Public, positive messages to support a woman's right to breastfeed

I've been delighted to observe and be part of a movement for improvements in birth and maternity services that is gaining momentum (see this article by Toni Harman in the Huffington Post.) In the UK the Positive Birth Movement, with its network of positive discussion groups, and the establishment of Birthrights, has done much to foster genuine, productive debate about women's experiences of birth in today's society. Writer Milli Hill has been commissioned to write a positive birth column after her piece Is Kate being bullied about her birth? was a runaway success for bestdaily; home birth advocate and journalist Beverley Turner, of Radio 5s Bump Club, has also had a number of positive articles published in recent weeks. There's a real buzz about positive birth at the moment and it's great to see.

Conversely, National Breastfeeding Week 2013 has left me feeling a little flat. Not because there weren't some great things going on - both on and off-line - but because, as the figures revealed in the papers during the week showed breastfeeding rates taking a small dip for the first time in years (and Rebecca Schiller so clearly articulated in her piece in the Guardian), without government-level strategic support for breastfeeding, all the efforts of everyone who is passionate about supporting women to breastfeed are just scratching the surface. As Schiller summed it up: 'if policymakers aren't funding enough midwives or a centralised system of breastfeeding support we simply set women up to fail.' (In my own area, with no funding for National Breastfeeding Week, the NHS, through which we work as peer supporters, couldn't support the events we ran in any way.) She also pointed out that the constant breast v bottle debates in the media (which I've critiqued in other posts, like this one) are falsely polarised and damaging to both sides, with women suffering guilt, fear of judgement and lack of support, regardless of feeding method.

I can't help wondering whether the key to improving our dialogue about breastfeeding lies in learning some lessons from the movement for improving birth. If we alter the fundamental question at the heart of all the arguments, what happens? In the introduction to his forthcoming book A Gift for Life (Pinter and Martin, pub date Sept 2013) Dr Carlos Gonzalez, author of My Child Won't Eat and Kiss Me! How to raise your children with love, Spain's answer to Dr Jack Newman, writes:

"...lactation isn’t a tool for achieving health, but rather an integral part of health itself. Not a means, but an end. Telling people to ‘avoid artificial lactation because it causes diarrhoea’ now seems to me as absurd as exhorting them to ‘avoid blindness because blind people are more likely to get run over’. Lactation is no more a way of avoiding infection than being able to see is a way of avoiding accidents. They are both normal parts of a healthy life. I know now that lactation is not an effort, much less a sacrifice, that a woman makes for the good of her child, but rather that it is part of her life, of her own sexual and reproductive cycle. It is a right that no one can take away from her.

I am aware that some women don’t want to breastfeed. This is fine. A right isn’t the same as a duty. Many people don’t go on marches or vote in elections, but they still have that right." (my emphasis)

There's a parallel here with the idea (enshrined in law thanks to Ternovsky vs Hungary) that it is a woman's right to choose the circumstances of her birth. If we see breastfeeding as a woman's right then that frames the whole question of our duty, as a society, to ensure that her rights are respected and supported, in a completely different way. Viewed in these terms, breastfeeding is no longer a 'public health issue', or a 'women's issue'; the right to breastfeed, if she wants to, becomes a completely integral part of the care a woman can expect from maternity and child health services - it cannot be seen as an optional extra, or a 'nice to have', the cherry on the cake once mum and baby have navigated the birth itself. It demands commitment to breastfeeding, and supporting breastfeeding, at a strategic level.

(For the few women who cannot breastfeed, the logical extension of the idea that breastfeeding is a woman's right would be to have robust systems in place to provide those women with acceptable alternatives; provision of donor milk and supplementary feeding systems, wet-nursing or milk-sharing, for example.)

