Clare Byam-Cook

[MewsMum]

Hi there,
I've just been having a look through some of the breast feeding threads and just wanted to post a little note re CBC.

She is fantastic.
I gave birth to my little girl at St.Thomas' in May and although I found the midwives to be excellent the help that I got breastfeeding was awful.
It was sooo demoralizing as all the other mums in the ward seemed to be taking to it like ducks to water but I just couldn't get my little girl interested. I asked for help as having joined the NCT I had been well tutored in the 'breast is best' philosophy. However, even with my midwife painfully squeezing my nipple and another swinging the baby on to the boob (having shoved my nipple to her nose prior to no avail)it still wasn't working.
Nevertheless I was told to just keep trying as it would of course work and babies didn't really need feeding that early on - she'd be fine! We gave birth on the Wednesday, by Friday night the poor mite cried all night. By Saturday morning she was yellow, her lips were shrivelled and she looked small and exhausted.
At that point I had had ENOUGH. I had to ask for some formula and eventually it was brought to me with a syringe.
Her face when the food landed in her mouth was a picture and it still makes me cry to think about it.
From that moment on I started to bottle feed.
We left the hospital that day (I begged!) and went home, still trying the techniques taught by the NCT but to no avail. Nipple to nose, swing baby on, arm between legs etc etc. Really uncomfortable for both of us and pretty crap really.
By week 2 after 2 midwife visits and a health visitor we still weren't breast-feeding (although at least pumping). I then called the NCT breastfeeding help line and was told to 'place the naked baby onto my stomach as she would then shuffle her way up toward my breast and latch on'. Great - needless to say it didn't work. The NCT lady who could have come to the house was on holiday. I was left with a 'Good luuuck'.
Thankfully at that point a friend gave me a number for Clare Byam-Cook. She made an appointment, came to the house and had us feeding within the hour. Her common sense approach was just wonderful and she removed so much awful NCT induced guilt. She could see from the pump that I wasn't making much milk and suggested to combine bottle and boob which worked wonders.
My little girl is 9 weeks old this week, we are still breast feeding and occasionally adding a bottle when necessary. My daughter sleeps 6-7 hours each night and happily feeds every 3-4 hours.
We're still not great breast-feeders (we are better feeding at home than in Starbucks) but we are doing it pain free and we are still here!
So many other mums I know who started with the NCT method have already or are considering giving up. To be honest I am really not surprised.
So - if you are struggling DO consider other advice. The main merit of an NCT teacher is that they have breast fed themselves for 6 months. Well, I am glad that they found it so easy... some of us just don't and I'm so glad we called in the Big Guns rather than just giving up. There is a really anti CBC vibe on this site, which is really sad.
I found her to be friendly, polite and ultimately a well-informed source of breast feeding guidance. The NCT could definitely learn a thing or two...

I hope MewsMum will come back 'cos I want some of my questions answered

Does anyone else who has had help/support/classes from NCT recognise the method MewsMum is describing and says is the NCT method? ("Nipple to nose, swing baby on, arm between legs etc etc" and "nipple to nose, push her on while holding the back of her neck, not head etc" )It concerns me that someone has done an NCT class and comes away thinking this is how it is done, not to mention thinking that our main qualification is having breastfed for at least 6 mths and having found it easy

Our breastfeeding line has recently had a proper audit (mothers surveyed, not by an NCT bfc, to find out their experience). There was a well over 90 per cent satisfaction rate on all the questions about their contact - positive reactions to the counsellor, to what the counsellor said, whether they would recommend the service to others and so on.

So while obviously we don't get it right all the time, mostly we do. This is why when one person (like MM) uses her experience of the line to generalise, it makes me concerned to put things right!

