Claire Boyle is a midwife and has been holding breastfeeding education and support classes for 15 years. She is based in Cork, but her celebrated programme is also taught in Limerick and Dublin too. You can find out more on her website, breastfeedingconsultant.ie.
Here, she shares her expertise with MummyPages.
We all know about Ireland’s low rates of breastfeeding – but why that is is a lot more complicated.
For me, however, and with a decade-and-a-half of experience under my belt, I reckon ultimately is all comes down to a long-engrained culture.
Right now, we’re fighting against 50 or 60 years of not being a breastfeeding nation, so it’s nothing something that’s going to change overnight.
That and the HSE simply doesn’t have the structures in place to assist and support breastfeeding mums.
Cork has something like two part-time lactation consultants for the entire city. Two! If a new mum is struggling on a Thursday evening she’d have to wait until Tuesday afternoon to get the help she needs to continue breastfeeding.
So the greatest single thing a new mum and her partner can do to breastfeed successfully is to prepare and learn everything they possibly can before their baby arrives.
Afterwards everyone will be busy and adapting to a brand new way of things – so it’s not ideal to only then begin to get to grips with the likes of feeding.
Oh, and baby brain is a real thing! Certainly most parents would probably agree that no new mum wants to have to start trying to retain new information in the aftermath of giving birth.
The other thing I’m always asked about? Sleep! Probably because parents worry about how they’re going to survive on a lot less of it, and also because these days we have cultural expectations when it comes to young children’s bedtime routine.
However, for the first six weeks, all your baby will be doing is sleeping and feeding, feeding and sleeping. Parents need to know that! After that period, it’s also unlikely that they’ll miraculously start conking out in their cot for six or seven hours a day.
Good antenatal education also means when mums and dads hear inaccurate information or advice about sleep or about breastfeeding – and that includes from health professionals – they know and can put it aside and focus on facts.
And let’s be clear: this is a time when dads definitely need to step up to the plate. I call them the memory sticks because they’re the ones who are going to have to retain all the practical information.
For example, in the early days and weeks your baby needs to feed ten or 12 times in every 24 hours. Each feed can last from ten minutes to 40 minutes. New parents need to know that’s perfectly normal!
I’ve been teaching antenatal and breastfeeding classes for 15 years now, and over that time it’s really been lovely to witness the arrival of more and more dads.
In the beginning it was unusual – but that’s certainly not the case now.
You can’t of course, fully prepare for the delightful upheaval that comes with the arrival of a little one, but antenatal education will make a huge difference to your health and happiness – not least when it comes to breastfeeding.
Clare’s top-tips for successful breastfeeding:
- Preparation is key! You won’t have the time or ability to focus on the particular once your baby arrives, so you should make the most of the weeks before the birth to get ready, and learn.
- Get your partner involved as much as possible. If you’re breastfeeding your baby, he’s going to have to do pretty much everything else for the first few weeks.
- Busy health professionals are often seeing multiple mums in a short space of time and they can give conflicting information; once you do your research, don’t let a flyaway remark put you off.
- If you’re trying breastfeeding for the second or third time, don’t let past struggles put you off.
- Understand the birthing process – and know that things like caesareans, or the use of pain relief during birth may inhibit your ability to effectively breastfeed in the first days of a baby’s life. Stick with it!
