Natural term breastfeeding working positively

In this episode I’m talking about natural term breastfeeding with someone who has both personal and professional experience of it. Olivia Hinge is an IBCLC, midwife and mum of three, currently breastfeeding her youngest child (who makes a sleepy appearance in the episode).

We talk about the realities of breastfeeding support on the maternity ward and what training Olivia would provide to all hospital staff if she had a magic wand, as well as Olivia’s own breastfeeding and weaning journey. Olivia’s brand new book on infant feeding is available now.

Find Olivia on Instagram @olivia_lactation_consultant

and get her new book here https://www.yellowkitebooks.co.uk/titles/olivia-hinge/a-judgement-free-guide-to-feeding-your-baby/9781399731904/

My new book, ‘Supporting the Transition from Breastfeeding: a Guide to Weaning for Professionals, Supporters and Parents’, is out now.

You can get 10% off the book at the Jessica Kingsley press website, that's uk.jkp.com using the code MMPE10 at checkout.

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

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

Transcript

Emma Pickett  00:00

Hi. I'm 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 to join me for conversations on how breastfeeding is amazing. And also, sometimes really, really hard. We'll look honestly and openly about that process of making milk. And of course, breastfeeding and chest feeding are a lot more than just making milk. 

Emma Pickett  00:48

Thank you very much for joining me for today's episode. I am looking at Olivia Hinge through the magic of my little squadcast platform, but you don't get to see her because I'm a meanie and I don't do youtubey podcasts, I only do audio ones, but I'm very excited to be able to share her voice with you. Today, we're going to have a good old natter about natural term breastfeeding and why it's special, and how we can help parents to do it, and why we really love it. And we're also going to have a natter about lots of other things, because Olivia has a book coming out, which I think will just have come out by the time this episode goes out, so it'll already be available for purchase. I'm going to ask you a little bit about the process of writing that book and what that's all about. We're just going to have a bit of a gossip. If you're up for that, Olivia?

Olivia Hinge  01:31

I'm very up for that. Thank you so much for having me.

Emma Pickett  01:34

Good. No, it's a pleasure. Thank you for saying yes. So you've been a midwife since 2011 Yeah, and you've been an ibclc since 2019 Yeah, you don't do private practice, so let's just clarify that, so you haven't got time if you're a flippin NHS midwife, 

Olivia Hinge  01:50

well, that's, yeah, it's like the breastfeeding stuff is just this absolute passion that I had, this thirst for knowledge, and that's how that sort of came about. But at the moment, I don't with the young family and working for the NHS, I just don't have capacity. I think,

Emma Pickett  02:04

yeah, do you? Do you get people messaging you and saying, Please, please, please, be my private lactation consultant. That must be tough.

Olivia Hinge  02:11

I do. It is. It is tough. I one thing I do struggle with, actually, those messages tend to be quite emotional, and I find emotional boundaries actually within the job quite tricky. So I spend a lot of time worrying about people and sort of thinking, you know, I've, when I've supported friends and stuff, it's like checking my phone, I wonder if they're okay, and all that sort of stuff. Maybe you don't struggle with that? No, I'm the seasoned pro.

Emma Pickett  02:38

No, God, not at all. I'm really poor at it, and I genuinely, I'm not doing that in a false modesty way. I'm really poor, and I we're I'm coming up to a holiday now, and I can feel myself absolutely burning out because I never, ever switch off.

Olivia Hinge  02:52

The emotional toil is hard, isn't it? 

Emma Pickett  02:55

Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, we can have a whole other conversation about birth and midwife's support, but just from a lactation perspective, you're talking to people at some of the most difficult times in their lives, in a system where they often don't get the support they need, feeling absolutely terrible. I mean, you know, from Amy Brown's work, we're talking about potential trauma. You know, not meeting breastfeeding goals can be the worst thing that happens to somebody and and you, you know, it's not that you think you're all powerful and you're going to solve the issue, but a lot of the time you can. And if you and if you're saying, I'm so sorry, today is a day I'm going to be with my family. I'm so sorry. I don't have capacity, you know, I'm so sorry. I'm going to have to sign post you to someone else. I feel terrible. I really can't manage it, and I'm also rubbish at knowing when to put my phone away. And yes, and that, I mean, there are some people who are so good and you, you send them an Instagram message, and it pings back, so sorry, don't reply to direct messages. And these are the most empathic people in the world of lactation support, but they ping back. Don't reply to direct messages. Here's this, here's this, here's that sign post here. And we're like, Wow, am I aura of those people, because you've got to get there in the end, otherwise, you know, you don't survive. Yeah. So we, you and I both have got a bit of work to do around this. I think especially when you've you've got to worry about your young family too. 

Olivia Hinge  04:10

Yeah, that's it. And also, you know, I'm already awful with DMS from people. I'm answering so many DMS, and I sort of think, hang on a minute. What's who's important here, my children poodling around around me, and I'm worrying about someone, DM and stuff. It's it's difficult this balance, this balance to be found isn't there. But I suppose the reason so many of us do this job is because we are big on empathy and we want to help, and we have that, yeah, this balance, 

Emma Pickett  04:35

yeah, I haven't found it yet. I talked to Wendy Jones on the podcast a few weeks ago, and she never got it is interesting. She actually told a story about how she realized, after the fact, how her children had felt they'd sort of missed out a little bit that her she'd always had half an eye on her phone and and, you know, she's a fantastic mother, and I'm sure she won't mind me saying that, but. Yeah, for her to note, for her kids to be have been aware of that is a little bit of a reminder. Now, I'm quite lucky in that smartphones came in. Well, I'd already been parenting for a few years. It wasn't common to have a smartphone when my kids were really small, but you are parenting little, little people in that smartphone era. Yes, and at the risk of sounding like your mum, you're good at putting your phone away. When you need to put your phone away, how are you getting on with that? 

Olivia Hinge  05:25

It has to be put away. So it has to be getting out the house. I don't look so much at my phone at all, and I'm very good at getting out the house. I'm not very good at being in the house. So that works that every day it's like, right? Come rain or shine, let's go out and the phone is away at home. I do find small children a little bit monotonous.

Emma Pickett  05:46

Thank you for being honest.

Olivia Hinge  05:49

So the temptation is, if I'm home to pick up my phone, but with a, you know, my youngest is coming up 18 months, so it's there are nap times where I get stuff done, so there can be balance with age and sleeps and things like that as well. 

Emma Pickett  06:02

Yeah, yeah. Do you have so you are saving it for nap time? Do you think right half an hour a day on Instagram? Or a bit more informal than that? 

Olivia Hinge  06:09

You just pick a bit more informal. I'm so disorganized and everything. Everything is completely as it happens. Nothing is planned very well for me.

Emma Pickett  06:18

And I think sometimes that's how natural to embrace feeling happens, because you just keep going with the flow. I mean, someone said to me, you know, the people at Karen breastfeeding, the people can't be bothered to stop. And I'm like, Yeah, fantastic. Why not? 

Olivia Hinge  06:29

That's 100% me. I don't have the energy or the enthusiasm to make changes. Literally, today, it's working for us, so let's do another day.

Emma Pickett  06:38

Yeah, absolutely not to say that you wouldn't want to another day anyway, but yeah, I think quite often it's the people who just happy, just to go day by day, are the people who literally just end up, yeah, someday, some days, without realizing,

Olivia Hinge  06:50

Oh, I absolutely hate this, and that's also okay. It's okay to I'm not enjoying it today. It's not working for us today, but I know come eight o'clock, it will work for us because it will get them to sleep much more quickly than anything else. 

Emma Pickett  07:03

Yeah, 100% Well, I'm looking forward to diving into the natural term breastfeeding conversation, but before we do that, let me ask some boring, practical questions. So your NHS midwife is that in a hospital doing births?

Olivia Hinge  07:14

Yeah, I'm, I've, I mean, I've been all over, but currently I'm working on a high risk labor ward, in a fairly big hospital in South London, 

Emma Pickett  07:24

okay? And is that night shifts and all the time? Or are you managing?

Olivia Hinge  07:29

I feel very lucky. The trust I work at with childcare or carer responsibilities, they give us set shifts. And sort of night shifts just wouldn't work in terms of childcare, because my husband leaves for work very early in the morning. So I'm very lucky that I have sex shifts in the week, and then I do some long days on the weekends. Okay, oh, that's lucky. Okay, yeah, I do feel very lucky.

