When did Breastfeeding Become Such a big Deal?
I know that I was breastfed until I was two and my younger sister Kate was breastfed until she was three. We lived in Switzerland and we went to the creche on the property of the psychiatric hospital our mother worked at. Our mother would pop down every few hours to breastfeed us. I remember her coming down to the creche to do that for my sister. I know that when my sister turned three, our mother had had enough and she left us with our dad while she went with a friend to France and my sister was left to go breastfeeding cold turkey. I remember our mother telling us about how when she woke up with rock hard breasts, she massaged and squeezed them until milk squirted all over the walls. When I was eight, we moved to South Africa and when I was nine, Gypsy was born. Jasmin’s birth followed 16 months later. Gypsy had to stop feeding while our mother was pregnant because the milk had dried up but as soon as the milk flowed again, both babies were back on the breast suckling away. Even whilst driving! That image has got to be one of my most prominent breastfeeding memories; our mother driving the bakkie (pick-up truck) on the bumpy dirt road in the Bokkeveld near Ceres with a baby straddling each leg and suckling away at a breast. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of this wonderful scene but I do have this one which is the two of them asleep post feed so you get the idea. Growing up, breastfeeding was normal. Like giving birth. If you had a baby, that is what you did to feed it until they were old enough to eat other things. The women who lived and worked on the farm also popped out their breasts to feed their children, most of them until their children were two or three, and one woman until her child was seven. When I was eight I saw a white woman cover her baby while breastfeeding. It’s funny because up to that point I had never stared at anyone while they were feeding their baby but this drew my attention. I thought it was an odd ritual and I wondered if the baby wasn’t hot in there? I got a fright the first time my baby suckled away at my nipple after giving birth – Ouch! I thought the hard part was over, no had told me that breastfeeding could hurt. It took me about three weeks of engorgement, tears, frustration, mastitis, pain, irritation, beauty, bliss and bonding to get the hang of the whole breastfeeding thing. But I have to admit, that for me, breastfeeding was like learning to ride a bicycle – I had to fall off a few times before I got it and I got some scrapes and bruises along the way. And it wasn’t just the first time I struggled with breastfeeding, it was a struggle every time I gave birth. Four times I struggled. That was my reality. Labour and birth were hard but give me pushing out a baby any time over the first three weeks of breastfeeding. I would feel that little jaw working away at my nipple and I would inwardly groan as I thought, “Oh no…not this again!”. I am well aware that there are all sorts of techniques to make all of this much easier. And I tried them. And sometimes they worked. And sometimes they didn’t. There is nothing like exhaustion and engorged breasts in the middle of the night...
Read MoreHelping Babies Breathe
Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) is an initiative of the American Academy of Paediatrics and the World Health Organisation. It is a programme that has been implemented to ensure that every birth attendant is skilled in the basics of neonatal resuscitation as part of one of the five 2015 Millennium Goals (to reduce infant mortality). Apparently, in Countries where this programme has been implemented, governments have found a decrease of up to 25% in neonatal deaths. Helping Babies Breathe is a neonatal resuscitation curriculum for resource-limited circumstances. It was developed on the premise that assessment at birth and simple newborn care are things that every baby deserves. The initial steps taught in HBB can save lives and give a much better start to many babies who struggle to breathe at birth. The focus is to meet the needs of every baby born. Helping Babies Breathe emphasises skilled attendants at birth, assessment of every baby, skin to skin contact with mother, delayed cord clamping, temperature support, stimulation to breathe, and assisted ventilation as needed, all within “The Golden Minute” after birth. Midwife Marianne Littlejohn and myself are trained as teachers and trainers of HBB and volunteer for Operation Smile and have thus far taught midwives, doctors, NICU staff, nurses, doulas, birth attendants, mothers, fathers, and interested people these basic but life saving skills. We have been privileged to teach all over South Africa, as well as in Malawi and Kenya. Plans are also afoot for us to teach in the DRC and Lesotho, as well as continuing to teach in South Africa. This last week I taught the skills to a group of peers, WOMBS doulas and CPM Mandi Busson at friend and colleague Lana Petersen‘s home. I must admit to feeling slightly intimidated, teaching friends and colleagues but this fell away very quickly as stories were shared and we acted out various scenarios from precipitous unplanned home births to water births. What I love about the HBB programme is its emphasis on normal birth – that it reiterates that approximately 90% of all births are straightforward and that it teaches as its introduction how to facilitate that: Skin to skin, delayed cord clamping, breastfeeding, etc and that even when a baby needs help to breathe, that every step is take to ensure that that mother and baby bond and cycle is not broken. Here are some pictures from this week’s course. We had so much fun acting out the various scenarios that plans are afoot for some fun birth theatre sports, possibly to be presented at this year’s Cape Town Midwifery and Birth Conference. If you would like to host or attend a Helping Babies Breathe course, please contact...
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