasionally idealising labour (for example, describing it as “something to deepen our emotional intelligence” p.19), Heli does not demonise intervention. The gentle, encouraging tone makes it highly suitable for expectant parents; there is a good clear description of what labour is actually like, including physical and emotional sensations, and what the woman might need at different stages. It would also make an excellent handbook for a birth doula.

*****

To order Confident Birth with a 25% discount, just follow the link and use the discount code KH25 at the checkout.

02 Nov

I’ll have what she’s having: A review of Birth & Sex by Sheila Kitzinger

I bought Birth & Sex after hearing Sheila Kitzinger speak with an energetic passion that belies her frailty, a few weeks ago; the talk was part revision of the history of obstetrics, and many parts eye-opener.

A few days later I read on a skeptical website a description of orgasmic birth as “the ultimate first world problem.” [Deliberately unattributed]: making women feel guilty for not having an orgasm during labour. It’s that familiar argument that informing people about how things could be is mistaken for setting impossible aspirational targets for all women. Throughout the book, Kitzinger dips into history, revealing how birth has become depersonalised, the mother and her needs sidelined, and the only goal a healthy baby.

After a fascinating chapter on genital anatomy and an exploration of sex in pregnancy, she goes on to explain the processes that impact on a woman’s experience of labour. She is not telling women that they should have an orgasm during birth, any more than that they should have an orgasm every time they have sex; but describing conditions which it is often in the woman’s power to create, that allow her to behave spontaneously. In fact the comparison with having sex is instructive, since goal-oriented sex is likely to be less satisfying than loving, fun, comfortable, spontaneous and uninhibited sex, all of which are applicable to birth.

Kitzinger shows how other cultures celebrate birth movements, for example in north african bellydancing; but how the gradual introduction of a bed into the birth environment forces women to accept a more passive role, and has gradually led to a production line approach, “without wasting doctors’ time, and free of any female emotions that might complicate the process.” [p.69]

She goes on to explore the use of language around birth, rooting this right back in the usurpation of female mother goddesses by a male creator, taking the power of fertility away from women. In modern terms, the medical language used to describe birth using the terminology of risk and words like “delivery” put the power in the hands of the doctors. The language used by women following a traumatic birth is significantly similar to that used by rape victims; I have heard examples of this myself and have to ask if empowering and informing women can really be a bad thing.

With a slightly disappointingly small section on breastfeeding, the book ends with a discussion of sex after childbirth and how this might be impacted by a traumatic, violating experience or a positive birth that can enhance the way a woman feels about her own body. Kitzinger also considers the impact of the birth on a woman’s partner and his or her feelings about sex; along with the impact of the transition to parenthood. I love her description of the first year after birth as “chaos and glory” for the couple [p.148].

Birth & Sex does not seek to demonise intervention, but asks for perspective in its use, and reminds us that birth is a complex psychosexual experience with the potential to be life-enhancing. In the prevailing culture, how much choice do women really have? This book takes on one small segment of a society in which women’s bodies are still objectified and their minds still belittled, to an astonishing extent. To deny women this information is to deny them choice and consent in the way they live and labour.

*****

To order Birth & Sex with a 25% discount, just follow the link and use the discount code KH25 at the checkout.

14 Sep

Dani’s breastfeeding journey

I have two daughters, Bella 2 & Lauren 9 months. I don’t know when I decided I was going to breastfeed or whether it was even a conscious decision, but when I got pregnant with Bella, the decision had already been made. I remember going to the breastfeeding antenatal class & coming out thinking “yes, I can do that!”. I read the books, I was looking forward to breastfeeding my daughter when she arrived. I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t happen. I knew about cluster feeding, growth spurts, I’d seen how a baby should latch. Simple, right?