Emma Pickett  07:51

So you've been able to carry on doing the sort of co sleeping, nighttime breastfeeding thing, 

Olivia Hinge  07:55

yes, because that really was a thing. I used to be a community midwife, and I'd be on call for home births, which I love, pre kids, it was like the dream. But then the thought of my phone going off at 130 in the morning, waking me up, and my co sleeping, breast sleeping child next to me and me going, Okay, bye, at silly o'clock in the morning, it was I just couldn't fathom it. I felt so distressed and upset at the very thought of it that I actually, that's what I said. Actually, I think I'll, I think I need to go back into the hospital and not do on calls. And the only real job that was going around at the time was with the infant feeding team. So I was bit like, those hours sound really nice. I could, I could make my hours what I want them to be. Let's try a nine to five. I'd never done a nine to five job like that, and that was where my skills that I had learned. I was doing it for the lactation consultant course at the time, but actually working under a particularly amazing and inspiring lactation consultant who is the lead for the infant feeding team is where my actual skills were cemented because you can learn all the theory in the world, and as a midwife, you get your clinical hours supporting breastfeeding. But it was actually working under the infant feeding Team Lead who who really taught me loads, and my skills were cemented with that, 

Emma Pickett  09:16

yeah, oh, I'm glad that happened, because we get to have you in the infant feeding world, and posting and writing as you are. So, so you became a lactation consultant. You did the course. Was that the breastfeeding London course that you did? Yes, yeah. So, so you did that course. You then did the exam, and you've recertified quite recently. 

Olivia Hinge  09:35

Presumably, I'm meant to recertify in about a month. I think. 

Emma Pickett  09:38

Okay, so the joy of counting up all your SERPs and all that, all that fun fingers cross auditing doesn't happen, although I think it's not as painful as it seems. I think you'll be absolutely fine. You'll have tons of hours, and you'll be laughed Yeah. And writing a book also gives you a chunk of hours as well, does it? Yeah? So tell us a bit more about the book. First of all, how the hell did you have time to write that?

Olivia Hinge  09:58

Oh, do you know? But it was a it. Been an absolute. It was a passionate joy. So I'd been approached initially, when I was pregnant with my third child, and the publisher was very much. They had an idea of what they wanted, and I had an idea. I mean, I'd never thought about writing a book, but, you know, oh, suddenly my imagination ran with it, and they very much wanted just a breastfeeding book. And I was like, Do you know what I think actually, if I was to write a book, I really want it to be about all types of milk feeds, because I've always felt very passionately about antenatal education, for example, that we're not just going to talk about vaginal birth without an epidural. But you know, some some antenatal providers get some flack for just promoting one type of birth. And we know birth and feeding can be unpredictable. I think it's really important that we have all the knowledge. And they just wanted breastfeeding. And I said, Okay, well, it sort of pitter patted out we weren't agreeing on what we'd wanted. And then yellow kite approached me, when the baby was about three or four months old, and said, you know, have you thought about it? And I immediately said, Yes, but I want it to be this, and this is what I want. So I don't know how the had, how I had the confidence, but I was like, this is what I'd like it to be. And they said, Perfect, that's what we'd like to Oh, okay, buy me. And then the next thing was being realistic with the time frame we we'd moved house, and we're doing a massive house renovation, and obviously had the third baby and yada yada. So it was all about being I can be a bit hyper focused and things, but I had to be realistic. How, you know, the quality of this had to be good, and it couldn't, you know, I couldn't Bosh it out in three months like I thought I could. I had to be realistic. And so it just came from there. And every nap time, I sat, breastfed the baby to sleep, and with one finger, held him, and with one finger, typed away.

Emma Pickett  11:47

How long did it take to start? 

Olivia Hinge  11:49

I think it's about nine months that first converse, that first conversation, and it being submitted. Yeah. I mean, there were times where I thought, bloody hell, I've been enough more than I can chew here. But it did, you know, these things do just get done, because you have to, 

Emma Pickett  12:04

yeah, and if it's in your soul, it's not like someone's asking about, you know, looking after roses or something. I mean, you are living, you are literally breastfeeding while you're writing it and and you exactly feel for so long. So it just kind of pours out when it's 

Olivia Hinge  12:18

and I was holding this, holding a small child who I was, you know, breastfeeding, literally breastfeeding, as I wrote it so and the emotions of all of that. And I think it all started me becoming a lactation consultant, with the challenges I had with my first child. And in fact, what I think one of the it was you and Lucy Weber and Catherine Stagg, who I suddenly discovered on Instagram. And I was like, Who are these women? They are incredible. Like this. You just gave me the fire. I was just ignited of I'm a midwife, and I don't have a clue, and you're UNICEF. Sorry, I'm fangirling you now. You're UNICEF. You know the chasing the intervals,

Emma Pickett  12:56

oh yes, the dangerous obsession, slightly loaded the title of that with the infant feeding interval. 

Olivia Hinge  13:04

And I remember reading that and being like, This is it? This is what I've always felt in my gut, that actually, yeah, feeding responsibly is so important for XYZ reasons. But you know, with my first I was being fed this whole rhetoric of rubbish about, you know, three hourly feeds, yada yada, that's going to help them sleep and all the rest of it. And of course, I have since found out that's all rubbish. But yeah, your information on that really, that really gave me the fire. So I thought, Wow, if I can write, yeah, it really was. And I thought, if I can, if I can write something that can have as much of an impact as the stuff that I read from, you know, some of my favorite lactation consultants on online. I thought, you know, I'm sure that that could help someone. But as you were saying before, the whole Amy Brown thing about sort of lactation, grief and trauma, I see that day in, day out at work, people having their second or their third baby and sort of going, Oh, I know, you know. I know this isn't going to work. It's never worked for me before, and it's actually just these tiny little bits of information that they need, can totally transform their experience. And whether that's be that they they do need to combination feed because perhaps, you know, they have insufficient glandular tissue or something like that, but empowering them with the knowledge to say, actually, perhaps this is why, and this is how we can make combination feeding work really well for you. Yeah, can really transform things, and actually, you can go on to natural term weaning if you have Combi fed. Yeah, I think that's a scent. Yeah, that's something that's a real that's not understood or believed by many people, that if you give some formula, that doesn't mean that you're never going to exclusively breastfeed, nor that you're going to finish breastfeeding before you thought you wanted to 

Emma Pickett  14:41

Yeah, yep. So that brings to mind a mum that contributed to my book, the breast book. I've got some chapters in the end of that book about people just talking about the relationship with their breasts. And there's a mum called Philippa who has been blind since birth. That's not relevant to this story, but it's interesting. And she had hyperplasia, and her. That ended up having an operation. No one really talked to her about what insufficient gland tissue was or or how her breast shaped. My impact on her breastfeeding. She spent a long time combination feeding, but did end up exclusively breastfeeding in the end, as you know, as solids happened, and as you know, their children were less dependent on her milk supply, she ended up exclusively breastfeeding and breastfeeding toddlers and going forward and, and, yeah, I think that's a really important message, that combination feeding is not closing any doors for lots of people. It can empower and facilitate and and make breastfeeding happen and, and so the title of your book is a judgment free guide to feeding your baby boob bottle. And all is that was that title that you decided on? 

Olivia Hinge  15:42

No, I wanted to call it the milk manual. But they said, Well, why don't you sort of pitch more and sell actually, that it's, you know, you can feed your baby actually how you wish. And you know, support should be for all. And I was like, Okay, what do you suggest?

Emma Pickett  15:59

Okay, okay. I mean, judgment free is a nice phrase, isn't it? Because, yeah, actually, I think that that book will be picked up by people who are in that space of, oh, I'm going to give breastfeeding a go. Which week they're not going to pick up the positive breastfeeding book. Some of those people, some and I love the positive breastfeeding book. I contributed to it. But lots of people be like, Oh, that's that's jinxing it, picking up that one, but this one, everybody's going to feel they can pick up this book.

Olivia Hinge  16:25

Yeah, hopefully, hopefully. And it's all about this. It feels like if you don't exclusively breastfeed, you're not welcome to get support. And I, you know, with like, bottle feeding, combination feeding, and that really, that really frustrates and upsets me. I know that we're short in terms of NHS support, in terms of time, and it's called a breastfeeding clinic and things like that. But, you know, somebody who hasn't been, you know, there are some people who genuinely cannot breastfeed for whatever reason, you know, medications and stuff like that. But, yeah, I feel they should get, they should have equal support. You know, saying we shouldn't be teaching people how to prepare formula milk as a group. I just, anyway,

Emma Pickett  17:05

yeah, so that's, that's the the WHO guidance, isn't it? So the, yeah, so the Who Code, and therefore the baby friendly guidance talks about how antenatally group discussion of formula preparation is not officially recommended. And I think you're going to be contrary to the who code if you officially do that, but you can give one to one information. I mean, I think the thinking around that is something about people not retaining information, but it's also realistically, there's also something going on there about, you know, normalizing it and promoting formula use as the norm, and in a group setting, are we creating a culture where formula feedings the default? I don't. I mean, what do you think's going on there? What's the intention behind it? 

