Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to a Wonder Care podcast. I'm Sheena Mitchell, a pharmacist and mum of three. I combine healthcare and practical advice to support you on your parenting journey.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: This week I'm diving into a really important topic. It's one that I'm sometimes a little bit nervous to talk about because mums already feel under an awful lot of pressure, pressure when they have a newborn. There's so much chat about how you feed your baby and it can be a little bit overwhelming. So from the start I want to say that no matter how you feed your child, you are a success. Breastfeeding can be difficult for many parents for many different reasons. A happy formula fed baby and a happy mom is an absolutely winning combination. For those of you who are maybe expecting a baby or you're in the early days of your journey. I really wanted to record this episode to encourage you and to explain the benefits and to bring a special expert who I'll introduce shortly to make your life a little bit easier in those early months. We have a huge chat all about the difficulties of the early weeks of breastfeeding and lots of tips to make the whole journey easier.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: Today I am joined by Nicola O'Byrne. You can find Nicola on Instagram at nicola underscore lactation consultant and Nicola is a lactation consultant based in churchtown. But Nicola, you also do an awful lot of online work as well.
[00:01:32] Speaker D: Most of my classes after you've had your baby and before you have the baby would be online, live online and then I see people one to one afterwards in the office in actually, you know, in the last few weeks there's been quite an upturn in online consults again, which was surprising.
[00:01:47] Speaker C: I think a lot of people love the online, I suppose way of communicating. It's so easy and handy, especially when you've got young kids at home, it can be hard to get out of the house.
[00:01:57] Speaker D: The upsides of it are if you have somebody there who could hold the camera and move the camera around, it actually works really well and I think it's even more empowering for the mothers because they're doing it themselves. I remember during COVID we used to record every consult so they could go back and they could look at it and it just integrated all the information.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: Yes, and that is really useful to look back on because might have a problem when your baby's nine days old, but then you might have a problem when they're nine weeks old and you don't clue what she did to fix it nine weeks ago. Yeah.
[00:02:27] Speaker D: Or you're in the office and it all works wonderfully. Or you go into the breastfeeding group in the hospital and it all works wonderfully and then you come home and you go, why can't I do it now? So most of the time, even in the office now, the part where we're doing latching and positioning. We'll record that with the camera phone if the mother wants to. It really helps them relax and go, okay, I don't have to remember absolutely everything here.
[00:02:50] Speaker C: Just talking about that before we came online, that traditionally breastfeeding is spoken about as a natural, easy kind of job to do. And I was saying that that was not my experience. And I am so glad that you have joined me today because obviously as a community pharmacist, I have a special interest in the area of breast milk, on its health benefits for both mums and babies. So just breastfeeding itself and then also of breast milk as a medicine, so using it to treat minor conditions and it's really, really fascinating. So I'll run through the, I suppose, evidence based that there is just to show moms how powerful breastfeeding is and how real and tangible the benefits are for both baby and mom. And then hopefully everyone will realize that actually, if I can get on board with this, there's a lot of benefits. So that's when you're going to come in and fix all those early week problems because it's certainly not easy. So I'm definitely glad to have you here for all the tips for mums for that.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: In terms of health benefits, it's important to remember that breast milk is a dynamic food. This means that it changes in response to your baby's needs, both nutritionally and immunologically. It's been shown that breastfed babies have a lower risk of many diseases, so I'll give you some examples now. Diarrhea, vomiting, preterm necrotizing, enterocolitis, respiratory infections such as RSB, pneumonia, whooping cough, bacterial meningitis, ear infections, asthma, sudden infant death syndrome, childhood obesity, and leukemia in childhood. Further down the road, breastfed babies are less likely to develop eczema and type two diabetes later in life, and the same is said for celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease. Antibodies flow from mum to baby in response to illness. This helps to support your baby's immune system, which makes them less likely to be sick. There are also a whole host of benefits to mum. So in the early months after delivery, a breastfeeding mum has a reduced risk of postnatal depression. Breastfeeding mums often recover quicker from childbirth due to the release of oxytocin. During breastfeeding, oxytocin causes your uterus to contract back towards its original size, and this can also reduce the amount of vaginal bleeding. Further down the road, breastfeeding can reduce the risk of a mother developing breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, thyroid cancer, osteoporosis, type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. So it's clear that the benefits are really, really extensive. Breast milk itself can also be used as a remedy and a lot of moms find it really helpful to use it in a whole host of different ways. Breastfeeding can be really useful when you have a baby with a sore throat. It can also be used if your baby has conjunctivitis. A simple way to do this is to express a few drops of breast milk onto a cotton pad and then use this to remove sticky or hard discharge from your baby's eyes. So always remember when using a cotton pad near your baby's eyes, it's just a single wipe from the inner part of the eye to the outside part of the eye because you don't want to risk reusing the cotton wool in case you spread infection. It can also be used as a remedy for rash, so it can help with eczema or sensitive skin. If you've got a few patches, you can just apply a little bit again on a cotton pad and dab the sensitive or irritated area. In this case, it can actually help to reduce skin infections due to the antibodies. The same can be said for nappy rash, dribble rash and even sore gums, really. The power of breast milk and breastfeeding is truly remarkable.
