Is breast really best?

As a brief disclaimer, I am breastfeeding Henry and we have found it relatively easy. We’ve been lucky.

Of course the medical answer to the question is “yes, breastmilk is the most nutritious and beneficial food for a newborn” but really, I’m not here to talk about it in that sense.

So let’s try again. Is breast really best?

No, I don’t believe it is.

I believe that ‘Breast is Best’ is a catchy and emotionally manipulative slogan.

I believe that breastfeeding can be a beautiful experience.

I believe that what is really ‘best’ for a baby is to be fed. Whether by breastmilk or formula, a baby needs to be fed.

And I believe that a baby needs to bond with a mother who is happy.

As I said before, for me, breastfeeding has come easily, and I was given fantastic support from the midwives when I was in hospital (a brilliant midwife named Rhiannon, in particular). Unfortunately, for many of my family and friends, this has not been the case but they have felt pressured to continue trying to breastfeed because “everyone says breast is best and I need to do the best for my baby.”

It makes me so angry that these wonderful, strong women are feeling this kind of pressure; that they’re feeling as if they’re bad mothers for considering using formula. Being new to motherhood is an emotional and overwhelming experience on its own, without adding the worry of being a bad parent.

Now I have no problem with someone wanting to persevere with breastfeeding if they’re finding it difficult, but if someone is truly struggling and refuses to consider formula purely because “breast is best”, then I do have a problem (with the slogan, not the woman).

Desperately trying to continue to establish breastfeeding can be physically and emotionally exhausting, and can put undue stress on hormonal, tired and overwhelmed new parents.

Imagine this scenario – a mother is trying to breastfeed her baby. It hurts and he doesn’t stay latched on well. She suspects he isn’t getting enough milk because he can’t latch on properly. She considers changing to formula but remember – breast is best – so she thinks that if she just carries on trying, they’ll manage it. After all, she has to be a good parent to him, and if she switches to formula, that isn’t “best”! What parent wouldn’t want to do the best for their child?

Is the breast really the best thing for the baby in this scenario? No! The breast isn’t giving that baby what it needs – what would be best is for him to be properly fed!

Now imagine this scenario – a mother is struggling to bond with her baby and is diagnosed with Post Natal Depression. She is told by the doctor that she desperately needs to go on anti-depressants, but that she can’t while she is breastfeeding. So she’s now torn – does she stop breastfeeding and take the medication? Or does she keep going with breastfeeding? Well, she hasn’t bonded with her baby thanks to the PND, so she already believes she’s a bad mum. She doesn’t need that confirming by her deciding not to give her baby the best. And remember, breast is best!

Surely this baby deserves a mother who is healthy and able to bond with it? Yes, the baby is getting all its nutritional needs (unlike in scenario 1) but its poor mum is tearing her mental health apart to try and keep it on breastmilk.

How about this scenario – The idea of breastfeeding really makes this mother feel queasy. She doesn’t know why, it’s just never something that has appealed to her. Now though, hearing and reading “breast is best” everywhere is making her question this. She really doesn’t want to breastfeed, but does that make her a bad mother? Don’t good mothers want what is best for their child? If breast is best, then that’s what she feels she needs to do, even if it goes against everything she wants.

It can’t do this mother and her baby’s relationship any good, for her to be regularly having to partake in something that she absolutely doesn’t want to do. What if she then comes to resent her baby for it? Yes, being a parent can mean sacrificing things for your child, but a mother's health is just as important as the baby's. 

And what about the mother who tries really hard but their milk just doesn’t come in properly? Or the mother whose baby has to be in special care for a while, and they can’t get breastfeeding established once the baby and parents are reunited?

Now it might be that in any of those scenarios, the mum carries on breastfeeding, perseveres, and actually it all does work out fine. The point is, it might not, so the least that the professionals can do is make it so that she doesn't feel pressured in either direction. 

I can understand feeling disappointed if you want to breastfeed and can’t for whatever reason; I’d have been disappointed if I wasn’t able to. What isn’t right though, is the amount of pressure to breastfeed. I gather from speaking to friends and family that once the decision has been made by parents to stop breastfeeding and use formula, the support and information seems to be pretty good. It’s the decision making process itself that isn’t right.

It should be an easy decision – what is best for me and my child?

So is breast really best?

Not for everyone.

Fed is best. Happy is best.

Make a decision based on that, not on a slogan that, let’s face it, relies on being really lucky that the words breast and best are near rhymes.

Birth!

So here it is!

On the way down to Labour Suite, the midwife explained that I was never in line to have the 3^rd dose of the induction medication.

Were I being induced because I was overdue, they would continue the normal induction process until it either worked or they had to stop and deliver the baby via c-section. However, because the induction was due to my waters breaking, they were under a time limit of only having 48 hours to get labour started properly.

Hence my move down to Labour Suite 48 hours after my waters broke!

Not being entirely sure how the next part of the induction would work (given that my contractions were clearly still not properly established), I asked whether I would be allowed a water birth.

She actually scoffed!

Thanks, lady.

I think she realised she’d been a bit rude and dismissive because she then explained why. To progress the contractions, I would need to be hooked up to a drip of oxytocin right up to the point of giving birth, and while on the drip, the baby would need to be monitored constantly.