Olivia Hinge  17:48

Well, I mean, I agree with what you're saying. I think that's what their belief. But what I don't think that's factoring in is the capacity on a postnatal ward. It's meant to be once you're going to be discharged in your formula feeding, then it should be taught to you one to one. I mean, people can't even get breastfeeding support, let alone being taken to a room to learn how to safely prepare formula. I also think if more people are shown how formula feeding should be done, possibly less people would do it, because it's not as simple as boiling a kettle, pouring out water to cool and then just shaking some powder into it, if you're doing it properly, this the safest way. It's much more involved than people think. And I certainly don't think it's the easy option, as it's betrayed. And I kind of don't think, I think it's slightly insulting to women to see, is it monkey see? Monkey do? I don't, yeah. I think people can be shown. I think if more people were shown, actually, this is how we truly recommend formula should be made, which many formula feeding parents actually have never seen, because they've done their own thing, because they're just copying what family and friends do. That's how they've always seen it being made. I think they might go, oh, blimey. Okay, so in the middle of the night, maybe it is easier just to put the baby to the breast of breastfeed overnight. 

Emma Pickett  19:02

Yeah, no, that's no, no. I understand that point. That makes sense. And those little machines that everyone's buying where you get that shot of boiling water, I think you know, everybody who's studying it and doing the, you know, proper research is realizing that is not enough, that is not enough to kill the bacteria in powder. I think so many parents assume, if you're buying a bunch of stage one formula for newborns, of course, it's sterile. Why wouldn't it be sterile? Why would that pattern not be sterile? But a, it's not sterile in manufacture. And B, the minute you open the tin, it's, you know, bacteria is going to love it. It's a great environment for bacteria. So we just have to be so careful and and sadly, these little machines that give you a little blodge of hot water is just not doing the job and you can't then top it up with cold water and expect all the bacteria to be killed. No, I think, yeah, understand what you're saying. I mean, that that point you made just then about how you know when you're on a busy postnatal award, you know, I don't want this to be a sob, sob story of how rough things are at the moment in the NHS. But, I mean, I have a cousin who's a midwife in st. Development center of London, and she talks about how, you know, if you have 5c section mums that day, you are absolutely spinning plates. You know, the chance of being able to talk to someone about breastfeeding is so minimal. I mean, what are things like at the moment? How are you feeling? We're just, we're just recording this. You know, coming up to an election, an election will have been all done by the time this goes out, who knows what the story will be? What do you think needs to happen and how bad are things at the moment? 

Olivia Hinge  20:26

I mean, recently, the birth trauma report has come out, and they've made recommendations. I mean, that was a shocking read that I'm sort of thinking, Wow. I cannot believe these people's experiences are actually happening. It's the sort of thing you read, and you want to be like, no that could never, no one would ever speak to somebody in that way. But of course, they are, and I find that, you know, shocking and appalling. And I look at my colleagues and I think, I don't think any of you would ever do this. But that's not to dismiss people's experiences. These things are happening, but the recommendations that they give at the end of that are the same recommendations that we're giving, given from so many reports, so many investigations into maternity services, and still, then nothing's happening. Nothing's coming of it, you know? So, yeah, it's pretty bleak in terms of, I know that some of my colleagues felt quite sort of attacked by some of these reports. You know that they're perceiving. It's all the midwives fault. I didn't see that. I see a lot of it was always identified as staffing, like you've said with your cousin, if you've got high risk, one of the sayings we have when we do training is that the birthing people now are not the birthing people who would have been many, many years ago. We've got people with much more complex medical histories, and we are putting lots of energy into reducing risk for them with our antenatal education. But what are we not then factoring in is that they need additional lactation support. We know that things like gestational diabetes, type two diabetes, so many of these things thyroid, if your thyroid is hyper or hypo in its activity, we know that that can have a massive impact on our ability to make milk. You know,

Emma Pickett  22:05

how many people don't know that? Olivia, it drives me bananas. I literally had a conversation this morning at breastfeeding support group with a mum who was struggling and no one had ever mentioned thyroid and breastfeeding to her, Oh, thyroid is the most and postpartum thyroiditis is not rare. It's more common than tongue tie. But yet, the number of people who are struggling with supply issues in like week four, week five, and it turns out it was thyroid, and no one's even thought about that. 

Olivia Hinge  22:31

Yeah, not discussed. Or you go to your GP and say, It's been suggested, you know, someone said this could be why my milk supplies is not where we'd expect it to be. No, no, no, we won't do blood tests for that, you know, no, because I think a lot of the time the GP doesn't, perhaps have the knowledge themselves around infant feeding to be able to go, oh yeah, that's a really good plan. That's, let's look into that. And we do lots. We look after these people and give them great care. And pregnancy we have, you know, policies and all the rest of it. But postnatally, no one's going. Should we check your thyroid function, maybe. Or, you know, should we continue the Metformin if you've taken that to conceive with polycystic ovaries, no one's giving lactation a thought at the end of the day once we've had the baby. And of course, we know that that our ability to feed our children with our whatever our intention was, is something that really impacts and our self belief of ourselves as parents. We've got soaring rates of postnatal depression and anxiety. Is some of that that we're not being you know, the whole fed is best thing. 

Emma Pickett  23:31

I Oh, well, I think we can both agree that's definitely what's happening, and impact on children as well, and impact on children's health, and what we see, you know, 10 years later, I mean, there's just so we're in a so you were in a pickle, but the reports coming out pickle. How are, how are, how are your colleagues doing mentally? I mean, what's happening with Are you seeing lots of dropout rates and people you thought were going to be here forever, just not hanging on,

Olivia Hinge  23:55

just not hanging on, just not it's, it's, it's relentless. Particularly, I think I feel for my colleagues who are newly qualified, you tend to have to work quite close to full time hours to get a position as a failing newly qualified midwife, because you need to get the experience quite quickly under your belt. You're working two night shifts. You know, you go to bed at 8am 9am but you're expected to be at work the next morning, at 8am How are you meant to sleep after a night shift and then sleep that night to go and do a day shift? I really feel for them. It's absolutely exhausting. Newly qualified midwives are coming onto a ward. They're meant to be supernumerary, so they're meant to be not counted in the official number of midwives. And you know, they're suddenly being like, there's someone okay. They're a low risk person birthing in that room. You go and do that, and I'll support you from afar. When actually that we should be working? Is it? You know, it's just, there's not the number of midwives. 

Emma Pickett  24:48

So student midwives are doing more than they should be. Is that what you're saying? 

Olivia Hinge  24:51

Newly qualified midwives. 

Emma Pickett  24:52

Sorry, newly qualified. Okay, yeah.

Olivia Hinge  24:53

So, you know, sometimes they're not getting those initial two weeks of supported care, things like that. We've got lots of. Of agency midwives, who can be great and but they don't know the hospital policies. They can't always give drugs. You know, it's, there's lots, there's just, it's just a really, it feels sort of, you walk onto the ward and it's like, what am I going to walk into and face today? Yeah, yeah. You just don't, you just don't know.

Emma Pickett  25:18

And I guess in that situation, breastfeeding support feels like a luxury if you've got the time to really sit with someone that's that's just wow. What a great opportunity, rather than it being the bog standard, which it should be, 

Olivia Hinge  25:29

because we do inevitably provide one to one care for people who are laboring, because that's, that's actually, that's essential. But yes, you're right in that saying that actually perhaps, Are they pulling someone from the postnatal ward? Or, yeah, providing decent breastfeeding support is something that isn't life critical, or one to one care, that sort of thing, and it makes you understand why sort of so my big thing is the golden hours that they your baby really needs to be left undisturbed, skin to skin following birth as possible. If everybody is, well, I just, I don't have research in this, but I just, in my clinical experience of what is it, 1312, 13 years as a midwife, you disturb that baby from that clunk, clunk, clunk. Of all those GPS sort of experiences of their hands, touching their smelling, they're licking at the breast, we disturbed them to just quickly weigh them, and that's it. They shut down and they go into that deep sleep, and we miss that opportunity for that very first feed. But I understand why the midwife is wanting to very quickly. I'm just going to quickly wear your baby or check your baby because they're under pressure to move the person to the postnatal ward because they've got another laborer. You know, it's we're caught between a rock and a hard place. And I think that for so many midwives, is part of why we burn out is because we have so much more in us to give to families and we desperately want to. And you walk away from the shift and you think I did not provide the care that I wanted to today because I didn't have the capacity, in terms of, I haven't been given the circumstances to be able to do that, and that's soul destroying,

Emma Pickett  27:02

yeah, yeah. I mean literally soul destroying to the extent that, you know, the horrible comments that you read about in reports, that's not an evil person. That's not someone who went into Midwifery, you know, with little devil horns, intending to make people's lives miserable. That is somebody who just is at Breaking Point and made a horrible mistake and, you know was unkind, and that that isn't who they are, that's just someone who's the victim of a system. I mean, even the absolute worst comments come from that place. In terms of the people you're seeing qualifying now, where are we with training around infant feeding? Are people much more likely to get better quality training now than perhaps when you qualified? What was your training like? If you don't mind me asking, 

Olivia Hinge  27:41

I can't, to be honest, I can't remember the breastfeeding training. A lot of my knowledge around breastfeeding, I'd always found it as an interest. So I'd always sort of enjoyed reading, like, Instagram accounts, stuff like that. But a lot of it came from my mentors. What my mentors, actual knowledge base was very variable. And there's things now I look back at and I think, Gosh, sorry I wasn't giving the best advice, because I just somebody else said it, so I just rabbited it.

