Beatrice's story - natural term breastfeeding and NBH supporting

My guest this week is the fabulous Beatrice Dane, a hypnobirthing instructor and breastfeeding supporter from Melton Mowbray. Bea discusses her early interest in motherhood, and her experiences breastfeeding her first child, Aria, to 4 years and 8 months, and her second child, Sam, who is still feeding today at 2. We touch on the challenges and triumphs of breastfeeding, the impact of family and professional support, and Bea's roles as a hypnobirthing teacher, breastfeeding support worker, and answering calls on the National Breastfeeding Helpline.

You can follow Bea on Instagram @‌beasbirthandboobs

The National Breastfeeding Helpline is available 24/7 on 0300 100 0212. There is also social media support available (and sometimes webchat).

My new picture book on how breastfeeding journeys end, The Story of Jessie’s Milkies, is available from Amazon here -  The Story of Jessie's Milkies. In the UK, you can also buy it from The Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill, London. Other book shops and libraries can source a copy from Ingram Spark publishing.

You can also get 10% off my books on supporting breastfeeding beyond six months and supporting the transition from breastfeeding at the Jessica Kingsley press website, that's uk.jkp.com using the code MMPE10 at checkout.

Follow me on Instagram  @emmapickettibclc or find out more on my website www.emmapickettbreastfeedingsupport.com

Find out more about the National Breastfeeding Hotline https://www.nationalbreastfeedinghelpline.org.uk/ 

This podcast is presented by Emma Pickett IBCLC, and produced by Emily Crosby Media.

Transcript

This transcript is AI generated.

[00:00:00] Emma Pickett: I am Emma Pickett, and I'm a lactation consultant from London. When I first started calling myself makes milk. That was my superpower at the time because I was breastfeeding my own two children, and now I'm helping families on their journey. I want your feeding journey to work for you from the very beginning to the very end.

And I'm big on making sure parents get support at the end too. Join me for conversations on how breastfeeding is amazing and also sometimes really, really hard. We'll look honestly and openly at that process of making milk, and of course, breastfeeding and chest feeding are a lot more than just making milk.

Thank you very much for joining me for today's episode. I'm gonna be talking to b, that's B Dane, who comes from Melton Mowbray, and I'm not gonna mention pork pies, I promise. Um, in the Midlands. Um, and as you'll have seen from the show notes, we're gonna be talking about her breastfeeding journey and how she ended up getting into the professional space of breastfeeding support.

Like many of us, she got sucked into breastfeeding support after personal experience. So she's a hypnobirthing instructor. She's a breastfeeding counselor. She's an NHS infant feeding support worker. She also works on national breastfeeding helpline, which we'll talk about as well, and she's a mom of two.

Thank you very much for joining me today. B, I really appreciate it. 

[00:01:25] Beatrice Dane: Thank you 

[00:01:26] Emma Pickett: so much for having me. Apologies for mentioning pork 

[00:01:28] Beatrice Dane: pies. I'm sorry, 

[00:01:29] Emma Pickett: I won't do it again. 

[00:01:30] Beatrice Dane: It's pretty standard in Mowbray here all the time. 

[00:01:33] Emma Pickett: Yeah, I'm so sorry. So you are in the Midlands, is that where you've always been? Is that where you're from originally?

[00:01:38] Beatrice Dane: Yeah. I'm literally at the moment, 20 

[00:01:39] Emma Pickett: minutes down the road from my. Home. So very close to it. Oh, that's nice. So tell me about your family. Who have you got? So I have got 

[00:01:49] Beatrice Dane: two children. The eldest is Aria. She is, well, she's just turned eight, which I think is mental. The fact that I became a parent eight years ago at this point, and my youngest is Sam, and he'll be three in December.

And I've also got. My husband at home and I do have a stepdaughter as well, who she's um, 12 now, which again, very insane. 

[00:02:11] Emma Pickett: Time flies. Okay. Okay, so one thing I love about your story, and I'm gonna sort of put this as a headline at the top, is that you were quite young when you had Aria. And you ended up breastfeeding until she was nearly five, which is not the normal UK experience.

So I think it's really important that we crack open your brain and work out why did you breastfeed for, to natural term? Where were your motivations? How did you get to that place? How did that, how happen? And I'd just love to know what makes you tick, if you don't mind me being nosy. Of course. So let's go back to the beginning.

You were pro, you were 21 when you had to. Tell us about your situation. Were you working? Was she planned? If that's too rude a question. Tell me to get stuffed. Where were you in your, in your sort of life journey when you got pregnant with her? 

[00:02:58] Beatrice Dane: Yeah, so me and my husband were together only for about six months before we decided that we both wanted to have a child together.

I've always wanted kids. They were always, it was always like at the forefront of my mind when I was a teenager. It was always, I wanna be a mom at some point. It was very important to me. I was always, I wanted to be around babies all the time and I'm, I'm very lucky that I'm a very fertile person and we felt pregnant very, very quickly.

It only took us a couple of months, so I know I'm very lucky in that department. But I was working in a nursery. I was only an apprentice at the time, so I was on a very small wage, but surrounded by lots of children, which definitely gave me that sort of urge. I was like, I really wanna really want to have kids.

It was really important to me. So it was very exciting when we did, but I was, I was very young at that point, so I was 20 when I actually fell pregnant at that point. 

[00:03:56] Emma Pickett: So, yeah. And had you, I mean, it's, it's great to hear that you were so passionate and obviously you were even working in that space with little people.

So your whole world was little people. Had you grown up looking after siblings? What, how, I just wonder where this amazing urge came from. Obviously, I'm not questioning it. I'm, I'm, the world has benefited from it, but I'm just curious. So you hadn't grown up with around babies. It wasn't part of your life, it just was something you always felt you needed.

[00:04:20] Beatrice Dane: No, I'm actually the youngest of four, so, um, my el, my older sister's nine years older than me, so I had no younger siblings. The only time I was around children was a family friend that ended up having two children and they lived just down the road from me. So I was very young. I was only about 12, 13 and I used to just go and visit.

I used to help. Look after them a little bit, go on days out with them for years. And I ended up being one of them. Um, I was one of their godmothers as well, and that was kind of my only surrounding around children. And she, she was actually a really big part of my sort of journey into breastfeeding because she was a very big breastfeeding advocate.

She. Breastfed, both of them, breast until natural term. So it was, it was always there. It wasn't unusual to me to breastfeed as well. Wow, that's 

[00:05:15] Emma Pickett: fascinating. So just at that key age, that kind of age, when your breasts were coming in, you had that beautiful example of natural term breastfeeding right in front of you, you know, every day.

