Cradles - breastfeeding support group

Cradles was created to support women struggling with breastfeeding.

• Who is Cradle?
• The Cradle rocks!
• How to make the world of difference
• It's not about ramming breasts down people's throats
• Raising awareness about awareness raising
• When the going gets tough
• For more information

Lorraine has a difficult and important job : she helps support new mums who are struggling with breastfeeding and tries to help discover what, out of the many different issues, could be causing each woman's particular problem. And as any woman with cracked, bleeding nipples or a baby who screams at every feed will tell you, that's more terrifying than a bad-tempered villain having a bad day.

In May 2005, her local Sure Start and primary care trust advertised for mums to become volunteer breastfeeding counsellors in an attempt to help more women with the Ilkeston area with breastfeeding problems. The only prerequisite was that they were themselves breastfeeding mums. "It was an eight-week training course," Lorraine explains, "which covered all aspects of breastfeeding, breast anatomy and general health. I was quite lucky with my two girls in that I never had any problems with breastfeeding but there were questions that I always wanted to ask but always felt too silly to do so. The course answered those questions and also made me realise that there are no daft questions when it comes to breastfeeding; so never be scared to ask!"

In July, the mums finished the course and started visiting local postnatal clinics. From there, they have grown what they offer to include antenatal sessions with mums-to-be, a drop-in session twice a week in the local health centre where mums can have a chat, a cuppa and a healthy snack, and they also offer telephone support for those important problems when people are at home.

Lorraine and the five other mums make up a group called 'Cradles', whose name has an amusing history to it. "We really struggled when we were asked to come up with a name," she admits. "We needed something that not only linked to the subject matter but also was easily memorable. Originally we came up with 'Bras' as bras support breasts, which contain milk, and we support mums. But we thought that was a really dreadful idea and that we ought to come up with something better! Cradles seemed ideal: you cradle a baby and we cradle the mums. The name stuck!"

Part of the reason why Sure Start and the PCT wanted a group of experienced breastfeeding mums to run this group was to try to provide a friendly and accessible service to mums in the area. And, talking to Lorraine, it is easy to see why this service works… and why breastfeeding rates in the Derbyshire area have risen in the ten months the group has existed. Lorraine chats to you as if you were her best friend, relaxed, jokingly conspiratorial and with a reassuring air.

"Of course we are all here to discuss the areas of breastfeeding that women are struggling with but we're also here if you just want a good moan!" laughs Lorraine. "It could be anything from 'Why won't my son latch on properly?' to 'My other half isn't doing the pots!'. We feel it's really essential to help mums feel important during those first few months with a baby, especially if they are constantly worrying about doing the 'right' or 'wrong' thing. We all know that it's not so clear-cut but new mums are scared of not doing everything perfectly. Sometimes just chatting to someone on the phone can make the world of difference."

One way in which Cradles is innovative is its work in the antenatal sphere. Instead of waiting for new mums to come rushing to them with breastfeeding problems once the child is born, Lorraine and the girls talk to parents-to-be at special antenatal sessions to address potential issues before they occur. It's a case of forewarned is forearmed but, in an area that is rife with different complications as breastfeeding, such advance information could be really helpful.

However, Lorraine is at pains to point out that Cradles is not an all-singing, all-dancing breastfeeding group with an evangelical stance. "At some of the clinics and groups I attend, I see the guilty looks on the faces of bottle feeding mothers and it makes me feel sad. I am not there to judge or criticise them. In fact, if a mum came to me and asked, for example, for advice on how to mix-feed I would gladly give it. In all this breastfeeding awareness, we also need to be aware of what's best for mum and baby. It's about striking a balance between giving out enough information but not ramming the message down people's throats."

For a long time, there has been a concerted campaign by health groups to promote the message that breast is best and one way of doing this is through events such as National Breastfeeding Week. Lorraine is in two minds about the efficacy of such campaigns. "They can certainly be useful but the problem is being aware of the fact that it is National Breastfeeding Week! You sort of need to draw attention to the fact that it's going on for it then to have any impact as, if people don't know about it, then it will have passed them by.

"I tried to get some of our local supermarkets on board for this reason. Our Tesco has a breastfeeding room so I thought they might be amenable to Cradles being in the store handing out leaflets to people. However, they still haven't replied to my suggestion. I might try Asda too; if anything, that might spur Tesco on to let us in! Our town hall also lets local groups run coffee mornings on every Saturday… but there's only a small slot and it's normally booked up way in advance. Getting the message out that there's a message to give is often half the problem.

Another way in which Cradles wishes to let mums know about their services is by going into the hospitals themselves to hand out information to new mums. "If we could meet mums either at their antenatal clinics or in the hospital before they go home, we could not only inform them about what we do but also let them put a face to a name. Often the idea of calling into a group where you know no one is intimidating and off-putting to anyone, so if they meet us beforehand at least they will know who they are if they ever feel like coming along."

Another major attraction about the group is their closeness to the subject matter, which makes them infinitely approachable when problems do occur. A common problem Lorraine and her colleagues see with mums who are recently home form hospital is concern over the tiny but precious amounts of colostrum they are squeezing out. "What you have to remember," advises Lorraine, "Is that this baby has just undergone a most amazing journey to get here so it's unlikely to be ravenous. Moreover, when you think that a baby's stomach is the size of its fist, you couldn't possibly get the equivalent of 5oz of milk into it, could you?! It would be impossible!"

Although Lorraine admits to not having trouble with breastfeeding itself, she, like every mother, had her moments. "It's often just reiterating to mums that everyone had bad days, even babies," she stresses. "There is absolutely no such thing as a textbook baby, despite any claims to the contrary. I always tell mums that this is a whole new relationship that they are entering into. Of course they are going to get things wrong or not be able to second-guess everything but that's because they need to get to know their baby, and their baby them, and this is a gradual, even lifelong, process.

As if to prove this point, Lorraine confides her own particular struggle. "My eldest daughter was a terrible sleeper. From the day she was born I don't think she ever slept longer than 45 minutes... and subsequently neither did I. For over a year, I struggled and, because I was exclusively breastfeeding, I had to do all the night shifts. My husband had to commute to work every day and I would have killed myself if anything bad happened to him because he had to get up in the night instead of me. However, it took its toll and I worked up the courage to tell my doctor and health visitor. They couldn't find fault with my routine, and I was doing everything I possibly could to try to break the habit. In the end, they had to medicate my daughter for a few nights to break the cycle. I felt like an evil mother drugging her up then weaning her off the meds but it worked and we had no further problems. And it was wonderful experiencing, once again, that sleep could carry on for longer than three-quarters of an hour!"

Lorraine's parting advice to new mums seems very sage to me. "I tell mums to concentrate on all the little things, such as baby's first smile or their laugh or when they slept through the night. These give you so much reward and motivation against the smaller, relatively unimportant things."

For more information

The Cradles team, pictured, right, look forward to hearing from you if you are in need of breastfeeding support.

Cradles
c/o 3 Manners Street
Ilkeston
Derbyshire DE7 5AS

Tel: 07900682980

www.cradles.org.uk

Where to next?

• Find out more about how to breastfeed in our breastfeeding section
• Having trouble breastfeeding? Use our problem solver
• Frequently asked questions about breastfeeding - see our experts' answers
• Discuss breastfeeding with other mums on our Feeding discussion board
• Unable or don't want to breastfeed? Check out our section on bottlefeeding
• National Breastfeeding Week information and features page
• See the babyworld features library