How long has it been since I've updated the blog?! Not for want of subject matter, but just too busy... In the interim the calendar has sold well, being featured in the Journal, Take a Break, La Leche League newsletter, SureStart newsletter and soon in another national publication. We were nearly mentioned on Friday night with Jonathan Ross, but the segment was cut at the last minute (apparently our breastfeeding calendar was less important than interviewing Cate Blanchett).
The calendar is temporarily sold out, but we're getting some more printed, so if you want to buy one at the 2008 reduced price (no longer £5), stay tuned, and we'll sort you out soon.
So many mums have emailed me about having negative breastfeeding experiences in big coffeeshop chains. Many of these chains are listed on Baby-Friendly Britain, showing a committment to being welcoming and facilitating to babies and toddlers, including those being breastfed.
This is just another example of how big corporations may recognise that it's the socially acceptable thing to do, to officially support breastfeeding, but they don't care about it enough to disseminate the information to their constituent stores. Mums have told me that they might have a terrible experience in a coffeeshop one week, only to be welcomed warmly another week, showing that their reception is more down to the personal attitudes of staff members, not company policy. This reminds me similarly of the UK study that found that the quality of a GP's advice on breastfeeding was not down to the amount of training received, but whether the GP (or their partner) had breastfed - another demonstration of a cursory look-in for breastfeeding awareness, without The Organisation really taking it seriously.
When will we see Starbucks including "How to receive a breastfeeding customer" in its staff training? When will we see mandatory breastfeeding education for GPs? (Even better) when will we see healthcare professionals, shop owners etc actually believing that breastfeeding is a good idea, rather than us having to convince them of this? Which brings me to my next post.....
Why does breastfeeding have to be viewed as weird? Why isn't mixing powdered chemicals with boiled water and chugging it into your baby in a plastic bottle weird?
I said I had more to write. Here we go: Jane's great idea.
All of this work to raise breastfeeding awareness, trying to convince people that it's OK to feed our babies in public, trying to convince them that it's not some sort of weird distasteful practice ("It's not natural", I've actually heard someone say - oh the irony - showing themselves to be small-minded and stupid) - but of course there's a far better solution.
In trying to dredge up information for the Take a Break feature (to be published in January), I was talking to lots of mums about their experiences with public reactions to breastfeeding. Bad experience here, bad experience there (although mostly positive stuff, I have to say), and presto, Jane mentioned something she and some other peer counsellors did for National Breastfeeding Week: they took a selection of art depicting breastfeeding into a local primary school and talked to the kids about how beautiful it was, how the nursing mother has inspired artists for centuries, and then encouraged the children to do their own art showing breastfeeding. A lot of the children may never have seen breastfeeding, so at the risk of sounding cliche, they were ahem blank canvasses.
OK, so I admit it probably wasn't Jane's original idea, probably other people have thought of it too, but it was new to me: if we catch 'em while they're young, teach them that breastfeeding is lovely and nurturing and beautiful, then there's a chance they'll grow up thinking this, and will be less likely to think that public breastfeeding encourages "paedofiddlia" (no kidding: I heard this as a true reaction of a member of the public).
It's the parents' responsibility to teach their children, to instill values and ideas. If breastfeeding is so marginalised and forgotten, we can't rely on parents giving it a proper role in their children's minds - so maybe it's time to include it in other forms of childhood education? Yes, tell the mums and dads about the health benefits, the convenience of it all, tell the children about how nurturing and life-giving and beautiful breastfeeding is and hope they remember.
Teach people of the beauty of breastfeeding, and the issue of public breastfeeding becomes irrelevant.
So I've been pretty busy with the fundraising calendar (available online here ), and have been neglecting the blog (erm the venue of my rants on breastfeeding?). I have lots of ideas milling around in my brain, lots of issues mums have raised in passing, and needless to say when I have time again, I fully intend to come up with a few new entries.