I wonder how powerful that word must've been. I'm guessing it must've been enormously influential. So when you say she was an advocate, she wasn't, she wasn't working in the area professionally, it was just absolutely what she believed in and what she chose to do for her own kids. 

[00:05:40] Beatrice Dane: Yeah. 

[00:05:40] Emma Pickett: I don't want to kind of, uh, put you on the spot, but when you say natural term, older than how long you fed Aria for or equivalent?

[00:05:48] Beatrice Dane: Um, I can't remember off the top of my head. I think 

[00:05:50] Emma Pickett: around the same sort of 

[00:05:50] Beatrice Dane: age, around that sort of four, four year mark. 

[00:05:53] Emma Pickett: Okay, great. And also, I guess, what a beautiful coincidence that you, that you met your husband and he wanted children. Yeah. The same time you did. 'cause that, that could have been an ongoing battle for many years and it was meant to be.

So you, so you got pregnant nice and quickly and, and you knew breastfeeding was important. You, did, you have antenatal education. Do you remember how that process went? Or you, you just absolutely were committed from the beginning to breastfeed? I had no, 

[00:06:18] Beatrice Dane: no idea really. It, I just knew that it was something that I wanted to do and it was something that.

I was very determined to do, um, kind of posting on Facebook groups when I was saying, okay, what do I pack in my hospital bag? And I'd be saying, no, I'm gonna breastfeed so I don't need to pack formula. And I'd have many, many comments saying, just pack some formula just in case. And I'd go, Nope, I don't need it.

I will be breastfeeding. It was just, for me, it just felt like it felt normal. It didn't feel like it was superior than formula. It just felt like. That's what you do. I knew that my mom had breastfed me and all of my sisters until we were sort of between two and four. I think I was the one that fed the longest, probably because I was the youngest.

And she's, my mom, said that every time she had another baby, she was pregnant. The older one would, um, wean off the breast. So for me, it just felt. To do that, but I had absolutely no education on it and no clue. I just knew it was something that I wanted to do. 

[00:07:21] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Wow. How rare is it for me to meet somebody who says things like this?

BI have to say, I wish I could clone you and and pass you around the country. 'cause it is so rare for me to talk to someone who breastfed themselves beyond infancy and just has this attitude of, it's just what you do. It's not so many people say, oh, I'm just gonna try. I'm gonna give it a go. I know it doesn't work out for many people.

I'm not gonna put pressure on myself. You're just like. Just like I will be walking, I will be breastfeeding. It is a thing. Um, so you breastfed yourself past babyhood. Any memories of breastfeeding yourself? Do you have any feelings around your own breastfeeding? There 

[00:07:59] Beatrice Dane: is. I do actually have one, one memory of me feeding from a mom while we were driving in the.

She was sat in the middle seat and I was just sort of lying on her lap and having a breastfeed while we were driving. Definitely not safe at all and not something that I would ever recommend for anyone to do now, but it is strange. I do have that memory. Wow, that's fantastic. I love it. 

[00:08:26] Emma Pickett: But I mean, yeah, 28 years ago, yeah it was, the world was different in terms of car seat safety and all the rest of it.

So yeah, it's certainly not something you do now. Wow. And I guess you obviously remembered it 'cause it was a bit different and a bit special and that's why it stuck in your head. So how old would you have been at that 

[00:08:41] Beatrice Dane: point, do you think? I think it was probably close to the end. Um, my mom said that I fed until I was around four.

Just over. Okay. So it must have been around that sort of age. 

[00:08:50] Emma Pickett: Okay. Wow. So you definitely, I talked about putting your brain apart earlier. You definitely could be studied as somebody for whom breastfeeding has so much been normalized. Yeah. That when it comes to your own journey, it's just, it absolutely is the baseline normal.

Um, you know, it's not about which classes you attend. If you've got this powerful belief that it's gonna happen, you are, you are set up in, in a way that's very different from perhaps other people's experiences. Tell us about Aria's birth. How did that go? 

[00:09:17] Beatrice Dane: So she was born at nine days past my due date. I went into labor at seven days past due to eight, and it was a long 48 hour labor.

Um, and I was in hospital for pretty much the whole time again with birth. I didn't do any antenatal education. I just. My antenatal education was watching one born every minute, which is again, not the education that you need when it comes to birth, but I just went straight into hospital and was there for 48 hours laboring constantly.

I was put on the, um, synthetic oxytocin drip at one point, try and speed my contractions along, and I had two doses of dim morphine. One that was a little bit earlier on, and then one that was a bit closer to her birth. It was a very long pushing stage. I had all my contractions in my back, so it was very painful in terms of, I couldn't find any sort of position that was comfortable.

But yeah, every single contraction was in my back and it was very, very long. I had. I wanna say threats, but it didn't, I know it wasn't actually threats, but, um, threats of we're gonna use forceps at some point, and that just completely knocked the fear into me. I was put on my back for pushing, pushing for about an hour and a half to get her out.

Ended up having an app episiotomy, and when she was born, she was placed straight onto my chest and she was absolutely fine, but incredibly sleepy. And didn't, didn't wanna feed at all. I had a midwife trying to sort of just grab her head and put her on, and she was having absolutely none of it at that point.

It wasn't a bad birth and it wasn't the sort of birth that if you wrote it on paper, it sounds like it was actually absolutely fine, but it was long. I'd had three days without any sleep because the labor started at night of, so I'd have no sleep prior and. I was very tense the entire time and 

[00:11:29] Emma Pickett: Okay. 

[00:11:30] Beatrice Dane: Yeah, it, it, looking back on it sort of a couple of years later, I felt very overwhelmed with it and didn't realize how overwhelming it was until I kind of started researching into birth a little bit more.

Realized that maybe, maybe it was a bit of a, a difficult experience with getting her out than I thought. 

[00:11:50] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. I, I mean, I can hear you being really careful to not put labels on your birth that maybe dismiss other people's experiences, but as you know better than me as a hypnobirthing instructor, you, you know, your definition is, your definition and how you describe your birth is absolutely valid.

Even if on paper it looks a certain way. I mean, you've used words like fear, fear and threats, and you know, big words. The hypnobirthing movement very much would be looking at and focusing out and finding alternatives for. So it's really interesting that you moved into Hypnobirthing as a result of that experience.

So you talked about her being really sleepy, that's connected to the medication. Yes. I'm guessing. And that, you know, that caused her to not have those initial instincts and, and reflexes. How soon was she feeding? Do you remember what those very early feeds were like and when they happened? It was seven hours 

[00:12:45] Beatrice Dane: after her birth, so quite a long time.