Emma Pickett  28:09

Yeah, the whole classic, you know, 10 minutes on one side stuff,

Emma Pickett  28:13

yeah, always stay on one side. I mean, we get these nuggets that you can just hear of, you know, gone down through the generations, and someone hired it from their, you know, senior midwife colleague, and someone heard it from theirs. I mean, I'm not saying that's the default by any means. You know, you don't you get lots of fantastic midwife advice. But, you know, I'm working North London and Haringey and and I still occasionally hear a little nugget and think, Okay, I wonder how many people have been told that one? 

Olivia Hinge  28:39

Well, the thing is, your mentor. This is what your mentor says to women, and your mentor is the person that's going to sign you off to say you're competent. So if you turn around and say something to the contrary of what she says, she's going to be like, Well, excuse me, I'm the qualified midwife here. This is what I say. So unless you say the same, isn't, you know, and we do. When people join the trust that I work in they have a two I think it's two days of whole infant feeding training, and it's excellent. It's really high quality. But what we're trained to do and what actually happens clinically can sometimes be, you know, your time short. We all know the benefits, for example, of laid back feeding, beautiful. Lie back, let the baby be face down, tummy, down onto you and let their instincts work them to get the best latch. But that can sometimes take a little bit longer than he go. Just sit up, pop you up with some pillows, and you put your baby to the breast. Oh, I'll give you a helping hand. Bosh, oh, baby's on. Okay, now you go home and you don't know how to do this, because I've done it for you, but that midwife is gone. I needed to see that baby feed because I only had five minutes with this family. And unless we get that baby on, I can't guarantee that someone will help them. 

Emma Pickett  29:48

Yeah, and five minutes of self attaching in a lay back position is not going, necessarily going to be when the milk transfer starts to happen exactly. 

Olivia Hinge  29:55

And sometimes it does take them time to get there and to bob around enough to get their tongue in the right position. Position, whereas the midwife desperately wants to see them feed because she's not sure. Like you said, she's got five. She knows that the elective Cesareans, the planned caesarians, are going to be stuck rolling in from theater soon. So she knows this is my time. I've got the time now. I've got this tiny nugget of window nugget of window nugget. We know what you mean. 

Emma Pickett  30:19

We've got both so, so so we've got, obviously, not enough people, too many, you know, too many people giving birth with not enough midwife support, not enough continuity of care, all the dream stuff not yet happening, or infant feeding not being prioritized, yeah. So it comes down to cash, but it doesn't really matter about cash if someone doesn't think breastfeeding is important. I mean, if Yeah, so we've so what do we need to, you know, with your here's your magic wand. What do we need to change in terms of the setup in a hospital, and also in terms of the training people are getting?

Olivia Hinge  30:51

We so we all have to do NHS workers, everyone from a ward clerk to a porter to a nurse to a midwife. We all have to do dementia training because we work in a hospital and we may encounter somebody who is experiencing dementia, so we have to learn how to help them. But similarly, all these people could encounter a breastfeeding mother, and for some reason, if someone in a healthcare setting, even if they're not clinical, their comments can have a massive impact on breastfeeding families. The Porter says something about, oh, you know, breastfeeding a two year old when they're being bought up from recovery after an operation, for example, I would love to see every single person in a hospital have to do, also do mandatory training on breastfeeding every year. Yeah, like we do dementia training. 

Emma Pickett  31:37

That should be, that shouldn't feel like a difficult ask. Should it? I mean it, in some ways, it feels pie in the sky, but it really shouldn't. I mean, what can be more, infiltrating

Olivia Hinge  31:46

little grassroot trickling up of actually breastfeeding a two year old is normal. It is beneficial. That's what I would love to see. And my big, okay, so my real pie in the sky. So we have, per sort of 1000 births a hospital does a year, you are allocated X number of midwives. I would love to see per number of births a year, 1000 births a year, X number of ibclcs,

Emma Pickett  32:12

yeah, and that's happening in the States. I mean, that's one of the reasons that America, despite its shockingly appalling, you know, maternity leave and and know who code, and people being given formula samples in hospital and all the rest of it, receiving breastfeeding rates than us with our amazing maternity leave. And, you know, know who code, you know, samples being given, etc, we, you know, because it's absolutely bog standard to have a lactation consultant hospital, you know, they're talking about, you know, 2.5 per X number of births. And one, you know, 1.5 posts. I think if you said to a hospital, you know, how many lactation consultants, you know, per 1000 births in this hospital, people would look at you like you'd, you know, ask them if they'd paint their faces green. It just isn't the language, no.

Olivia Hinge  32:57

And to be an infant feeding team lead, being a lactation consultant ibclc is desirable, not essential, for lots of trusts. I think also, we should point out that, you know, midwives can provide exceptionally brilliant, normal breastfeeding support. So we know, as midwives, we are the experts of normal So if, for example, somebody started to get high blood pressure, or there was anything sort of their funder, so the measurement of their tummy, of their bump was low. We would then go, hang on a minute. This isn't following the path of normal. I need to refer on to my obstetric team, or, if you've got pelvic girdle pain, to my physiotherapy team. We work as a multidisciplinary team. But then with breastfeeding, it's like, Okay, so I've exhausted the normal, which is positioning an attachment, for example, where can I refer on to? Oh, I don't have a tongue tie service, for example, to refer on to. I don't have an easily accessible self referral place to refer this family to when they're facing problems. So midwives are left sort of going, I don't really know what else to do here, like the latch look that's why so many people are told, well, the latch looks good, so the pain, you just got to suck it up, when actually, there's so much more that we can do lactate. I know, as a midwife and a lactation consultant, a lactation consultant has loads more knowledge, because we've studied for it. It's not to say that midwives aren't good at feeding support. It's the difference between a midwife and an obstetrician, Yeah, but you're like the obstetrician of infinity, yeah.

Emma Pickett  34:21

I mean, one of the things I sometimes see in hospitals in the UK is when a midwife gets stuck, they're signposting to a peer support service, and that's where the signposting is going. And actually, the peer support service is more normal. I mean, you know more, as in, lots more. You know, more time, more people, more you know, effort. It's not specialism. It's not, you know, it's not going to people who are going to give you that more of an expert view. I mean, peer supporters absolutely hold up breastfeeding in the UK and are so essential, 

Olivia Hinge  34:50

and how frustrating that they're all volunteering, yeah? Something that's so important, and we're not even saying, Do you know what you're doing, something amazing. Let's pay you for your time.

Emma Pickett  34:59

Yeah? Yeah. I mean, I'm lucky that I live in a borough where we have got some paid peer support posts, and in North London, the breastfeeding network has got some commissioned services in different boroughs where we are getting more paid positions. But it's such a difficult space, because I think I'm just sometimes I'm a little bit worried that when we do have a peer support service in hospital, it may possibly de skill midwives. If midwives think, ah, today's Monday, I know we're going to have the peer support team in place. I don't have to have any conversations about breastfeeding. You know, six months of that, and then what happens at the end, the next time the midwife has to have a conversation about positioning, attachment?

Olivia Hinge  35:35

Really, really good point. And I don't know how we, one of the hospitals I've worked in we did the whole Well, if you you do your normal bit, and if something isn't working, or something still hasn't remedied, then the infant feeding team would come in. But as you say, a peer supporter, how much more skilled they are than an experienced postnatal midwife. I'm not sure community midwives can be really amazing in their infant feeding support, but it's, you know, you could have a newly qualified midwife in the community who has to make decisions there and then, because she's on her own, she can't walk out the door and have a chat with her colleagues, and that's why the baby looks a little bit yellow, or you're a bit nervous, you're not quite sure, why don't you just give a little formula top up? Yeah, just a little one, just to make sure, just to flush it.

Emma Pickett  36:23

Who knows? It's a nice round number. This let us give 30 mils at every feed. Yeah, it's just that. Say belt and braces. 