Bella arrived on her due date after a long & tiring labour. I’d planned a drug free labour but ended up having a relatively new labour drug called remifentinal, offered by my hospital. I asked for that 16 hours in because I’d been advised it wouldn’t cause my baby to be drowsy, unlike other forms of pain relief, such as pethadine & an epidural. I had skin to skin with Bella as soon as she was born & tried to latch her onto my breast, but she showed no interest whatsoever & after an hour, we decided to try again later, once I’d been stitched up & moved to the post-natal ward.

For 16 hours, Bella showed no interest whatsoever. I tried, the midwives tried, & she simply fell asleep. I hand expressed miniscule amounts of colostrum which was syringe fed to her instead. Then, late that night, she woke crying & a midwife came to help me latch her on. Bella would latch on but wouldn’t suck & before long, she became so distressed that she started to scream & I ended up having a midwife shove her onto my breast, causing her to cry further. The night continued like that & both Bella & I were crying. I continued to hand express for her & begged the midwife not to give her formula.

We stayed in hospital for 4 nights because I couldn’t get Bella to feed from me. In this time, she was tested for jaundice on several occasions, but her levels were ok, though she was very sleepy & quite an alarming shade of yellow. On day 3, my milk miraculously came in, in spite of her not suckling & I started using a hospital grade pump to express, & cup feeding her. Finally, on our 4th night, she seemed to “get it” & began feeding, albeit only from my right side in rugby ball hold. A midwife spent several hours with me that night trying to get Bella to feed from my left side, but didn’t succeed. I accepted that I would probably have to feed her from one side only, but this didn’t concern me. It seemed a small sacrifice to make if breastfeeding was going to work out. On day 4, the midwife who’d helped me so much the night before weighed Bella before we were discharged at my request. She had, somehow, in spite of the shaky start, only lost 5% of her birth weight, so we were free to go home.

Back home, I just couldn’t get Bella to feed at all. It didn’t matter if I tried to feed her before she was crying, or when she was crying, she’d latch on & then pull right off. After 5 hours, she fell asleep, clearly exhausted, but she’d not fed so I knew she would wake hungry again. She did, & the whole process repeated itself. I sent my partner out for nipple shields the next morning, & when a midwife came to see me, she tried over & over to latch Bella on, with no success & she left, advising me to keep trying & to express & feed that to Bella if need be. For the next 8 days, Bella was almost completely express fed. I did, rarely, get her to latch on with a nipple shield, but that would be following several hours of screaming, then a 5 minute or so feed before she’d fall asleep exhausted, only to wake minutes later & the cycle to repeat itself.

I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. I knew having a newborn baby was going to be hard, but I didn’t think it was supposed to be like this! I blamed myself, I barely stopped crying & was wondering if we could return the baby. No-one could tell us why breastfeeding wasn’t working & why Bella wouldn’t latch. Just that “she’d get there eventually”.

The worst night of my life was when Bella was 12 days old. For some reason, that night I was completely unable to express. I had no milk to give Bella, it was a Sunday night & I had nothing to feed her. I called the midwife unit at my hospital begging for help & was told we could go in & they’d give us formula. When we went there, Bella was screaming with hunger, a midwife gave me 4 bottles of formula, told me to go to bed & let my partner take over the night feeds & let me go to sleep, then gave me some sleeping tablets & sent us on our way. We had no idea how to formula feed & my partner was as tired as I was. I woke at about 1am to hear him crying, Bella was throwing up the formula & screaming & in desperation, I called the midwife unit again & eventually we were readmitted after I pleaded with them to help. When we arrived, Bella was taken away from me for the night, I was given more sleeping tablets & put away in a make shift room at the end or a corridor after a midwife asked “did you not think having a baby would be hard work?”. The next day, I pumped what I could for Bella & was later (wrongly) diagnosed with PND & put on anti-depressents & discharged. We didn’t leave the hospital that day, I wasn’t ready to go home, I needed more help. & I spent another couple of nights on a nicer ward, with kinder midwives, who helped me combine feed with formula & expressed milk Bella & reassured me that my experience wasn’t “normal” & that what I was doing was ok. We left hospital when Bella was 15 days old with a much more settled little girl.

