Guest post - What we, as mothers, need: support

This week a have a beautiful post from a talented blogger and real life friend of mine! The blogging world knows her as Recipe Junkie and her blog is well worth a visit if you don't know her yet.

Sally is giving us a beautifully moving and compelling account of her experiences as she became a mother, showing us that, in the end, every mother faces different challenges and knows her own struggle and that it's ok to ask for help :)

Turns out that despite the ‘childbearing hips’ and the fairly practical approach to pain and all things gory, I was rubbish at giving birth. Not in the ‘wimp-out-get-me-an-epidural-immediately’ way, but things just didn’t work out right, either time.

While the giving birth bit was pants, the breastfeeding was fine. I didn’t love it, but it worked, with a bit of perseverance. It didn’t occur to me to do otherwise to be honest. My mum breastfed me and my younger brothers, and while I can’t remember it specifically, it’s what I perceived as ‘the norm’. And perhaps after the first emergency c-section, there was an element of “well, I’m damn well going to get this bit right”. I was vaguely aware of the health benefits of breastfeeding, but possibly more importantly, I’m also inherently lazy. The thought of all that sterilising, and measuring, of making sure you had enough of everything with you, well, it was all too much for me. I could barely remember to take the baby with me when I left the house (if I did) in the first few months of my first born, so the thought of taking anything other than my boobs to feed him, well, it would have been too much.

I remember being in hospital after section #1, lying in my bed in an amenity room, unable to lift my baby out of his cot to have him next to me to feed, but eventually, I got him and we lay there, getting by together. I was visited by someone I think from the Leche League but to be honest, I can’t remember and she was pretty rubbish – cooed on about the beauty of breastfeeding when I wanted some practical support about what I should actually be doing, and the midwives didn’t have much time to spend helping breast feeding, but it just worked.

The early months with my son were difficult ones for me. I had mild depression, didn’t feel like I’d bonded particularly well with my baby. I did too much too quickly after the section, and didn’t recover as well as I might have done. I didn’t feel like seeing anyone, and I remember finding the NCT ‘get togethers’ with my ante-natal class particularly difficult – one of the other women was very confident that ‘she would always be doing the best for her baby’, while I was plagued with indecision and self-doubt – the classic woman with career who falls apart (a little), faced with a defenceless and completely unpredictable infant, unable to admit I wasn’t coping or to ask for help.

I did have anxiety about feeding – especially on the days when he did nothing but feed, or, worse, the days when my breasts were achingly full to the point where my nipples felt they might just ping off, yet he seemed to refuse point blank to feed, while I would sit there leaking milk and tears – but mostly we got on OK on the feeding side of things. Given the fact that I was mildly depressed, it was only a blessing that he piled on the weight like a dream, and my milk or ability to feed was never questioned. Eventually, I gave in, admitted I wasn’t coping in other aspects, and got support from the health visitor when my boy was about 6 months old, enabling me to sort out my depression issues and carry on with life. My boy and my boobs agreed to part company when he was around 10 months old and I went back to work. Earlier than some, later than lots of others. It was an amicable break up – on both sides, and my boy went happily on to solid food without a backward glance.

Fast forward a couple of years, and my daughter arrived, a week early, in true emergency style. Forget the calm undertaking of the first ‘emergency’ section: I went into labour while we were in Southampton General Hospital where my lovely boy was having chemo for the leukaemia that he had been diagnosed with 3 months earlier. Despite the desire of the ward’s admin officer and fundraiser who had originally trained as a midwife, giving birth on a ward full of immuno-compromised children was not desirable, and I had nothing with me, not even the bag with the kit to collect my cord stem cells in the event that my son needed a transplant. The events of that afternoon/evening will forever remain implanted on my memory – my husband driving from Southampton to Basingstoke at a speed that would make your eyes water, him trying to make arrangements for our son without worrying me (while I thought he was sneaking off for crafty fags), my mother speeding down the M1 in thunderstorms to be there to help us out, finding out that there was no gas and air left (I kid you not), the moment when the monitor I had been strapped up to because of the previous c section indicated that my unborn baby’s heart beat had disappeared and we had to hit the big red button, screaming at the nurses to make sure they had the blood bags to collect the cord blood, and swearing at the chirpy anaesthetist (“Hello, my name’s Ben and I’m your anaesthetist today!” “F*** OFF YOU ARE TOO YOUNG GET ME A GROWN UP!”).