Um, after she was born, she didn't show any interest in coming to the breast, and I, I know that it was seven hours because I have a photo of her very first breastfeed when she came and I was like, I was so excited that I was taking photos. So I've got the sort of the timestamps of. When that was, but surprisingly, I had no sort of pushing or encouragement from anyone at the hospital to supplement her, to give any formula to hand express or anything.

They just kind of left me to it and said, yeah, well baby, we'll be a bit tired because of the medication, but she'll be fine because she's got all the stores from your placenta, which felt reassuring at the time. Knowing what I know now, it's a little bit. More of a sort of, maybe I should have been given some support to hand express and give her a little bit of colostrum to help maybe wake her up a little bit and encouragement with skin to skin.

But they just kind of went, yeah, pop her in some clothes and put her in the cup. No problem. 

[00:13:50] Emma Pickett: Ah, okay. So little pieces of the story aren't quite, so I was thinking, oh, great, they're all so relaxed and they understand about, you know, fat stores and Oh, she's in, she's being put in a, in a co, in a cot. Not close to you, but, but the fact that you were excited about her having her first feed shows that you knew it mattered and you knew it was a significant, you know, and that, that's obviously what we want to hear.

Any issues with the early breastfeeding of Rio? Any any particular problems? Nothing 

[00:14:17] Beatrice Dane: significant. Um, you know, the standard cluster feeding, um, trying to figure out the latch and getting that right. I mean, looking back, she had an incredibly shallow latch the entire time. Every photo I've got, I kind of almost wince and go, Ooh, how did someone tell me that that was a good latch and that she was latched on?

Well. But just mainly just establishing feeding. At that point, she did lose 9.5% of her birth weight, and I definitely contribute a lot of that to the fact that we had a bit of a slow start to feeding. I wasn't told how many times to offer the breast, how frequently to offer the breast. So there was plenty of times where I was actively trying to sort of like almost rock her and not offering the breast to her.

So she definitely didn't feed as often as she should have done. 

[00:15:11] Emma Pickett: Okay? So you'd absorbed all that kind of wider cultural messaging about good babies going longer between feeds that had come, come from somewhere. But the fact you got to four years, eight months with her feeding journey suggests that you managed to push against all those cultural messages and you, you know, you followed your instincts and, and got to the right place in the end.

Do you remember when she put on, were you worried about her weight gained? Was that something that no one was en? Obviously nine and a half percent is below the threshold, hopefully, where people would be encouraging you to supplement. You didn't have any concerns around continuing exclusive breastfeeding?

[00:15:45] Beatrice Dane: No. I was very much prepared for it because after speaking to a friend, she said that her baby had lost. Um, a bit of their birth weight and being told to give formula and she was like sort of very encouraging me that if they tell you that, just, you know, tell them no, you're gonna keep breastfeeding and just keep putting baby on the breast as often as possible.

So I was very much almost prepared for that to come, but it didn't, they just told me to come back, um, to the clinic in 48 hours and get her Reed and I think at that point she was at 7% of her birth weight two days later. So. Clearly, um, getting lots of milk in and increasing her weight at that point. So I wasn't worried.

I just focused a bit more on, at that point, I was like, okay, just keep putting her on, keep putting her on. At that point, she'd started cluster feeding on day four, and I remember I was writing it down in like notes on my phone and I was putting down okay, five minutes. Five minutes. And I remember messaging my mom and saying to her.

What's happening? She's feeding like for five minutes and then she's off the breast for five minutes and then she's coming back on and it just keeps happening. And she was the one that told me that's cluster feeding. That's what will help your milk supply to increase. Just keep doing what she needs, keep putting her on the breast, she knows what she's doing, and your milk supply will come up really nicely.

So that was the first time I'd heard the term cluster feeding from my mum. 

[00:17:11] Emma Pickett: How wonderful to have a mum who's got all those positive breastfeeding hours under her belt. Did you have other friends who'd had kids? I'm just thinking about other couples your age. Were you the first of the group to have babies or were other people already parents?

[00:17:25] Beatrice Dane: I didn't have anyone around my area. I had a few sort of online friends from some Facebook groups that we kind of chatted every now and again. It was nice to. That sort of communication. There was one person that had had a baby sort of similar time, and she was breastfeeding as well and she was the one that sort of was very encouraging.

One person near me had a baby at similar time and was formula feeding, but that was it. No one else my age, no one else I knew was having any babies 

[00:17:57] Emma Pickett: at that point. And when did you start? Thinking about kind of training and breastfeeding support or training to be a hypnobirthing instructor. I'm just curious as to when your brain shifts from mommy mode to professional mode.

[00:18:11] Beatrice Dane: I think it started fairly early on, literally after maybe a couple of months after Ari was born. In terms of just the more I learned about breastfeeding. The more I wanted to pass it along to other people. So once my mom had told me about cluster feeding, I started researching into it. And then anytime somebody would put on a Facebook parenting group, like, oh, my baby's feeding so much, and I, I would just get so excited, like, oh, that's cluster feeding.

I know that I wanted to kind of pass on that information because it was so valuable to me in those moments. I didn't end up going to my first breastfeeding support group until Aria was four and a half months. I didn't actually know that there was a breastfeeding support group in Melton. Um, none of the midwives or health visitors had told me it was a friend from postnatal yoga that said, oh, you know, there's a, a breastfeeding support group that's on every, every Thursday at 12 o'clock.

And I was like, oh my gosh. That's amazing. Yeah. I'll, I'll come a lot. I actually came along in the perfect week because they were that very week recruiting for new peer supporters. And the sort of leader of the group was walking around going, does anyone wanna train? And I was like, yeah, actually I would love to train.

That would be really, really great. Can I have some more information on it? And so I started the local peer support course when she was six months old. Wow, you don't mess around. 

[00:19:37] Emma Pickett: That's that's super efficient. That was meant to be, wasn't it? Yeah. So you start training as a peer supporter. You have ended up working as an NHS infant feeding support worker, and you're also a volunteer on the national breastfeeding helpline.

So let's take a pause from talking about your own breastfeeding experience for a minute, because in a minute I'd love to talk about the ending of Aria's breastfeeding journey. But before we do that, tell us about volunteering on the National Breastfeeding Helpline. What do you do? How does it work? Oh, I love it.

[00:20:04] Beatrice Dane: I really love taking those calls. It's, it feels like you're making such a difference. Um, I started taking calls on the helpline about three and a half years ago, and there's such a massive variety in calls that come in. Sometimes you'll get a phone call that is about night weaning, and then one about going back to work, one about cluster feeding.

It's such a massive variety. It, you can just almost audibly hear the parents on the phone. Relaxing into the call as as you talk to them 

[00:20:38] Emma Pickett: and you do the night shifts? I 

[00:20:39] Beatrice Dane: do as well. Yeah. 