So seeing breastfeeding as a woman's basic right, which she is free to exercise or not, is one way of reframing discussion of it. We move on then from divisive breast v bottle polemics, and instead focus on how our society and culture is, or is not, doing what it needs to do to ensure that a woman's right to breastfeed is not infringed. We're part of the way there with laws that protect breastfeeding in public, but we must also look at our failure, in the UK, to fully implement the WHO Code on the marketing of breastmilk substitutes, and confront what the recent figures showed so clearly - that breastfeeding in Britain is effectively a postcode lottery (despite what we know about its potential to reduce health inequalities). As Rebecca Schiller, in her role as co-chair of Birthrights, says:

"Women have a fundamental right to autonomy when deciding how and where to give birth and how to feed their babies. Birth choices are often made with feeding goals in mind. However, women in the UK do not universally have equal provision of these birth settings and often tell us that they are refused entry to them. Birthrights is working hard to raise awareness of this issue and work with women and health professionals to ensure that the choices women make around birth  - for whatever reason - are respected, supported and made realistic.

Women most certainly have the right to adequate levels of postnatal support and the right to make fully informed choices about how they give birth and feed their babies. If our maternity service doesn't offer all women the chance to make and realise those choices through appropriate provision of a range of birthplace settings and experienced, adequately staffed postnatal services, it certainly raises the question as to whether, through lack of resources and lack of evidence-based policy, we are effectively giving an illusion of choice where often none exists." 

Another way of reframing the discussion of breastfeeding takes a different tack - focussing on public, positive messages about breastfeeding (again, following in the footsteps of the Positive Birth Movement and Tellmeagoodbirthstory). My book Breastfeeding: stories to inspire and inform and its accompanying Facebook page attempt to promote positive breastfeeding stories - a recent favourite is this one from a mum who never thought she'd breastfeed, but changed her mind. Other groups and individuals are doing their bit to normalise breastfeeding and breastfeeding in public. Christina Conboys and a group of mums in Harrow have put together a book of fabulous, inspiring photographs called Breastfeeding is Beautiful; spoken-word poet Hollie McNish's heartfelt poem 'Embarrassed' is being shared all over the web - it sums up brilliantly some of the cultural issues affecting how we see breastfeeding in Britain. I also love the work of We Do It In Public, a photographic library of normal mothers breastfeeding in all sorts of everyday situations - for (paid) use by organisations, companies, websites and anyone who needs images of infant feeding to accompany their content. And it's a great resource for mothers to browse too.

The impact of these positive, public messages about breastfeeding cannot be underestimated. They are the antidote to all the little comments that undermine breastfeeding that we all come across every day: about four-hourly feeds, about a bottle before bed to get them to 'go a bit longer', about 'needing your body back', about no nutritional benefit after six months, about formula being 'just as good these days', about how 'he's using you as a dummy'. It works in the same way that positive birth stories counter negative messages about birth. It's well-known that supportive breastfeeding groups (again the parallel with the Positive Birth Movement is obvious), where mothers meet other women with similar experiences to their own, are of immense value in supporting women to meet their breastfeeding goals; that's why the major breastfeeding charities, such as La Leche League and the ABM, put mother-to-mother support at the core of their activities. I recently read this interesting blog about how negative experiences of breastfeeding in public affect mothers and influence their decisions about how long to breastfeed for; if we exchange those negatives for positives we both support breastfeeding and support women.

It seems to me that raising the profile of breastfeeding in the UK requires (at least!) a two-pronged approach. If we started by accepting that it is a woman's right to breastfeed if she wants to, then that would give us a clear way forward: breastfeeding needs to be at the heart of what we do, in government, in law, and in public life. It's not rocket science. It's just something else that HR departments, TV programme commissioners, editors and policy-makers would need to at least consider, in the way that they already consider diversity, gender, accessibility. And if, at the same time, we could increase the visibility of breastfeeding as it's done, everyday, by thousands of women, then it wouldn't be long before everyone stopped paying so much attention to it. It would just be normal.

(I'm reminded, in writing this, of feeding my daughter on a trip to the Westfield centre in Derby, a huge shopping mall with multiple, well thought-out parents' rooms. I often suggest to new mums I support that it's a good place for an early trip out with the baby because of these facilities. However, last time I was there and my daughter needed a feed I was close to benches in a large, airy seating area, with all sorts of people sitting on them - older Asian men, Derbyshire grannies and giggly teens. I consciously chose to join them all and feed my daughter there rather than going to the parents' room. I felt, as a confident third-time mum, that I was doing my bit to normalise breastfeeding. It may have backfired, however, as the Derbyshire grannies that cooed over the baby had leaned right over, stroked her head and tried to talk to her before they even realised she was feeding...)

