Breastfeeding battles
The mothers who are judged and found guilty
When TV reporter Kate Quilton began breastfeeding her newborn son in May, she was slightly stunned to discover how difficult it was. “Like many new mums,” she says, “I had been focusing on the birth rather than what happened next. So I never expected to have problems feeding my child. Especially as my own mother and sisters had breastfed with relative ease.” So Quilton began keeping a video diary of the experience, capturing the moments of pain, frustration and exhaustion that many women feel when they breastfeed their baby.
“In the first five weeks, there were plenty of times when I was suffering bleeding and cracked nipples,” she recalls, “and even crying with pain while I fed my son.”
All the time, she asked herself, “‘Is this normal?’ I expected a bit of pain in the early days, but this was extreme.” By recording her experience, Quilton created a remarkably intimate and compelling look at the reality of breastfeeding – one she is now sharing with the public in tonight’s documentary Breastfeeding Uncovered for Channel 4’s Dispatches series.
Received wisdom goes that breastfeeding should be uncontroversial: the World Health Organisation advises that all babies are fed breast milk for the first six months of life before being weaned (and offered breast milk alongside solids).
The wide range of nutrients in breast milk, the NHS agrees, helps babies to develop a healthy gut microbiome and protect against infections, diarrhoea and vomiting, sudden infant death syndrome, childhood leukaemia, obesity and cardiovascular disease in adulthood.
Yet, according to Unicef, the UK is among the 10 countries with the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world, with 150,000 babies never being breastfed at all.
Of those mothers that do, Public Health England figures released this month reveal that only 43 per cent are still breastfeeding at six to eight weeks after birth.
Quilton, best known for presenting Channel 4’s
Food Unwrapped series, does not just focus on her in the programme, but also explores how and why we British are so resistant to feed our infants in this most natural way.
“One of the most important factors is a gradual change in culture, which started as far back as the turn of the
20th century,” she explains. By the Seventies, breastfeeding had started to fall out of favour, with just 25 per cent of babies breastfed in US hospitals; there has been the longstanding influence, too, from formula milk companies. An exclusive survey by Swansea University given to Dispatches suggests that 67 per cent of us think there is no biological difference between breast milk and formula, which is far from the case. Breast milk contains natural lactose, protein and fat, all of which can be easily digested by newborns, while formula contains processed or alternative versions of these components, such as casein curds. In an effort to control how formula milk companies advertise their products, the Government passed the Infant Formula and Follow-on Formula (England) Regulations 2007, which controls their ingredients, and prevents any milk
‘The worst thing is the guilt, whichever way you feed your baby’
targeted at babies aged under six months from being advertised.
Yet for some mothers, offering bottle feeds is not a choice but necessity if they cannot feed their child themselves. According to
Which? magazine, 71 of mothers use infant formula to some extent for babies under six months old – and Quilton nearly counted herself among them. “My son didn’t feed for the first 24 hours after birth, but everyone told me he was tired and not to worry. But in the next few days, he just didn’t seem to latch on.”
She found herself desperately collecting colostrum, the thicker first milk that women produce and the most nutrient-dense form of breast milk, in a desperate bid to syringe it into her son’s mouth.
“I kept trying to feed him but my nipples were becoming sorer and I was in a lot of pain. Still, I kept telling myself this was normal.”
Quilton lives in Tower Hamlets, one of the few boroughs in London not to have cut its breastfeeding support team – one of whom came out for a visit.
“She identified that my son had a slight tongue tie” – when the string of tissue or frenulum that attaches the tongue to the floor of the mouth is too short – “and improved my positioning to help with it.”
After a few weeks, her son had his tongue tie corrected and, says Quilton, “there was a huge improvement over night. But I felt it was a bumpy start for us both.”
There is a clear postcode lottery when it comes to this kind of help, and both the upset and stigma for those who do not receive it, and are left unable to breastfeed their newborns, is immeasurable. Yet in 2015, the funding for breastfeeding support was transferred to individual local authorities, and many cut their services in the wake of austerity.
In the documentary, Emma Pickett, chairman of the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers, explained to Quilton: “Without support, the temptation to go to formula, even when you want to breastfeed, can be even greater.” She added that incoming cuts to the public health budget “will have a further impact on breastfeeding mums”.
For Quilton, “the worst thing about feeding babies in the UK is the guilt, whichever way you feed your baby – formula or breast. Women get pitted against each other.”
And there’s not only the issue of what you feed your baby, but the latest battleground is where you do it, too.
“Before we made the film, I knew that women had been shamed for feeding their babies in public,” says Quilton, “but I was still surprised when it happened to me. I was breastfeeding in my local park and amazed to hear two older ladies muttering ‘Not in my day’ and how I ought to be feeding ‘behind closed doors’.”
She is particularly infuriated by stories of mums being told to feed their infants in the lavatories. “Would you want to eat your lunch in the loo?”
Prof Amy Brown, Britain’s leading researcher into the impact of public attitudes towards breastfeeding, told Quilton that about 40 per cent of women who stop by the time their baby is about six weeks old say part of their reasoning is because they felt judged, or that the fear of judgment would render them unable to feed.
Yet, Quilton points out: “For babies who are thirsty or hungry, feeding in public is no different than you or I having a sip of water.”
The objection is not with the baby, in these circumstances, but the breast, as Quilton acknowledges. “It’s incredible that a breast in lingerie on an advertising hoarding is fine, but one feeding a baby is not.”
Quilton admits she is becoming more confident though. “On my first trip with my son on the Tube, he started screaming for a feed after just five minutes, so I had no choice. There were a few raised eyebrows.”
This kind of casual normalisation is part of the solution, she says. “We just need to see babies fed in public more often.” For the film, she helped persuade about 50 breastfeeding mums on to the lawn in front of the House of Commons to highlight the fact that there are still some areas of our national Parliament where breastfeeding is not allowed.
“What does that say about our national attitude?” she asks. If we are to raise rates of breastfeeding, Quilton believes we have to tackle the problems facing it at every level: “We need to support and teach new mums how to breastfeed [and] make breastfeeding more normal.”
There are few, surely who would disagree with her – nor her final musing. “Can you imagine any other species on the planet shamed for feeding their young?” she ponders. “It’s just madness.”
Dispatches: Breastfeeding Uncovered in
on Channel 4 at 8pm tonight
‘Can you imagine any other species on the planet shamed for feeding their young?’