[00:20:41] Emma Pickett: How do you get stay awake? How does it get well? How do you organize it? What timings 

[00:20:45] Beatrice Dane: are you doing? So I do the second shift of the night, so it's not the full sort of 12 hours.

So I wake up at quarter past three in the morning, um, to start my shift at half past three, and then I finish at quarter two, 10 in the morning. 

[00:21:00] Emma Pickett: Okay. Whew. Now, obviously you may not be on the calls constantly that whole time and there may be gaps and you've got time to say hello to the, to the, your kids and you know, it's, it's possible to.

Eat a bit of toast. Yeah, but that's still pretty intense. Now when I, I, so I do web chat as a volunteer and I also volunteer marking modules as well. But I, I haven't taken phone calls for a little while. When phone calls come in at nighttime. Now, obviously you can't say anything to break any confidence, but I'm just wondering, are the calls at night different?

Are they more desperate? I mean, I just wonder, or do you still get someone going, hi, I happen to be awake and I thought I'd call, I'm going back to work. How does that work? Um, what kind of calls do you get at nighttime versus the daytime? You do tend to get 

[00:21:40] Beatrice Dane: more of the, the newborns. That, um, the parents are ringing sort of in that first seven days where a lot of the time maybe they've just been discharged from hospital, a lot of sleepy babies, um, where they're trying, parents are trying to wake them up for a feed and they're just not waking up for their feed.

And it's been caught sort of getting to be quite a while. But you do tend to feel like the parents are, that you're a lot more vulnerable at nighttime. I remember it, especially when it is. Your first baby. I just remember feeling that dread in the night. It's almost like as soon as it gets dark, everything just feels so much harder.

It just feels like you are completely alone. You are isolated. And I just remember with Aria it was night two and we all know that night two is the most horrendous night ever. I just remember sitting in bed crying. She was crying and I was saying to my husband, Dwayne, I just, I just want someone that I can talk to right now.

I just wish I could call somebody. And yeah, it definitely makes a massive difference there to be somebody that parents can ring. It definitely feels like they are a lot more overwhelmed and. Upset at those times. So we tend to find that the calls tend to be a little bit longer in the night because the parents really need that time with us.

Yeah. And I feel very grateful that I'm able to give them that completely, you know, devoted time to them, not rushed. I know that sometimes with, you know, health professionals that are coming in, they've got lots and lots that they need to go through, so they might may not have that time to just sit with them.

But we can, I can sit there on the phone for two hours if they need me to. I'm there for that and I, I feel very grateful and very privileged that I'm able to support parents in those really vulnerable moments. 

[00:23:45] Emma Pickett: Yeah. It's such an amazing gift to, to give parents that, and you are having conversations with people that they will remember for the rest of their lives.

Yeah. They will never forget the call they had with you on, on day two. On day three. And the things that you said and, and you, you will change someone's whole mindset around what's going on. It's, as you say, it's such a privilege and a responsibility, and you're not a health professional in that setting.

You are, you know, a mom who knows how to talk about breastfeeding and knows about breastfeeding and, and you know, a lot of the job is about listening. And, and reflecting and, and helping parents to come up with their own solutions. You know, we don't give advice, we give information. Um, but yeah, powerful stuff.

And as we're really lucky that the National Breastfeeding helpline has had that, that contract to do 24 hour care because it's such an amazing gift. Um, so thank you for doing that and waking up at quarter past three. I'm not sure I could do it. So I'm, I'm very impressed that you are, I've 

[00:24:39] Beatrice Dane: managed to 

[00:24:39] Emma Pickett: adapt 

[00:24:40] Beatrice Dane: to it quite quickly.

It's not as hard waking up at that time as I thought it would be. 

[00:24:45] Emma Pickett: Okay, 

[00:24:46] Beatrice Dane: I believe you. Well, I'm currently, currently today post night shift, so. Oh, you look pretty normal. You look 

[00:24:54] Emma Pickett: bright as a button. I wouldn't even know. Sounds all right. You are. You definitely are. All right. I want to tell you about my brand new book called The Story of Jesse's Milky.

It's a picture book for two to six year olds, and I wanted to write a book that was about weaning, but also not about weaning, because breastfeeding journeys end in all sorts of different ways. So Jesse's story is presented as having three possible endings. In one ending, his mom is pregnant and Jesse's going to share his milk with a new baby.

In the second, his mom was getting really tired and it's time for some mother led weaning. And in the third, we see a self weaning journey as Jesse's attachment to breastfeeding gradually fades. There are beautiful illustrations by the very talented Jojo Ford, and the feedback from parents so far has been so lovely and touching and I'm really excited to share the book with you.

If you're interested in my other books for Older Children, I have the Breast book, which is a guide for nine to 14 year olds. And it's a puberty book that puts the emphasis on breasts, which I think is very much needed. And I also have two books about supporting breastfeeding beyond six months and supporting the transition from breastfeeding for a 10% discount on the last two.

Go to Jessica Kingsley Press. That's uk.jkp.com and use the code. Mm PE 10 Makes milk picket Emma. 10. Let's go back to Aria. So Aria is, she's two, she's three. Breastfeeding still pottering along. You obviously had that lovely example of your local friend who'd breastfed till natural term. Your mom had breastfed passed those baby years.

Did you have kind of goals in mind for her breastfeeding journey, or were you just playing it by ear? Literally just taking it one 

[00:26:42] Beatrice Dane: day at a time. I had no goals. I definitely wanted to get to one. And then when we got to one, I was like, let's just see how it goes. Aria really didn't get on well with solid food when we first started weaning.

It took her until she was probably about two to really take to it properly. So she very much relied on breastfeeding quite a lot. So for me, I was like, well, I need to keep going because she needs it for nutrition at this point. So she was very much what you would call a booby monster. She was feeding very, very frequently 

[00:27:18] Emma Pickett: and I'm glad that it was that way round rather than somebody telling you you should reduce the breastfeeding in order to increase her appetite.

Did you have anyone saying that to you in your life? 

[00:27:28] Beatrice Dane: Not directly. I think there were sort of subtle, subtle points mostly from maybe my in-laws that didn't really understand breastfeeding, so, so he's still still feeding. She doesn't really need that anymore. I would just kind of brush it off very quickly because by the time that she was feeding at that point, I was, um, a trained peer supporter and I felt very confident in the decision that I was making.

I was like, well, I know the benefits of continuing breastfeeding and it feels right for us, so I'm gonna keep going. Yeah, don't mess with me. And I don't think anyone would dare say anything to me now at this point. No, I bet. 