It was at this point that I realised, with not a small amount of dread, that aside from going to the toilet, I would more than likely be laying in the same position on the same bed right up until I actually had the baby.

So here I am – still cheerful at this point! On the right of the photo, you can see the medication on the drip, going into my hand. On the left, you can see the monitor, recording the baby’s heartbeat and my contractions. 

The midwife settled me into our room and said she would be back soon to put me on the drip and monitor.

I really can’t explain how excited I was at this point! Nervous, yes. Terrified, of course. But still so excited.

Soon, the midwife returned and hooked me up to the drip. She showed me a long tube with the medication in it, and explained that all the medication I should need was in there, and that a specific amount would be released each hour. This amount could be adjusted based on how my body and the baby were responding, and I would be starting out at 1mg per hour.

To be honest, I was expecting this to be adjusted each hour but I was increased to 2mg an hour pretty quickly. Within about half an hour, I think.

It wasn’t long before shift change gave us a new midwife, Vicki, and Hayley the student midwife, who would actually be the one who ended up coaching me through the birth itself.

At this point, not much was happening really. For a good few hours, I was in a cycle of my medication being increased, staying as calm as possible through some quite intense contractions, and watching the monitor.

My husband only told me this once I’d already given birth, and I had no clue at the time, but the midwives were at this point considering giving me a c-section, because I wasn’t really reacting when I had a contraction. They were apparently worried that if I wasn’t feeling the contractions when they were registering as strongly as they were on the monitor, I wouldn’t be able to use them properly to help me push.

The thing is, I was feeling them! I was just trying to stay as calm as possible and breathe through them.  Luckily for me though, by the time my medication was at 9mg, I knew I’d need some pain relief, so began using the gas and air but in all honesty, it didn’t do much apart from make me feel light headed.

Around 10pm, my cervix was checked and I was proclaimed to be 4cm dilated! The decision was made to increase the medication again, taking me to 11mg per hour, to ensure that I continued to progress.

The gas and air was still feeling a bit useless, so I asked for pethidine. Let’s just say, if I were to ever be giving birth again, I wouldn’t bother with it! It made my light-headedness worse, it made me feel nauseous, and it didn’t really do anything to help with the pain.

I don’t know how long it was after that the pain became unbearable. I do remember it was quite sudden!

I told my husband I needed an epidural, and I had it within about 10 minutes. The relief! It turned out that the medication had been turned up so high to help me feel the contractions that I was actually contracting too much and too often (which I never knew was possible). Looking at the printout from the monitor, it was almost as if I was having one long contraction, as it didn’t have a chance to fade properly before the next began building.

No wonder it hurt!

I took the opportunity to get a bit of sleep, though it wasn’t completely restful – an epidural doesn’t completely numb you, you know!

Around 3am, my cervix was checked again and I was fully dilated! Vicki explained that she’d like me to rest for bit more and let the baby descend a bit further on his own.

“You’ll be pushing in an hour.”

I do remember feeling suddenly very nervous at that point, but I think tiredness overrode that because I know I did fall asleep again after texting my family to tell them I was fully dilated.

4am arrived, along with my midwife, student midwife, and the midwife in charge (to wish me luck).

It began!

Altogether, I was pushing for an hour and a half, and the majority of that time was incredibly frustrating. I knew going in that a lot of pushing is to just move the baby down the birth canal, but to be honest I didn’t fully appreciate quite how much effort that takes! Though I couldn’t be sure of timings because – hey – was a little too busy to look at a clock, I’d estimate that of those 90 minutes, at least 80 of them were spent getting him down the birth canal. Actually pushing him out was easy in comparison to that!

I think part of the problem is that you can’t actually tell how much progress you’re making at that point – you’re completely reliant on the midwives telling you that he is indeed moving.

Yes it was very tough, yes it was extremely hard work, but I think I went into a bit of a trance because suddenly one of the midwives said that she could see his head. I do remember that I didn’t believe her! No way was I that close to actually having him!

So she made me reach down and feel.

“Oh my god, he’s got hair!”

At this point, my midwife let the student midwife (Hayley) talk me through the rest of the birth. It all happened rather quickly after that. Before I knew it, there he was!

They put him up on my chest immediately and I just held on. It didn’t feel real that this, right here, was my own baby and that I got to keep him.

After negative test after negative test, countless invasive and undignified examinations, and IVF, was it really possible that we actually had our baby boy there in front of us?

I expected to be hurried straight back up to the ward but actually, I had a very relaxing couple of hours on the Labour Suite. Henry was checked over, I had a shower once my legs started working again after the epidural, and I was given some food (it all came straight back up but they got me some more and I managed to keep it down – apparently that can be because of the injection they give you to help deliver the placenta).

After all that, Henry was wrapped up and put into his little cot, I was given a wheelchair, and we went back up to another private room on the ward.

And there we were… a year and 2 days after finding out that my fallopian tubes were blocked and we needed IVF, we were sat in the hospital with our brand new, perfect baby.

Henry, born at 5:30am on 6^th May 2018.

Perfect.