[00:06:44] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, it really is. We call it magic milk sheena. And the thing is, we don't actually know an awful lot of what it does do, down to like, you know, the hamlet cells that will fight cancer when they use hamlet cells from breast milk fight cancer. I remember it was actually a friend, it must be 15 years ago now, and her baby was born with diaphragmatic hernia. So that was where there's a hole in the baby's diaphragm. So one of her lungs was really underdeveloped because the intestines hadn't let it grow. She had a bit of a rocky kind of early few weeks, but then had surgery. They closed off the hole. This mum was breastfeeding because she'd breastfed her first baby and she was determined that this one needed it. And she continued breastfeeding when she came home from the hospital. And when she went back to the pediatrician at about, I think maybe it was nine months, the pediatrician sent her down for an x ray to check to see how the lungs were looking. Now, when she came out of the initial kind of surgery and everything, her left lung was fully developed, but her right lung was underdeveloped, like much smaller. And when she brought the x ray back to her, the pediatrician said, oh, this must be the wrong they must have mixed up the x rays. This couldn't possibly be your X ray. And it turned out that it was, that this was the baby's X ray. And the right lung was completely normal. And when we talked about it and everything, we realized, obviously breast milk really, really helped. But the act of breastfeeding was also what really helped because it's aerobic exercise for the baby, and because the baby had to use this kind of energy to feed and use her lungs to feed when she's breastfeeding, it inflated the lung and grew it more.
[00:08:22] Speaker C: That's amazing.
[00:08:23] Speaker D: Yeah, it's magic.
[00:08:26] Speaker C: And that is very true because you really do notice when you're feeding a baby. And obviously I fed my own children for various lengths of time. My first daughter, it was just a struggle from start to finish because she just wasn't doing what I was trying to schedule her to do and I.
[00:08:40] Speaker D: Just couldn't understand it.
[00:08:42] Speaker C: But I think watching them breastfeed versus watching them take a bottle, huge amount of extra effort. So it's very easy to imagine that physiological change happening because as you say, it's basically physio for all of muscles in that area. So that's amazing. In terms of, I suppose, the medical evidence that I mentioned there, is there anything else that you've come across or anything that I've missed?
[00:09:10] Speaker D: Well, I have a couple of favorite ones, colostrum. So colostrum is misunderstood in that people think it's just a very small amount and it's good for the baby, but they don't understand that. Actually what it does is it acts like a paintbrush on a baby's bowel, like a coat of varnish. So one small feed of colostrum will coat the whole baby's bowel and will stop bacteria and viruses entering into the baby's body. It's almost like it's magical pushes out the meconium, the first stool, it acts like a laxative on the bowel. So another one that I really think is amazing is the fact that the mother will pass antibodies through her milk to the baby if she has a cold or flu or even COVID. Like, look at COVID. Look at the evidence that came out about breast milk and COVID. And definitely I saw a lot more mothers saying, I'm going to breastfeed and I'm going to keep breastfeeding, first of all, because sure, I'm not going anywhere anyway, but I also want to give my baby the antibodies, so if they do get COVID, they'll be protected somewhat. So one of the other things that I love is the washback effect that when the baby is attached to the breast, their saliva actually enters into through the nipple, into the mother's breast. And so any bugs that the baby has will be passed in. The mother will make the antibodies and pass them back to the baby.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: That is amazing. It's almost like natural vaccination, you know what I mean, way of vaccinating in.
[00:10:34] Speaker D: The NICUs, where obviously breast milk for a preterm baby is like medicine for them. They have to get it because of necrotizing endocrillitis. The earlier they are, the more important it is. But they do this thing in the NICUs where they have a piece of cloth that they swap, so the mum takes it one day and then the baby has it in the incubator the next day and what they're doing is they're swapping back and forth their natural flora.
