You can read part 1 by clicking here and part 3 by clicking here.
Yip, there’s a reason they call being pregnant, ‘expecting’! We spend most of our pregnancies wondering, hoping, daydreaming and planning what our little baby will be like, look like, how the breastfeeding/bottlefeeding/weaning will go and how we will train our little one to sleep and smile on demand. (I’m thinking of the books I studied with a mixture of awe, dread and excitement. And which I now see were an utter waste of my time – and set me up for deep disappointment, frustration and anxiety. In short, these books caused me to seriously doubt myself as a mother. (Despite being an avid recycler, I’ve triumphantly ditched these books in the bin!)
Six months into my very bloated and nauseous pregnancy, my midwife asked me if I was going to breastfeed – to which I answered the most uninformed and naive ‘yes’ in my life. In my mind’s eye, I saw my content little newborn peacefully suckling at my breasts. Blithely, I publicised my intention to breastfeed her only until her first teeth arrived (I presumed, around 6 months) – at which point, she would voluntarily wean herself, no strings attached. To even begin to detail the journey Layla and I undertook would take literally forever, and my desire – by telling you our story – is not to bore you, but to inspire you by telling you about the reality of breastfeeding. If, during our first pregnancy, we were educated more truthfully and realistically about breastfeeding, there would be far less us of new mothers being torn apart by guilt, frustration, anger and fear. Certainly, those cases of postnatal depression triggered by a ‘failure’ to breastfeed could be prevented. But perhaps it is not so much the absence of the right kind of information and support, but the proud self-determination first-time mothers fall prey to (myself included.) If I look at my own feelings and ideas about how my baby and I would breastfeed, I felt fairly confident that it would happen with no serious fuss or bother. I had watched a DVD on why breastfeeding was apparently so much more superior as a feeding method, and it all looked so simple and prosaic. The only thing that confused me a little was the whole ‘latching-on’ business – i.e. how the top of your areola shouldn’t be in the baby’s mouth, but must show above it. But, again, I simply assumed that it would only take an attempt or two till baby and I got it right. THANKFULLY, my mom flew over from the UK to help us out for the first month of Layla’s life – and she had bought a couple of pricey Avent bottles with her ‘just in case’ I couldn’t breastfeed, or if I wanted to express milk so she or Craig could help with the feeds. Ha! That blerry breast-pump was used all of two times: once to ease the moer of an aching breast that ballooned, rock hard and stretched, like a B-grade porn star’s! The second time was an hour or so before our lift arrived to whisk us off to Heathrow. Layla was 3.5 months old – and all those horror stories that get pelted around from mom to mom about screaming children, ear-ache and flying, had me in a neurotic tizz! (Despite usually loving the limelight, I couldn’t convince myself that I wanted everyone on the plane staring, glaring and tutting at me thanks to my bellowing babe!) Googling the issue didn’t enlighten me as I’d hoped, so I hunted around for any solution other mothers and midwifes could offer (barring chewing gum and horse tranquillisers!) In the end, because Layla refused to take a dummy (one of the options suggested), I settled on expressing some milk to give to her as we took off and landed, from a bottle. (And that was another bugger of note: Layla refused, point blank, to drink from anything except Mama. We spent too much money on every single variety of bottle and teat shape – including the famous ‘breast-shaped’ Tommy-Tippee bottle. Good marketing – but just a tad misleading…) Anyway, there I sat amidst our packed suitcases, nervous as hell about the impending 12 hour flight to Cape Town, my boob in one hand, and the other awkwardly clutching the manual breastpump – trying to eke enough milk from a stubbornly reluctant mammary gland, in the hopes of securing enough earache-banishing sips for the flight. (That’s one of the marvels of breastmilk – it keeps for 12 hours, no refrigeration required.) Craig and I laughed in a kind of nervous embarrassment at my nipple being sucked two inches deep into the gasping, sighing breastpump. I felt a bit like a cow in a dairy. Not very natural and not at all comfortable – so when the dratted thing broke after just a few minutes, I was very, very relieved! Capping the bottle of perfectly warm milk, we gathered up our things, piled into the car, and hoped for the best! (I have gone waaaaaaaaaaaaay off-topic here – I meant to tell you, magazine-article/synopsis-like, about the expectations versus the reality of breastfeeding! Oops! But I am so engrossed that now I just can’t stop. Where was I? Oh yes. Heathrow.)
Heathrow, Terminal 5. Having arrived incredibly early, there was time to kill and a hungry baby to feed. Rows and rows of seating remained sat upon by travellers trying to be oblivious to this heavily laden mommy and her wailing bub… Until I spotted a kind-looking lady who made smiling eye-contact with me and motioned us over to sit next to her. Out of all of those other travellers who pretended Layla and I were invisible, I wasn’t surprised when I heard this lady’s South African accent as she fussed around me like a mother-hen, trying to make us comfortable on the metal seating so Layla could get fed – and she was so fantastically comfortable and reassuring about me breastfeeding right there next to her that it set the tone for the rest of the adventure! (Last week I said this was going to be a series of three posts – but it looks like it may end up as a mini cyber-novel! See you next week for more about the delights of Heathrow’s security checks! *wink*)
You can read part 1 by clicking here and part 3 by clicking here.
Have read about your travails up to here, but when I click “here” I’m toid it no longer exists. That may or may not be true; I’m not as trusting as I was. Have got to get back to work, but I’ll just relate this snippet from my own first pregnancy: Some friends of my husband’s were staying with us, and I knew for a fact that morally speaking they weren’t as white as snow. Thought they’d be unconventional also. So I had no qualms about unbuttoning and lodging my baby where it would do most good. A perfectly natural thing to do, it seemed to me. But it caused a sensation … Everybody, including hubby, was deeply embarrassed. I was flummoxed. Aren’t people odd?
I agree, Madeleine! In this day and age, where you can see hundreds of boobs on display in CNA, the Internet, the beach etc, one would think that a mother feeding her baby would be quite acceptable. The very opposite, in fact, is the case… Breasts have been hyper-sexualised to the point that they have been stripped (no pun intended!) of their magnificently physiological and familial meaning. My dad suggested I cover Layla and myself up more when I fed her, and I was so hurt and humiliated. Trying to explain to my dad that Layla would get too hot under a blanket and would pull it away to see me anyway was futile. Now I just say to anyone, sweetly, “If you’re embarrassed by me breastfeeding, here’s a blanket to put over YOUR head!”