Eleanor's story - breastfeeding and Bell's Palsy

This week, I’m talking to Eleanor Nightingale about her breastfeeding experience with Bell's Palsy. During the birth of her daughter Hattie, Eleanor had an emergency forceps delivery, extensive tearing and haemorrhage. Six days later, the left side of her face became paralysed and after a rushed trip to A&E fearing a stroke, Eleanor was diagnosed and treated for Bell’s Palsy.

Eleanor faced several challenges with breastfeeding, from trouble latching and tongue tie to sleep deprivation, but overcame them with support from her husband and a lactation consultant. Despite her difficulties, she successfully breastfed her daughter, Hattie, for two years and shares her weaning experience here too. Eleanor also shares practical tips to help others who might be struggling with Bell’s Palsy in the postnatal period.

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  00:45

 Thank you very much for joining me for today, I am looking at the face of Eleanor, Eleanor Nightingale, and as you've seen from the title of the episode, we're going to be talking about Eleanor's experiences of breastfeeding with Bell's Palsy. So first of all, am I pronouncing it right? Yes, spells, palsy, palsy, palsy, palsy. I think, I think you're right. It's a good word. It was, strikes me as sort of like a Tudor word, palsy. It makes it's an ancient condition, but tell me more about it before we start talking about your breastfeeding experience. For the anyone who doesn't know, what is Bell's Palsy? 

Eleanor Nightingale  01:17

I'd literally never heard of it until it happened to me, and it's a condition where half of your face gets paralyzed. It's not necessarily linked to postpartum or pregnancy, but it can be, and it's to do with, yeah, the peripheral nervous system and inflammation around the nerves going to usually the left side of your face. 

Emma Pickett  01:43

Okay, I didn't realize it was just the left side. That's interesting. So cause is not necessarily known?

Eleanor Nightingale  01:49

We know some risk factors, some possible triggers, but we don't know exactly how it happens.

Emma Pickett  01:56

So the left side of your face is affected, and just your face, not just your body, okay, okay. And how far along were you? This happened to you postpartum. You had this for the first time postpartum?

Eleanor Nightingale  02:10

It can happen in pregnancy. It can happen during labour. For me, I was six days postpartum. 

Emma Pickett  02:17

And the word palsy, what does that actually mean? Do you know what's that means?

Eleanor Nightingale  02:22

paralysis or a sort of lack of control.

Emma Pickett  02:26

And somebody called Bell, I'm guessing, probably a white bloke, let's be honest, some white bloke came along and put a name on it. Okay, so that's the that's the headline. That's what we'll be talking about. But obviously, it's wrapped up with your breastfeeding experience and how it impacted on your postpartum experience. Tell us about your child. Who have you got? 

Eleanor Nightingale  02:45

I have a two year old now, Hattie Harriet. So she was born in 22

Emma Pickett  02:51

and before you had her, what did you know about breastfeeding? What were your feelings about breastfeeding? 

Eleanor Nightingale  02:55

I was very keen to do it. I'd done a session in my NCT group, which was helpful with a breastfeeding peer supporter who'd given us her number as well to reach out, reach out for additional support later on, and she turned out to be absolute gold mine. And I'd read a little, I didn't know a lot. I didn't know how much there was to know. I think most people don't.

Emma Pickett  03:20

Yeah, that's a good way of describing it. A lot of people think it can't be that complicated 

Eleanor Nightingale  03:26

I had a variety of information. A very good friend of mine had a child two years older, and she'd had a lot of latching difficulties, and she was super supportive. She'd refer me to a couple of Instagram accounts, including yours and Lucy Weber, fantastic Lucy, and also Lindsay Hookway, who, though she's not directly breastfeeding, she's an lactation consultant, as I'm sure. Obviously, you've had her on the podcast. 

Emma Pickett  03:52

Yeah, she's fabulous and great accounts to start off with, because you're gonna get a really good sense of what's normal and and what's normal in terms of sleep too.

Eleanor Nightingale  04:00

She'd had her baby in the pandemic. We had a lot of chatting over zoom while she was trying to latch this baby. And she said to me, in my last week of pregnancy, if you ever need someone to come over and just help you try and figure it all out, I'm happy to be another pair of hands

Emma Pickett  04:15

That's special so you had that support network lined up, and you obviously had the motivation to want to get breastfeeding up, up and running as well. Tell us about your your birth with Hattie and that early, 24 hours.

Eleanor Nightingale  04:26

The birth was pretty tricky. I had a lot of bleeding in labour, which was quite scary to be bleeding while you're contracting, but before, before only pushing Okay, and we never really sorted out why, and then she got distressed as I was pushing, and I ended up having an emergency forceps delivery. They prepped me for a C section. I thought we were going down that route, but thankfully, we avoided that, but I had a lot of tearing second degree. But. If it's too much information in multiple directions and a lot of internal trauma from the forceps, 

Emma Pickett  05:07

a lot of people listening to this thinking, yeah, I get this. This is not, this is not very often on podcasts, but it's really important to acknowledge what like.