I continued to express until Bella was a month old, but my supply was dropping in spite of round the clock pumping with a hospital grade pump & I made the decision to formula feed her exclusively. I was never happy with this decision, I’d wanted to breastfeed so much & failed. I mourned what we should have had & felt guilty for not being able to give Bella the best. I tried to relactate many times over the next few months, but Bella screamed if she was placed anywhere near my breast & I had to accept it was never going to be.

I found out I was pregnant again when Bella was 8 1/2 months old. I was overjoyed, but I was also determined to “get it right” this time, yet haunted by my breastfeeding experience with Bella & this played on my mind throughout my second pregnancy. At my lowest points, I almost made the decision not to try in case I failed again.

I armed myself with more information, I went along to breastfeeding support groups to make myself “known”. I called the lactation consultant at my hospital & told her my story & asked for her advice for the second time round. She promised me she’d keep an eye out for me going into labour & help me if need be.

I gave birth to Lauren 5 days after her due date. My labour was very different to Bella’s, it was shorter, I kept active, I managed it drug free & she was born in the water at the midwife led unit at my hospital. While we were still in the water, I tried to latch her on, but she was fussing & after half an hour, the midwife suggested we got out & had skin to skin on the bed & try again. I honestly believed at this point that it was going to be history repeating itself. Once on the bed, the midwife instantly got Lauren latched on & she fed for 1 1/2 hours on both breasts. I cried with happiness.

Lauren’s almost 9 months old now & our breastfeeding journey simply went from strength to strength. She really was born to breastfeed. She really was a textbook breastfed baby, cluster feeding, growth spurting, comfort feeding. She has healed my wounds from “failing” Bella, I’ve realised that some obstacles are pretty much insurmountable & I did everything I could with Bella, it wasn’t meant to be. I’ve since discovered Bella has a severe lip tie, & I suspect a lesser known posterior tongue tie, neither of which were ever picked up. This may have been why it didn’t work, who knows?

I’m loving feeding Lauren & am looking forward to hopefully continuing to do so until she self weans.

***
National Breastfeeding Helplines

NCT
Breastfeeding Line 0300 33 00 700
7 days a week 8am–midnight

La Leche League
0845 120 2918

The Breastfeeding Network
Supporterline 0870 900 8787
7 days a week 9.30am – 9.30pm

BfN Drugs in Breastmilk Helpline 0844 412 4665

Association of Breastfeeding Mothers
0300 330 5453

National Breastfeeding Helpline (NHS)
0844 20 909 20

10 Sep

Book Review: Toxic Childhood, by Sue Palmer

I picked this book up for £1 at Wokingham NCT’s Nearly New Sale, purely out of curiosity. I would say that I have entirely grown out of my organic/green parenting frenzy, partly through poverty and partly from being exposed to science debunking quite a lot of it.

Palmer does state in her preface that the book is largely her own opinion based on largely qualitative research and extensive interviews. This comes across very clearly throughout the text, and may alienate a lot of parents who choose not to follow her highly directive recommendations.

The main message of the book is that childhood ain’t what it used to be, and everyone would be much happier if our kids roamed free in the fields until teatime, then feasted on vegetables from the allotment and played wholesome games until they went to bed. Palmer develops her arguments well, supports them with a wealth of anecdote, and offers suggestions for detoxing childhood both at a family level and at a policy level. This is all very well-meant, but the parents who read this book are quite probably those who already give some thought to things like the effects of TV and junk food on their children. However I feel that the Brave Old World solution is not the right one for my family, and I worry when books dictate parenting styles without leaving room for individual circumstances and inclination. The TV, the internet, junk food and the dangerous streets are realities that our children have to learn to cope with, and it is hard to find a balance between protecting them, and preparing them. I did not feel that Toxic Childhood made many positive suggestions about embracing change.

05 Sep

Book Review: My Child Won’t Eat, by Carlos Gonzalez

After enjoying Gonzalez’ Kiss Me! so much, and with a long standing interest in the subject of solid food, I looked forward to reading My Child Won’t Eat, and hoped it would have some useful information that I could pass on in my Introducing Solids Workshops.

