As we’ve discussed before here on our blog, breastfeeding support can be of vital importance to someones journey. And by the same token, giving support can also form an enormous part of your journey. To celebrate World Breastfeeding Week, we’ve put together some stories of journeys of both our members and our admins to show what breastfeeding support can achieve.
MEMBERS STORIES:
Lucy Matthews
I joined the group at about eight months into feeding. Being able to access expert advice, reassurance, friendship, and the shared experiences of others virtually 24/7 has been so important to me in keeping me going when things have been difficult. I also have to confess that when I joined I didn’t really like the idea of feeding a toddler, but being part of this group not only normalised that for me but also led me to aspire to making the 2 years recommended by WHO. We are now at 2 years and 2 months. This feels like one of the most special things I’ve ever done. Thanks for helping me achieve it.
Jodie O’Brien
Breastfeeding has been a very, very difficult journey for us. We started off with me having a severe nipple injury due to the hospital’s negligence, latch issues, a whole host of health problems and, finally, multiple allergies which requires strict diets for both me and my little boy. I’ve had days where I wish he didn’t breastfeed so I could eat normal food again, but then he gives me a sleepy, milky smile and I know I have to carry on. He’s 15 months now, so I don’t know how much longer he’ll feed for as he’s already dropping feeds, so I will enjoy them while I can 🙂
Stacey Leeder
I put my baby on to formula because I was uneducated about breastfeeding. Then I felt guilty and wanted to give my baby the best, so I relactated after a few months and taught my baby to latch again. I then did research about breastfeeding and educated myself and learnt a lot as my health visitor was not very helpful with breastfeeding advice. I joined facebook groups to learn more, and here we are feeding at nearly 2 years old, and planning to feed to natural term. I am also a bf peer supporter.
Kiri Houghton
I think one of my main worries has been Eva’s irregular pooing (21 days is our personal best) and this group helped me realise that it can be normal for this to happen given that the baby is gaining weight and has plenty of wet nappies. Had I have listened to my GP, she would be given movicol and water in between feeds which would potentially have affected my supply!
Ellie Barrow
Hello! As you can see my name is Ellie, I am a 27-year-old mum of two beautiful babies! I am a LLL trained peer supporter and I completed my training in about September 2013. I initially did my training through sure start and volunteered for them.
When the funding was cut for breastfeeding support in our area, we started a CIC community interest company called Milk Fairies! I am now one of the directors of milk fairies and still volunteer, we run two groups a week, have a help line, offer a home visit service and have a Facebook page/group or two!
My breast feeding journey began December 27th 2012 when I had my little boy Harry. Despite the fact that all of the women in my family (on my mum’s side) breastfeed/fed I really had no idea what to do or what to expect, all I knew was that that was how you fed your baby… Although, “Not everyone can, so I will give it a go. If it works, great, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter,” because that is what society told me!! Oh, how far I have come since then!!
I fed Harry until he was about 21 months old. Stopping was gradual and in-line with me returning to work and doing late shifts, etc., but I was happy that it wasn’t traumatic for either of us! I feel very lucky to have had what I would describe as a simple, lovely, uncomplicated breastfeeding journey without even a sniff of a blocked duct!
I am currently feeding 9-month-old Eva, and have suffered one bout of mastitis,not nice but I caught it early! I am hoping to feed Eva for as long or longer! Neither of my babies have had a drop of formula, something else I am quite proud of!
I was very lucky to have a fantastic local support group when I started out, but I recognise that so many places have nothing like that, and that is where this group comes in!
ADMIN TEAM STORIES:
Jenny Baldwin
Inadvertently, I became an admin of Breastfeeding Support and Information UK a few years ago. The group was initially started due to a distinct lack of decent breastfeeding support being offered on other groups. At the time, I was an NHS peer supporter and I was starting out on my breastfeeding counsellor training, so I had some knowledge behind me but I was certainly lacking experience in supporting women with breastfeeding. My own personal experience was that of breastfeeding three children, the youngest of whom is currently breastfeeding.
