There are so many things about your story that concern me – things that you weren’t told, the fact that you didn’t see a specialist until you came back into hospital. There are so many things that can be done to help people struggling with breastfeeding, and its that these aren’t being done that is the problem.

Its appauling to see how many people are being let down by our health system. Without the support, any message is useless. I have several friends who have not breastfed due to inadequate support, and while I do not want them to feel that they have done something bad, they wanted to breastfeed and were failed by the NHS. I’m going to be doing peer supporter training so that I can help to do something small about this, but people like you should have at least seen a proper counsellor, if not a lactation consultant (who is highly trained and experienced). Unfortunately these are few and far between and many are volunteers, so its down to the goodwill of people rather than a government provided service, which is wrong, and bad!

I believe that, Kat, you are doing a great job for parents and new-borns and that breast feeding is a good thing on the whole. I would just like to share with you our story where I wish that we had been better prepared, informed, and supported, even though we had already attended all the classes and heeded all advise from professionals. This was our first child and it was like walking in the dark, we took as much advice as we could get. My message here is that, although our story may be an individual case, each child and their parents should be treat as an individual case and there should not be one rule pressured upon everyone. Parents should be equally advised of when and how to use formula whilst not allowing the breast feeding push to create a fearful image of using formula.

My wife and I was pushed the slogan ‘Breast is best’ all the way through pre-natal for our first child and that is what she wanted to do after listening to the pro’s and con’s against formula.

When Oscar arrived he wouldn’t latch on. He would try but then turn away. The nurses encouraged Andrea to stimulate more milk, knowing that it wasn’t flowing well and Oscar appeared disinterested. After three days we were told to go home and that Oscar would eventually get hungry, latch on and then the milk would flow.

Two days later, 48 hours of screaming baby and no sleep at all for the three of us, we returned to Hospital after suspecting that Oscar had Jaundice. Andrea was forced to express using a pump but her yield was very low. The nurses did their best to get the milk flowing but to no avail. Both mother and child were exhausted and hungry, Oscar having only the milk that Andrea could produce, being constantly told she needed to produce more.

A breastfeeding specialist was brought in and she tried her best to help and even supplied a motorised pump to express at home. Oscar had recovered from his Jaundice and he and Andrea was allowed home again. After a couple of weeks of trying to breast feed and express using the pump with difficulty and very little sleep, we were stretched to our limits. One evening Oscar was screaming non-stop. Andrea was very weak and I was on the brink of breaking. Surely this isn’t how having a baby should be? Sure, we were told to expect sleepless nights etc. but we were at the point of collapsing.

Oscar was inconsolable, screaming for help for hours on end, and that was the last straw. I knew then that Oscar was starving and no one had figured to try to solve his problem, not even us, because up to now it was Andrea’s problem. It took us a lot of courage and we were both very upset, but I left my wife at home crying of the guilt and feeling of being a useless mother, whilst I got in my car to drive 4 miles, crying myself, to get to a shop that was due to close, to get a box of evil formula.

I rushed back, then followed the instructions to the letter. After half an hour, we gave Oscar his first good feed. Without stopping and as fast as he could, he consumed the whole lot. Then, no more crying! Oscar was asleep in his mothers arms, content for the first time in weeks, sighing, because he finally had something in his stomach.

It wasn’t until the next day that Breast feeding support checked Andrea’s medical notes and realised that Oscar had been naturally conceived with the help of Clomid Tablets (Clomifene Citrate) due to previous miscarriages investigated as being caused due to very low hormone levels. The connection was then made that because the Tablets are only taken at the time of conception for 7 days, Andreas hormone levels returned to their low level and this is why her milk was not being produced.

Our close friends warned us about having breast feeding pushed in our face all the time. We thought it was the right thing to do but in hindsight, what damage did we do to our little boy? He had to suffer with severe Reflux for the first year and we wonder if this was as a result of a bad start to feeding.

I still feel angry today that a lot of assumptions were made and that we were treated in a very standard way instead of looking at the individual picture which happens a lot in today’s world. Andrea was still encouraged to connect herself to a motorised pump, but she was drained of life and needed to become fit again in order to support her baby. The pump was returned and formula became a new item on our shopping list, no longer looked upon as evil.

One of the daftest things that I saw in it was her claim that the wrong people train as breastfeeding counsellors, because if you’ve managed to bf for 6 months it’s obviously been an easy ride. What a crazy thing to say! I went to a bf group *because* we were having problems (shocking latch caused by cricked neck following forceps delivery), as did all the others now helping as peer supporters. We’re about to be let into the postnatal ward soon too, to support new mums right from the start (rather than the hurried 5 minutes “advice” I received from a succession of midwives).

I’m proud to have made it to 8.5 months. The only reason we stopped at all was due to something beyond my control – radioactive iodine treatment for thyroid cancer, making my milk poisonous – and even that was after breastfeeding my way through two operations. I could have delayed the treatment, but that would have increased my risk of secondary cancers, and the stress was affecting my supply. Either way I’d love to see Clare B-C tell me that was a doddle!

Err… right. That’s why the majority bottle feed, is it?

The NCT “Tummy to mummy, nipple to nose” seemed fairly useless motto at the time (I presume it was?) – and made it seem like the baby would magically latch on straight away without any problems or assistance… and you’d be able to go home a few hours after birth.

It would help if hospitals wouldn’t dismiss mothers until they’d had e.g. 3 proper breast feeds – at least this would help [new] mothers get over any initial problems.