The book is sensibly divided into Causes, Solutions, and Prevention, and uses a rich selection of anecdotes to illustrate the points made in each section.

Gonzalez’ basic premise is that babies and children can be allowed and trusted to regulate their own appetites; and that it is the parents’ expectations that are wrong. If parents stop worrying about it or trying to force their children to eat, they will still eat the same amount, but it will all be much less stressful. They won’t eat any more than they did before, but they won’t waste away either.

This premise is entirely sensible and based in the science relating to appetite control, and Gonzalez uses the perspective of the child to argue that mealtime battles are confusing and unhelpful when it comes to creating a positive attitude to food.

The book includes a large section on breastfeeding, which, as the author acknowledges, is likely to come too late for the parents of babies or toddlers eating (or not eating) solid food, at whom the book is targeted. Perhaps this would be more useful for health professionals and other people supporting those parents.

I found some of Gonzalez’ recommendations to be highly directive and some of his language is really quite judgemental. On the subject of introducing potential allergens, he writes:

Before one year, introducing many different foods only means buying more tickets for the allergy lottery.
p.118

which is sweepingly dismissive, and not in line with current recommendations from the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, whose review of the evidence concludes that there is currently no clear indication that early (or late) introduction of certain foods either prevents or triggers allergies.

I am not sure I learned anything new from My Child Won’t Eat, but the book gave me plenty to reflect on, and has helped to develop new perspectives and different ways of explaining things to parents.

*****

To order My Child Won’t Eat! with a 25% discount, just follow the link and use the discount code KH25 at the checkout.

12 Jul

Book Review AND GIVEAWAY: Kiss Me! by Carlos Gonzalez

Subtitle: How to raise your children with love

Dr Carlos González sets out his stall very clearly in the first pages of his book:

This book assumes all children are essentially good, that their emotional needs are important, and that we as parents owe them love, respect and attention [p13]

He demonstrates this last point over and over again, by taking the statements of various childcare experts and graphically substituting the word ‘child’ with ‘wife’ or ‘colleague’ or ‘prisoner,’ revealing shocking double standards in our expectations and our treatment of children.

The book is roughly divided into two main chapters, the first of which presents children’s behaviour in terms of survival, adaptation, and genetic predisposition. González reframes disobedience as instinct, explaining for example a toddler’s preference to be carried rather than walk as a deep instinctive drive for safety and security.

The other half of the book is given over to demolishing various parenting theories including sleep training, therapeutic crying, and smacking. It is particularly gratifying to read his meticulous critique of Dr Christopher Green, that unpleasant advocate of smacking, whose basic assumption is that children are all ungrateful tyrants in need of taming.

González’ style is ranty in the extreme, and occasionally it is hard to tell if he is being sarcastic. This book gave me a lot to reflect on with regard to the way I talk to new parents and try to help them understand their babies’ behaviour. But however much I enjoyed this most arid humour, and however valid his premise and instructive his examples, I am wondering whether I would recommend Kiss Me! to new or expectant parents.

González writes with great empathy for children, but much less for parents; who, he explains, are inevitably confused by woolly and non-evidence based ‘advice’ from authoritative experts. His suggestion to combat this is that all parenting books should state on the cover what the author’s basic philosophy of human nature is.

Kiss Me! is an interesting book, and its most useful chapter focuses the mind on understanding, respecting, and empathising with children. Despite his strident tones, this is a very healthy approach to parenting.

***
I’ve got a copy of the book to give away to a commenter. I’ll draw names out of a hat on Thursday 19th July, and the book will be sent to you.

To order Kiss Me! with a 25% discount, just follow the link and use the discount code KH25 at the checkout.

09 Jul

The Birth Story of LDH

written by his father

We went to bed on Friday 27th April with a full weekend of preparations planned. With a due date of 15th of May, we were adamant that L would, at the very least, be born in May. Shortly after midnight, C awoke to discover her waters had broken.