Some of my friends are contemplating when baby #2 might come along. We discuss being worried about neglecting baby #1, not having time for baby #2, years more of nappies, potties, etc, can we manage on any less sleep? Where will the money come from? And we also try to be positive. One friend summed things up well:
"I think my key plan is that I'll tell my Dad he is refused entrance into my home and [my husband's] family can visit for their first birthday. I won't be embarrassed to breastfeed so will leave the home without having to plan trips out around 30 minute intervals. I will not read anything with the word "routine" in it and thus will not feel like I have failed some exam I hadn't expected to take. I won't worry about losing weight. I will think the sling is the best invention ever without waiting 6 weeks to cave and so will read lots. If anyone asks how my child is sleeping I'll just smile and nod. If my kid wants to eat all the time I won't think "No you can't be hungry, I'm not your human dummy!" instead I'll cut them a break and think "well you are after all 10 days old, sure go ahead and have a suck"."
A sort of Desiderata for the second-time mom.
Another story of Starbucks being rubbish - this one in Borders book store. Apparently a mom was asked to stop breastfeeding!!! Appropriately, she told the guy to go screw himself, and continued feeding her child, but so easily she could have been nervous about it all, and therefore put off for life! What's the point of having a company policy if none of the staff know about it??? Somebody needs to remind Starbucks that they listed themselves in the Baby-friendly Britain directory. Am I that person? I'll get the nappies washed first, mash the food for tomorrow, iron my trousers for work, scrape the food off the ceiling, but then I'll write an email.
Shocked and horrified!!! Another sorry tale of cafes letting us down. This time it wasn't breastfeeding, but just being baby-friendly, or even simply polite. A mum I know was in the Central Station location of Starbucks - a chain listed on Baby-Friendly Britain, purporting to be welcoming etc - she was enjoying a relaxing coffee with her sweet 11-month-old girl, who was chirping away happily. A staff member came over to her and said something along the lines of "We've had some complaints, and I don't know how you'll do it, but can you shut her up?", gesturing to the infant. Really, this guy's manner was rude and unpleasant. The mum in question was pretty upset, and emailed head office, telling them about the incident, and she didn't get a reply!!!
Now this offends me on several levels:
I'm writing to the company, telling them this, asking for a written apology to the mum and disciplining the staff involved, otherwise I'll have to add another entry to the Blacklist. If they respond well, I'll remove the name Starbucks from this entry.
It's World Breastfeeding Week! In honour of this great occasion, I've arranged a little cafe photoshoot for local mums, breastfeeding their little ones. The plan is to get a photo that shows that breastfeeding is compatible with coffee culture. Sunday August 5th at Kaffeccinos on Grainger Street, 3pm - the details are here.
More in the O'briens saga: after re-sending my email of complaint, with added complaints, O'briens head office has finally replied. Thank goodness! I'm not someone who enjoys getting so cross!
The full text of their reply can be found here, but it basically said that they couldn't be held responsible for one store's grumpiness, and many other O'briens locations are very breastfeeding friendly (you hear that ladies? Don't paint 'em all with the same brush). They also requested that I remove O'briens from the Blacklist, which is a toughy: do I comply, in fear of being sued, sweeping under the carpet the poor reception that breastfeeding mums are likely to receive at that particular store, or do I stand my ground, despite learning (from a rather biased party) that other O'briens locations are much better? Check out the Blacklist to see what I decide... You could also read my reply to their reply, here.
It may be worth mentioning that the day after I got cross with O'Briens coffeeshop (read the entry here) I emailed their head office, explaining what had happened. I expected an apology or explanation, to say the least, and hoped that there would be some sort of forward-thinking company policy that they could remind the store manager about - but no, I didn't even get a response! Even less impressed with these guys - it's looking less like a problem with one location, and more like a problem with company ideology. NB: the company finally replied. Read the blog entry about it
I was in The Scrumpy Willow and the Singing Kettle today, and thinking about what a nice place it is. I don't mean to sound like an advert, but it was great to be somewhere I didn't have to wonder about staring, disapproving people when I fed my baby, somewhere with healthy food, somewhere I know is ethical. They have a page on their website entitled "Ethos", which I think is great - people who think about what they're doing and what they stand for. I've decided to add such a page to this site as well, to remind me what I'm trying to do.
