Free support is available for breastfeeding mums
REACHING OUT: Aedin Ó Cuireáin with her 21- month-old daughter Bríona and Maria Harte with her 10-month-old daughter Claudia - both mums were helped by HSE breastfeeding support services.
Maria Harte didn’t have a lifelong dream to breastfeed her baby – it certainly wasn’t a priority when she got pregnant with first child Bobby, now three.
“I’m a very bad patient. When I got pregnant, I just wanted to get this child out healthy. I knew there were two classes of mothers – those who breastfed and those who went with the bottle. To me, both were fine.”
Yet, after an emergency C-section and giving birth to a 10lb 7oz baby, leaving her feeling very sore, Maria tried her best to give her newborn “the bit of colostrum”. She thinks he got it once or twice but mostly he didn’t.
“I was so tense, tight and wound up, and he was like a little gremlin. He was starving and he had tongue-tie. My mum and my husband were there supporting me and they said ‘look Maria, you’ve done a marvellous job. Let’s just give Bobby a bottle, he’s starving’. And I did. I felt immediate relief – I could feed my baby. He was happy, he was sleeping. At the back of my mind I felt there’s always next time.”
At a mums’ group, Dun Laoghaire-based Maria met mothers who breastfed exclusively and took it really seriously. “I wondered: where do I fit in all this?”
By then she was pregnant with Claudia, now 12 months. And her sister, Nikki, had given birth to twins. “Nikki breastfed one baby and bottle-fed the other,” says Maria, explaining that one twin had a suspected tongue tie, which couldn’t be diagnosed over Zoom and which made breastfeeding impossible.
“I was just so in awe of Nikki – seeing someone who couldn’t be more like me doing it on her terms.”
Once Claudia was born, breastfeeding was a struggle. “In the hospital, they said she was jaundiced. She kept falling asleep on the boob. She didn’t have enough strength to get a good latch so she didn’t gain weight.”
Through a local WhatsApp group Maria contacted a lactation consultant, who watched her try to feed Claudia. “She said ‘she’s got a tongue tie, we can go tomorrow and get it fixed.”
Maria then discovered she could get free HSE breastfeeding support via Zoom and email. “The PHN was focused on getting all of us in the group to six weeks, day-by-day, feed-by-feed. It was a really tough six weeks. I didn’t know if Claudia was getting enough milk, my nipples were really sore, she was colicky. I didn’t know how to keep her awake to get enough milk into her. How could I get her to put on weight through breastfeeding and a few little top-ups with an occasional bottle?”
Admitting she couldn’t have done it without the group and PHN support, Maria says after six weeks it was like a switch went on. I was still giving Claudia a bottle before bed, so I was combination-feeding – and getting five hours sleep nightly.
“I learned it’s OK to be a mother on your terms and that support is there – you just have to put your hand up.”
With National Breastfeeding Week starting today, the HSE confirms more mothers are trying breastfeeding each year – 62% of babies are breastfed immediately after birth in hospital. “Recent data suggests a seven percent increase in number of babies breastfed at three months of age from 2015-2019,” says a HSE spokesperson.
“We’ve certainly seen an increase in mums wishing to breastfeed during the pandemic. Women became aware they could protect their babies from Covid-19 if they’d developed antibodies through having Covid or after vaccination,” says lactation consultant and midwife Claire Bulfin.
Bulfin says breastfeeding barriers are partly culture-based. “In countries like Sweden, which has extremely high breastfeeding rates, it’s normal to see mums breastfeeding in cafés, buses, in families. So there’s more awareness breastfeeding is a normal lifestyle routine.”
In addition, a lot of education is needed around the high support needs of mums in early weeks of breastfeeding (partner support is vital). “Breastfeeding takes a few weeks to establish. Babies feed at the breast very frequently in the first few weeks – it’s normal for a mother to breastfeed her baby 12 to 14 times a day. Mothers can sometimes feel overwhelmed – until it settles down to an easier pattern.”
It’s good news, says Bulfin, that the Government this summer announced funding to the HSE for 24 additional lactation consultants, thereby providing support to every maternity unit in the country. And that in-person breastfeeding groups are returning after 18 months.
First-time mum Aedín Ó Cuireáin can testify to what early education and support meant for her breastfeeding. She had always wanted to breastfeed but soon after beginning to feed Bríona, now two years old, her nipples started to hurt. “The domino midwife noticed the latch wasn’t quite right. She corrected it and said it should only hurt for the first 60 seconds – if it hurt longer, I should take her off and put her on again. Her other good tip was to put my finger into the corner of baby’s mouth to break the latch – without that, Bríona would be pulling off me, adding to the injury. Those were two crucial bits of advice in those first days.”
The Dublin mother recalls another challenging episode. “Bríona was eight weeks old. She just wasn’t settling. She was waking a lot in the night. I couldn’t believe she was that hungry. The best advice I got was if she doesn’t settle, just feed her again. So I lived by that – if she wasn’t settling, I’d put her on the breast again. Within a week she started sleeping through the night.”
Both Aedín and Maria know firsthand the challenges of breastfeeding. “People say, ‘How hard can it be? Just stick some strawberry jam on your nipple’. It’s really minimised,” says Maria.
“But the support is there. Ask for it. And the rewards are as much for the mother as the baby. There’s a new confidence that comes when you manage breastfeeding.”
- Visit exa.mn/HSE-breastfeeding-expert
- Cuidiú offers free support to all mothers – you don’t have to be a member. Click here for full list of counsellors.
- Follow Cuidiú on Instagram/Facebook for more information
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