Looking back I think transference has a lot to do with it.
It's easy to make sxtreme emotional dramas out of our relationships with counsellors and caregivers.
In the end we just have to weigh up what they say, listen and make use of it rather than follow slavishly/feel hurt betrayed.
The same could be said of GF.

sawnriver I do agree with you that there is nothing wrong with charging/paying for a service, and if CBC helped you or anyone then great. It's just a pity that she has such a history of slagging off the voluntary organisations. I think she must be insecure in her own abilities to need to do this.

swanriver, I have no problem with CBC charging for her advice - she has to make a living. I do think, as I have said, that everyone who purports to help in some sort of professional or 'volunteer professional' capacity should be supervised (in the sense of having to meet certain objective standards, not in the sense of someone else always being there) and updated in order to stay registered with an organisation, and as far as I can tell, CBC is neither supervised nor updated.

Volunteer counsellors will never be able to guarentee a service whereby everyone who wants a home visit will get one when they want. The ideal answer is to have a free service usable by everyone, as part of the health service.

This would include midwives and health visitors being trained and supervised better.

swariver, good point about transference.

Someone comes to an NCT bf class, wanting very much to breastfeed and looking forward to it, and the class builds up her confidence and knowledge in breastfeeding, so she knows a bit more and feels she can do it. This would be one of the aims of the class, after all. Then she has her baby, and a combination of events (labour and birth related, poor hospital support, fatigue and so on) make breastfeeding really difficult.

She feels betrayed.

Even though the class will also have tried to prepare her for problems, and to tell her the problems can be overcome, she will feel let down....the help she tries to get does not mareterialise, or if it does, it proves inadequate. One phone call to a helpline will not resolve a difficult breastfeeding issue - that's not the fault of the helpline. It's like visiting the chemist shop and complaining they won't fix your sprained ankle - they can give you pills for the pain and a bandage, but you need someone experienced to look at it, too, to check for a fracture.

Then the same mother sees someone who does help her - and (I'm guessing) has a bit of a 'lets slag off NCT' session with her ('cos CBC has form on this) and her betrayal and anger are confirmed even more.

X-post Tiktok.
TPL. I didn't realise at the time(10 years ago)that was part of her philosophy, but I quite agree that it is unacceptable for her to trot out the "NCT equals guilt and indoctrination ". Maybe she has got more hardline.
I for one, never felt indoctrinated by NCT or letdown by them. Much more letdown by NHS if it must be said, oh dear anti-pun .
I quite agree that OP is being a bit doctrinaire, but as a new mum it is very difficult to know all the politics sensitivities etc, you just know what you know, so I think some of you should put her comments in context, and not sneer at her.

another x-post Tiktok - wasn't talking about you.
Good points - agree with supervision issue. NHS just needs to do more.

Tiktok,

I don't recognise the 'NCT method' that the OP talks about, but it was suggested in our breastfeeding class that we hold babies by the back of the neck and not the head, to allow them to tip their head back and get a good mouthful of breast. I was a bit and then found it awkward, so always ignored it and supported her whole body along one arm (is that called the cradle hold?)

swanriver - totally against sneering at MM, not fair, I agree. But I am right to put a different view of NCT, albeit from the inside

confusedfirsttimemum - what you heard in the class is right....back-of-head-holding and pushing is not helpful. Supporting whole body along one arm is a fine option, too. I think one difficulty with talking about positions in class is that it is impossible to cover all positions and that everyone has to find their own way with their own baby, as long as the baby gets a good mouthful and is able to suck and swallow comfortably and without causing the mother pain. I'm very experienced, and I tend not to go through the instructions, apart from that one (about good mouthful etc) and I do say there are many ways to get the baby into a position where that can happen...including self-attachment which is not 'putting the naked baby on your stomach and letting him shuffle to the breast'.

confusedfirsttimemum I have been reading the book recently and was a bit st that sort of advice - she seems to advocate feeding on demand while also saying that within a few weeks or months your baby should be going 3-4 hours between feeds and if not try to make them do that

I attended an NCT class on breastfeeding before my DD was born, and since then have called the helpline a couple of times. I have found the help given over the phone reassuring/helpful on both occasions.

