I remember ringing a family member and saying, “I’m in bed. I’ve got the baby. I don’t know what to do.”
I explained what had happened, and she said, “I’ll grab some bottles and some formula. I’m coming straight down.”
And I said, “No. Stop there. I need to feed this through. I just need help with everything else.”
But that was the instant reaction — almost like relief. Like, oh good, you don’t have to breastfeed anymore. And there was this sense that breastfeeding was something exclusive to me. That other people couldn’t get involved in it. I found that quite a big hurdle at the time.
Because actually, I found breastfeeding so much easier.
Middle of the night, out in a shop — you can do it anywhere. It’s ready. To have a screaming baby on your hip while you’re trying to make up formula with a hot kettle… it just never made sense to me.
I don’t think the support networks were what they are now. Now you can access a breastfeeding group every day of the week. You can ring someone at three in the morning. It’s there.
When I was a first-time mum, we did have a breastfeeding support worker in the team, and she was fantastic. She knew every trick going. I used her a lot. I really needed that help. But she only worked a couple of mornings a week.
Sometimes even medics — not maliciously — would say, “Just give a bit of formula.” Without realising what that message does.
I had to go back into hospital about ten days after one of my babies was born because I needed a CT scan. The message that came back from the CT unit was, “You’ll need bottles because the dye will change the taste of the milk and he won’t go back on the breast.”
Luckily, I had expressed milk at home. I told my husband to bring it in. I expressed while I was there. I put him straight back on the breast afterwards — and he fed normally. No issues at all.
As a professional, I was frustrated. The message had been, “Your baby will not go back on the breast.” That kind of language imprints itself on women. It matters.
I had two home births.
The first went fine — he was eight pounds ten. A good size, but straightforward.
The second baby, born at home, was nine pounds twelve. He got stuck. With the manoeuvres and the care the team knew how to give, we got him out. He took a bit of coming round, but he was okay.
So when I was pregnant again, we planned to go into hospital. Even though I was full term and beyond, I still struggled with the idea of a section. I kept thinking, if he’s not as big as the last one, it’ll be okay.
But this baby had an unstable lie — breech, transverse, oblique. He was all over the place. I wanted a home birth, but it wouldn’t have been sensible.
We opted for a caesarean.
He’s four years and nine months now, and I still question that decision. But at the time, it felt right. He arrived safely. And that’s the best outcome. Sometimes you just have to sit with that.
In parallel to that, in 2019, we were pregnant with our stillborn baby.
At the twelve-week scan, we knew something wasn’t right. It was during COVID. We had a CVS, blood work, and by eighteen or nineteen weeks we had the results.
He had a condition called hydrops — fluid overload. He either wouldn’t survive in the womb or wouldn’t survive long after birth.
So we knew we were going to lose him.
Our decision was to continue the pregnancy and let him decide. If he wanted to go, he could go. If he wanted to stay, he could stay.
I liked having him there. I could feel him. He was still growing, slowly. That was a comfort.
He passed away in the womb at around twenty-eight and a half weeks.
I’d gone back to work. I remember sitting in the office on an admin day thinking, he feels quieter today. He’d only ever fluttered because he was so small, five or six hundred grams. But it felt different.
By the end of the day, I knew.
They scanned me. There was no heartbeat.
The labour was really intense. Probably more emotional than anything, but physically it felt dreadful. Worse than a natural labour.
We buried him in the cemetery in Walton. For the first twelve months, I visited him every day. That became part of my healing. If I couldn’t have him at home, I could at least go and see him. He felt present there.
When people asked about our children, and I’d say, “We’ve got two boys — but one was stillborn,” people didn’t know what to say. It became awkward. Silence.
The day he was born, I was offered medication to stop the milk.
I said no.
I wanted the milk. I needed to do something with it. I needed to leave a legacy for him.
I made enquiries about milk donation. There were blood tests, forms — quite a process. But I committed to it. I expressed once a day. Every day.
I’d do the school run, walk to the cemetery, and then express. It took up most of the day. I did it for twelve months — which is as long as they’ll accept milk. After that, they said I had to stop.
I was still feeding my toddler at that point — he fed to sleep until about two and a half. So I’d take what I could during the day. I was getting between sixty and one hundred and twenty millilitres. It wasn’t insignificant.
It was worth something.
It gave me a sense of achievement. It gave me purpose. And it meant that part of him — part of that pregnancy — was still nourishing other babies.
That mattered.