[00:28:08] Emma Pickett: No. Okay. So you, so you, I don't want to go too deeply into your in-law's experience 'cause that's obviously a bit tricky, but, so your, your partner, your husband didn't come from breastfeeding family in the same way, but I'm guessing you've had his support 'cause you wouldn't be here today if you didn't.

So you've managed to convince him. 

[00:28:24] Beatrice Dane: Yeah, that's been, I think a bit of a slow, slow burner that one. So I remember having a conversation with him when Ari was three months old, where it just sort of came and he was like, yeah, yeah, you're doing well with breastfeeding, but I imagine at six months you'll introduce some follow on milk because that's what you do.

And I was like, no, no carry on breastfeeding. I was like, okay, but well after one, you'll stop, won't you? Because you know, feeding after one, that's a bit odd. I was like, no, if it feels right, we'll just keep going and. I didn't hear anything negative from him, never anything negative it, he just kind of sat and listened.

And as I did my training, I would just talk about it a bit more and I would discuss some of the benefits and it would just almost like drip feeding these conversations of just continuing to breastfeeding like, like it's normal. It's not anything strange. Um, and so I remember when we got to two. We ended up having another conversation and I was like, what?

What do you think about me still feeding Aria actually? And he was like, it's great. You're doing an amazing thing for her. I'm so proud of you. I think keep going. You know, feed her for as long as both of you want to. And he's now a massive advocate for it. Um, when he talks to friends at work and they've sort of asked always.

Is be still feeding Sam at the moment. He's like, yeah, isn't it amazing? You know, he, she's giving all of those incredible antibodies and all those amazing benefits to our kids. I feel so, so lucky that the mother of my child has done that. He's such an advocate. It's amazing. 

[00:30:01] Emma Pickett: Oh, bless him. So, so if I'm putting you on a tour around the uk, we'll add him to the tour bus as well and we'll have him talking to groups of blokes.

Yeah. And dads and partners all around the uk. 'cause that's exactly what we need. That, you know, the, the dad advocate is such a powerful thing, so that, that's fantastic to hear. He's 

[00:30:19] Beatrice Dane: become like a peer supporter in, in himself. Like I'm sometimes telling him a story of, oh, you know, I've had this mum that I'm supporting at work, that this is happening, this is happening.

And he's saying, well. Doesn't she need to do this, this, and this? And I'm like, that's exactly what I suggested to her. I'm like, you're a great little, like you're listening to what I'm, I'm saying and what I'm talking about and you're taking that in and you are now passing it on. Others like, aren't you brilliant?

[00:30:44] Emma Pickett: Oh, fantastic. So, um. You passed the two? Yeah. Did you, when, so you said her feed, her eating, her solid food, eating mm-hmm. Picked up at that point. So you don't, didn't have any ongoing concerns around her solid food as she got to that mark. And how, how does she eat today? What's her eating like today? 

[00:31:01] Beatrice Dane: Um, she's definitely what you would consider sort of a fussy child, but, um, we've been doing more research and we think she's maybe got offered.

So it's got some sort of restrictions with feeding. She's very much particular about what she eats. What sort of food she has and, um, won't sort of touch any different types of food as well, so, 

[00:31:23] Emma Pickett: okay. So even more important, she was breastfeeding? Yes. I mean, that really shows what a gift breastfeeding was in that situation because that is not caused by breastfeeding, if anyone stupid might imagine that for a split second.

Um, but, but breastfeeding alongside that is going to be keeping her healthy, helping her development, helping her brain development, and such a gift that you were able to natural turn breastfeeding in that situation. So she gets to nearly four and you get pregnant again. Yeah. Tell us what were the circumstances of that?

Was that planned? Was that expected? Again, I keep asking if you Pregnancy as a planned sounds like I'm being horribly rude. Sorry. I'm just curious as to whether you were expecting that to happen and, and, and did you, because of what happened to your mom? Already expect that you'd end her breastfeeding journey during pregnancy, or were you open to tandem feeding?

Tell us what you were thinking at that time again. I was just taking 

[00:32:15] Beatrice Dane: it one day at a time. At that point, I had no sort of plans to it. Um, Sam was planned again, very lucky. We only tried for a couple of months and fell pregnant very quickly. So she was four and a half at the time that I fell pregnant, and I just sort of kept going.

She was only feeding like at bedtime. Literally for a couple of minutes, for a little bit of comfort and okay. Sometimes in the night she would sort of come through into our bed and if she came into our bed, she'd just have a quick feed to sort of settle herself back to sleep. So it was okay, very, very minimal.

I mean, for the last sort of year and a half of that time that I was feeding her, my milk supply had reduced a lot and it almost looked like colostrum again. It was sort of yellow in color. 

[00:33:04] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Weaning milk. Yeah. Lots of, lots of people don't realize the existence of weaning milk. It's fascinating, isn't it?

Yeah. So as you said, yellow looks like glostrum. Lots of people go, oh, I'm gonna make some breastfeeding jewelry. What the heck? I was expecting that white piece of breastfeeding jewelry that looks beautifully sparkling like a pearl. And I've got this thing that looks like, yeah. Yellow honey. Yeah. So as, yeah.

When milk drops below a certain threshold, we, we revert back to what's more similar to colostrum. So you mentioned that her feed had gr feeding pattern had gradually reduced from that booby monster at two. She'd gradually got down to just having a bedtime feed and the odd one at night. Had you done anything to make that happen that way, or was that all led by her?

What? What, as you went along, were there times when you did have to put boundaries in place? How did that journey go? The only time I think was 

[00:33:49] Beatrice Dane: maybe six months into COVID where she just went from sort of feeding. Five times a day to just constant, I think because we were at home so much, she just would feed continuously.

And I was like, I'm feeling very touched out at this point. So I just started putting some boundaries in just as a case of I was counting down, um, from 10, and I'd say right when we get to one or when we get to 10, booby goes away. Just so that she knew it was sort of coming to end and I'd give her some time without counting for.

And then I'd start counting and it only, it took a very small amount of time and she actually started counting herself, so, mm-hmm. She at points, she wasn't even feeding. She, I'd say she'd ask for some boob and I'd say, yeah, she can have some, but only for 10 seconds. And she'd come on and just go 1, 2, 3, and she'd just have the nipple in her mouth like, you're not even doing anything.

Well, she's counting. Yeah. And that's the same thing. That's thing now as what Sam does at this point, now that we've sort of started the same. Boundaries. He now does exactly the same as his older sister. 

[00:35:00] Emma Pickett: That's fascinating. So that, that really is a nice demonstration of how quite often it's the act of asking.