What do you think of the idea of breastfeeding as a woman's right as a normal part of her sexual and reproductive life? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

National Breastfeeding Week 2013: some thoughts on breastfeeding support

I've been a breastfeeding peer supporter for two and a half years, since shortly after my third child, who only recently stopped breastfeeding, was born. In that time I've been constantly reminded of the incredible value in what we do. When I hear women's stories (such as this one) of how they've been supported to overcome problems and achieve their feeding goals, I have a great feeling of pride and good fortune to have been able to be part of their support network. 

Breastfeeding support doesn't begin and end with a new mother and her baby, although they are at the heart of it. It ripples outward and affects others too - the partner who desperately wants to be supportive but doesn't have all the information he needs; the mother-in-law worried about why mum isn't giving the baby water between feeds; the GP who isn't up to date with treating thrush; the pregnant woman wondering how she will feed her baby; the young girls walking past mothers breastfeeding in coffee shops.

Whatever the ins-and-outs of the latest 'breast v bottle' debates in the papers, on TV or on the radio, peer support, which is truly mother-focussed, exists outside that arena. No one, surely, could have a problem with the idea of women supporting other women, who want to breastfeed, to achieve their goals. In the introduction to my book Breastfeeding: stories to inspire and inform, published a year ago by Lonely Scribe during National Breastfeeding Week, I wrote:

"Peer support is not about judging mothers' choices, or breastfeeding evangelism - it's about positive ways of helping those who want to breastfeed, for whom it matters, to continue as long as they want to, and supporting them to make informed choices for themselves and their families."

With its focus on listening (see this lovely post), taking time to understand mothers' concerns and making appropriate, supportive suggestions, peer support fills a need that maternity services and health visiting teams can struggle to provide. (Which is not to say that peer support alone is sufficient to properly underpin breastfeeding in the community; for that you need good systems of upward referral for more complex problems, often sadly lacking). Peer support comes in different guises; we are trained by and supervised by the NHS, but in other areas support may be offered through other organisations, such as the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers, La Leche League and the Breastfeeding Network, or through community interest companies like realbabymilk.org or Little Angels.

The feedback we get from mothers who attend our groups and see us at clinics, have home visits from us or call our helpline, is that the service we offer, voluntarily and free of charge, is highly valued and hugely important. Women remember kind words, a listening ear and calm suggestions, whatever course their breastfeeding journey takes, and this in itself is important - they may try breastfeeding again with subsequent children, or be more encouraging of their friends, or challenge misinformation when they hear it, based on their interaction with us. That's a responsibility, but one that I welcome; it feels like an incredibly gentle way of changing the world.

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I'm a peer supporter with BEARS in Amber Valley, Derbyshire. Follow us on Twitter @feedingsupport, and check us out on Facebook for details of groups and clinics, and our National Breastfeeding Week events. We're running our popular 'Breastfeeding Millionaire' quiz, with a host of fantastic prizes, all week, as well as a Positive Postcard Project (send a positive breastfeeding message to someone, and receive one yourself). And there's a Big Feed picnic in Belper River Gardens on Wednesday 26th June 2013 at 1pm.

Other Keep Britain Breastfeeding bloggers are involved in breastfeeding peer support: look up Mummyisagadgetgeek, lifeloveandlivingwithboys, Circus Queen, Hex Mum and Twinkle Mummy.