It's pretty cool. They say that if breast milk was developed now as a product, it would win a Nobel Prize.
[00:11:07] Speaker C: And that's kind of sad, isn't it? Because it just shows and I'm as bad as anyone. Like I'll go off and buy a mindfulness book and never read it and go great off the list. We have become really impatient and really busy and we're looking for easy fixes to everything and breastfeeding is an amazing fix for everything but it's not easy.
[00:11:32] Speaker D: For a small percentage of people it's easy. Yeah, maybe they don't generally one of the things I know that you were asking me about was is pain normal? Does everybody have pain at the beginning of breastfeeding when they start and no, they don't. And I see mothers day in, day out, some of them could have the worst latch in the world where their babies are literally hanging cliffhanging, as we say, and they have no pain. And then we get somebody who really their technique and everything is very good and they're getting their baby in nice and close and everything, and yet they have excruciating pain. So there's always other things that you look at that I'd be looking at to try and figure out what's going on. Like for example, just today I saw a mother, she had her third baby and she was having excruciating nipple pain and she'd never had any pain on her first two and she was like, what am I doing wrong?
I cannot figure this out. The baby didn't have a tongue tie, there was no reason why she should have.
[00:12:32] Speaker C: I always, as a pharmacist, jump to potential thrush because and I know obviously affect everyone, but it can be a big source of that. There's needles being stuck in my nipples, toe curl pain that's not normal. So that's a good thing maybe to have checked by a GP.
[00:12:54] Speaker D: Yeah. And I think thrush is one of those ones that generally there's two ways it'll present. One is that the mother has had a period of breastfeeding where it was completely pain free and then develops pain. Okay? And you tend to see that more in the later six months. In the six to twelve months you see that more and then there's thrush. Then in the early days where the nipple has got really infected and maybe the mother's had mastitis and everything and then she gets thrush from all of that that the nipple just won't heal because even though the infection and all is gone, there's still no growth.
[00:13:26] Speaker C: And then if you're not treating it properly because obviously just like the good transfers from mum to baby candida, which is a thrush infection, fungus does the same thing. So if you're treating obviously mum for thrush, there is that question of how you manage the baby who potentially has oral thrush as well. It can just be a vicious cycle of it passing from you to the baby and backwards.
[00:13:51] Speaker D: Yeah, I find that if it's treated effectively one of the things that I see being said a lot is I see mothers coming to me and they would have had used dactron oral gel on their nipples, which isn't suitable for nipple, for nipple tissue. It doesn't penetrate the epithelium on the nipples. So they need to use Dactyrin ointment or doctrine cream on the nipple to really clear the thrush. Like dactrina oral gel is for the baby's mouth. It's not for the nipple.
[00:14:18] Speaker C: Actually, even with doctor and oral gel for the baby's mouth, it's quite a thick gel. And there is a little choke hazard if they're kind of under two or three months. So there is better medicines out there, like even on prescription as well. Little oral drops and whatnot that do the same job. But you're absolutely right and I think even flagging that these kind of issues can happen is really good. And what do you do if there's someone who they're in the hospital and they're like, ow, I don't like this. Because that happens a lot. It's just sore. Is it usually a problem with the latch or is it a case that your nipples are just so in shock of what's going on?
[00:15:03] Speaker D: There's a certain amount of wear in the men. Okay. Like for some people, just learning how to latch the baby on and doing it quickly because when the baby latches, it takes the nipple from the front of their mouth right back to the back of their mouth. And so if they're not doing that fast, they'll pull it because you really want to get the baby's chin into the breast and the chin and the cheeks should be touching in a really good latch. And most of the time what people are saying to me, do I really need to hold them that close? And I come. Yes.
They're plastered to you in the early days, like no gaps at all between your breast and the baby's cheek and.
[00:15:41] Speaker C: Even trying to get them off it's like got to hook your finger in there and break that seal.
[00:15:46] Speaker D: So I generally say put your finger in between their gums and then turn it so you break the seal. If you just put your finger in, they'll just suck your finger. So yeah, it's nerve wracking.
[00:15:57] Speaker C: I actually really liked that face breastfeeding where you're in the early days and obviously your baby is too young to communicate with you in any meaningful sense in a normal kind of communication. Yet when they're feeding all they communicate quite well and there's a lot of bang, bang, bang. This one's kind of not working anymore.