Olivia Hinge  36:28

Yeah, I understand why they do. I do totally understand that. And maybe even I said it. I don't think I did, but maybe I did, because I get the rationale behind that. Nervous midwives thought that, or maybe they've had a bad experience of a baby they thought was feeding really well. The baby comes to be weighed and has lost a huge amount of weight and has readmitted, and it's really shocked and scared them and knocked their confidence. When you then have a conversation with them and you debrief with the midwife, it's sort of like, what sort of birth was it? Oh, it was a very, very long induction with hours and hours of epidural, you know, three or four liters of IV fluid. And when you explain to them, actually, maybe the mother, there was an inflated birth weight because of the IV fluid, lots of it, maybe the baby actually, the feeding wasn't going that badly. And you were right. The big weight loss is that the babies weed out all of that water log sensation that they've had by the mother having all that IV fluid and labor, and then they sort of go, ah, but we don't we. We don't also have the capacity for the infant feeding debriefing that we'd love to offer our colleagues. 

Emma Pickett  37:29

Yeah, 

Emma Pickett  37:32

A little advert just to say that you can buy my four books online. You've Got It In You, a positive guide to breastfeeding is 99p as an e book, and that's aimed at expectant and new parents. The Breast Book published by Pinter Martin 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 my last two books are 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 MMPE10, Makes Milk Pickett Emma 10. Thanks. 

Emma Pickett  38:18

Yeah. I mean, that's a good point about the traumatic experience of the midwife realizing, oh my god, this baby's had dry nappies and hasn't pooed for five days, and I've got to send them to a and e sticking in that that's going to really stick in your mind, and that is going to influence the choices that you encourage people to make next time. And that debriefing, not just debriefing after a difficult experience for the family, but debriefing about your own breastfeeding experience. Or, you know, you're you're 24 you're a new midwife. What do you know about breastfeeding? I mean, the baby friendly training, although it's done a huge amount of good in the UK, has got some gaps. And we'll talk in a minute about gaps when it comes to natural term breastfeeding, but also the debriefing gap. You know, people have, they're 24 they haven't breastfed themselves, maybe, but their sister had a terrible time and breastfed for a week. Or, you know, their best friends have really struggled, and there's so little, you know, let's think about what you think of breastfeeding. Where do your ideas come from? What kind of culture you're sitting in? 

Olivia Hinge  39:14

You know, is it your normal seeing somebody that you love and care for struggling in the emotion that I tell you, the emotion of feeding a baby absolutely knocked me for six of my first child, despite being a midwife and having this knowledge, but watching a loved one suffer through that can really, really leave you with that deep ache of, I don't want anyone else to experience that. And you know, my sister or whoever, actually going to Combi feeding or completely stopping breastfeeding and giving formula resolve that for her, and you can sometimes, like you've said, Jump Jump to suggesting things because of past experience that perhaps isn't the most evidence based or the best thing for that family. Letting go of our own baggage is so important. 

Emma Pickett  39:56

Yeah. How long had you been a midwife when you started your family?

Olivia Hinge  40:00

Me, My eldest is eight, and I've been so five years, okay, plus three years as a student.

Emma Pickett  40:05

And how did it change how you worked? 

Olivia Hinge  40:08

Oh, in a million ways about that, but the emotional, the defensiveness that I had in pregnancy. Oh, I'll try to breastfeed, you know, if it doesn't work, you know? Yeah, because it's that, it's that cognitive distance is distancing myself from something I desperately want to do. I desperately want to do. I knew that then I didn't have the birth that I wanted. It wasn't traumatic, it was just hugely disappointing, and it was through no one's fault. I did all the right things, and this just happened. And so I sort of thought, right, I haven't got the birth I wanted. I felt like I'd sort of failed at that. I was not going to fail at breastfeeding. And I think I faced every bloody problem you could get with breastfeeding. So navigating the system, I was incredibly lucky that I could afford to see a private ibclc who was also a tongue tied practitioner. I was so lucky that I could afford that and even knew what that was. So yeah, for me, it's this murky area of nearly driving yourself completely nuts trying to establish breastfeeding, that point where you sort of think is this actually benefiting me or the baby anymore? But I did. I did get there. I did get there in the end, I don't know what was I was told to triple feed, and I just totally ignored that advice, like, I can't imagine doing that now. I was just like, No, I'm not doing that. But

Emma Pickett  41:33

someone was worried about weight gain, and you were like, Yeah, you I'm gonna get through this.

Olivia Hinge  41:37

I was like, I don't need to do that. I'm just gonna keep putting the baby to the breast. So, yeah, she she fed probably 2025, times a day until she was about a year. It meant you made it work. Yeah, she was a very, just a high needs baby, and being at the breast was a regulation tool, I think. Yeah. So there was, there was lots, lots about my first feeding experience, but I also learned that the huge resilience, determination and stubbornness, actually, for me, was a really big part of establishing breastfeeding and support around me My family. Breastfeeding was quite normal for my family and my husband was hugely supportive, and that that, for me, was actually key in the not not giving up when I found it desperately hard. 

Emma Pickett  42:26

Yeah, I've had some conversations on the podcast over the last year or so, and realized that it is supportive people around you, whether that's partner or family or whatever, but it there's also just something about people who are bloody minded. Yeah, I'm thinking of Tracy, the lovely mum who breastfed her triplets and ended up exclusively breastfeeding her triplets. She can't even rationalize where that came from, that desire just to make it inspiration. Just wasn't going to not do it. She was not going to allow herself to not do it. 

Olivia Hinge  42:55

And your brain is working differently when you've just had a baby. It's not the brain I'm thinking here now, thinking, why didn't I triple feed when they told me to, I can't explain to you why I didn't. I just had this with breastfeeding, I actually allowed myself to trust my instinct, and with birth, I didn't. And I just, I just looked at the baby, and I thought, we're not looking at the baby, we're fixating on the wet, on the scales. I just felt we needed a really holistic look at everything and what was improving, not just the scales. The weight did eventually, you know, improve and do its own thing, but it just took a bit of time, and I just stubbornly felt strong in my intuition that it was going to be okay,

Emma Pickett  43:37

yeah, yeah. And so did you? Did you reach your feeling goals with first baby. 

Olivia Hinge  43:42

Yeah, I don't really have a feeding Yeah, I fed her. I fed her, and that was my initial goal, that I wanted to exclusively breastfeed her. I didn't know how long. I'd never thought how long for. I didn't really, I don't know. I didn't, I didn't really have a clue. I just couldn't, in a way, could. I couldn't see further than that day, because we'd had those struggles. And then we got to a year, and she still fed a lot, and I still really enjoyed it. It was that moment together. It felt intense because she needed to breastfeed a lot. That was her, her desire. And I then started to learn actually, she wants to continue, and I want to continue, but this has to be something we both enjoy the majority of the time. So I started to realize the importance of boundaries. 

Emma Pickett  44:27

Yeah, I love the way you talked about that. Actually, I think that was when I first got in touch with you about the podcast. I can't remember, but that you did a post about boundaries that I just loved, because you were just so down to earth about it. And I met somebody the other day who said, Oh, I don't like the word boundaries. It's it's too kind of clinical and modern, and it doesn't really respect the fact that we're enmeshed. And I thought, Oh no. I said this to her. I said, No, you if you don't have boundaries, one day, you go, f off. Just get off me. I can't mean that's how it ends. If you don't have boundaries. Got to you've got to find that space where you can look after both of you. Yes. So tell me about the journey you went through.

Olivia Hinge  45:06

I realized I'm actually really important here. I'm key. If I'm not happy, she's not going to get what she so desperately loves. So it was, it was just starting with, actually, no, you're not. She wanted to twiddle. Oh my goodness. And I just tolerated it because I'd read somewhere someone saying, Oh, it might be that she's trying to stimulate a letdown. And so I sort of thought, Oh, God, you know, I didn't have that milk.

Emma Pickett  45:30

It's natural. Olivia, it's natural. It's part of breastfeeding. It's what babies do and and it's all part, you know, it's all part. It's all signed up. You've signed up for breastfeeding, so you've got to sign up for the twiddling, yeah. 

Olivia Hinge  45:40

And I've signed up to actually, I'm happy for this to be ongoing. I meant to be easy, breezy, loosey goosey about this. And I suddenly thought, I'm absolutely hating this. This has to stop. So that was it. She had to stop twiddling. Otherwise she, you know, and she screamed and she roared, and I felt hugely guilty, so I let her continue. Oh, she's about 1314, months at this point, and I was suddenly like, I'm doing something wrong. She's breastfeeding more than she did as a newborn, which was a lot, and she wants to twiddle, and I'm doing it all wrong. And then I just sort of had this moment of clarity of, actually, no, she can be upset, you know? I'm taking, I'm, I'm stopping her for doing something she desperately wants to do. But crying is her only way of communicating, really, at that age, and I really hate this twiddling. It's going to be either stop the twiddling or stop the breastfeeding. 