We called the hospital, and were told that we could go in immediately, or wait until 6.30 in the morning. We’d always thought we’d want to rush to the hospital as soon as they would admit us, but we surprised ourselves by taking their advice to try and get some sleep. At least, I did. C spent most of the night repacking the hospital bag and planning for whatever lay ahead. I’m not sure whether she’d slept at all when we got up at 5am. In keeping with a long held plan, C made herself a large bowl of pasta and pesto, which she ate while I loaded up the car.

At around 7am we arrived on Southmead hospital’s assessment ward. We’d been there previously when it had been full to capacity, but on this occasion we were the only ones . In fact, our arrival seemed like a major event at the end of what had been a dull night shift for the midwives on duty. C was strapped into the trace machine and it was established that everything was fine with L, but that contractions had not yet commenced. We were told to go home and return to be induced at midnight if labour didn’t start in the mean time. Again, we were advised to get as much sleep as possible, because as one midwife put it, “that’s it for the next five years.” So naturally, we went shopping.

Laden with energy foods we returned home and again I went to sleep. I suspect C slept a little too, but not much. The day passed extremely quickly, and although she did experience a few mild contractions, C still did not go into labour. At 11pm on Saturday we called the hospital again, and were told to come in at 1am for induction.

Very early on Sunday 29th April, around 24 hours after C’s waters had broken, we returned to Southmead. We were seen by a student midwife called Abigail, and at 2.30, C was given a Propess pessary to start the induction. The process was very painful, and not helped by the fact that Abigail had particularly stubby fingers, ill-suited to inserting pessaries next to the cervix. Propess slowly releases dinoprostone, a drug which causes the cervix to relax and dilate, thus initiating labour. We were moved to the Quantock ward in order to await this effect.

C had always imagined L being born on a beautiful summer day; a day which couldn’t seem further away as the rain hammered on the glass roof of the Quantock ward and a fierce gale raged outside. I was given a folding bed and again we were advised to sleep a few hours. In-keeping with our established pattern, I slept, but C didn’t. By 5 in the morning, she was finally starting to have painful contractions. Despite hardly having slept for 2 days, she found that she was unable to sit down. We tried the TENS machine, which helped a little, and later we convinced her to try gas and air, which she thought was amazing. By 9am she was having fairly frequent contractions and biting hard on the entonox inhaler. “Has anyone ever broken the mouthpiece?” C asked the midwife. “Oh no,” she replied, “although I’ve seen a few broken teeth.” It was around this time that we were told we’d soon be moved to the Central Delivery Suite.

This did not happen for another 3 or 4 hours, by which time C was in quite a desperate state and thinking about an epidural. She was sobbing with pain when we arrived on the delivery ward, where the howls of birthing mothers rang out from all sides. An examination by our new midwife, Tracy, established that C was open 4cm.

Most of the NCT-endorsed pain management products and techniques went unused. The electric tea lights stayed in their box, unopened. The carefully selected playlist of calming tunes remained in the suitcase. The birthball was deflated and stuffed in a bag full of cereal bars because we were sick of carrying the thing from ward to ward. All C wanted was an epidural. Unfortunately, the two anaesthetists on duty were both in theatre dealing with emergencies, so we had to wait long after the point where C had been saying she could bear it no more. She did bear it, however, through many cycles of exhaustion and agony. Finally, around 3pm, the anaesthetist arrived and a curious thing happened. C had a period of lucidity, and despite having been climbing the walls minutes before, stopped contracting and chatted to the anaesthetist quite rationally. I think a couple did occur, but she rode through them with a strange tai chi technique she’d invented somewhere along the way; a sort of zen howling punctuated by the rasp of entoxin. Explanations done, decision made, soon after the epidural was administered. The effect was immediate and a relief for everyone.