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Of milk and memories: how my breastfeeding story ends

I knew this time would come eventually. I can't remember when I last fed my baby. It might have been on Friday morning, or last Tuesday. It would have been first thing in the morning, and I would have gone into her room, having heard her calling brightly 'Mummy-Daddy! Mummy-Daddy!' from her cot. I would have gathered her up, warm and sleepy in her pyjamas, still clutching her comfort blanket, and carried her through to my bedroom. She might have said, 'My want my milks', and I would have propped up my pillow, and sat back in bed, and she would have dropped her blanket and draped herself across my lap. She might have said 'That one first, Mummy, then that one [pointing].' She might have paused mid-feed to look up at me and say 'Yummy, yummy, in my tummy rummy!' with a wide grin. Then she might have said, 'All done now, mummy. Can my have some weetabix?' And wriggled down from the bed, and run to the door, turning back to say, impatiently, 'Come ON, mummy!'

My daughter Ada, my third and very likely last baby, is thirty months old and just about weaned (I think). The morning feeds have been becoming less frequent as the months pass, and they've been short (though very sweet). And this week it feels as though the end is nigh; this morning she said 'Milks?' when I got her up and I said 'Ok', but she shook her head, and squirmed to get down, and spotted her brother through the banisters, and went off to play instead.

Ada's first feed, November 2010

I find myself with mixed emotions: pride when I see how my daughter is growing up and becoming her own person, more separate from me; wistfulness when I recall her babyhood and realise how quickly it has passed; and a gentle sadness that my own experience of breastfeeding, which has brought me so much, in all aspects of my life, is coming to an end. When I wrote up my breastfeeding experiences for my collection of positive breastfeeding stories, Breastfeeding: stories to inspire and inform (published when Ada was eighteen months old), I concluded: 'It seems strange to think that I might be approaching the end of breastfeeding when it has been so central to our family life over the last few years. There's no doubt I will look back on it as one of my most precious experiences of motherhood.' I feel very lucky to have had almost another year of breastfeeding since I wrote those words, and that Ada has had such a gradual, gentle weaning. It will be fascinating to see whether, as she gets older, she will remember breastfeeding. A few weeks ago, my older daughter, aged six, came into the bedroom in the early morning while I was feeding Ada. 'Mummy!' she exclaimed in shock as she looked at us, 'I'd completely forgotten that you breastfeed Ada! How could I have forgotten that?' We all laughed, but I was struck by how, when we don't have constant reminders, even things that were once a completely integral part of the family 'furniture' can slip into memory.

Ada's favourite book at the moment is The Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Rebecca Cobb. We currently read it every single night. It's a beautiful book and the part that brings a lump to my throat, even on the umpteenth reading, is the part where, after the paper dolls have been snipped into pieces by a little boy with scissors, they continue to sing their song:..

'And the pieces all joined together,
and the paper dolls flew... 
...into the little girl's memory
where they found white mice and fireworks,
and a starfish soap,
and a kind granny,
and the butterfly hairslide,
and more and more lovely things
each year.'

I'm hoping that buried in the corners of my children's minds, along with all the other lovely things, there are some memories of breastfeeding that will be there all their lives. As for me, it's not so much a corner of my mind as an overflowing treasure chest.

And in some ways it's definitely not the end of the story: with publishing, writing, peer supporting and campaigning, I think I'll be busy with breastfeeding for a long while yet.

Childbirth Without Fear and the backlash against the breastfeeding backlash...

It feels like deja vu - earlier in the year I tackled birth and breastfeeding newspaper articles in this post; and this week Helen Rumbelow in The Times and Anna White in the Telegraph have been at it again.

I read Helen Rumbelow's article about the new edition of Childbirth Without Fear by Grantly Dick-Read, and its powerful cover image, with some interest, as I've been proofreading it for Pinter and Martin. (I know, I can't believe my luck either.) It's ironic that Rumbelow's piece, which draws heavily on her own experience of birth, and misinterprets many of the main points of the book, perhaps illustrates all too clearly why many of Dick-Read's insights are still relevant today.

