Michelle Tant

This year has felt like one attack after another on breastfeeding. There's been the ongoing Facebook debacle; photos of breastfeeding being removed while Playboys pages are continued to be allowed to flaunt more flesh than a whole convention of breastfeeding mothers. Then there was the ridiculous opinion piece in the British Medical Journal which many newspapers, including The Daily Fail regurgitated as fact, further undermining the benefits of breastfeeding. Just this week I saw a short piece in Practical Parenting magazine about the Chinese developing GM cows to produce human milk! One sentence says the milk will have more nutritional content in it, though its unclear whether it means than breastmilk or than formula milk. And now this. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/campaigners-livid-as-whitehall-axes-breastfeeding-week-2287445.html Our beloved government in its wisdom has cut national support for National Breastfeeding ...

I appreciate that the title of this blog post sounds a tad on the self centred side, but do bear with me. At work today I had a bit of a 'moment'. I found out things I wasn't happy about, hadn't been consulted on and to add insult to injury I felt that I was being dumped on work load wise. In my job we do manage our own day to day work, in that I have an amount of tenancies to 'look after' so how I manage that time is up to me so long as the net result is the same... I achieve the targets set. So when I realised today that yet again a colleague was expecting me to do their work for them despite them being able and available, I guess I threw all my toys out of the pram as it was the straw to break this camels back. Fuming and very upset to boot I rang my line manager. 10 minutes later I came off the phone even more frustrated and upset than before. What happened? I explained how I felt, the circumstances as I saw them and the response I got was excus...

In January 2010, a massive shattering earthquake hit Haiti with the epicentre in the capital of Port au Prince. In Haiti now there are an estimated 1.2million orphans. Entire communities were destroyed in the space in seconds and families devastated forever. In my church we have a couple who are involved with the charity Direction for Life, him as a Police Chaplain and they responded to the disaster by going out there with a team and making contacts, channeling aid and welfare to the people needing it most. They now have a vision to create a community for some of the orphans.10 x 3 bedroom houses with 'house parents' to become family to children. School as well. These things cost money and so I've been thinking how to raise a bit of cash. Kev and I haven't been able to travel for some time now. I know some people travel all the time with their kids, it just hasn't happened for us. Anyway, we've done a fair amount of travel in the past and we've a...

We recently went for a walk in the woods and after taking this gorgeous picture of the three men in my life, it occurred to me that they rarely get a look in on my blog so here they are. A beautiful day spent with my most favourite people in the whole world. One of those days when you remember to count your blessings, each and every one of them. Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

Today I watched history as our nations favourite Prince got married to the lovely Kate Middleton. I wish them health and happiness in their marriage, they seem very sweet. I'd say that Brits in the main have been very happy to see this wedding, not least because there's the general feeling that we've had quite a bit of bad news on a world scale lately. It seems the world loves our Monarchy so it felt like a world event. Here in the UK people have been celebrating, apparently there was 5500 applications for street parties for today and our (choke) Prime Minister said to celebrate and don't worry about the red tape so presumably there were many more. We watched the wedding at home then had a BBQ with friends to celebrate. My kids dressed as Princes and a Princess, hence my picture today. Congratulations William and Kate. Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

I am presuming (hoping?) that The Guardian newspaper did nor set out to publish an inflammatory piece about breastfeeding but unfortunately, it seems to have fallen into the media breastfeeding black hole. http://m.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/23/mix-feed-baby-doctor?cat=lifeandstyle&type=article But more important than yet another media #fail are the ridiculous statements by this 'Dr Smith'. What book was he referencing when he said that the immune benefits cross over in the first few weeks, suggesting therefore that there are no further immunity benefits to be gained by breastfeeding for longer than that? I blogged about some of the significant milestones in breastfeeding here - http://michelletant.blogspot.com/2011/02/milestones-that-matter.html and honestly doctor, the facts are easy enough to come across if you look. Then to move along to saying that expressing is faster than a baby feeding directly? While of course there may be individual cases whe...

A friend said to me the other day how her own mother was pressurising her about her weight loss. My friend is 8 weeks post partum. The hurt I felt on her behalf cut me to the core. The one person who is supposed to be a guaranteed cheerleader is your mother. That doesn't stop once you become an adult. In fact if there was ever a time you need your mothers support and unconditional approval, its when you become a mother yourself. Mothering is hard! It's also joyful, rewarding, surprising, fulfilling and utterly mad. But it is also relentless, tiring, heart wrenching and complicated. Who doesn't need the occasional shoulder to lean or cry on? Mothers are uniquely placed to be supportive of other mothers. Who should know this but a mother? Our own mothers have 'been there and done that'... sometimes right, sometimes wrong but they have been there and they know that this mothering lark is not as black and white as the books would have us think. Now ...