In the class we were given the same suggestion as confusedfirsttimemum mentions. I think my main critisim of the NCT class is that it was presented that if you do X,Y,Z then breastfeeding will just happen/work with no problems. It was a total shock to find this wasn't the case (i've spoken to others in my class who felt the same about this). I had a number of problems getting started with bf and also had lots of support from NHS sources - some was great, some was not so good (including the health visitor who came round the day after we came out of hospital telling me 'this baby cannot suck, it needs a bottle so it can learn how to' and threatening to readmit us to hosptial if i didn't give her a bottle. The biggest source of help to me, honestly, was MN! For the sheer volume of info avalible/ variety of opinions and options.

tiktok I think the NCT gets the blame for a lot of things surrounding childbirth and bf, often simply because it's a name that everyone knows. That recent study on natural childbirth techniques news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8068889.stm springs to mind - it wasn't even connected to NCT antenatal classes but the news sparked lots of comment about NCT making women feel inadequate if they don't give birth naturally.
As has been said here, I think a lot of women - I was one of them - get terrible advice from midwives and HVs, but somehow that often seems to end up as "the NCT made me feel guilty for not bf-ing..."
I did pay for a lactation consultant - not CBC! - as I didn't know about the NCT helpline then. Incidentally, all the advice I had from her I've since seen here, mostly from tiktok, so I feel reassured that she knew what she was talking about!

ChasingButterflies, I think there is a lot in what you say. NCT does not teach in anything like the way examined by the study, but it still came in for criticism.

Lactation consultants, as long as they have the IBCLC credential (which CBC does not), do normally belong to a professional body (in the UK it's the Lactation Consultants of Great Britain). The international body does the formal, official regulatory thing but LCGB would certainly do something about a complaint referring to one of their members, and I think that's a good piece of consumer protection.

I think our helpline is great, and my impression that it is was confirmed by the audit and report I described earlier today, but some people will need more than a phone call and more than one visit - some women I see two, three or even four times, with emails and calls in between. But if there is not a breastfeeding counsellor available nearby, we can't conjure one up

Other vol orgs are also worth contacting and may have bfcs in places we don't.

Stealth - it's shocking isn't it. I met a mum a month or two ago who was topping her DD up with expressed breast milk after every feed. I asked her why, and she said she wasn't feeding enough and kept stopping, so she had to use a bottle to get enough into her to try and make her last longer between feeds (and for the feeds to take the full 40 minutes she had read they should). I was quite for the little girl, as she was obviously just stopping drinking when she was full...

yes! I just wasn't sure if that was her current advice or not, as the book is probably a few years out of date.

No idea if it's current advice - and to be fair this women seemed to have read a lot of the 'routine' books, which all seem to assume that breastfeeding takes a certain length of time...

The thing about expressing to see quantities is misleading in both ways : the baby might get more breastmilk out than the pump (as we see when mums excl bf twins post to mumsnet to ask why they can never get more than a tiny amount with the pump) or less than the pump (this is seen, typically, when a baby fails to latch and feed well, and the mum has to express to get the milk out).

In addition, mothers don't always produce exactly the same amount any one moment.

From MewsMum's history, if I had been with her and listening, I would have been pretty sure the baby was not getting enough milk and it would be fairly certain her production had decreased - I wouldn't need to ask her to express, and in any case, expressing only tells us what the mum can get out with that pump at that time. It would be a clinical decision, made with the midwife, whether the baby actually needed formula as well, once he was feeding well...and he may have had quite a bit of catch-up to do, to ensure he had the energy to continue to feed well from the breast. So formula might have been necessary in the short term.

So the way we would do it would not involve the possibly misleading technique of expressing at all.

I am reading this post with interest, it quickly turned into an NCT debate. I personally am very glad that there is anorganisation like the NCT as I think they provide invaluable support. That said, when I was pg I attended NCT sessions and was concerned about some of the language used and how it might be interpreted. (no I won't give details, have written about it before and I have name changed and it will identify me)

I think that we need to realise that whilst and organisation can be great, not everyone will have a positive experience with them but also that an organisation should not be judged on one encounter.