Emma Pickett  46:32

Yeah, that's, that's what I hear a lot of people saying. I've heard that's what we ultimately boiled down to, yeah. People say to me, You know what? I'm, I'm actually going to wean because I can't work out how to stop the twiddling. That is, that's someone who desperately needs help. And actually what you said just then about how she absolutely has the right to be cross, I say that all the time. People say, oh, I want to wean gently. What does that mean to you? That means no tears. But actually, that sometimes happens, but it but if you really are struggling and you want to put boundaries in place. It may not always happen, and that is okay. You know, if your child says at three o'clock in the morning, you know, I want to go to Sainsbury's and buy some ice lollies, you're going to say, Honey, I'm so sorry. We're going to wait until the morning. You know, a three year old is going to be screaming their head off, and you'd be you'd have no hesitation in saying, No, sweetie, we're not driving to Sainsbury's to get ice lollies at three o'clock. Yeah. But for some reason, because it's breastfeeding, we feel like, you know, oh my god, they're upset. Yeah, exactly. I've got to sacrifice something. I failed. If they're sad, this is I'm being selfish. I'm not allowed to do behave like this. But if you don't look after yourself, you just won't end up breastfeeding in the same way. You'll stop. So if anyone's listening to this and you're struggling with twiddling, please don't let anyone tell you that it's natural and you have to put up with it, and it helps the let down. Because actually, I would even question the logic of it helping the let down, because you're gonna get it. There's no oxytocin from me, exactly. Oxytocin, lovely dose of stress hormone, a bit of adrenaline. That ain't happening, helping a letdown.

Olivia Hinge  48:00

No. So I held, I held her hand, and she for i I initially started, I think I bought a very expensive purple plastic nipple to stick onto my T shirt. She was not having any of that twiddle toys distraction. She looked at me like, What are you doing? I'm not in for any of that. So it ended up with actually holding her hand, which she didn't like. So I took her off, and she was absolutely livid with it, and I sat in health space for and I said, I know that you're sad and you're frustrated, but it's an absolute NO. If you want to go back on the breast, we don't do that. And despite being 14 months, she totally got it.

Emma Pickett  48:33

Yeah, and I think that's a really important message, because someone said to him the day, he's only three, so I'm not sure. No, no. At 10 months, I think even at nine months, you can start some of these conversations, and even if they don't understand what you're saying, there's a tone. And you absolutely can hold a hand. And certainly 1314, months, you know this is talking about children are pre verbal, children who may not even have the best understanding. You can put boundaries in place with a child of any age. 

Olivia Hinge  49:01

They understand when you're excited, when you're sad or when you're not impressed by something at sort of eight months old, I reckon. So she totally understood I was not impressed by that, and yes, she was upset, but she understood it stopped, and then we continued. And then the Night Waking just drove me absolutely potty, until one morning I woke up and I said, Well, that's, that's effing it. I'm not. I'm not. We're night weaning now, yeah,

Emma Pickett  49:24

so what were your nights like? You were just

Olivia Hinge  49:30

she had her own floor bed, so I'd start in my own bed, then go into her on a double bed in another room with the with my, my other two children, I've just kept them in our bed. I'm not jumping around in the middle of the night, but that worked for us with her, and it was just an all night boob bar, it was. And I was back at work by then, and and I just got to the point of just snapping. I'd had enough. I was exhausted. I'd wake in the morning tearful, just being like, I, you know, I. This just feels like it felt like I was flogging myself, like I was just like, Why? Why am I continuing to do this? Like this is I'm really I felt like it was really negatively impacting on me, and therefore me as a parent. I was tired, I was grumpy, and I didn't I didn't believe that I could so I had tried to sleep train her, because her suit was terrible. I'd lasted one night, and it's something that still left with me that I find very hard. It really wasn't the right choice for her as a child, nor me as a parent. It hadn't worked for us, and I found it hugely distressing. I found it very, very hard.

Emma Pickett  50:35

So this is some I don't want to poke around with this too much. Libby, this is tough, but this is someone telling you you need to leave her to cry. Is that what someone's advising? 

Olivia Hinge  50:43

Well, as with all these things, a bit like being told to triple feed, I made my own plans, but it was not feeding her. I stayed in the room and I rocked her and I cuddled her, but I withheld feeding from her.

Emma Pickett  50:55

And so you actually jumped to that, essentially from yes straight to nothing. 

Olivia Hinge  51:01

Yeah, at like, seven, eight months, I was told, you know, I was, I was sold on that, that if I didn't do this psychologically, she was going to fail academically, she was going to end, you know, all these, these horror things that you read. So, yeah, that really worried me. And I thought, Gosh, I'm negatively impacting. She's sleep deprived, and she's not going to develop normally. Educationally, she's going to be affected, sorry, a waking child. So I was, like, terrified of that, so I went ahead and tried to seek China that one night, and it was just, just not, not for us. But I understand why people do it. I totally got to that point. But then age two, I was like, I know that you understand boundaries, and this is going to be our next boundary, is that no booby at night, and I read her all the books and she got them, because sometimes she'd throw the book across the room and discuss,

Emma Pickett  51:49

I love that when people say, Yeah, I bought the weenie book and she's hidden it. It's underneath the sofa. I'm not going to be able to get there again,

Olivia Hinge  51:56

not having any of that. Yeah. But then I just one night was like, No. And again, it was just having to hold space. There was, there's no such thing with any of my kids with gentle night weaning in that they may not cry because they do cry. They're very, very upset. They want to be fed. And this is their norm. It's easy for them, but, um, she actually took to it really, really quickly, and she understood. And I was fairly fluid in that, you know, if they were unwell, we could resume feeding. I always felt like there's these, these rules, if you don't do this, it's awful. But at things like when I night wind, I continued to feed them to sleep, I was kind of led to believe that that was also something that you shouldn't be doing, whereas, actually, I think it's important to say you can make what you want. Of these boundaries, you can make what you want. Of all these rules, it's okay.

Emma Pickett  52:42

There are very few rules, actually, when you come down, yeah, just Just to add, if anyone's listening to this and thinking, my seven, eight month old is being damaged educationally by waking frequently, have listened to Lindsay hook way is a good place to go for information about normal sleep and and how. You know, little people can wake with every sleep cycle and be absolutely fine and not remotely sleep deprived. Doesn't mean that we are struggling, but they can be absolutely fine.

Olivia Hinge  53:08

I look at photos of me, then she's beaming and happy and I'm like, broken in the corner, absolutely no developmental issues at all there. 

Emma Pickett  53:15

Yeah, but a two. But you that key phrase you use when talking about her at two, she understood. That's the key thing, isn't it, that that does make night weaning a lot easier. So she understood the books. She understood explain to her why you needed to nightween. What kind of conversations are you having with her? Mummy's done.

Olivia Hinge  53:34

Mummy's cooked. Mummy is done. We need, you know, we need more time to play the next day. If mummy gets more seat we get to do more fun things. I think I probably bought her a toy that she didn't acknowledge or even ever play with, but that made me feel a little bit better about it, and that's that's okay. I did feel guilty about upsetting her, but again, we still enjoyed breastfeeding in the day. I then chose around two not to feed her outside the house, just because we can never get anything done. Constantly pouring up my top. And I was like, no, let's go out and actually explore and enjoy the world around as you know. And so then I carried on feeding her until I was pregnant with her sibling. So I think on her third birthday party, she sort of squeezed my boob and was like, it's gone. And I was about 14 weeks pregnant with her sibling?

Emma Pickett  54:21

Yeah. So yes, it's about 75% of people will dry up pretty much, either completely or partially or mostly during pregnancy. So, so, but I'm guessing, if she was not too bothered, she'd already been sort of scaling things down anyway. 

Olivia Hinge  54:36

If it wasn't I had been giving her a gentle it will I can't say that it was child led I, I did gently push her towards it. I have huge admiration for people who tandem feed, but I felt, I felt deeply for me that that wasn't going to be the right thing for me, and I'm pleased that I listened to myself with that. Actually, I think that allows me to be a better parent.

Emma Pickett  54:58

Yeah, well, in general. It sounds like you're very good at listening to yourself and knowing what you need to change and giving yourself permission to do that, which is

Olivia Hinge  55:05

That's it? Giving yourself permission, giving yourself permission. Yeah.

Emma Pickett  55:09

And then tell me about number two. How are things different, without feeling Jenny, how was it was your birth? A bit more? 