[00:16:17] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:16:19] Speaker C: And it's so funny and it is a lovely I think that's a lovely thing. And actually I remember by baby number two, so it definitely took me to the second child. Kind of learning more about reading their cues really helped me and then it helped me even breastfeeding. My second child successfully helped me parent because I pretty much Irish twins. It was like 14 months between it and it really helped me parent the 14 month old better because obviously I wasn't feeding her because she had given up a long time ago. But just in terms of sleep cues and kind of just getting to watch and slow down and to realize that the little nuances, the little kind of yeah, absolutely.
[00:16:59] Speaker D: And that is so true because that's one of the things that I know we were going to talk about what can people do to prepare for breastfeeding? Like can you prepare for breastfeeding? You can't prepare for actual breastfeeding, you can learn about latching and positioning. But it is really useful to know what normal baby behavior is. It's really useful to know what happens a baby if somebody puts their hand on the back of the baby's head, they'll try and latch back towards the hand because the rooting reflex is all over their head. It's not just on their cheeks. So there's all of these kind of things that set breastfeeding kind of make it really stressful. If you're holding the back of the baby's head when they're latching on, they're going to resist it.
[00:17:40] Speaker C: I actually never knew that.
[00:17:41] Speaker D: I would say that it's probably the number one cause of babies refusing to latch in the early days they just get totally confused and if the babies have had a vacuum or forceps or anything, their heads are extra tender. So you have to be very careful about hand placement and where you hold.
[00:17:58] Speaker C: Them because at that stage that's when if someone else is holding them, your partner or your mother, your sister, they can tend to do a little bit like they're rooting around anywhere to try and find food.
[00:18:08] Speaker D: Realistically, a dad today said to me, oh, she latched onto my nose last night and he said, oh my God, and she can really suck.
[00:18:20] Speaker C: Finally you understand one thing I wanted to ask you about in terms of the preparation for breastfeeding. So I was that mom who read every book that ever existed and I was a pharmacist. I thought I knew loads of stuff and I didn't. Turns out like I did know about treating ailments but I did not know about the reality of actually feeding and whatnot and reading will bring you so far. And I know there's a lot of mums listening who probably have read online about pumping pre labor to produce some colostrum to have for the sake of.
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[00:19:27] Speaker C: Now I always look for various reasons like pumping clostrum can actually obviously stimulate contractions. Is that correct?
[00:19:33] Speaker D: If you are somebody that has high risk so if you are somebody who has risk of preterm labor, if you've got a cervical suture in situ, if you've had low Lyme placenta, so the evidence would have shown in a big randomized control trial in Australia that it didn't send people into labor. But the recommendation is that if you start to do antinatal expression or harvesting of colostrum and you start to get Braxton Hickstock contractions or any lower back pain, that you should stop.
[00:20:02] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:20:03] Speaker D: So the evidence says, no, it doesn't. But then they do say, be careful.
[00:20:08] Speaker C: Do you know what, especially that last week, it could even be from your 40 weeks, and you're like, well, get out anyway. Do you know what I mean?
[00:20:13] Speaker D: Well, one of the ways that people kind of, if they're kind of in early labor and they want to help things along is they will do antinatal expression to get oxytocin going.
It's one of those things that's become very popular in the last ten years is antinatal expression. I do sell a pack and a video to teach mums how to do it, but I'd always be very clear about the fact that, like, one in five people who do it will get nothing.
[00:20:42] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:20:42] Speaker D: And that doesn't mean they won't have a lovely breast milk supply afterwards, but they just don't have colostrum that's freely flowing. The average amount that people get is probably between six and ten mils, and that's expressing every day. So that's small amounts daily.
[00:20:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:58] Speaker D: But afterwards it is really useful if you've got a sleepy baby. If you've got a baby that doesn't latch, it takes the pressure off you to be providing the colostrum straight away, so you can kind of it's almost like it's a little bit of an insurance policy.
[00:21:12] Speaker C: Backup. Yeah. And you don't often get backups when you're breastfeeding in the early days. It can be hard. And actually, that just brings me on to another question again, look, I'm kind of digging into my own experiences here because they're probably quite commonplace. My first baby was Frank Breach, and there was no way I was being allowed to deliver naturally. So she turned at like 39 weeks or 38 and a half weeks anyway, so she was a C section. And then my second one I tried to have naturally. And she is as stubborn now as she was then, and she refused to come out. And it was twelve days over when they eventually were like, no, get it here. And then my third child, I went into labor while waiting for a C section in Hollis Street, which was kind of nice in a way that I went, oh, look, my body does work. I was like, Can I have it naturally now? And they're like, no, sit up there. Now you're going to have your section.