Yeah. That is motivating them and the idea that they can ask and you will meet that request and that's the interaction they're looking for sometimes ahead of even the milk. So you were down to bedtime, feed the odd occasional night feed. You get your positive pregnancy test with Sam. What happens next?

So we 

[00:35:22] Beatrice Dane: carried on as normal. Um, I didn't really have any sort of sensitivity to my nipples at this point. And then a couple of weeks later, she came on to have her normal bedtime feed and she just came off after literally a couple of seconds and went, can I have some back tickles instead? And I'd been building sort of like stroking her back while we were feeding, we'd lie down, feeding in her bed.

And so for the last. Six, seven months I've been tickling her back. We'd put on what we call the rabbit story, um, which is called The Rabbit, who wants to fall asleep on Spotify, and it's sort of aiming to, it's like hypnosis for children basically to aim to sort of help them. And go to sleep. And so I have, I've heard about this 

[00:36:10] Emma Pickett: book.

Is this the book that no one can ever finish reading? 'cause it's so incredibly sleep inducing. Very long as well. When you put it on Spotify, it's on for like 

[00:36:17] Beatrice Dane: 40 minutes. It's wonderful. So it's the rabbit who wants to go to sleep? Yeah. Is that what it's called? Okay. Good tip. Thank you. So I'd already had that playing in the background, doing back tickles alongside breastfeeding.

So I'd unknowingly been doing habit stacking. Without actually realizing. Um, and then, yeah, she just had a few socks and went, can I have some back tickles? Instead, she turned around and I was like, yeah, okay. Let's just tickle you back. No problem. Expecting that the next day she'd probably have a feed again, and that was literally it.

She then asked for back tickles every night, and that was it for feeding. It was very never asked again. Never asked again. 

[00:36:56] Emma Pickett: Wow. Okay. So even in the middle of the night when she's coming through, she's just snuggling in bed and having back tickles. Yeah. So do you remember when the last feed was, or because it was, was the last feed and you didn't realize it at the time?

It didn't really stick in your head? 

[00:37:08] Beatrice Dane: I remember the process of her coming off and saying, I want back tickles, because I was just very surprised in that moment. She'd never asked for that herself. But I don't remember the actual feed itself because it was so brief. She'd literally just come on for a few seconds and that was it.

So I never, I don't really sort of remember that last feed or the last sort of few feeds that was just normal. 

[00:37:33] Emma Pickett: And how did you feel, how were you feeling emotionally at that point? Was there a sense of relief? Was there a sense of Oh no. Um, what were, what was going through your head emotionally, especially in the early pregnancy where quite often were extra emotional?

[00:37:45] Beatrice Dane: A very mix of emotions. I, part of me was thinking, see they do wean by themselves. It does happen. You, you can just leave them to it and they will eventually wean. Obviously. I do feel like maybe the pregnancy probably had something to do with it. Maybe she could feed for a little bit longer without me falling pregnant, but I was like, well, they do stop.

This just shows you, they do stop, but very emotional and. Sad that that journey had come to an end, because for me, her breastfeeding journey was a massive part of who I was. It kickstarted that passion for breastfeeding support and, you know, made me want to become a breastfeeding supporter. And at this point I was working in the NHS as a, an feeding support worker.

So I'd got that career from her and I sort of felt like it was, that was leaving me like the reason for that. Was sort of being pulled away a little bit. So it definitely felt very emotional that it was coming to an end. 

[00:38:47] Emma Pickett: Yeah, you described that very vividly. I, I definitely relate to that. It's just a part, it's become your identity.

Mm-hmm. It's like huge Part of my identity would be breastfeeding woman. I'm, you know, and, and are you still allowed to be breastfeeding woman? Yes. You are, because you're still working in that space professionally, but you're a different kind of peer supporter, aren't you? You've said goodbye to that chapter of your life and, and it's, even though you're still, you're pregnant.

So imminent baby, it's still. It's definitely saying goodbye to a whole phase. Yeah. Very powerfully described. And your pregnancy potters along. Yeah. Tell us about Sam's birth. Pregnancy was okay. No complications particularly. No, none at all. It was absolutely fine. 

[00:39:24] Beatrice Dane: The only thing I had was, um, pelvic girdle pain towards the last couple of months, which I didn't have with Aria.

So this was definitely something that I had to adjust to a little bit. But his birth was. A lot calmer compared to Arias. Had you trained in Hypnobirthing at this point? I hadn't trained in hypnobirthing, but I'd done a hypnobirthing course prior to his birth instead. 

[00:39:49] Emma Pickett: Okay. 

[00:39:50] Beatrice Dane: But I had already signed up to do the hypnobirthing training course to teach other people when he was four months.

[00:40:00] Emma Pickett: Okay. Gosh, you don't mess around. Do you be I'm, I'm impressed. Wow. Okay. So you had done some hypnobirthing and. Did you have a chance to kind of debrief after Aria's birth? Is that something that you needed to do or did you kind of do that in your own head as it were? I 

[00:40:14] Beatrice Dane: kind of haled it in my head and haled it a little bit with um, Dwayne and with my doula as well.

I actually, at one point, I think it was actually during the pregnancy, I wrote down my entire birth story with Aria from start to finish, from what I remember, because I'd almost sort of pushed it to the back of my head. I went, you know what? There's probably things that I've. Pushed back so far that I've not actually taken the time to just feel those feelings and then let them go.

So it was pages and pages, I think it was like 10 a four pages worth. Um, on my laptop. I was just typing away and wrote everything down and then just read it and was like, okay, I can let that go now. And talked it through with my doula quite a bit because obviously she sort of needed to know. My previous birth experience so that she could support me in the best way in, um, in Sam's birth.

So yeah, we kind of talked about it quite a bit. 

[00:41:12] Emma Pickett: Okay. Did you have have a different kind of birth plan? Did you kind of make plans to advocate for yourself in a different way? What was, what was your thinking going into Sam's birth? 

[00:41:22] Beatrice Dane: Uh, so we ended up planning for home birth instead. And that just came from the years, sort of prior doing that research into birth.

I kind of. I went from, well, maybe I'll go to the birth center that's, um, separate to our hospital and that slowly turned into, actually I'd like to have a home birth instead. So planned for a home birth, had the home birth. I was really, really happy with it. I actually ended up having him on my due date, which I wasn't expecting.

I was very much prepared to go past my due date again, and almost I wanted to be that hypnobirthing teacher that sort of was like, look, you can go past your due date and this is how you managed to go past your due date. And now feel like a bit of. Fraud almost because I'm like, how inconvenient he came on your, he was on due date.