Of the cover she writes that the mother looks more like a model 'than the kind of birthing woman I was, or have ever known... and then there is the matter of the neonate she is sort of sitting on top of...' This is surely part of the point (and one that's well made in the book itself) - our mental images of childbirth are cultural and this unmedicated, upright, spontaneous birth looks, to women more used to seeing birth take place in hospital, unusual - even shocking. According to Rumbelow some American booksellers won't stock the book 'because so many readers will assume the image is a spoof; fakery of the kind most women suspect when they hear stories from the likes of Gisele Bündchen, claiming that the birth of her son “didn’t hurt in the slightest”, which is Brazilian supermodel shorthand for “why do all you fat birds make such a fuss?”' Really? It wasn't just that they found it a bit graphic for a US public that combusts when it sees a nipple due to a wardrobe malfunction? The rest sounds to me like Rumbelow's personal view. One of the things I object to about Rumbelow's tone, in this and other articles, is the way it casually dismisses the possibility of valid alternative perspectives - I'm no Brazilian supermodel but I've had three pretty painless births - and I can't see how that kind of narrow focus can add anything to the important discussion of the issues surrounding birth.

One section of the article I found particularly troubling.  Rumbelow writes: 'Dick-Read... had been a pariah but slowly his influence crept into NHS hospitals. “Natural” may or may not be desirable, but from the NHS point of view, a bouncy ball and a warm bath were a lot cheaper than the anaesthetist, epidural and staff surveillance required for a medicalised birth. Accountants realised that pain relief could be marketed as a luxury not a right. An unholy alliance grew up between the bean-bag hippies and the bean-counter NHS cost controllers.' To read this you'd think that there was some sort of conspiracy to encourage natural childbirth within the NHS; in fact, it reflects the increased influence of midwifery - woman-centred care - and the best research we currently have about outcomes (in terms of birth injury, postnatal pain, Apgar scores, initiation of breastfeeding) for mothers and babies, which informs the NICE guidelines, as well as the type of birth women want for themselves. (I can't help thinking that if Rumbelow's suggestion were true, the NHS would be encouraging us all to have home births - even cheaper!) And the situation today, although better than in times past, still has room for significant improvements - for more, see this excellent post on The Mule.

What's clear from actually reading Childbirth Without Fear is that Dick-Read was capable of real insight into women's experiences of birth. He observed carefully, thought deeply, and had an appreciation of the magic, or spirituality, or importance - whatever you want to call it - of birth. He recognised the importance of the right kind of support and for the need for women to be educated about the amazing abilities of their own bodies, and that with these came a reduction in the fear that leads to tension, and thus to an interpretation of the physiological process of birth as 'painful'.He understood how culture affects women's expectations of birth and breastfeeding. (The section about the translation of words describing labour in the Bible is just brilliant.) His style of writing may be of his time, but his work couldn't be more relevant today.

As with birth, so with breastfeeding. Fortunately, when it comes to Anna White's bitter article 'The Breastapo need to stop nipple-gazing' there's no need for me to go into too much detail - the Analytical Armadillo has already done a great job here.

What I find myself wondering is why these particular journalists keep writing exactly this kind of article. Are their editors specifically commissioning pieces that take an anti-breastfeeding, or anti-choice stance, and if so, why? Despite Anna White's claim that 'a growing number of academics are questioning the presumed-to-be empirical evidence promoting the health benefits of giving babies the boob' the evidence that artificial feeding presents risks to the health of mothers and babies, in the UK and elsewhere, is overwhelming; we also know from the Infant Feeding Survey that most women start breastfeeding and want to carry on but are derailed by numerous factors, lack of information and support chief among them. We also know that home birth and 'natural' birth is safe and that women in the UK are entitled to choose it if they wish. Whose interests are served by articles that deliberately pit medics against mothers (Rumbelow says of Childbirth Without Fear that it is 'one of the most controversial texts, pitting those in the medical establishment and mothers against each other'), and mothers who feed their children differently against each other? Normally I would suspect vested interests, or the desire to attract certain readers and/or advertisers, but in the case of the broadsheets (as opposed, say, to the parenting glossies or the Tesco baby magazine) this doesn't seem so likely. It's possible that the explanation is simpler - these journalists have emerged from their own experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding in our society with strong feelings, and unlike most people they have a platform where they can work them out in public. It's also possible that those commissioning the articles have experienced, either first or second hand, a type of birth and breastfeeding experience that those of us who support women are working hard to try to improve, through initiatives like the Positive Birth Movement and the establishment of Birthrights.