So all section deliveries and there was obviously they say that there's a delay for breast milk coming in now. I don't know if I was aware of it as much in my first child more that I didn't realize they weren't working. So so long as she was kind of feeding away whether she was getting anything or not, I wasn't experienced enough to know. And I just kind of went to where she must be and she was unsettled anyway, probably because of that.
[00:22:32] Speaker D: But let's move on, remembering it all as you.
[00:22:38] Speaker C: And the same with the second and third. And I do remember you do feel like it's only very small amounts you're producing and there is a certain amount and things could have changed. So I am not in any way being negative, but from my experience in the maternity hospital, there was pressure put on me to give a bottle at that point, and only for I really didn't want to, and kind of stood my ground. Because you're very vulnerable when you've just had a baby, and if someone tells you that you're harming them, you're very frightened and you're very scared, and you feel like horrible person. And you would very easily say yes. And I think there was probably times where I was just on the edge and I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with someone giving a bottle in that situation.
Actually, I think that's really important to say. I'm not saying that you can't, but for me, because I had wanted to exclusively breastfeed, which didn't work out in the first baby, so that's good for people to know as well.
[00:23:37] Speaker D: They might end up it doesn't have to be all or nothing and they.
[00:23:41] Speaker C: Might give a bottle the first day and they might never again. There's no stress and I know there's this whole thing of the virgin gush and all the bacteria, but ultimately a happy mum will feed for longer and those benefits are so great.
That's just my top and sonnet, because it is it's a guilt written territory.
[00:23:58] Speaker D: If you were virgin gush when you.
[00:24:00] Speaker C: Think about yeah, it's not very I'm trying my best. No.
[00:24:08] Speaker D: I have seen actually, I think that term induces so much lack of confidence in people that it really makes it so much harder.
[00:24:23] Speaker C: If that's what their aim is, because you feel like you've already failed and so you may as well give up and that's simply not true. Exactly.
[00:24:34] Speaker D: And I think as well, there's an awful lot more people out there who are combination feeding than what we know of. When they count up the numbers for breastfeeding, it's always the exclusive numbers that we hear about. So I have five kids and so if I was going to be included in the numbers for whatever year, three of my kids would not have been exclusively breastfed, and yet they all fed until they were 18 months, two years plus. So we do really need to rethink the way we're counting, because I even.
[00:25:10] Speaker C: Remember a situation where I was getting the train. My baby was six weeks old, my first one, and I was getting the train on my own. And I always had a small little bottle of optimal in my handbag for a backup. And I hadn't used it to that point. Remember being on the train and there was a stag party sitting beside me, all around me. And as the first time actually my third child, they would have all gotten a full show and I wouldn't have cared. But baby number one, I really did care. And I remember like half crying while giving her this little bottle of Optimal.
[00:25:44] Speaker D: I'm like, that's just I just wish.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: More people would go like that's okay, you can go back to feeding, as you said, for a long time after that.
That whole issue is important.
[00:25:57] Speaker D: I'm just going to say as well, though, one thing is that abdomen is not the lightest formula that's out there. It's the most heavily marketed one, which means that more people in our demographic will use that, but it's purely the way it's marketed. The other formulas are actually the same.
[00:26:18] Speaker C: Do you have a favorite?
[00:26:20] Speaker D: Do I have a favorite?
I would look for something organic, but a lot of the time what I'm saying to people is that this is not your baby's main food. This is just to grow the baby. The baby's getting all their immunity and all of their things from the breast milk. And this is just to put a little bit of extra fat on the bones that we need this baby to grow a bit faster and be stronger. But I think that there's an excellent website in the UK called First Steps Nutrition. It's an independent watchdog for the formula companies, and it goes through what's in every formula and what the evidence is, what the formula company is saying, versus what actually the evidence is. And I think if you go and read there, they have an area for professionals and an area for parents. If you go and read their baby milk report, you'll see quite clearly that you don't need to use the ones that have all the fancy things in it because none of the things that are in it have actually been proven to be beneficial.
[00:27:21] Speaker C: Just like with a lot of the multivitamin brands, I'm like, well, actually, you don't need half that nonsense because there's no evidence.