I was like, that wasn't my fault. You've got our 

[00:42:12] Emma Pickett: permission to lie B, you can lie. If it's fine, you can but tell a hypothetical story instead. Yeah. So he came along and did you have a water birth? What was, what was your kind of setup and where was Aria when you gave birth to Sam? So 

[00:42:25] Beatrice Dane: I didn't give birth in water, but I labored in water pretty much the whole time.

So. The same as Ari. I started labor, um, literally in the evening just after putting her to bed. So I'd lay down with her, stroked her back, got her to sleep, went downstairs into the kitchen and felt a bit of a, a trickle. And I was like, I think that might be my waters. Um, okay. That's interesting. Put a pad on.

Went and laid down in bed. Rang my husband. He went, is it baby time? And I went, yeah, it actually is. Can you come home, please? He was at work, so he was like, right. I'm off. See you later guys. Lay down for a little bit and then stood up and I was like, yeah, there's definitely more water coming out. And my contraction started sort of within half an hour of my waters going.

So things were happening, not sort of super strong at any point in time at this point, but they did get strong very, very quickly. And by four o'clock in the morning I was like, I need my doula here. I need to get the pool up. I need to do something. I need some support here. He was back to back as well. So again, all my contractions were in my back.

I never felt a single contraction in my stomach, which meant a lot of my contractions ended up being not fully pushing, but sort of half pushing because he was actually turning from being back to back to front to back. Okay. So it was, it was long, again, longer than what the midwives would expect, but nowhere near as long as Aria's birth.

So it was more like, um, about 14 hours. Compared to 48, which for me, I was like, that's so much shorter. But they were actually like, yeah, they were getting a bit twitchy towards the end, like it's going on a bit long. And I was like, yeah, but I just have long labors. That's just the way my body works. It does.

I do have a bit of a longer labor, but that's fine. 

[00:44:16] Emma Pickett: And is Aria waking up at this point? I'm just thinking 14 

[00:44:19] Beatrice Dane: hours. Yeah. Ari's 

[00:44:20] Emma Pickett: waking up. What 

[00:44:20] Beatrice Dane: happened then? So she woke up about seven in the morning, slept all the way through, which even at that point wasn't like her. So I feel like the oldest kids just know sometimes when something else is going on.

So she woke up at seven, came downstairs and was just a bit like, what's going on? There's a lot of people in my house, and she just went to, Dwayne went, can I go watch Aladdin in your bedroom? So she wasn't bothered about anything that was going on. She just wanted to go and watch Aladdin. So he went upstairs, sorted her out, popped Aladdin on, and um, then we rang my mom to come and collect her just because I felt like it was more of a distraction.

For me rather than, she was fine. I just wanted her gone so that I could focus. And then he was born at 1240, so still quite a few hours later at that point. 

[00:45:10] Emma Pickett: Okay. Oh, so, so Aria's what, just over five at this point? Yes, five or five and a bit. Yeah. And then she came back and met him. I want, how was that first, first encounter?

So lots of people I'm, do, reason I'm asking is 'cause lots of people are. Really nervous about that first meeting. Mm-hmm. They wonder how to do it properly. Yeah. And if they get it wrong, something terrible's gonna happen 20 years later. I mean, how did you do that sort of first encounter between Aria and Sam?

[00:45:36] Beatrice Dane: So it was about 24 hours later, my parents kept her for the night just to let us have that first night by ourselves relaxing and sort of like adapting to him just being there. Um, so she came the next morning and. I think he was just in the Moses basket just because that's where I'd put him. I'd just gone to the toilet.

So I was like, well, he's there. And she just came over and like peered over and was like, oh wow. She'd um, already FaceTimed us. So literally while he was in skin to skin with me post birth, we were FaceTiming and she was like, it's my baby brother. She was very excited. She wanted to come home that evening.

But my mom was like, no, let's give, let's give mommy a bit, just one night just to relax and have a bit of recovery after birth. Like they're gonna be very, very tired. And then you can go first thing in the morning. 

[00:46:29] Emma Pickett: What a gift to have your mom so close. Yes. So she had that relationship with Aria and, and could say that and Aria would be like, sure, yeah, I trust you.

She's got you. We, we have that connection. No problem. That's that's lovely to hear. And and how about Sam's early breastfeeding. And did Aria ever ask again to feed? I'm guessing not 'cause you haven't mentioned it. No, she never did. She was 

[00:46:48] Beatrice Dane: never bothered. She. She talked about it and said that she used to have booby and she was very happy and she remembers it.

She remembers feeling very happy and safe, and she still remembers that it tasted like strawberries. Apparently. Aw, that's what she said it tastes like. When I asked Sam the same thing he says, it just tastes like milk. So, very logical, man. Yes. I like that description. How has his breastfeeding journey been?

Oh, amazing. He latched on about half an hour after he was born. He just, he literally did the breast crawl. He found his own way to the breast and then. Fed solidly for about an hour, an hour and a half. Very happy. Like wow, going. The whole time he was sucking, he was swallowing, he was taking a milk that entire time, and then eventually came off and was very, very settled and things were very different with him.

I knew to just offer the breast really frequently. I just, anytime he kind of even opened his mouth a tiny bit, I was like, right in. We go, let's do another feed. Let's keep just offering the, offering the breaths as often as possible. I co-slept with him from the first night as well, just to maximize our sleep together because I didn't do it with Ari until she was about four months old, and I was just so sleep deprived and the difference was amazing.

I felt so awake, so alert. I was so happy. And yeah, we just spent the first two weeks in bed together. I was in my pajamas every single day. I was just letting him come off and on the breast as often as he wanted, and we spent that time in our little bubble and Dwayne looked after Aria and just made sure that she was happy.

And did whatever he could and helped out that way, making sure I was fed. He brought me up about a million crumpets because that was my postpartum craving. 

[00:48:44] Emma Pickett: Mm-hmm. But 

[00:48:45] Beatrice Dane: things were so different and he only lost 2% of his birth weight. So 

[00:48:49] Emma Pickett: gosh, that's, that says everything. A massive difference. And how did Aria feel in those first few weeks?

She was adjusting. Well, you didn't have any concerns. 

[00:48:56] Beatrice Dane: No, she was very chilled with it, to be honest. It was the Christmas holidays for her, so she had a few days out with my parents and they took her. Out for the day they took her to the pantomime and stuff. So she definitely had, um, had some time sort of attention with just her as well.

Um, but she was just enjoying being off school because she, she had only just started that, um, that term. So she'd had a, a big, long term and then she was like, okay. And now I'm at home and just relaxed and 

[00:49:24] Emma Pickett: rest. Oh, and there's a baby. Yeah. Oh, that's so great to hear. And that thing you said about co-sleeping, and it's absolutely a gift, isn't it?

