The Queen asked me: How do you breastfeed twins?
ANYONE who ever says Test cricket is too long and boring for modern attention spans hasn’t spent a day continuously feeding twins in 30-degree heat.
One scorching hot day, the three of us were naked for most of the afternoon (me and the babies, not Kenny) while I tried to breastfeed them. They were so hot and tired that they fell asleep after a few minutes, but would then wake up five minutes later for another feed.
It was a day-long procession of sweaty boobs and slithering babies. ‘I feel like a cow,’ I moaned as another one slipped off my breast.
Luckily, it was the summer of the 2005 Ashes. I watched most of that series naked. I had a district midwife who was obsessed with seeing me feed them at the same time. Every time she ‘popped by’, they had just been fed or weren’t awake. I was beginning to think she didn’t believe me, so one day I made them wait for food, then when she arrived, I performed for her.
I popped the breastfeeding cushion (a V-shaped thing) under my boobs and put the twins into the rugby-ball hold, cradling each head with my hands so their feet were under my armpits.
She seemed suitably impressed, and never asked to see it again. I will admit it wasn’t the comfiest thing, and it certainly wasn’t practical in public. Can you imagine the stares and tuts you’d get if you got both your t**s out in Starbucks? But people did seem genuinely interested in the process. And when I say people, I mean the Queen.
It was ITV’s 50th birthday in 2005, and I was invited to a huge gala dinner at the Guildhall in London, which was to be attended by Her Majesty. I was selected to be in one of a few groups of ITV staff whom the Queen would talk to.
‘So, you’ve just given birth to twins?’ The Queen came to me first.
‘That’s right, six weeks ago.’ It was my first night out, and I’d squeezed myself into an old Alaïa dress, complete with my milky boobs and freeflowing hormones.
‘Gosh, six weeks. So I take it you’re not feeding them, then?’ she asked.
‘I am breastfeeding them, but I expressed the milk tonight. My husband will give them a bottle.’
‘And how do you breastfeed twins at the same time?’ She was not letting this topic go.
I proceeded to explain the rugby-ball hold in great detail to the Queen. Sadly, my time was quickly up, and she was ushered on to Ant and Dec.
A few years after the Queen incident, I was at Clarence House (home of the then Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles) for a tour of the gardens as part of my role as a Prince’s Trust ambassador. After the tour, we were on a terrace having tea and biscuits, and Camilla was doing the conversational rounds.
She was very easy-going and the conversation was not led by a lady-in-waiting; it was just general nattering. She let slip that her daughter was about to have twins at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, and we appeared to share the same specialist.
Then Camilla said: ‘Can I ask you, how does one feed twins?’
With a strange sense of deja vu, I proceeded to explain the mechanics of the rugby-ball hold… to the next Queen.