I'm passionately interested in women's stories of birth and breastfeeding and find them endlessly revealing and informative, in terms of what they tell us about individual women and the influences that affect their experiences. However, it's always a mistake to extrapolate too far based on one's personal experience: hard as it may be, a more objective view, that puts your own experience in the context of many others, and considers the available evidence with an open mind, is what leads to greater understanding, if not agreement. It's something that peer supporters and breastfeeding counsellors cover in training - to debrief their own experiences, deal with their own feelings and then put them aside in order to focus on how they can best support other women with a different set of influences, values and aims, within a society and culture that exert their own pressures on women and their choices. I don't think either Helen Rumbelow or Anna White has yet been through a process of genuine reflection about their own experiences of birth and breastfeeding; had they, their articles would be contributing to a much more rounded discussion of issues that ultimately affect all women.

Giving breastfeeding mothers a break

We all know the feeling of desperately needing some time to ourselves. Whether it's time to have a bath in peace, to read a book, to go to an exercise class or just to sit with a cup of coffee, as mothers we often crave a few minutes (or, better, a few hours!) to just be free of the constant demands that small children make on our attention. It doesn't make us bad mothers to want this alone time. Being a parent is hard work, no question. Whether you've got one newborn, or a larger brood, the daily shepherding of little humans through their daily lives can be delightful, but also exhausting, repetitive and - at times - lonely and boring. And in today's society the other pressures on mothers are great - we are constantly bombarded with (often contradictory) messages about what we 'should' be doing: getting our babies into routines, sleeping through, eating solids, so we can get our lives and our bodies back...

This can weigh particularly heavily on a new breastfeeding mother. Even mothers for whom breastfeeding is working beautifully often feel they are somehow not doing 'enough'. I hear a lot from new mothers about 'getting started expressing', not because they need to be separated from the baby, but to give their partner a chance to do feeds, or to allow them to go on a long-planned hen weekend, or because grandma wants to have the baby for a day. Mums often sound ambivalent about this - the hassle factor of expressing and bottle-feeding to please others can seem like an extra burden. I also hear a lot from mums who are tired out from constantly feeding the baby, trying to keep on top of the washing and cleaning, shopping and cooking meals - and their partner doesn't get home until late in the evening. They think their lives would be easier if they weren't tied to the baby by breastfeeding, and expressing and bottle-feeding, or feeding formula, seem (or are made to seem, by others and the media) like the keys to more 'freedom'.

I think we have a problem here that's a real threat to breastfeeding: it becomes the 'fall guy' for the other problems of new motherhood. Feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for your new baby? Blame the breastfeeding that keeps you tied to the baby 24/7. In need of a break? You can't have one if the baby won't take a bottle. Want to keep up with your hobbies and interests, or see your friends? Not while you're breastfeeding! Want to eat a curry, go for a few drinks, have an evening out? Not if you're still breastfeeding! (Note the 'still' - it's part of the not-so-subtle pressure to stop breastfeeding early). Partner won't look after the baby? How can he, if you won't bottle feed? Baby won't sleep at night? Breastfeeding's the culprit. No time to yourself to exercise, get your hair done, go shopping? Yep, breastfeeding's the problem. I say, this is all rubbish. It's not about the breastfeeding. It's about society's attitudes and how they play out in individual families. I truly believe that breastfeeding is more flexible than many people think, and I think it's possible to balance your life as a breastfeeding mother with the other parts of your life that are important to you.


Of course life will never be the same now you have a child (breastfeeding or not). That's not a bad thing! This is a new chapter. You will not 'get back' to how you were before. But you will be able to enjoy the things that made you happy before you became a parent, albeit in a new, different, possibly even better way. Some things may be off the agenda for weeks, months or even years (I loved long tramps over hills and dales before children), but new opportunities will come along to compensate.

