Tag Archives: PND

Sep 30 2014

GIVEAWAY: Win 1 of 5 copies of Guilt-Free Bottle Feeding by Madeleine Morris & Dr Sasha Howard (CD: 31/10/2014)

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I’ve written dozens of posts now about breastfeeding. Although I’d urge mum (that can!) to try and breastfeed, I know better than most that it isn’t easy. I lasted 6 weeks with both of my babies and I’m incredibly proud of myself for lasting that long.

With both children I was hit by crippling depression and anxiety. Although I believe every mother has the capacity to breastfeed, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best thing for her or her baby. My mental health really suffered as a result of breastfeeding and yet I put myself under incredible pressure to continue. Panic attacks ensued and I wound up being hospitalised several times. As a result I wasn’t the best mother I could be, and I didn’t enjoy those first precious weeks with Dexter or Heidi.

But Breast is Best… right?

Maybe not. Madeleine Morris and Dr Sasha Howard have now launched a myth-busting book that shows women they are not bad mothers if they can’t or don’t want to breastfeed; Guilt-Free Bottle Feeding - why your formula-fed baby can be happy, healthy and smart.

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This isn’t an anti-breastfeeding book, it’s an anti-guilt book

Unfortunately, in the quest to promote breastfeeding, formula and mothers who formula-feed or mix-feed have become demonised… We have all come to believe that ‘good mothers breastfeed, bad mothers bottle feed’. This is not only simply wrong, this ill-founded belief is damaging mothers, and their relationships with their babies, in what should be one of the happiest times of their lives. Madeleine Morris

9781908281777
Half of all British babies will have a bottle of formula before they are a week old and their mothers feel guilty. They feel guilty because every single book, poster and midwife tells them that breastfeeding is the single most important thing they can do for their babies.
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But for some families, breast isn’t best. Some mums don’t produce enough milk, some have post-natal depression, others are juggling two kids already, or need to go back to work, and some mums simply don’t like breastfeeding. Are they bad mothers? No! But they believe themselves to be.
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Guilt-Free Bottle Feeding, written by award winning former BBC presenter Madeleine Morris and paediatrician Dr Sasha Howard resets the conversation around infant feeding, revealing how the benefits of breastfeeding have been oversold to British parents, and showing guilt-wracked new mothers they have not failed their babies by giving them formula.
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With a thorough, yet easy-to-understand analysis of science, parenting sociology and the modern media, Guilt-Free Bottle Feeding provides a balanced, much- needed and long-overdue alternative view to the simplistic message that ‘breast is best’. This practical book proves that despite the huge pressure women feel to breastfeed, it possible to raise perfectly happy, healthy and smart bottle-fed and mixed-fed children.

Breast milk is wonderful stuff… but sometimes breastfeeding doesn’t work out, for a huge number of complex physical and social reasons. We need to show mums they are not failures for giving their babies a bottle. Dr Sasha Howard

Guilt-Free Bottle Feeding:
  • Examines over a hundred original medical journal articles to show the benefits of breastfeeding in the developed world are not as clear cut as women are told
  • Looks at emerging evidence that the immense pressure to breastfeed is now a contributing factor to post-natal depression
  • Shows how sloppy science reporting, ill-informed websites and celebrity culture unfairly demonise bottle feeding, leaving mothers feeling like failures
  • Points out the double standards of a medical system which relentlessly pressures mothers to breastfeed, but doesn’t provide them with the support they need
  • Calls for an individually tailored ‘feeding plan’, to give mothers a realistic feeding goal rather than the blanket 6-month exclusive breastfeeding target, which 98% of UK mums fail to meet
  • Calls for a mother’s physical and mental needs to be valued in the feeding relationship
  • Reveals the ‘X-Factor’ of breastfeeding research, and why we may never know the differences between breastfed and formula-fed babies
  • Gives a large, detailed guide to choosing a formula, safe bottle preparation and how to bottle feed for maximum health and bonding – information which is shamefully lacking in the NHS.
Told with humour and personal experience yet grounded in years of fastidious research, Guilt-Free Bottle Feeding is a much needed real-world counterpoint to the almost religious promotion of breastfeeding which now dominates medical and parenting discourse.
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As mothers who both breast- and bottle-fed their babies (they met at their NCT class), and decorated professionals in their fields of journalism and paediatrics, Madeleine Morris and Dr Sasha Howard are uniquely placed to provide evidence-based reassurance to mothers they are not failures if they don’t exclusively breastfeed.
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Guilt-Free Bottle Feeding: Why your formula-fed baby can be happy, healthy and smart By Madeleine Morris & Dr Sasha Howard is available on Amazon for £7.59 (ISBN: 9781908281777), or in e-book format for £6.99 (ISBN: 9781908281784)
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*** GIVEAWAY ***

I haven’t read this book yet, but a copy is on its way to me. As someone who staunchly believes that breast isn’t always best and advocates pro-choice when it come to feeding your baby, I’m all for it.