And I will put that link. So thank you for that. I'll put that in the show Notes for People. So that'll be on the website wondercare, ie. Under the podcast episode, because that sounds brilliant, actually. And another thing I want to say there as well, well, two things. The first thing is you spoke about maybe putting fat on baby, and that, you know, a topic that comes up a lot because my children were all quite lean because they were predominantly breastfed. And that's okay too, because you will have grandparents or people come over going, jeez, basically like. Coming over to a skinny woman and telling her to eat a burger.
[00:28:05] Speaker D: Mine were all Buddhas like. They had rolls of fat on them and I was then accused of feeding them too much, even though it was breast milk. So you can't win.
[00:28:14] Speaker C: No, you can't.
[00:28:15] Speaker D: Somebody will always have an opinion.
[00:28:17] Speaker C: And the other thing I just wanted to say there, because while I'm saying an emergency bottle might be a big mental health relief to you, the other thing that was pointed out to me, and I always remembered because it is true. Anytime you're not feeding your baby, your body, like, two days later is not going to have that feed for your baby or it'll have a reduced amount. So just to remember, I remember one night just being so touched out and not being able to deal with feeding the baby, but I still got up my husband fed her, or him, which one was an express bottle that I had during the day. And I actually got up and pumped and went back to sleep because it was actually just easier than having to change a nappy, settle the baby if they took an hour to go back to sleep. And I just wasn't able to do all of that. But I still wanted to be that's.
[00:29:09] Speaker D: Like, really good management, I would say, of the postnatal period, is that it's also looking at the mother as well as the baby. It is not all about breastfeeding and the baby. The mother has to be included in that whole circle.
People get so much attention when they're pregnant and everybody is lavishing helping them and doing this and doing that, and then they have their baby and it's all about the baby.
And that's why we have such high rates of postnatal depression and postnatal anxiety. It's not even depression as such. A lot of the time, it's like really bad anxiety. And I would be a big fan of if you have an horrific time in the hospital and you've had a birth that just knocked you completely and it does happen and you come home and you're just like, ready to you can't see the wood for the trees. A reset can make a big difference, which is like, you pump, you go to bed and you sleep and then you start again.
[00:30:09] Speaker C: Yeah. And I remember going back to work quite early for a few days after my first daughter, because obviously I'm a pharmacist, we had no cover on certain days, and that was just it. And I remember some evenings I would pump during the day if I could, any little bits, and then my husband would give that, or if I didn't have enough, it could be a bit of formula mixed in with it, even. It was like whatever we could get. And I'd go to bed at 09:00 after, say, cluster feeding, sitting on the couch and feeding from seven to nine and just hanging out, basically. And then he'd take the baby and the baby'd have a snooze down with him and then he'd give that bottle at like maybe 1112 and sneak baby back into the cups of my bed. And then he'd go off to sleep and I'd wake up four with this magic baby having had 7 hours. Isn't this great? Yeah. I don't think you need to suffer by being a martyr. It's teamwork.
[00:31:05] Speaker D: It's teamwork and it has changed. Like back in the days people would be with their baby 24 hours a day and there wasn't an alternative. And now what we do as women is just so much more than what we ever did.
So you cannot expect that breastfeeding would be the same. There will be the lucky people who are able to stay at home for six months or twelve months and exclusively feed and never go near a bottle or a pump, if that's what they want. But certainly people shouldn't be shamed for breastfeeding and doing the very best they can.
[00:31:42] Speaker C: Yeah, and that's exactly it. So it's interesting there I was just thinking about the Irish breastfeeding figures and today I don't want to really look any further than the six months because this is really about you're pregnant or you've just had a baby and you might even be contemplating giving up or whatever. It's just to highlight the real life battles and the reality, as we said earlier, and the benefits of actually sticking with it, but realizing that again, you don't need to be a martyr. There's ways of sticking with it, know, exclusively breastfeeding or by doing a bit of pumping or by whatever you need to. So you were saying obviously the figures are probably better because those figures are only including exclusively breastfed babies. Do you know, are the figures in Ireland over the last, say, five years or ten years? Is it improving or is it getting worse?
[00:32:34] Speaker D: No, it's improving. Yeah. The last figure I heard was we're just after National Breastfeeding Week and what was the number? I heard 62% at the Postnatal at the public health nurse check.