It's not selfish to put you, and your little family, at the centre of things for a while. If you want to turn down invitations to distant, child-free weddings, do so; if you don't want to let the grandparents have your child overnight, you don't have to. If you don't want to be bothered with expressing and bottle-feeding, you can forget all about it and just carry on breastfeeding for as long as you like. Be polite but firm when dealing with those who have an opinion about what you're doing. Part of parenting is learning how to make the choices that are right for you and your family and standing by those choices. And the choice to continue breastfeeding, and thus to not accommodate requests that conflict with it, is very valid. 'Can't you just give the baby a bottle?' is an often-heard question, to which 'no' is a perfectly acceptable answer.


So, some practical tips about how to get a break as a breastfeeding mother, that don't assume the breastfeeding is the problem. First, and perhaps most importantly, work out what it is that's important to you. Presumably the breastfeeding is important to you, because you did it (yay!) and you're still doing it (yay again!). But you'd love some time, to just do something. Let's see how that might be achieved. Obviously it helps if you've got some support - a partner, family nearby, friends. But even if you're on your own, there are things you can do to carve out some time for you, while continuing to breastfeed. Marshall your resources: if you've got support, draw on it. Tell people what you need and ask them to help make it happen. If you don't have support, see if you can get any (breastfeeding groups are a great place to start).

When my children were newly born I couldn't bear to be physically separated from them, even if they were only downstairs. This lasted several weeks and seemed to be part of my instinctive response to my baby - along with the gut-wrenching feeling I got when they cried, and the way I sprang awake, fully alert, when they made so much as a murmur. (And the way my boobs leaked at the first cry of hunger, from my own baby or someone else's.) Don't rush the first few weeks. Get what help you can to enable you to just be with your baby, let them sleep on your chest, feed as long as they like, let the house go to the dogs. Read this poem.

However, even in the early weeks, you may want a little time - to take a shower, for example? I remember agonising over how I could have a shower when I was alone with the baby. What if she woke and needed feeding? I put her in a bouncy chair and took her into the bathroom with me, then showered at breakneck speed. I soon realised that wasn't very relaxing and took to getting up early (while my husband was still at home), having a shower and then going back to sleep! Or I'd shower at night. The point is, you can change these things around. Try things out. You'll get to know what works.

With a tiny baby you can feel as though you literally never put the baby down. Slings can be a godsend and enable you to do things around the house and get out for a walk, but it can feel liberating to have a few minutes to yourself without a baby physically attached to you. Luckily, other people can wear slings and carry your baby too - so get your husband or partner to go out for a walk with the baby in the sling (or pram, if the baby likes the pram) while you do... whatever you like. Watch telly, do chores, paint your toenails. Or go out for the walk too, just not holding the baby! I used to love hanging up the washing while someone - anyone! - held the baby for ten minutes. I was outside, in the sun, with my arms temporarily free, alone with my thoughts. I learnt to savour those moments.

When you're up with the baby in the night, and doing a lot of night feeds, it can feel as though you never get comfy in bed or have space to yourself. When my second baby was not sleeping well my husband would take him downstairs when he got up for work, and look after him for an hour so I had the bed to myself for a much-needed extra hour of sleep. I loved him for it.

It can be helpful to focus on what you can do. You have lots of 'thinking time'. You can plan, make lists, decide what you will do in the future when you get chance. (That future comes sooner than you think!) I wrote two-thirds of a novel while on maternity leave with my second baby - when he napped, I typed. I imagined and planned the scenes while breastfeeding, then wrote them up when he was asleep. It's not a great novel - it's not even finished! - but it's a testament to the fact that I managed to keep a little bit of head space for myself and my ideas while at home with a small baby.

I missed reading when my babies were small. Either I was too tired to read, or I couldn't hold the book and turn the pages while breastfeeding (other mums I know were more adept than me!). A friend having her second baby deliberately made the choice to sit up and have the light on during night feeds so that she could read while feeding at night, reasoning that she might as well make best use of the time if she had to be awake. Now I have a smartphone I would browse and read on that if I were spending hours on the sofa feeding a newborn. (Sadly my breastfed baby is now 23 months old and she wants to play on the smartphone while feeding.)