If you’re currently bottlefeeding, pregnant, or just interested in the findings, you can win 1 of 5 copies right here. Just enter via the rafflecopter below.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

T&C’s – a.k.a – the boring bit!
    • Only 1 option is mandatory (leave me a comment) – the rest only improve your chances of winning so just complete as many as you feel like
    • UK entrants only – you must be over 18 too (sorry)
    • The winners will be contacted by email and must respond within 1 week of having been emailed (I’ll try all known avenues to contact them) or a new winner will be drawn
    • When the giveaway is closed, Rafflecopter will select the winner completely at random
    • The winners name will be published on this site

Win competitions at ThePrizeFinder.com

Jun 2 2014

The Reality of Having Two Babies

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Having two babies is bloody harder than I’d ever envisaged, and today has been possibly the toughest one yet. In fact, thinking about it, all Monday’s are pretty dire. I’m still in blissful weekend mode where I wake up beside the man who helped me create my little miracles, and the man who bears most all responsibility for them at the weekends. It’s a bit of a shock-to-the-system when you hear Dexter screaming what I can only assume are toddler profanities and rattling his stair-gate like Lecter’s neighbour in Silence of the Lambs. Then there’s my beautiful newly birthed cherub in an odoriferous morning nappy laying beside me - eying up my breasts like an alcoholic who’s spotted out-of-date cast offs in ASDA’s grundon. At that very moment, you know you’re in for a crap day.

Yep, parenting two kids is tough. The midwife might as well have handed me twenty babies when she slipped my Heidi to me. All the sense of occasion was pretty much destroyed when she then whisked her away as “she’s gotta lot of poo on her, bless her… sit tight, I’ll just wipe the worst of it off”.

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Even before Heidi and I were discharged, I was finding it hard work. Whipping out boobs on-demand and dealing with 3am hysteria came hurtling back like a bad dream.

And Heidi wasn’t as ‘pretty’ as I thought she would be. I remember seeing right past all the baggy and peeling skin with Dexter and thinking he was the most beautiful baby ever to be born. But Heidi looked like she’d strolled right out of a scene from the Labyrinth. Don’t get me wrong, my daughter is gorgeous (…now she’s had a few weeks to grow into herself) - but there’s definitely an altogether different appreciation of #2,3,4 babies that most of us aren’t expecting.

Fair enough, there are ways to ‘cheat’ your way through the week - like leaving the kids in PJ’s throughout the day so they look bed-ready when daddy comes through the door, or fast-forwarding the evenings so it’s acceptable to grab a glass of wine at bang on five-o-clock. But it doesn’t work as a long-term solution and all too quickly you’re rocking back and forth in the garden (behind the Little Tykes monstrosity that you thought was such a good idea until you realised your kid believes it’s an actual house he can actually sleep in) clutching a packet of cigarettes and telling yourself you won’t start again ‘properly’, just have one or two when the stress gets too much.

Then there’s the guilt.

You can see your toddler isn’t quite as thrilled as you thought he’d be so you start forgiving the odd misdemeanor as he’s obviously “acting out”. But when you give that precious inch, that toddler will sprint out of your grasp like that fella out of the Virgin ads. All of a sudden you start believing your two-year-old is capable of deception more masterful than the kid from Problem Child. I’ve definitely lost Dexter to the dark-side and he’s now fully aware that the way to rouse mummy from the sofa when she’s breastfeeding is to pull out a wire from the back of the telly, rip out her plants, or take his nappy off and pee on the floor. If mummy is waning and is looking beaten, he’ll move it up a notch and swallow lego, coins or anything else that will have us all bundled into an ambulance.

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Toss in the fact that I’m still pretending to be Super-Mum and am still trying to find a few spare minutes in the evening to tick off reviews that are outstanding from 6 months ago, and it’s quickly apparent why a vein is bulging in my neck like Stressed Eric. It’s no wonder I’ve been hospitalised twice with a suspected blood clot that has turned out to be nothing more than severe acid reflux and panic attacks.

So yes, I’m back on anti-depressants and waiting patiently for them to kick in. I’m also now frantically ringing nurseries and waxing lyrical about my beautiful first-born in an attempt to disguise the fact he’s now so awful to me that I just can’t cope. Every time a nursery worker scoffs that “some ladies pop them on the waiting list at birth” I kick myself for not being so flippin organised.