[00:32:47] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:32:48] Speaker D: So I was like, wow, because I think 57 was the last one. Now it's going to be interesting because we know that more people breastfed during COVID Okay, so this is going to be kind of interesting to see what happens now. Will it continue to go up? But I was talking to somebody the other day who had a baby ten years ago and she just had another baby and she said the difference in the hospital was unbelievable. She found it so much more supportive. And so like all of the hospitals, particularly the Dublin hospitals well, I don't know that much about ones around the country, but the Dublin hospitals are really investing in breastfeeding and have improved an awful lot of the services.
And each one, obviously they have places where they fall down, but you're not thing is perfect. I think things are moving in the right direction. I'd love to see mothers getting more postnatal visits, going home earlier and having somebody coming every day who was just doing breastfeeding stuff with them.
[00:33:45] Speaker C: I remember when I had my second child and feeding did go quite well with her, much better than with my first baby. But I remember actually it was the nine day mark and she just stopped latch like she just wouldn't actually feed and it was hours and hours were passing in the day and I was getting nervous because she was so little. And I remember emergency calling a lactation consultant out of the house and spent an hour with us and it was gas like the spider fingers. I can't even remember. There was all these weird techniques. Swear to God, the child latched on, that was it, never again a problem. So the value of a lactation consultant and that expertise and literally and I know a lot of people won't like this, but the hands on help is actually amazing.
[00:34:27] Speaker D: Hands on help with consent?
Well, yeah, you'd think obviously. But some mothers do feel violated when somebody manhandles them without asking.
[00:34:39] Speaker C: Well, that's understandable. People come from and I think I'm quite approved in general, actually. I think a lot of women in Ireland are the know our society was like I'm still the one who's tripping over myself in the gym shower, trying not to let anyone see a boob. Now, I suppose that's another big challenge, but as people start to get through the early weeks, they want to go out to cafes and feeding in pub can be a big thing, but clothes are so much better designed that you can really keep yourself kind of hidden. And I have a little scarf, a light scarf I'd put over and it's all very possible. And I did find that very few people were shocked and most people were trying to smile down at you in a slightly way because they were trying to show you support. And I think the more people that feed out and about, the better because it gets rid of that kind of fear.
[00:35:26] Speaker D: I was never really that phased when I had my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th was a bit iffy. But anyway, when I had the fifth, I really felt like I was a mother duck, like with the ducks behind me. I was forever counting children.
But whatever I was doing this day, I decided I'd go to the playground at the Phoenix Park with them all. They were on holidays and that was somewhere where I could contain that. The gate was closed and so nobody could go anywhere. So arrived in and the little one must have been, I don't know, two or three months old and they were all playing. I sat down and I went to feed her on the bench and this woman smiled at me and she came over and she said to me, you're doing a great job there. Can I get you tea or coffee from the shop?
Wanted to cry.
[00:36:10] Speaker C: Yeah, you would cry that it makes me cry. Yeah. Isn't it mad?
[00:36:14] Speaker D: Just that we do want approval, we do need to praise mothers and recognize what they have done. I don't think it ever left me that feeling that I could grow my baby on the outside like that. You grow them inside and then you grow them with your own milk on the outside. And that's what we're not used to. And that confidence in our bodies, because we never doubt that our lungs are going to work or that our heart is not going to work and all that. But we always doubt that our boobs will work.
[00:36:43] Speaker C: It was definitely a big change in pace of life and in my independence. So it's a big leap to go from kind of being a busy person who's busy. I love to be busy all the time and then obviously having a baby, it took me a long time to realize that you don't be busy, it's boring. Having a baby is all you can do because they're not going to cooperate.
You're just better to chill out and relax and just try and accept that what you're doing is enough. Minding a newborn is enough. You don't need to be, I suppose, achieving ten different goals. Yes, it's time and it doesn't last very long and there is life after breastfeeding and your children get older and more independent and so easy to mind, like mine now at age and it does get so much easier. So just to allow yourself that bit of time so that you're not always fighting yourself lie on the couch if you need to lie on the couch.
[00:37:45] Speaker D: It hasn't really ever been studied. I would love to see different personality types on how they approach breastfeeding and certainly the mother who's an A type personality who likes everything in a box, they do struggle because you have to succumb to it and this is part of the whole early weeks of breastfeeding. Like every mother has to feed a different amount of times to make the amount of milk that she needs for her baby because nobody has the same storage capacity on each side, nobody has the same amount of breast cells and the babies are different in the way they suck and the way they extract the milk. So it's all a big conundrum for the early days and it has to be worked out between the two of you. So giving people advice about, oh, only feed them every three hourly, or don't feed them three hourly, or only feed them for 15 minutes on each side, it really doesn't work, and it doesn't teach the parents anything intuitive, which is what you get to you know that bit where you get to going, yeah, I know you've had enough now.