Getting out of the house alone - just for a while - can really make you feel as though you've had a break. At weekends I used to feed the baby, hand her to Daddy, then go out for an hour or so, often to buy something for lunch. It needn't have been shopping - it could have been a haircut, a walk round the park, a coffee with a friend. Leaving a breastfed baby for an hour with a trusted friend or family member is definitely doable.

Often there are breastfeeding-friendly ways round even quite complicated arrangements. In my book Breastfeeding: stories to inspire and inform, one mother tells how she attended her sister's wedding in South Africa when her breastfed baby was just 12 weeks old. She planned in advance, pumped a stash of milk, got the baby taking bottles, then flew out to SA for the weekend, attended the wedding, pumped while she was there, then came home and carried on breastfeeding. A friend of mine had evening Paralympics tickets but her baby point-blank refused to drink from a bottle. We talked it over and in the end she brought her daughter's bath and bedtime earlier over a few days beforehand so that the baby (who sleeps well at night!) went to bed earlier and my friend could get to the Olympic Park in time for the event. As mothers, particularly first-time mothers, it can seem difficult to adjust routines that seem to be working well - but breastfeeding, and babies, can be more flexible than we think, if we give them chance.

This post has covered a lot of ground - but it boils down, again, to the importance of support for breastfeeding mothers. Sensitive support, that addresses the real issues and doesn't shift the blame onto breastfeeding, can make all the difference.

Breastfeeding: peer support in action

I love the work I do as a peer supporter of breastfeeding. It's one of the reasons I wrote Breastfeeding: stories to inspire and inform, which in some ways is peer support in book form (more about that in the introduction to the book!). Today something happened to remind me, once again, of the power of sharing our experiences with other mothers.

When I trained as a peer supporter we were encouraged, as a group, to share our breastfeeding stories with each other. I spoke about my first daughter Evie (that's her in the picture below) and our problems with feeding, and also about my second child, who was completely different and a guzzler from the get-go. I think I was feeding my third child, then only eight weeks old, while I was actually talking! That was in January 2011.

The full story of my breastfeeding journey with Evie is in the book, but I'll summarise here: she had silent reflux*. She would arch her back and cry during feeds, was hard to settle, didn't feed for long or very often, gained weight slowly and went on total nursing strikes. She popped on and off the boob during feeds, making feeding in public messy. She was manifestly uncomfortable much of the time. At five weeks I mentioned the idea of reflux to my health visitor, who firmly told me to put the idea out of my mind, then left without suggesting anything that might help. For the next five months I struggled on, until, after a referral to a paed, Evie was finally diagnosed with reflux and started on infant Gaviscon. Things improved from that moment on and I fed her much more happily until she self-weaned at eleven months, having never been a baby who got much comfort at the breast.

Fast-forward to today. BEARS, our group of peer supporters in Amber Valley, Derbyshire, has a Facebook group (actually, we have two - one for everyone to join, and a closed one for us to talk amongst ourselves). It's a great way for us to stay in touch with each other, and we can pool our experience to better help the women we support. Today the question of reflux came up. And that's when one of the other peer supporters posted this:

"I remember you telling us the story of the silent reflux when we were training... I told my friend about it and how similar it sounded to you so I suggested she ask the doctor about it and the doctor agreed she had all the symptoms... so you passing on your story stuck with me and therefore helped my friend and her baby :) It's amazing that you've helped someone and you didn't even know it :) They are both doing fabulous! She's now 12 weeks old and on meds for the reflux and one very happy breastfeeding baby girl who has doubled her birth weight and some more!"

This is just a great example of peer support in action: shared knowledge meant that this mother could get the help she needed and she and her baby are happily breastfeeding. I feel great to have been involved, however indirectly - and it's stories like this that keep us doing what we do.

*You can read more about reflux here: http://kellymom.com/health/baby-health/reflux/ If you're concerned about your baby, seek help: peer supporters, breastfeeding counsellors from the major breastfeeding charities, IBCLCs and infant feeding advisers should have the information you need or be able to point you in the right direction.