Olivia Hinge  55:15

Yeah, I had the dream birth of her. I had the dream. I had the very healing dream birth, and and she had a tongue tie, and it was but no supply issues at all. She had a tongue tie release. And I just knew, actually, my resilience on my first and all that I'd learned it was going to be okay, like I had that intuition with the birth. I just knew it was going to be good, and thank heavens, it was Yeah, and I continued to feed her again until I was I was pregnant, I night weaned her about two and a quarter, and with her, there was never, she probably wanted to twiddle, but there was never any entertainment, not even an option, okay. No, no, it wasn't. And I and with her, it was manners, if that's a better word for people, from very the very beginning. So she, I it was always, you're not happy. Should we go find granny? So with her, it was always, there was never any option to do these sorts of minxy things, so to speak. She never, she never twiddled. She never slapped. You know, when they go from boob to boob to boob, literally chopping and changing constantly. If she did that, I would always be like, Okay, we're done. You're you're sort of playing, and I don't enjoy that. So yeah, we didn't entertain that. And that, you know, I felt much happier and had less of the negative feelings with her than I did before. Every change with my first

Emma Pickett  56:35

and number one didn't show any interest in feeling again after baby was born. No, you're not interested. Not interested at all. And then, if I was asking you about what your night weaning methods are, what are you doing when you're night weaning? Let's think about night weaning number two, are you literally saying, write my love tonight. Boobies are sleeping. I mean, what are you doing?

Olivia Hinge  56:57

I'm not doing anything. I'm not doing too much. Thinking about it really. I'm sort of reading the books beforehand. I think that's more for me than them.

Emma Pickett  57:06

 Nurses when the sun shines, Sally wins from night nursing those good old Sally classic,

Olivia Hinge  57:12

those classics, yeah. And I'll be honest, none of them perfectly described our setup, yeah, and what our intention was, sometimes I ad libbed a little bit and made it more like what our setup was, and put our word for feeding in, but yeah, and then one night, I'd wake up in the morning and go, tonight's the night I'm done. I'm knackered.

Emma Pickett  57:32

So you, you were ready, you had to get to that mental place. Yeah, was your partner doing anything? Was Was anything changing? Physically? 

Olivia Hinge  57:40

He would, very much, he, he would do whatever I would ask of him, but no, I, I for me. That wasn't right. I had to go and respond to them. I wasn't I didn't feel like I could stop feeding them, and suddenly their whole night changed. I wanted just the feeding to change, but it was still me, yeah, and that just work for them as children.

Emma Pickett  58:01

That makes sense for me. And when I talk to families, I mean, I think unless there's something, you know, unusual going on that is ideal, we don't want the child to feel they're losing everything. So yeah, so you would say, tonight, my love, boobies are sleeping. I'll still help you get to sleep. I'll still give you cuddles.

Olivia Hinge  58:15

So I boob them, I'd still feed them to sleep, and then overnight, I would stick, try and stick with one phrase, but it never really worked. But I'd have in my mind something I would say, like, booby in the morning, booby in the morning, you know? And they would, they would scream and roar at me, slamming their fists on the bed, and they were old enough, but I felt very confident that this was huge frustration and anger, not distraught, what's going on? Yeah. Why is this happening? I felt very confident that they understood what was happening, and they were just really pissed off with me,

Emma Pickett  58:51

and they had the right to be pissed off, and that's, that's, yeah, no, that's something we can't take away from them. I mean, they have a human right to be pissed off, just as you have a human right to say, 

Olivia Hinge  59:00

No, I'm done just exactly. And I think with my second I felt very confident in this, that actually, by doing this was this was going to enable me to be able to breastfeed for longer, and that, I think ultimately, is what my children want. So yeah, I felt, yeah. 

Emma Pickett  59:15

How many days did you get the roaring, what was the typical? 

Olivia Hinge  59:18

I think about three or four. Okay, yeah. And then about a week, two weeks of waking and fumbling around, slapping my chest to me, going, No, no, go back to sleep. Now, they stayed in our bed, so that didn't change either. And then once I felt then actually, I feel quite lucky that both of them, they were over two, just over two, and I did it. Their waking actually dramatically reduced, very quickly. They still work two or three times a night, but just to come on, let's cuddle. Got them back to sleep?

Emma Pickett  59:46

Yeah, I'm glad that was your experience. You know that isn't everybody's experience, but it is a lot of people's experiences. If, if they've got the child who's breastfeeding, literally, with every sleep cycle quite often, the night weaning will help reduce. To that, that's pretty much what I had. Yeah, yeah. And then next pregnancy, and you was, did you have a similar experience where you didn't want to turn them feed? And yeah, really happened in pregnancy?

Olivia Hinge  1:00:11

Yep, exactly I was, I was bit. I was there was a lesser I had three and a half years during my first, my second, or three years during my second and my third. So I did feel a little bit guilty that My middle child breastfed for less time. I sort of had the assumption that I would feed the further children. I thought I feed them for longer. I don't know why. So she was about two and eight months, or two and nine months when I stopped feeding her. And she was very gracious. This is a good word. Yeah, she was very she was, she's always been a more intuitive child to emotion. And she, I think, understood more. And so she was, there was less. There was less. I don't know, she just, she just accepted it. She was like, Okay, it's done. I get it. And off she went. And of course, that made me feel hugely guilty. You know, the less protesting. I sort of thought, oh, gosh, maybe I should have done it for longer, but I found the nipple pain in pregnancy so painful and uncomfortable that it will was the right decision for me to stop, how I'm going to stop the third baby when there's definitely not going to be a fourth. 

Emma Pickett  1:01:18

So that was third who I've just seen just now. Yeah, yeah. I mean, do you have any thoughts? Are you thinking, let's just see what happens? Or what do you think? 

Olivia Hinge  1:01:26

No, no, no, the shop shut. No. You mean, have another child? 

Emma Pickett  1:01:30

No, no, not the shot, not the not the child thing. I got the impression that was not happy. I meant the breast breastfeeding thing. 

Olivia Hinge  1:01:37

I will just go and see. I'm aiming for about three years, I guess, for for him. But I do, I do feel like now he's coming up, he's coming up to 18 months, and I feel that momentum towards me psychologically getting ready to night wean him when he's about two. Is, is, is building. I've, you know, I've been pregnant and all breastfeeding for eight years, non stop. Yeah, I feel like my time has come a bit. So, yeah, I feel like, I feel like I'm more confident also in my decisions to stop or to put boundaries in place.

Emma Pickett  1:02:07

 I mean, one thing that's really coming across, Olivia, know, you had that little pang of guilt when you talked about number two, but it's just really refreshing to hear how confident you are about what you want to do. And I'm guessing that comes from a place of, you know, knowing about breastfeeding and, you know, being confident lactation consultant, but also just, you just sound like a woman who knows her body and knows what feels right and what doesn't do.

Olivia Hinge  1:02:28

You know, that's been a revelation for me since, since having children, being in tune with my body, I did not have a clue before, and I've started to build this confidence and trust with my body, and I think also confidence as me as a parent. Actually, I can be a brilliant parent and say no to my child this whole sort of, that whole gentle parenting thing, initially for me, was like, oh, never upset the child. Oh, no, I can't do that. I'm meant to be gentle. Actually, me being gentle is holding space for them and saying, I see you're upset and I see your anger with me, and that's okay. I'm not going to let you eat that cigarette butt, and I'm not gonna let you twiddle two in the same Yeah. And you can be angry, that's okay, and I'm here for you. 

Emma Pickett  1:03:07

And I failed if they are angry, and you haven't failed if they are sad. I think that's that has definitely been a revelation for me. I mean, like a lot of people, I'm correcting toxic parenting cycles and correcting, you know what happened in my own childhood? And I think some people go so far into the overcorrection that they think that gentle parenting means my child must never be sad. I will always miss parenting is Yeah, yeah. I would always be there for them. I will give them everything I possibly can to make them happy. And then we suddenly grind to a horrible halt, we realize that doesn't work in the long term. That may not even allow breastfeeding to work in the long term, because everyone is going to eventually explode. And then, if you actually look at who's talking about gentle parenting, nobody is saying permissive parenting, you know, Sarah Rockwell Smith and and Philippa Perry, who's talking about, you know, emotionally intelligent parenting. No one is actually saying your child must be happy 100% of the time. 

Olivia Hinge  1:04:03

I mean, Sarah Ockwell Smith talks about boundaries. Everybody's talking about boundaries because that's what helps little feet people to feel safe. Yeah. And if you hadn't have night weaned, I'm guessing you would not have breastfed until three or, you know, two and nearly three. I mean, it's you, just you end up not coping, and people fall apart. I sometimes meet people who absolutely hate every minute of breastfeeding, but they want to do it, and they set a goal. And I think it's also okay to say, It's okay not to enjoy it. Yeah, you don't have to love every minute. I always say I sort of love 70% sometimes 80% of it. But there's, you know, there's, there's always bits of it that is hard, but there's bits of my job that I dislike that doesn't mean I'm a bad midwife. Do you know what I mean? There's there's love and hate in everything, and that doesn't reflect whether you love it or hate it. It doesn't reflect if you're good as a parent.