Had somebody in the last few days. Who. Her feeds were taking ages and the baby was gaining enough weight and everything was okay, but she was like, this just takes so much effort.
And I said, well, when are you swapping them over? Like, when are you swapping them from one bib to the other? And she goes, I'm not. I'm only feeding them one breast because that was what I was told to do. And the minute she saw the difference, swapping the baby to the second side after the swallowing had slowed down, it was like a light bulb.
[00:39:19] Speaker C: The supply is an issue as well, because if you've got a lower supply I used to always gosh, now both my boobs are empty and yet here in another hour.
I did always struggle with supply, but there is a lot you can do to help that. And I know Moms, listen, I started eating kind of porridge and oat bars and that really did help a lot. And there's things like fenugreek and all. Yeah.
[00:39:45] Speaker D: I think that what I would like people to know is that the one way to make more milk is to remove more foods and fluids and all of that. They do have some role, but what we know now about kind of foods like oats and barley and all of that is that they are supportive of a milk supply, but they don't increase a low milk supply.
Fenugreek is actually the same. Evidence has come out about fenugreek, that it will support a good milk supply. But for improving and raising milk supplies, there are better things if you can match whatever you're going to use to the reason why the mother isn't producing a full milk supply. Like, say, if she has thyroid levels that are not optimal, and if she's on thyroid drugs, or if the mother has polycystic ovaries and has insulin resistance, we'll use other things. But the first thing you do is you make sure every bit of milk.
[00:40:42] Speaker C: That'S there has been taken effectively. Yeah, very good. Oh, yeah, I just wanted to ask you I remember being in the hospital because I had sections, I was in there a bit longer and I had a good opportunity in Hollistry to see a lactation consultant, which was great. Bosch is that a thing now? Like, do people in general see lactation consultants in hospital or is it private practice when you get home?
[00:41:05] Speaker D: It varies massively between the hospitals. Some hospitals, their policies would be that the midwives are trained in breastfeeding support and that unless there is a problem with the baby, that that's when the LC comes in. So sometimes people will ask to see the lattian consultant and they'll be told, you don't need to see the lactation consultant. Like, everything's fine. So it depends. Some hospitals will really make an effort to try and the LC will try and get around to everybody while they're in, but then it isn't a 24 hours service. Most of the time it's not the weekends. It's improved a little bit, but it's limited hours, I suppose.
[00:41:43] Speaker C: To summarize some big learnings from our chat, I think definitely realizing that feeding is a big job and it's okay for it to be a little bit consuming at the start, completely like it.
[00:41:55] Speaker D: Is going to be all consuming.
Babies get faster at feeding and milk supplies go up and up and up over the first few weeks. So what takes a huge amount of effort in the beginning. By the time most people get to six, eight weeks, they're going really kind of stuck with this.
[00:42:14] Speaker C: Yeah, you can see the benefits. And it is so handy, like, never having to have kind of bottles ready or be cleaning bottles. It was amazing when I got it right. It was just amazing. And even when I was back at work, after my third child was six months, I fed him to a year. And I used to so look forward to coming home and lifting him for a dream feed that he did not need, that I just needed him.
[00:42:37] Speaker D: Okay.
All about the baby, remember?
[00:42:41] Speaker C: Yeah. And it was so cute. And I still have such happy memories of that little chair and I'd sit there and just relax from the day. Like it was just lovely time. But there's so many benefits when you get there. But it is just to try and stick with those early months and to seek help when you need it. Yeah.
[00:42:59] Speaker D: I mean, if you feel like it's really difficult and it's really hard, the chances are there are things you can do to make it easier.
And that's where people like me come in.
[00:43:07] Speaker C: Thank you so, so much for joining.
Hopefully, all of those tips and all of that very honest reality will, I suppose, make it easier for people to gain the benefits which are so vast and so clear a medicinal and clinical level of breastfeeding and breast. Milk so that they can make the most of nature and reduce any interference of a modern world with that lovely, simple relationship, which is mother and baby. So thank you so much for joining today.
[00:43:35] Speaker D: Thank you, Shingle. Bye.
