You've Got it in You

Emma Pickett

Description

You may be worried about breastfeeding and worried that it might 'not work'. This is a common feeling when you live in a society where breastfeeding is often sabotaged by incorrect information, patchy support from a stretched health service and powerful messages from formula companies. But it's not a feeling that is entirely logical. We are mammals. We get our name from the dangly milk-producing bits. It defines us. I'm writing this book because I would like you to be as well-prepared as possible. I would like you to breastfeed for as long as you want to and as happily as possible. I want you to feel supported. Some of this new life with baby will be about flexibility and responsiveness and acceptance. If you are used to a world of schedules and decisions and goals, it may be a bit of a shock. Learn about human biology before you think it sounds bit too scary. Babies are the products of millions of years are evolution and we are too, if we can just tap into our instincts and trust them a little bit. Success comes when we tap into those instincts and when we know when to get help when our instincts aren't answering all of our questions. Can everyone who wants to breastfeed make it work? No. It may not work out for every single person. Not everyone may be able to exclusively breastfeed due to medical issues. Most of these people can give their baby breastmilk though and I'll talk this through as well. And let's not start this journey by imagining you'll be someone who won't make it.

Sujets

• Pregnancy

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781784626563
• Langue: English

Extrait

You’ve Got It In You:
A Positive Guide to Breastfeeding
Emma Pickett
Copyright © 2016 Emma Pickett
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador 9 Priory Business Park, Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicestershire. LE8 0RX Tel: [phone] Email: [e-mail] Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador Twitter: @matadorbooks
eISBN 978 1784626 563
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
Contents
Author’s Note
Introduction
You’re Pregnant
Your Birth
Your First Night
Your First Week
Your First Two Weeks
Your First Month
Feeding in Public
Giving a Bottle
Babywearing
Your Second Month: Routines
Why Stay Exclusively Breastfeeding?
Your Third Month: Breasts Change
Your Fourth Month: Sleep
Starting Solids
Going Back to Work
Ending Breastfeeding
Tidbits
How to Train as a Breastfeeding Counsellor
If Breastfeeding Doesn’t Work Out …
More Reading
Author’s Note
The title – You’ve Got it in You – obviously refers to two things. You’ve got the breastmilk actually physically literally IN you. Even if you don’t exclusively breastfeed for whatever reason, even if you have tiny amounts of glandular tissue and have had some breast surgery, you will produce some milk. Every millilitre counts.
And you’ve got it in you. You have the determination and commitment to give breastfeeding the best chance possible. When breastfeeding doesn’t go to plan, it will be your inner strength that keeps you going and hopefully helps you to overcome the hurdles along the way.
And my son, the eldest of my two breastfed children, came up with the title.
Illustrations and front cover design by Estelle Morris http://www.estellemorris.co.uk/
Introduction
Let’s remember that for most families throughout history, breastfeeding has been straightforward, normal and easy. It’s just what happens after the giving birth bit. It isn’t complicated. It isn’t scary. It’s not something we ‘hope’ will work and we need to ‘give it a go’. Among all the millions and billions of women who have given birth in history, few imagined that for even one moment that it WOULDN’T work. Of course it’s going to. Our bodies can make a baby. Why on Earth would the producing milk bit not work? That’s a heck of a lot less complicated.
You may be worried about breastfeeding. You may be worried that it might not work. This is a common feeling when you live in a society where breastfeeding is often sabotaged by incorrect information, patchy support from a stretched health service and powerful messages from formula companies. But it’s not a feeling that is entirely logical. We are mammals. We get our name from the dangly milk-producing bits. It defines us.

Among all the millions and billions of women who have given birth in history, few imagined that for even one moment that it WOULDN’T work – of course it’s going to work. Our bodies can make a baby. Why on Earth would the producing milk bit not work? That’s a heck of a lot less complicated .

