Amy
My first was actually… she’s an IVF baby… the subsequent two has been absolute shock well surprise lovely not shocks lovely surprises. It was incredibly hard and I still have scars on my nipples now to show for it and I think partly it was down I just expected that was the way it was going to be so I kind of had it in my head that … it has to work because that’s how I wanted to and i think also having had tabby through IVF I think I was determined to sort of prove to my body that I could do it and I think with Tabby i definitely came out of the pregnancy… feeling quite sad about my body not doing what it was meant to do.
I was really determined that I wanted to breastfeed and when it was really hard really really painful and really intense I found that really really tough. I had the local team have people that will come to you, they had a look for tongue tie they didn’t spot it. The lady that came to our house was lovely but I think she was quite new to the job so she kind of looked and said oh it could be.
I knew that tabby wasn’t getting a very efficient feed she wasn’t putting on weight very well but everyone just sort of looked and said oh well the positioning looks fine. I do still think she has quite a shallow latch compared to most but she felt like an absolute dream straight away. Then we realised we were pregnant. For a good nine weeks before I suddenly thought hang on a minute something’s not right and actually one of the things that made me think was that Tabby didn’t like the taste of my milk anymore and she’d just look at me and I thought that’s strange like as if she was like, why are you trying to poison me.
I’ve grown up seeing breastfeeding everywhere. I’m pretty sure I remember being breastfed my mum says i breastfed quite late, till about two and a half. I swear I have a memory of breastfeeding which sounds ridiculous but I just had this sort of image so i think I just kind of went into assuming that it’d be fine because everyone else I knew were absolutely fine with it and it was never really spoken about times when it could be quite difficult or intense or you know anything like that. My sister had her three and my younger sister actually had her first before I had mine. My cousins, I’ve got loads of cousins, they all very happily and openly breastfed at parties. It was never something that seemed unusual to me so I think moving to Coventry and seeing that there was this sort of real push it’s a really great place for support.
There’s lots of support here which is really good and I feel really lucky that we had that. I think that’s why I was so determined to do it. My mum was bottle-fed but I think she was quite determined when we were born that she wanted to breastfeed even when she was pregnant with my sister, I was still feeding from her I think she said I was feeding till about two and a half three-ish and funnily enough she’s never really spoken to me about it. I just knew, I guess. I’ve got a younger sister as well so I must have memories of her being fed. Any sort of family friends that had small babies all breastfed. I didn’t often see bottles at all.
I spent £200 on my mobile in the first month of Tabby being born… just phoning my family, my sisters and my mum. I was a bit shocked when I realized my phone bill but looking back. I phoned the national breastfeeding helpline as well in the early days and then obviously, in Coventry, you’ve got a breastfeeding support group… I actually went to one of the meetings with a friend.
In a way, lockdown was quite nice because I got to a point where I was quite nervous to feed in public with Dolce because she’s so big and I’ve only ever had negative comments once. When Tabby was quite little still and it was two young girls in McDonald’s so it was easy to kind of brush off but I think… you do feel very vulnerable in public when it’s something that’s not seen very often. When she was tiny it was fine it’s just as she started to get bigger and wanting it I think I started to feel much more self-conscious but I have to say it has been quite nice in lockdown because you don’t see anyone so you can just do whatever you want Because Dulce goes to nursery two and a half times a week… Tabby wasn’t in school yet so that was nice and the weather was nice and we were able to get out and about and it didn’t feel too different.
This time around definitely feels different. So I just have Tabby… on her own for a couple of days while she’s not at school which is nice. That’s been quite nice actually to have a little bit of a change around because normally it’s just me and Dulce and Tabby’s at school. I can definitely tell that lockdown is affecting them. We went to the park the other day and we bumped into one of her school friends and not a school friend she would particularly play with… but she was so excited to see him.
I think it’s very easy… when you’re a new mum… it’s very easy to assume that you don’t know what you’re doing and therefore you just revert to what everyone else tells you when actually everyone else’s advice might have worked for them but isn’t necessarily what’s best for you