Apparently in Chinese folk wisdom, a new mom should eat foods with ginger and vinegar, to add heat to her body and encourage circulation, thereby improving milk production. Do we have any folk remedies like this in the UK? I've heard of cabbage leaves for sore nipples, but what do we do to encourage milk? Is the absence of such a folk remedy in our culture an indication of the way we've lost our heritage, and drifted away from older breastfeeding tradition? You don't hear a lot of folk remedies for bottle feeding, do you? Email me.
So I was checking out coffee shops in town today, offering UNICEF "breastfeeding welcome" stickers to the ones that looked alright. Mostly I got a positive response, which was really nice (I guess I was trying to choose cafes that would like such stickers), but man oh man did I get a negative response from one. I'll name and shame: O'Brien's coffee house on the corner of Westgate Road and Grainger Street.
I went in and asked the lady behind the till about the breastfeeding policy, and she grimaced before replying "well, we won't stop you". I should have given up there, but I continued to explain about this website, and would they like a UNICEF sticker and a listing on the site? She looked annoyed, and called to the manager who was sitting at one of the tables, asking if they wanted a sticker. This guy didn't even speak! He just looked at her, then me, then looked back at his table with a curl of his lip and shook his head, no.
I can almost understand shop owners declining UNICEF stickers - there are many changing pressures on local businesses and this isn't an area where breastfeeding is particularly common (or socially acceptable), so maybe a cafe manager would be too conservative to encourage breastfeeding. I can't understand why these two people had to be so rude and dismissive about declining a sticker! Never will I patronise any branch of O'Brien's again. Check out the first entry on my breastfeeding blacklist.
What O'Brien's head office did about it..
I mentioned a London group who did the Race for Life? Here are photos they sent me. The snazzy red t-shirts designed for the event proved to be real icebreakers, talking about breastfeeding with people.
I was at a garden party at the weekend, at the house of one of the Peer Counsellors from our local Baby Cafe, and wanted to bring some homemade cookies with me. What do you think I decorated them as? Yes, they were breast cookies. I had a total crisis of confidence on the way to the event - maybe this was too weird. I'm rubbish at social things, and perhaps this was just all a bad idea. Commited to going, and not wanting to be an idiot, I went along with the cookies anyway.
And it was fine. In fact, more than fine - people liked the cookies! Instead of being received as some sort of pervy innuendo (as so many non-breastfeeders would have), the breast cookies were enjoyed with the fond gentle humour of people who saw breasts as the conduit of love and nourishment. It was so sweet!
Man#1: Would you like a breast?
Man#2: No thank you, I've had one breast already.
Wife of man#2 (only heard the last part of the conversation): What??
Man#2 (explains to wife, with a smile): I've had one breast already - if I have two, I may not sleep tonight.
Ah the humour of parenthood.
Now that I've been turned down for SureStart funding, I can be more political - yay! I think Baby Milk Action is cool. I'm working on a Nestle boycott graphic to send them, even though I should be working on business cards for this site, first...
Shocked, shocked I tell you. I was forwarded this article from today's Guardian, and I couldn't believe what I was reading. Yes, I'm new to this breastfeeding lark, but are the UK formula manufacturers really breaking the rules this badly?? Do women seriously not know the difference to their baby, from formula feeding as opposed to breastfeeding? Shocked.
I was emailing LLL website people, to ask if I could include a link from my site to theirs, and this really nice person called Helen mentioned that in London there's a breastfeeding group who are doing the Race for Life, a sponsored run, in aid of Cancer Research. I had never thought of it that way! Of course breastfeeding is protective against cancer. Anyone keen out there could try getting a group together for next year - the races this year are all May-June-July, so it's a bit short notice I guess. What a good idea.