Firstly Happy New Year to everyone, I hope Christmas and New Year was relaxing and not too stressful even though it was busy. Christmas and New Year was certainly busy in our household. Having 4 children ranging from the ages of 13 to 21/2 can be a challenge, but not one that I would ever change !
I did manage to get a quick glimpse at the Daily Mail a few days before where I stumbled upon an article entitled ‘Meet the Extreme Breastfeeders’, which I proceeded to rip out of the newspaper (much to my husbands dismay !) so I could put it on my ‘save it for later’ pile. That night once all the children were in bed I sat down to read the article which had got me thinking during the course of the day about what Meet the Extreme Breastfeeders could possibly mean !
The article was actually very interesting. It was about 3 mums who had all made sure their children were breastfed but in 3 very different ways.
The first lady, Sarah Hastings, breastfed her daughter until she was 6 months old but then needed to go back to work. Her daughter struggled to take the bottle and ended up with her Nanny breastfeeding her daughter instead. The arrangement wasn’t planned, it came about by accident as Sarah’s Nanny was herself still breastfeeding her own 18 month old daughter. One day Sarah’s daughter was crying, Sarah was on the telephone and it was the only way her Nanny could soothe the little girl. Sarah was obviously quite shocked when she walked back into the room but quickly realised that this was the perfect solution.
The second lady, Sabreena Mahroof, was born without a womb so 3 years ago decided to go down the surrogacy route in order to become a mum. She discovered she was having twins and through the agency Surrogacy UK found out that it may be possible for her to breastfeed her babies even though she didnt actually give birth to them.
With the support of her GP Sabreena started taking domperidone with a combination of herbal supplements to induce lactation and did feed her twins for the first 2 weeks of their lives. At this point the whole process took its toll and Sabreena very unwillingly gave up, which was extremely upsetting for her as she believed ‘breast is best’ and had fought so hard to feed them herself. Luckily the surrogate then offered to donate her own breast milk, and continued to do this until the twins were 6 months old, so they could continue to be fed breast milk and not formula.
The third lady, Lynn Adams, was diagnosed with a condition called Mammary Hypoplasia after her daughter was born. It meant she couldnt produce enough of her own milk to feed her daughter who had to be treated in hospital at 10 days old for dehydration. Her GP suggested she take domperidone to boost her milk supply and used a milk supplementer system while nursing to boost her daughters consumption. Lynn said that although she found it fiddly and time consuming she relished the opportunity it gave to her as there is so much more to breastfeeding that just the milk.
The article gave me a lot of food for thought about A Beautiful Mummy’s customers, who they are and what they have been through. We are extremely customer focused and help our customers as much as we can. We understand that when customers telephone us their newborns may be crying in the background, their toddler may have decided to try to wash-up and it may be complete chaos (as it can often be when newborns are around) and we are very supportive, but until now it hadn’t crossed my mind the journey our customers may have been on to be able to breastfeed in the first place. To be honest I don’t think these ladies have been extreme, I think they have all made very brave and personal decisions which have been right for them and that’s what this is all about.
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