The admin group initially started out with some women who were passionate in giving evidence-based breastfeeding support, but the team were largely untrained. Gradually, we realised that we had a responsibility to ensure that the team were trained in breastfeeding support to ensure that we were giving not only evidence-based support, but also to ensure that women were given safe breastfeeding support. We are now fortunate to have an admin team who are experienced, and more importantly know when to signpost women for specialist breastfeeding support.
Through providing support and information on the group I have learnt such an incredible amount, and that is due to the amazing mums that we have supported over the last few years. Every challenge provides a new opportunity for us to learn more about breastfeeding and more about ways to manage the issue. I personally have read an incredible amount of articles in my quest to find answers for women struggling.
The best reward for me is seeing those who really struggled meet their own breastfeeding goals, and supporting those amazing women through the difficult periods is a really humbling experience.
Happy World Breastfeeding Week 2016 😊
Ali Thomas
For me, this group has helped me in several ways. I joined this group as an admin when my daughter was just turned 1. I had learnt a fair bit about breastfeeding but I felt that to support mums better, I needed to train, so I did my mother supporter training with the ABM.
I learnt so much in terms of breastfeeding knowledge, and how to communicate well with people, and I also learnt a great deal about myself. It affirmed my passion for breastfeeding and feminism, and also reminded me how supportive my husband is – he cared for our daughter to enable me to work, and he proofread everything I wrote, learned a lot himself in the process, and he continues to support me by answering posts in the dads’ group.
It has introduced me to some wonderful women in my fellow admins, and I have beautiful friendships that I wouldn’t have without this group. Going to the ABM conference allows us to meet up and celebrate our achievements.
I feel proud of what we’ve achieved; watching the group evolve over the last year has seen us introduce the off-topic post and the milestone file, but also we’ve introduced the page, the dads’ group, the politics group and the blog. I never dreamt that I would write something that would be viewed 12,000 times – how amazing!
I continue to feel the support of every member of this group in feeding my little girl to natural term. In a world that is is sadly unaware of the beauty of feeding a toddler I love having a breastfeeding village 😍
You can read more about my personal journey here
Catherine Holmes
Before I had my son, I hoped that breastfeeding would go well, but I wasn’t prepared for how much I would love it and how big a part of my life it would become. He is now 32 months and still happily boobing as much as he can, so it’s an integral part of our relationship. I will never get over what a parenting wonder-tool it is whenever he needs some comfort or to reconnect.
I also feel that breastfeeding my son has given me a vocation. I volunteer as a peer supporter once or twice a week, and I spend a lot of my spare time giving support on Facebook. I joined the BS&I team in November 2015, and I absolutely love it here. I think we do something a bit different, and I’d like to think it really works. As well as the pride I feel at being part of a team which is such an amazing source of support for our members, it’s great for my personal development too. I’ve learnt so much from my fellow admins, from members, and from the research that questions I’ve been asked here have prompted me to do.
I am currently training to be a breastfeeding counsellor with the ABM and look forward to being able to offer more support in the future as I learn more, as well as volunteering on the national phone line once qualified.
Trudi-Louise Brannon
I had been a member of the group for a while before being asked to take on an admin role in August last year. I felt very honoured to be asked, although a little nervous as to whether my knowledge would be up to scratch and whether I would be able to find the time with a threenager and a newborn. Accepting an admin role was definitely the right decision. I have been a breastfeeding peer supporter with my local team for three years and can’t fault the training I received for it. It gave me a solid grounding from which I have been able to support the women in this group. Being part of this admin team has shown me how much more there is to learn from the knowledge and experiences of both the admin team and the members in the group. I am constantly learning from my experiences in the group and am able to take this knowledge with me into my local supporting role too.
Breastfeeding support is a massive area with such a vast number of worries or issues that may arise for individual women that there are many things that I simply hadn’t had to give support on before. My admin role means that I have the opportunity to support women with a wider range of issues and discuss how best to support different issues with the admin team. Being able to support women on a daily basis and having the rest of the team to discuss things with has definitely helped me to keep my knowledge updated and fresh in my mind.