The general anaesthetic was probably a great relief to everyone.

When I woke up, I had a baby girl. Amazingly after all the trauma, she was perfect. I stayed on the delivery suite, and despite the midwives concern, wrapped her to me using a blanket to hold her on my chest. I was desperate to get home, to my son, and fortunately, established breastfeeding with my daughter relatively easily. I was much more confident as I knew what I was doing, and had coped with a section before, and the scary midwives in charge of me were mostly well pleased, apart from the fact that I wouldn’t put her down very much. “She should learn to sleep on her own” they berated me. But I’d learnt from the first time, and it was easier to keep her swaddled to me than to keep putting her down in her cot. I did spend the first couple of weeks clinging to the floor with my toes each time she latched on, but I knew it would be OK eventually and it was.

I fed her for around 9-10 months – as with so many thing with the second child, the details are forgotten. I took her with me wherever we went, which was mostly the paediatric wards of either North Hants or Southampton General Hospitals with my son. It meant that in all the chaos of my son’s illness, when she was often left in a buggy in the corner of a treatment room, this was something I could do for her. And given that I spent so much of that time dealing with the more complicated aspects of keeping my son alive it was wonderful to be able to spend time with her occupied in such a fundamental, and fundamentally simple and life-giving activity. I will always treasure that time.

The thing about breastfeeding though is a bit like the birth itself, or any aspect of child raising. You can beat yourself up for not having ‘the proper’ birth, or for not breastfeeding – or breastfeeding but feeling miserable about it as some people do, but the way I see it is that you need to have the support to get on with your situation and make the best of it. I didn’t get particularly good support on the breastfeeding side of things – or anything else - with my first child, but I muddled through the first few weeks, and it was OK. With child number 2, by virtue of the fact that my son was ill, I was surrounded by paediatric experts, and while they were primarily concerned with my son, we had fantastically holistic care which meant that if I was worried about my daughter, I could ask.

I had no depression following my daughter’s birth. Ironically, the people who should have been looking after me and my daughter, the local health visitor/nurse team, were the ones that were no help at all. There was fantastic health visitor who helped me out before my daughter was born, in relation to my son, but she retired, and, honestly, the baby clinic was terrible. To be fair, I didn’t make it often, but one occasion I have vividly implanted in my mind is when my daughter was 8 months old. We actually had time between my son’s chemo appointments to go to the baby clinic, and I proudly went in with my beautiful girl, who I was still breastfeeding, but who was being conveniently easy to wean. She hadn’t put on much weight since the last time I’d taken her, but she had started crawling. She was fit and beautiful. So there I was with a healthy baby, plus a nearly 3 year old with no hair who looked, frankly like a cancer victim, and the nurse in the clinic laid into me for feeding my daughter cow’s milk from a cup. There was no interest in the family circumstances, she didn’t ask about my son, or what my daughter was eating in terms of solid food, or the fact that I was still breast feeding her 3 times a day. I was close to abusing her by allowing her to drink cow’s milk.

I managed not to punch her, and left. Fortunately, I was on my way to hospital with my son anyway, and had a brief sob with one of the paediatric community nursing team before the amazing, awesome, wonderful consultant came bustling in and told me to pull myself together, anyone with any sense could see that my daughter was fine – “Well, no, the guidelines say you’re not supposed to give her cow’s milk, but look at her - she’s FINE and you are doing a WONDERFUL JOB” she told me. And that is what we as mothers need. Support.

My challenges, especially with my second child, were about holding it together, not about the feeding itself. The decision to feed both children was pretty much a no brainer. But, especially after the birth of my daughter, I was lucky to have friends and family to support me through that time, as well the doctors and nurses caring for my son. But everyone faces their own challenges bringing up their kids: physical challenges, emotional challenges, and what we all need is support, not criticism, to help us through it. The thing is that we’re all mothers, all struggling with raising our children and looking after them as best we can, and we should support each other, and be able to find support.

Apart from the incident I have described above, the support I had helped me through the challenges I faced in that period, and pulled me through a really, really tough time in my life. If the challenges a woman is facing relate to actually feeding her child, then she needs the support to help her get through those challenges too, and the ability to know where to get the support from. And it’s really OK to ask for help - whatever the challenges – it’s not a relative thing – it’s personal.

Sally