TikTok - I'm sure if you had been at the session I attended I would have had a better experience and I know you feel passionately about the good that the NCT do but you must, sadly, accept that not all NCT members are as informative/fair/balanced as you are. No organistaion is that good .

Can't we just accept that the NCT is an excellent group of selfless people who volunteer their time for the good of others but who don't always get it right. They shouldn't be critised for the minor thingsthey did wrong but thanked for the major achievements they do make.

Not sure if I have got my point across, but hope you see what I meant.

Have to go, not checking back in for a few days so don't go yelling troll - have family due to arrive for a few days later on.

nothingventured - I agree with you. Not everyone has a positive experience with NCT (our helpline only got 90 per cent plus satisfaction, which is good, but not perfect ) and I know not all classes are perfect (I have been in some which were quite poor), and I know not all breastfeeding counsellors are perfect, or even good, all of the time.

Judging one experience, or even two or three, and applying it generally is not fair, as you say. The OP did this, suggested that NCT could learn from CBC (I did ask her in what way, and I did mean it, but she has not replied) and misreported (I hope) so-called 'method' she said was NCT's. That's why I got miffed!

I don't disagree with any of your post

Tiktok-- So glad you agree, didn't want to offend at all. Right, really am off now to clean house before guests arrive...

I don't know if this is true or not but our NCT teacher said THEY got to decide how many of their classes they gave up to the breastfeeding counsellor, ours gave up 2. One sesion which was for the whole group and one session where the Dads were sent to the pub and it was just the mums left. So we had 4 hours total b/f advice.
I know several other NCT groups who used the same bfc but only had one session, without fail they all said they hadn't really clicked with the bfc whereas everyone in my group liked her and we all b/f for 6months+ (which apparently, as a whole group, is very unusual). Maybe, where they can, the NCT should try to include more than one session of breastfeeding advice.

I have no problem with CBC being paid, even tho I am quite impressed she gets paid more than doctors for a lot less knowledge and quality supervision, but when you get a NEW poster on here praising CBC but not actually saying what was so good you do tend to raise an eyebrow....

In retrospect, what both antenatal appts and my NCT course could have done better to help breastfeeding would have been to be explicit about how limited the help was in my area and recommend looking further afield.

So the antenatal midwife encouraged bf and gave me a fridge magnet with 3 helpline nos. and recommended ringing with any problem. The postnatal help was pretty good (was in hospital for 3 days). The NCT class on bf (from teacher who had bf 3 children) was good.

But then when I needed further help, I found only answerphones. No-one had mentioned that the helplines are all volunteer-run and have to call back hours later, so I'd expected to just be on hold before speaking to someone. I'd been told people could come to my house - but in reality only the NCT had a volunteer anywhere near, and I had to go to her, an hour by bus. And I'm hardly rural - I'm in London! I was told to try a bf group or see the hospital lactation consultant - HVs had never heard of bf groups and the lc had a month-long waiting list!

If I'd known that support was a lot more ropey than advertised, I'd have researched myself and found the Baby Cafe in Croydon and the bf groups in Brixton a lot earlier and been saved a lot of pain and heartache. Ironically the only useful help I got at home was CBC's less-than-perfect book, but much better than other leaflets because she gets that you have huge stresses going on and that bf isn't the only important thing in being a mother. Whereas the NHS and NCT leaflets just made me feel like a tearful failure.

Luckily a baby group run by a bfc started near me just in time, I got referred to specialist help, and my ds is still bfing at 10 months.

notcitrus - at least there was something available for you, even if not totally convenient. Where I live, there is no support at all, whatsoever. No baby cafes, no helplines, no leaflets, no bf groups, nothing. I got lots of info and help from mumsnet, books and phone consultations with various female relatives (varying degrees of helpfulness!).

Even CBC, with all her faults and possible misinformation, is better than nothing at all!