I love the ethos of this group and the passion of all the team; we work well together and are supportive of each other. We all have different strengths and personal experiences but everyone’s input and contribution is valued. We may be on slightly different journeys with our training but we all have the same end goal in sight – to help mothers achieve their personal breastfeeding goals by providing them with sound support and information. I feel privileged to be part of the admin team and to call these ladies my friends.
Hannah Ashford
I was asked to be an admin last summer. I felt honoured to be asked. It took me a little while to get into the role and I was pretty dormant to begin with.
My background is mainly 1-2-1 in person support, facilitating antenatal classes and counselling on the telephone. So I did feel this has opened a doorway to a whole other way to support mothers. However, when I started to be more active in the group with supporting I started to really enjoy it!
When you are speaking with someone face to face or on the phone you can use counselling tools to really bring out the underlying worries to look at the full picture of a situation, whereas in text, that’s very different. So I read the book ‘Online Counselling and Guidance Skills: A Practical Resource for Trainees and Practitioners’ by Jane Evans to try and help me to understand how to use more of my counselling skills online. I also hope to attend a study day next year to learn how to improve these skills.
Since then I have found that I enjoy the role even more and I feel proud to be part of such a supportive, non-judgmental online support group.
The issues brought to the group vary widely. From latching to support with the social aspect of breastfeeding and everything in between. The issues in the group do reflect what I hear from mothers on a day-to-day basis outside the group, which leaves me pondering what can we do as a society to help women prevent issues…
The other admin are just lovely. We all vary vastly on our training and knowledge but that only enhances the support we can offer. Working closely with such an informed and passionate group of women helps me to feel impassioned to support mothers and restores my faith in a situation where so many feel failed by breastfeeding support.
Jo Farren
My journey started with my eldest boy, now a strapping eight year old. I was very poorly supported with breastfeeding. After having my second son, I sought out support and it made an enormous difference to our experience, and from there I decided that I wanted to put something back in terms of support and make a difference to other mothers experiences. So I did my peer support training with the ABM and was asked to join this page.
I’m still a relative newbie but I do jump on posts to reassure, give info or support when I have had a similar experience. I would love to go onto to my counsellor training but having just had baby number 3, I figure now is not the time!
I feel I’m constantly learning, from my peers and from support experiences. This is a lovely group, we keep it support focused but have a milestones and off-topic post every week which is lovely. I hope to be posting an important milestone myself in the near future so watch this space!
Sarah Abelle
Hi, Sarah and I’m 33. I have two daughters, both breastfed. My eldest, who is 4, I breastfed for 27 months. My youngest (16 months) is currently breastfed.
I always knew I wanted to breastfeed, and I went to some classes on it when I was pregnant with my eldest daughter. However, I don’t think it was until I held my daughter in my arms for the first time that I felt so strongly about it. After a long and difficult labour, which ended in an emergency c-section, I was a bit overwhelmed and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I got some support from the hospital staff, but not much, and no one discussed position and latch with me. After a few days of muddling through, I was in excruciating pain with every feed. I felt very much alone and was pressured into formula top-ups for what was described as a problematic 10% weight loss, which I now know to be normal.
This was a low point for me; about two weeks in, the pain was gradually subsiding after I got some good suggestions on the NCT helpline about positioning and attachment, but the top-ups were not what I had envisioned for our breastfeeding relationship. Fortunately for me, my mother visited and stayed for a few days and with her help I managed to get back to exclusive breastfeeding at one month in.
Breastfeeding became easier and easier from this point, and we both enjoy the bond we shared. When I went back to work at 7 months, I expressed for my daughter and continued to do this until she was 16 months old, when I reduced my days at work and continued to feed her when she was with me.
I got together with some local friends in 2014, and united by a passion to improve breastfeeding support in the area, we set up a local breastfeeding support charity called LatchOn. The charity has gone from strength to strength, providing regular support to mothers, and also presented information about breastfeeding to mothers-to-be. Recently, it has even taken us to the House of Commons, which is one of the places I can now say I have breastfed!
I am NCT peer supporter trained, so that I am able to provide women with breastfeeding support for the Facebook group I admin, the charity and also the local NCT support sessions that run in our area. It’s something that I continue to be passionate about and feel privileged that I have had a chance to help so many women on their breastfeeding journeys.