C was quite disappointed she’d had to have an epidural, but I think it’s a wonderful invention. The transformation was extraordinary. We even cracked open the CD wallet and listened to some Bill Evans. The catch; another examination established that she was still only 4cm open, and the contractions were coming more infrequently. It was decided she would need a Syntocinon drip, a synthetic form of oxytocin that encourages contractions. We were beginning to doubt that L would be born the same day.

8pm, and the shift change brought us a fresh midwife, Helen, a brisk, tell-it-like-it-is Yorkshire woman with 40 years of midwifery under her belt. “I’ll ‘ave this baby out by end of my shift” she promised, which meant by 8am the following morning. In fact, he was out just before midnight. Around 10.30, C was ready to start pushing and after one last hour of hard work, L was born, with a little help from a miniature sink plunger. L was placed on his mummy’s chest for the skin-to-skin, whereupon she broke into song, a Hungarian children’s melody that encapsulated her and child in a bubble whilst the team busied themselves delivering the placenta, which seemed to follow in seconds, and stitching up, which took somewhat longer.

At 11.34pm on April 29th, LDH was born, weighing 3.085kg.

We had had a long weekend, entirely consumed by the process of giving birth. Difficult though some of it was, we look back on it as a positive experience. C lost a litre of blood during the birth, and over the next three days she had to have 2 blood transfusions. The cannulae in her hands made feeding difficult in those first few days in the hospital, and by Wednesday we were desperate to go home. Looking back to the first 24 hours from induction through to birth, we feel happy about what we endured, but more than anything else, there is the indescribable delight at finally meeting our son after what has been an incredibly long and tiring journey.

19 Jun

Toxic Milk

This week, The Guardian continues it’s one-newspaper ‘backlash’ against breastfeeding with an article from Florence Williams about The Wonder of Breasts.

Williams starts with some really interesting stuff about the changing components of breastmilk and how they act to protect and nourish the developing infant. But then halfway down she launches into a terrifying rant about how every chemical with which you have ever had contact has accumulated in your body and is poisoning your baby through your milk.

She then makes the fascinating, many-layered statement:

The breastfeeding lobby is sometimes reluctant to highlight breast-milk contamination because they don’t want women to have another excuse not to breastfeed.

From where I’m sitting in my comfy seat in the breastfeeding lobby, I am blissfully ignorant that most women want an excuse not to breastfeed. For one thing, I don’t see it as my job to gatekeep the information, just as I don’t deliberately protect women from the risks of formula feeding, on which more later. If you will forgive me for mentioning it yet again, parents need to be able to make an informed choice that suits their circumstances and their inclinations. This article undermines informed choice by scaremongering and not giving the entire picture, and it insults women who want to breastfeed, especially those who are finding it hard, or who have given up after a struggle, and did not have the luxury of needing an excuse.

I’m no chemist so I don’t have a clear answer to this, but the first thing I would want to know in order to feel fully informed is whether the chemicals found in breastmilk, at those doses, is harmful. ‘PCBs,’ she says, ‘at elevated levels […] can interfere with thyroid function.’ Are these elevated levels? I do know that the UK government monitors the chemical levels in breastmilk (purely as an environmental pollution measure) and that they are decreasing, and this is supported by this excellent article from Best For Babes.

I would also want to see a straight comparison with the chemical levels in formula milk, which for those of you who did not know is made out of cows’ milk. Cows, which arguably have a more restricted diet than humans, are also subject to environmental pollution. The nutrient balance in cows’ milk is significantly different from that in human milk and lacks many of the interesting ingredients discussed by Williams in the first part of her article.

Then I would want to consider the potential for pollution or contamination during manufacture, storage, and making up of formula milk, which in its powdered form is not sterile. And finally, I would compare the relative risk of exposure to these chemicals with the risk of not breastfeeding, for both mother and baby.

That, then, would be an informed decision.

BabyCenter has a nice Q&A on toxins in breastmilk written by former NCT Breastfeeding Counsellor Caroline Deacon; and an article published in 2008 in the journal Environmental Health gives some interesting perspective on communicating about the presence of chemical substances in breastmilk.