I want you to read this book and other books and websites and get informed and I also want to give you a sense of confidence that this is probably going to work if you want it to. It’s very likely to. If we positively prepare to breastfeed, our mental state is in a good starting position. I would like you to be as well-prepared as possible. I would like you to breastfeed for as long as you want to and as happily as possible. I want you to feel supported.
I have been a breastfeeding counsellor with the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers ( www.abm.me.uk ) since 2007 and an IBCLC (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant) since 2011. I have been volunteering on the National Breastfeeding Helpline since it opened in 2008 and have spoken to more than 1800 callers. I have been volunteering at three drop-in groups a week in North London since 2007 and visit new families in their homes and sometimes in hospital. I’ve seen a lot of tears from people who are struggling to make breastfeeding work.
I’ve seen a lot more tears from people for whom breastfeeding WAS working but they just didn’t know what was normal or how life with a new baby was going to go. Information helps.
The beginning of this book is structured as a timeline. There are things that I would like you to think about when you are pregnant and as each month passes certain issues are likely to crop up. Later on there are some tidbits you may dip into as you go along.
Everyone’s experience is different. Everyone’s baby is different. Any book that tells you that you MUST breastfeed for X number of minutes should be thrown across the room right now. Or a book that tells you that you can control your baby so that they will want to feed every three hours and if you can’t manage that, you’re doing something wrong.
There is one universal truth: your baby is a person too. This new little person is coming to share your life and they have their own biological urges and their own needs and they cannot be entirely controlled. Nor should we want to ‘control’ them. We will fill them with love and they will fill us with love. It might not always feel that magical and at times it will feel incredibly tough. If I tell you that, it doesn’t mean I’m not being positive. I am not going to make this sound like a walk in the park in some attempt to convince someone who may be unsure to breastfeed. I want you to be realistically prepared. I want you to understand when things might get hard and how to deal with them. If we know what’s normal, it goes a long way to helping us cope with the first few weeks and months.

I’ve seen a lot more tears from people for whom breastfeeding WAS working but they just didn’t know what was normal or how life with a new baby was going to go .

Some of this new life will be about flexibility and responsiveness and acceptance. If you are used to a world of schedules and decisions and goals, it may be a bit of a shock. Learn about human biology before you think it sounds bit too scary. Babies are the products of millions of years of evolution and we are too, if we can just tap into our instincts and trust them a little bit.
Success comes when we tap into those instincts and when we know when to get help when our instincts aren’t answering all of our questions.
Can everyone who wants to breastfeed make it work? No. It may not work out for every single person. Not everyone may be able to exclusively breastfeed due to medical issues. Most of these people can give their baby breastmilk though and I’ll talk this through as well. And let’s not start this journey by imagining you’ll be someone who won’t make it.
You’re Pregnant
For most women, there is no ‘decision’ to breastfeed. It seems obvious. It takes a tiny bit of googling to read the research articles on SIDS, allergies, diabetes, obesity, breast cancer, hospitalisation in the first year of life, diarrhoea, respiratory infection, ear infections and so on. However not many women ‘decide to’ after reading scientific research. It just feels like the right thing to do for many of us. We can see from statistics that starting off breastfeeding is the norm for the current generation of new mums. In England, 74% of mothers initiate breastfeeding after birth. You may be in an area where that figure is a little less or dramatically higher.
Most families want to give it a go. But let’s watch our language at this point. Are you thinking: “I’m going to give it a try. It might not happen but might as well try. I’ll have formula just in case. I’m not sure it will work out.” If you are thinking along those lines, that’s a useful sign you need to do more reading and have a better sense of how breastfeeding works. It suggests you don’t know many people who have successfully breastfed and haven’t been around breastfeeding much. It suggests you may have known more people who struggle and haven’t had all the support they wanted.
That applies to many women who live in the UK. Most of us have never seen breastfeeding up close until we have our own baby and we’re the ones doing it. We may never have really looked at a nipple in detail before. (Newsflash: the milk comes out of more than one hole!) The only breastfeeding we might have seen was perhaps in a television advert for formula where messages were carefully cultivated. The only women we’ve seen talking about feeding choices were on bus stop adverts talking about ‘moving on from breastfeeding’. We live in a messy culture where we do sort of know breastfeeding is what those breast things are for but we struggle to talk about it. We struggle to do it in front of other people. Breastfeeding support is patchy and many mothers don’t get to breastfeed for as long as they want and feel angry and betrayed about their early experiences.
Your job in pregnancy is to get your soldiers lined up and get on the ready line.
74% of women in England start out breastfeeding. By six to eight weeks, how many do you think are still breastfeeding? 60%? Really? That’s quite a drop-off rate.
Actually according to Department of Health figures, at the six to eight week check, only 47% of mothers are still doing any breastfeeding.
We know from the government’s infant feeding survey that many women give up unhappily. Of those who give up in the first two weeks, 90% didn’t want to.