Michelle Tant

When I started as a Breastfeeding Counsellor, I used to cram as many things as I could into my antenatal classes. A year later and some more direct experience supporting brand new mothers in their early breastfeeding experience and I find my classes to be a bit different. I used to go to great pains to tell parents how they could do it properly, not quite step by step, but almost. I'd justify this approach by thinking about how I would have appreciated the information before I breastfed my first child. It took being on a postnatal ward with a brand new mother with an hours old newborn to remind me in exquisite shock just what it is like to be a new mother. It took me right back and I started to think long and hard about just how I felt in those first 24 hours. Morphine induced haze aside, when the mist started to clear, I was overwhelmed with the enormity of the task ahead and the minute and beautiful creature in my arms. The realisation that all the information I'd bee...

"I am far too lazy to bottlefeed"; just one of the phrases used by myself and my breastfeeding mummy friends when asked about our feeding choices. In fact we did a radio interview when my eldest was 7ish months old and someone said that. It raised a laugh but it is actually very close to the truth. The thought of having to prepare all the bottle feeding paraphernalia in order to leave the house really does leave me cold. I have enough trouble leaving the house as we are. We were being interviewed that time as a part of women's health week and National Breastfeeding Week was looming. There was around 5/6 of us, we all were still breastfeeding at 10 months and more, and that did make us an unusual sight. The (not so secret) secrets of successful breastfeeding Understand me when I say I am NOT bottle bashing here. Everyone has their own decision to make and I am simply saying one (slightly dramatised) reason why I didn't/don't bottlefeed my children. The ...