My second daughter was born in April 2015. We spent a long time in hospital as she had an infection when she was born, which made feeding more problematic than it would have otherwise been, as well as the posterior tongue tie that we had divided when she was 3 weeks old. But we got through it and she’s now a healthy and active 16 month old, who has been exclusively breastfed from birth.
Breastfeeding is now a normal part of parenting for me as well as something that I’m passionate about helping other women with. I would never have guessed that it would be, prior to having children, but I love the bond it has created between my children and me, and the more I learn about breastfeeding and breastmilk, the more convinced I am that all mothers who want to breastfeed should get the support they need to do so.
Cai Batty
My name is Cai and my daughter Astrid was born in August 2015. Our breastfeeding journey was far from easy, it was excruciatingly painful for me and although she was literally almost permanently attached with maybe 15 minutes at most between feeds, she was not gaining weight well.
I looked for help from local healthcare professionals whose advice was not great and negatively impacted our journey. We were told to top up with formula and feed baby no more than 3 hourly and not knowing any better that’s what we did! My supply dipped, baby still didn’t gain well, the excruciating pain continued for me and more than once I considered giving up.
We had one ineffective tongue tie snip on the NHS, when that didn’t help in desperation we went private and my baby’s posterior tie was divided twice and we worked with a lactation consultant. During that time we weaned both from formula and nipple shields. My supply did not just bounce back unfortunately despite lots of skin to skin and frequent offering and it was suggested we could try supplementing with EBM via a supplemental nursing system.
When Astrid was referred to hospital for failure to thrive it felt like a huge blow. The paediatrician was happy for us to try supplementing via SNS and we had just had the 3rd tt division so she gave us 10 days grace to see results before she would start tests to see if there was anything underlying wrong. We also had a lot of support from La leche league via email which kept me hopeful and sane.
Luckily, we turned a corner! I’m so glad now we persevered and we’re still going with no plans to stop until Astrid is ready. I trained as a peer supporter to help other new mums and their babies, thinking if I could help just one mum avoid going through what we went through then I would be happy! I also help admin this group which is fab, it keeps me current and I love the evidence based approach. I wish I had known these groups existed when we were struggling!
Asha Crocker
Asha’s breastfeeding journey is incredible and complex, and shows how tongue tie can impact those first months of breastfeeding. To see how tongue tie, exclusive expressing and breastfeeding support form Asha’s journey, please read her moving story here.
Rachel Byrom
By the time my daughter was born I’d read all the books and articles I could on how to breastfeed and I thought I knew it all. Roll on to a week postpartum and my nipples were in tatters and I would cry whenever my husband bought her to me to be fed as I knew the pain was about to begin again.
I sought help from 3 health professionals who all assured me her latch was great and she was gaining weight like she should. One even told me I was just one of those who just needed to toughen up! Finally I found the right person; who listened to me when I said I was in agony and knew that something wasn’t right. It turned out my daughter was tongue tied and I was quickly referred for a division.
That woman saved my breastfeeding relationship. Once things improved and the pain stopped I finally found the joy of breastfeeding. I loved her falling asleep on the breast, those milk drunk moments and the little hands reaching up to my face. We went onto feed for over 2 wonderful years.
The same wonderful lady asked me to train to become a peer supporter and I jumped at the chance. I began volunteering on the postnatal ward at my local hospital and recently became an admin on the Breastfeeding Support and Information group. I’ve learnt so much more from the experienced ladies who I admin alongside and see every day how the group supports and helps women to achieve their breastfeeding goals. I only wish I’d been a member when my daughter was born!
Thank you all for reading and getting to know our admin and members. A collection of journeys which are so different show that breastfeeding is completely personal and unique to the breastfeeding dyad. However, communities like our group unite women with different journeys and bring them together with a love and passion for the special bond that is breastfeeding; not just bonding mother and child, but bonding mums together in our online breastfeeding village.
HAPPY WORLD BREASTFEEDING WEEK!!!
Stories written by individual contibuters
blog edited and compiled by Ali Thomas.
through the eyes of a breastfeeding support group 