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the reality of having two babies. It’s terrifying, emotional, stressful, awful and very likely to get me sectioned. As much as I love my babies, I really really do, I cannot wait for them to morph into proper little people - toilet-trained, capable of asking me where babies come from, and no longer receiving draught milk but necking it out of the bottle and then sneaking it back into the fridge… Only then might I rediscover my sanity… and start begging Craig for another.

May 17 2014

Breastfeeding Part 2 - Did I Give Up?

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A week ago I posted about my struggles with breastfeeding Heidi. I was in a pretty bad place when I wrote it; tired, emotional and I still had a post-op hangover to contend with too. The post was a bit of a cry-for-help and I received so much advice from fellow bloggers, friends and complete strangers that I thought I’d post a quick follow-up to let everyone know I’m okay, and just how Heidi and I have decided to move forward.

The gist of the post was that I was finding positioning virtually impossible with a c-section wound and large boobs. I also wasn’t enjoying the ‘act’ of breastfeeding itself and felt a bit like a milk-cow. Being so diddy, Heidi was also only just working out to feed efficiently so would take up to two hours per feed which was difficult on Dexter. It was bad enough adjusting to having to share me with his sister, let alone having me held captive on the sofa. He wasn’t violent, but he did seem really heartbroken that I was dedicating so much time to Heidi and he was left to play independently for such long periods. The whole thing made me dread feeding times and Craig would see me crying daily and getting irritable with Heidi in a way that a new mummy should never be. 10325541_10152066347927190_8205445067148453103_n

After a nightfeed Heidi will steal my pillow

So my first instinct was to pack it all in. This is what I eventually did with Dex (approx 6 weeks in). I didn’t miss the experience at all and Dexter is a healthy and happy little guy - so I didn’t worry about giving up from a health stance. In fact, the only thing that stopped me was the fact that Heidi is likely to be my last baby - I wanted to at least give it a chance.

Never-the-less, I still thought it was affecting my relationship with Heidi. It’s not right to resent your newborn, and it’s not right to sit there in floods of tears every time she cries out for nourishment. I still don’t think we’ve crossed this bridge entirely but I have made it halfway across. I love my little girl, but I’m still finding it hard. Right now, I’m not clear whether this is the usual 6 week haze every new mum feels, or something a little more worrying. I’ve decided to stay positive about this for now and maybe book a GP appointment for a PND assessment at a later date.

As regards feeding, Heidi is now combination fed. She is exclusively breastfeed at night and somehow we’ve managed to find a laying down position (of sorts) which means she’s co-sleeping beside me after her nightfeed. It’s not ideal as I worry about having her in bed beside me, but moving her back to her crib is impossible as her sleep is so light. I’m definitely finding that breastmilk is the quickest way to send her to sleep, but that sleep is short-lived.

Throughout the day, she’ll still have boob-time before her bottles where possible. It works really well and I’m feeling far less irritable. I actually think I’m probably breastfeeding more now than I was before, but I’m feeling less pressure to be the sole provider of milk. If I’m too tired, I don’t have to do it. This realisation is a new one, and one I’m happily embracing.

My only concern now is that Heidi seems to have a poorly tummy after her formula feeds. She winds easily but seems to find it really difficult to poop. When she does manage it, she cries out in pain. I’m completely clued up on colic but I don’t think this is it. Perhaps the formula isn’t agreeing with her, or maybe our sterilsation isn’t as thorough as we thought. It’s something I’ll be keeping an eye on and raising with the GP.

Dex and Heidi

They’re slowly beginning to bond

I can still sit there for up to 2 hours with Heidi but these long feeds are becoming less frequent. I think this is a combination of Heidi becoming more efficient, and my being less stiff and more relaxed. She may still need a top-up after nursing, but as least Heidi has had the benefit of me before she’s given her bottle. It also means my milk won’t dry up so all options are left open.

I’ve decided not to see a lactation consultant (despite initially booking a meeting). I know Heidi’s latch could be better and perhaps there is a tiny bit of tongue-tie, but she seems to be coping never-the-less and I’d rather she didn’t undergo an unnecessary procedure. I’m also fed up of appointments now and would rather just get on with it. When Heidi gets a little stronger, and my boobs level out a bit, hopefully we’ll be able to maneuver ourselves into more comfortable positions.

Feeding away from home continues to be a problem. On these days she’ll be given formula or we’ll try to express in advance. I just don’t feel comfortable breastfeeding when I’m out and about so I don’t want to stress myself out over it. It’s very rare that we’ll be out for an entire day anyway so it’s not something I’ve had to think too deeply about yet. I guess I’ll just cross that bridge when it comes to it.

So thanks everyone, I’m so grateful for all your help and support and will continue to keep you updated.

 

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