Emma Pickett  1:04:51

Yeah, and parenting a two year old is bloody hard. I mean, the idea that stopping breastfeeding is suddenly going to make your child want you less, need you less. Be less demanding, be less annoying. That's not the case, no. So if you hate breastfeeding, it may well be that you're just finding parenting a two year old really hard.

Olivia Hinge  1:05:08

And with my first she was so intense, and her need for me, it was all about me, me, me, me, like with the intensity I can't actually describe, it was so much I was never put under any pressure by my husband to stop feeding her, to let her like him. There was never any pressure from him towards me or her. He just, every day, continued to slog away, putting the effort in. And he just had this again, quiet confidence that she would now at age eight, I think she would go to him, and I equally if she was upset or hurt, and very often, he is her favorite person, and it did just take a little bit of time and maturity on her behalf to become an independent her you know, it wasn't the breastfeeding that caused her to be glued to me, that's just her and her character. It still took a lot of time after I finished breastfeeding for her to sort of expand out towards him and build their relationship. So, you know, when people feel pressured to stop breastfeeding, because you know that the other parent feels left out. I do understand that other parents feelings, but very often it's not stopping the breastfeeding that's going to resolve and stopping the breastfeeding

Emma Pickett  1:06:17

when the parent who is breastfeeding doesn't want to stop the breastfeeding, that's going to end up with too little angry, just, you know, people who are feeling resentful. I mean, if neither member of the dyad want to end breastfeeding, that is not a healthy place in which to enter a weaning relationship. It doesn't mean and if a little person is really dysregulated and unhappy, they're not suddenly going to go, yay, I love my other parent. Now, yeah, yeah. We don't need to diminish one person to make another parent feel elevated. I think that's that's so important. Did you ever get negative messages from anybody about natural term breastfeeding or older toddler breastfeeding

Olivia Hinge  1:06:50

I'm a bit like Teflon? I don't really, oh, this shit just washes over me. I don't really. I did have, I did have a close family members say I think it's weird when children are fed over one and I was a bit like, Okay, I think the way that you parented is weird, but I haven't said anything. We all parent so differently, and there are things, you know, people worrying about feeling judged. I don't. I think judging each other is kind of just part of human nature. You don't have to tell someone if you think it. There's things I do that probably my close friends and family think is odd as a parent, and there's things that they do that I think I wouldn't choose to do that, and that's okay. Yeah, we're not all going to parent the same way. Um, people, yeah, people may thought things and said things, but they're not the one. I'm not asking them to feed the baby at 2am

Emma Pickett  1:07:38

yeah, so why do you sink in, which is, yeah, I'm lucky.

Olivia Hinge  1:07:42

I am lucky in that self confidence of actually, this is the right thing for me and my family, yeah, and I've got a bit of a resting bitch face. So people don't always say that much to me. 

Emma Pickett  1:07:53

They're very handy. So one thing I just want to touch on, because I realize we're running out of time. The Baby Friendly training does not touch on natural term breastfeeding. You're not going to get conversations about breastfeeding two year olds. So you're going to get midwives who meet someone tandem feeding, or meet someone who's feeding a four year old or a five year old while they're pregnant. Or, you know that I've got to get home because my five year old's breastfeeding. 

Olivia Hinge  1:08:16

And for lots of midwives, that's going to be completely alien, because that will not have been covered in training at all, or something they immediately panic about. Now, you can't, you can't do you can't do that that could stimulate labor. You know, you're not allowed to colostrum harvest until 36 weeks because of the risk of premature labor. Oh, my goodness, panic, panic. You can't. You've got to stop. And no, you don't need to in a low risk pregnancy. 

Emma Pickett  1:08:37

You absolutely don't. Yeah, so Hilary Flower talks about those kind of, you know, uterine hormone blockers and all sorts of reasons why premature labor is not going to happen nature is not daft. If you were designing the little magic course for for midwives about natural term breastfeed, actually, this is the course the porters can do as well. This is the course you've got one hour to talk to people about natural term breastfeeding. What are you going to do in that hour? 

Olivia Hinge  1:09:03

Oh, I'm going to talk about the I think the big thing is that it's nutritionally and hugely valid, and that it can be a great source of nutrition for older children, and the immune factors, how it intent, it becomes more concentrated, and then also about the emotional connection and trying to get rid of that sexualization of breasts, because I think that's where a lot of this has come from. And with midwives, it's talking about the physiology of actually tandem feeding and feeding an older child is totally normal. And what we were designed to do, 

Emma Pickett  1:09:34

you don't use up the colostrum. You're not going to trigger premature labor, you know. And after birth, it can be an advantage, because it helps relieve engorgement and increase milk supply.

Olivia Hinge  1:09:44

The thing I've said to colleagues, actually, when I, for example, was gave somebody a pump, the other a pregnant lady a pump because she was apart from her breastfeeding other child, and she wanted to pump milk to leave the child. And I and there was like, Oh my God, you're giving her a pump. Are you mad? What are you doing? It's. Well, her child has breastfed the whole way through the pregnancy. What's a bum going to do? And also, it's pointing out that they're worried about the oxytocin stimulus, and the nipple could then, you know, make uterine contractions because they're stimulated by oxytocin. And it would say to them, Do you think that she was told not to have an orgasm in pregnancy? Then they're like, Well, where are you going with this. It's like there's a lot more oxytocin with an orgasm, because you can feel your uterus cramp in pregnancy when you have an orgasm, but that's okay. But a little bit of breastfeeding, which doesn't cause any cramping, that's not allowed. Who are we serving here? The patriarchy by saying women continue to have sex, yada yada, or are breastfeeding infants? So, yeah, unless somebody's on total bed rest and told not to have sexual intercourse, I don't see any problem with with continuing to feed in pregnancy. 

Emma Pickett  1:10:51

Yeah, we need to get people understanding that, because tandem feeding, I'm hoping, will be more and more common as more people are natural term breastfeeding,

Olivia Hinge  1:10:58

it's people's little dirty, I'm saying with inverted commas, dirty to the secret, isn't it? They come. I can, I can smell out a tandem feeder from a mile away and saying to them, like, oh, you know, did you have you breastfed your first child? Yes, I'm still feeding them. It's like, Yay, amazing. You know, do you want them to come in and feed during labor if things stall or, you know, you probably know how to call it, you know, things like that, just normalizing it is just so important. And the delight on these people's faces when they realize actually, there's a midwife that thinks this is brilliant and awesome is is a really wonderful thing. And I'm sure there's more of us out there that sure there's lots of midwives themselves who have tandem fed. And more and more people. I feel I was in a playground the other day, and myself and two other people were feeding over one year olds. That's pretty amazing, isn't it? Yeah, that's great. I really wonder what will come from the infant feeding survey.

Emma Pickett  1:11:53

Yeah, so looking forward to that, someone said that there was some pause because of the election. I can't believe that's the case, because all the data has been gone out and being requested, and that can't be a pause because of elections. So yeah, that's going to be such good news. I'm really looking forward to seeing that. I'm confident we're going to see slightly higher rates. And I do believe that really, you are part of that story. And I'm very honored that you lumped me in with Lucy and Catherine earlier. You are also part of the team on Instagram. 

Olivia Hinge  1:12:17

Oh, that's sweet. I think of you through it as the OG. 

Emma Pickett  1:12:20

Oh, that's complete bollocks, but thank you for that. But you are. You can be an OG too, if that's the case. Cool book coming out. Your book, writing Instagram was, oh, hang on. 

Olivia Hinge  1:12:32

You haven't seen that, but I'll take it. 

Emma Pickett  1:12:36

I'm pretty confident having spoken to you and seen your Instagram, that's going to be a brilliant book for everybody. So I look very much. We look forward to reading it. And we'll put in the show notes how people can get hold of it. And we'll make sure that I thought most people listening to this will already be on the Instagram for you, but we'll make sure we put your link in the show notes as well. And actually, on Saturday, someone came up to the ABM conference, the Association of breastfeeding mothers conference, and said, Oh, I love the podcast. You know who you should speak to, Olivia hinge. And I went, Oh, well, as it happens, I'm talking to her on Tuesday, so that was lucky, wasn't it, she was like, yay. So if you are listening, person who said that to me at the ABM conference, shout out to you. Thank you so much for your time today. 

Olivia Hinge  1:13:15

Well, thank you so much for having me, and it's been a great honour. 

Emma Pickett  1:13:18

And yeah, really looking forward to seeing what you get up to next. And yeah, I'd love to hear how your next breastfeeding journey goes, so maybe in a few years time, revisit we can have a chat about your final weaning story. 

Olivia Hinge  1:13:29

Yes, perfect. Thank you so much. 

Emma Pickett  1:13:31

Thank you. Bye, bye. 

Emma Pickett  1:13:36

Thank you for joining me today. You can find me on Instagram at Emma Pickett IBCLC and on Twitter @MakesMilk. 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.