Mm-hmm. If to embrace co-sleeping, what a difference that makes to your mindset. The people that co-sleep feeling like they're doing something naughty, still haven't, you know, all the oxytocin's not flowing. They're not able to get into the zone. But if you go, this is biology, this is evolution. Co-sleeping is sort of meant to be the default.

I'm gonna follow the guidance, I'm gonna do it safely, but it's kind of how things are meant to work. You get more sleep. In the vast majority of cases, not for everybody, but for a lot of people it makes such a difference. And the people who are really struggling are often the ones who've been pushing against it and thinking they're failing if their baby doesn't want to sleep by themselves.

It's not what we're meant to do as a species. So yeah, I remember. That decision to why am I fighting this? And suddenly everything just falls into place and it makes such a difference. And 

[00:50:18] Beatrice Dane: that's exactly how I felt with Ari. I was fighting it for such a long time. And then when I did just finally accept that she was a baby, needed to be close to me, needed to feed often and stop trying to fight against it, then I was like, ah, I feel so much better.

Not fully better, because I was very religiously trucking her feeds. Which was not good and it fed massively into my anxiety. But, um, with Sam having that confidence showing I'm gonna breastfeed, I'm gonna co-sleep and we're just gonna go with it, I'm gonna follow his cues rather than the time. I'm not gonna bother whether it was 20 minutes, but the last time he came to the breast, I'm just gonna offer it as often as he needs.

And I felt so much calmer. So much more relaxed and way more confident in my own parenting ability. 

[00:51:11] Emma Pickett: Yeah. So even though he was feeding more frequently, you felt about it very differently 'cause you weren't busy rocking to try and get, to get him to not feed, just embracing nature. I mean it sounds so cheesy, but it's so true.

Um, so he's now two and a half, he is still breastfeeding. What's his current 24 hour pattern roughly? It can change massively 

[00:51:31] Beatrice Dane: from day to day. Um. He's not as obsessed with the boob as Aria was. He went on solids really, really easily. So already at that point he kind of slowed down on breastfeeding a lot quicker than she did.

She was very much reliant on feeding for nutrition. He wasn't at that point. So it'll depend if I'm with him or not as well because um, if I'm doing a night shift, for example, I'll put him to bed and then I sleep in the spare room. And then he won't have any feeds all night. Um, Dwayne will wake up with him in the morning and get him ready for nursery, take him to nursery, and then I won't see him until normally sort of 24 hours later.

So he is gone a full 24 hours without a feed sometimes, and he's been absolutely fine. Sometimes he'll even not realize that I'm back and he won't ask for a feed sort of straight away. Sometimes I've picked him up from nursery the next day he's come home. Just got on with plating. Which again is very, very different to what Aria was like.

If I picked her up from nursery at the age of two, I actually had to sit in the car and feed her. She couldn't even wait until she got home. Whereas he will go happily quite a while if I'm with him throughout the day. It comes and goes. I think it's that typical toddler, like if I sit down, he's like, oh, can I have some boob?

Can I have a feed at this point? Sometimes I'll say, yeah, that's no problem. Sometimes I will say, yes, but let's count to 10. Um, other times I might say, yes, but let's do this puzzle first instead and almost delay it. If after we've done the puzzle, he still asks for the feed, then I'll be like, yeah, no problem at all.

Let's. Let's have a feed now, but it's normally, if I'm sat down on the sofa, that's when he'll kind of be like, let's, let's have a feed. And sometimes he'll be happy to have just a little bit of, almost like a bit of a comfort feed, a bit of a snacky feed. Other times he will literally just be there for ages and he'll just sit there for a long time, like, right.

Okay. Can we stop now because I actually really need to go and cook dinner at this point. Like we've been here for about half an hour and that's. I've got, I've got some stuff to do at this point. 

[00:53:50] Emma Pickett: It sounds like you're doing a great job of kind of communicating with him and, and helping him understand why there are sometimes boundaries and what, what your needs are too, which is a great thing to say.

And what are your plans for the future? What's next with, with Sam's feeding, but also professionally as well? 

[00:54:04] Beatrice Dane: One day at a time with feeding. I have no plans. I'm, I'm pretty certain he is gonna get to three, he turns three in December, so I'm pretty sure he is gonna get to that three year mark where we go from there.

I dunno, because I dunno if he'll feed for as long as Aria did or not because he isn't quite as attached to the breast as she was. But we'll take it as it comes professionally. I would absolutely love one day to. Become an IBCC, but it is gonna take me a long, long time because I don't have the health professional background.

So it's gonna be a bit, bit of a longer journey for me and, and finding the time to do that as well with working in the NHS as an infant feeding support worker on the helpline at night, and also with my hypno birthing business as well. I kind of, um, don't have much of a spare time to try and get that in at the moment.

[00:55:00] Emma Pickett: No, but you're gonna have no problem gathering your hours. Yes. You're doing so much Best first field support. That bit's super easy. And actually the, there are ways to get those health sciences courses. Yeah, there are. I'm sure you found the shortcuts. There are Facebook groups that talk about it. There are people who've done it.

There are courses available online that just bash you through them. Yeah. Um, so I have every confidence that, that you will get there. Thank you so much for talking to me today. B I'm really honored to hear your story. We're so lucky to have you on the national breastfeeding helpline. And, um, it's just been such a pleasure to hear somebody who's so confident about breastfeeding.

And it doesn't mean you didn't have any challenges, doesn't mean everything was super easy, but you've just got that underlying belief that it's gonna work. And an underlying confidence that just makes you, you just come across as a relaxed person. I'm not saying you're laid back in a way that's unhealthy, but it's just really nice to see someone who's got such a positive attitude.

And, um, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Is there anything we, we haven't touched on that you wanted to make sure we covered? No, I don't 

[00:55:56] Beatrice Dane: think so. Got through pretty much everything that I wanted to. I had typical standard breastfeeding challenges, but nothing that was sort of crazy. It was just, it was normal.

It was all very normal challenges. But the, I think definitely having that, I'm very stubborn and that determination of I'm gonna do this definitely helped. 

[00:56:19] Emma Pickett: Yeah. As I said, we're gonna clone you, we're gonna get the bus, we're gonna have the Dwayne and b talk. Um, we'll make it, we'll make it happen. Thank you very much for talking to me today.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining me today. You can find me on Instagram at Emma Pickett Ibclc and on Twitter at Makes milk. It would be lovely if you subscribed because that helps other people to know I exist and leaving a review would be great as well. Get in touch if you would like to join me to share your feeding or weaning journey, or if you have any ideas for topics to include in the podcast.

This podcast is produced by the lovely Emily Crosby Media.