Michelle Tant

(February 2018) As a breastfeeding counsellor with experience in facilitating breastfeeding antenatal sessions with over 500 partners of potentially breastfeeding mothers I have shifted my focus over the years from simply helping partners to understand the way feeding works, to helping them to visualise what life will be like as a fully involved parent, enabling their partner to have a positive breastfeeding experience as well as helping their babies to receive the optimum nutrition he or she requires. Becoming a midwife however has really opened my eyes to the realities of integrating partners in the early neonatal period. There have been improvements in the involvement of partners throughout labour and birth and many NHS Trusts do allow partners to stay for the first night following the birth of their baby in response to mothers saying they want this to happen. However as midwives, what is our expectation of the level of involvement and why do we think they are staying? It is...

 (September 2015) Image credit: http://www.thensmc.com/resources/showcase/be-star?view=all Since qualifying as a Breastfeeding Counsellor I have worked with over 500 fathers in antenatal breastfeeding education. The overwhelming impression I am given from them is that of a desire to be involved and to support their partners throughout the process. This desire is borne out in the research (Sherriff et al 2009; Rempel and Rempel 2010; Brown and Davies 2014) and what is interesting is that it also shows that mothers whose partner are supportive are more likely to have a positive breastfeeding experience (Meedya 2010). Image credit: http://beingdadboston.weebly.com/photo-credits.html I have subsequently become increasingly interested in supporting this need, particularly as my class experience shows me that often partners have the view that in order to help their partner they must feed the baby, thus ‘relieving’ the mother of the ‘burden’ of breastfeeding....