Eleanor Nightingale  05:18

Well, your episode on breastfeeding after blood loss was fascinating, because I lost a lot of blood. I had a major postpartum hemorrhage, partly due to all the internal tearing that they just couldn't stitch up. After an hour and a half they stopped. They said, we're not doing any good here. It's not improving matters. So we're going to stop. We're just going to keep, put you in in high dependency and keep monitoring the loss. But we don't think more stitches is going to help

Emma Pickett  05:46

as that's intense, that is, that is, and you're alert enough to be part and, yeah, yeah, I bet, I bet

Eleanor Nightingale  05:56

I remember them saying, them saying to me, as Hattie was on my chest, it's just not stopping. It's just not stopping. We can't get it to stop and hearing them, but obviously nothing you can do. 

Emma Pickett  06:09

Okay, so you in the high dependency unit. You've obviously got Hatty, and that's lovely and wonderful. But then you've used that word scary, which is not a great word to experience in those very early hours. What happened next?

Eleanor Nightingale  06:25

I wanted to latch her in theater, and the midwife suggested that, but then the anesthetist said, No, you can't breastfeed in theater, so we had to wait until I got onto the high dependency unit, which was a couple of hours after she was born, but James, my husband, was able to give her some of the colostrum I'd expressed before then, which was great, because she was hungry. I could, well, she kept making fish mouths at me and rooting, yeah. So it was lovely that he could give her her first meal. The midwife showed him with his little finger and the syringe of colostrum. And that felt really good to know that she was already getting something in mind. 

Emma Pickett  07:05

That's a lovely advert for antenatal expression that I can imagine that, 

Eleanor Nightingale  07:09

yeah, it really helped my confidence. Antenatally, I texted my friend the first syringe I expressed the look, look, what's good? There's just these tiny little one mil syringes. And I didn't do you hear of people doing loads, which is an which is amazing. I'd only done half a dozen, like, one mil syringes, literally, but it was great to have in those first few hours in theater. Okay, yeah. And it was something James felt he could do. And I'm guessing he's pretty scared as well. At this point, he was pretty scared by it all, yeah, and that they offered it to me, but I said, No, you do it. And then it gave him something to focus on as well. 

Emma Pickett  07:48

So when you're in the high dependency unit, is Hattie able to be near you in that environment? 

Eleanor Nightingale  07:53

Yeah, she was in he was in there the whole time. I had a really lovely student midwife look after me all through the night, because they were checking me every 15 minutes was pretty painful. She was born at 11pm Okay, so I got to the high dependency about half one, and they were changing the pads under me every 15 minutes to weigh them. So forget any chance of sleep,

Emma Pickett  08:15

right? Yeah, presumably giving you a whole bunch of drugs that stop bleeding to happening. Oh yeah, drips, and you're getting transfusions at this point as well.

Eleanor Nightingale  08:25

I was told I was going to get one, and I never did. Wow, okay, and I still don't know. I was too out of it to really ask the questions I should have been asking. 

Emma Pickett  08:36

I'm guessing they knew what they were doing. They must have, they must have realized that that wasn't required for some reason, even though it was a steady blood flow, perhaps not a significant volume, but gosh, with that scenario, I would have expected you would have had a transfusion, but I'm guessing they were keeping an eye on that, so you weren't stitched up. But did more stitching happen the next day? 

Eleanor Nightingale  08:56

No, they said it was stabilized. I mean, I had had a lot of stitches, but they just said eventually they had to stop. 

Emma Pickett  09:01

Okay, so we're waiting for your body now to just finish sorting out the tears. And I'm guessing that wasn't an easy first few weeks in that situation. 

Eleanor Nightingale  09:11

It wasn't, not at all. But Hattie did latch. She latched really well in the high dependency unit. So she was already feeding. I got down to postnatal the next day, late the next day, and spent a night on postnatal. And when I woke up at 5am I asked the nurses, I said, She's asleep. Should I wake her up and feed her? I said, When did she last feed? And I said, oh, about 10. And they said, Yes, yes, wake her up and feed her. So I did, and they said, we've got somebody from the infant feeding team if you want any help. And this lovely lady came and sat on the edge of my bed at five o'clock in the morning and helped me latch her on. And everybody said, actually looks great. Looks fine. It was a bit. Inchy, and in retrospect, I can see a couple of red flags she was clicking, which I didn't know was something to look out for, and my nipple was very shape. And lipstick, okay, okay, afterwards, but nobody was asking about that, okay? I didn't, didn't realize it was a problem. 

Emma Pickett  10:24

Yeah, okay. So anyone who knows about infant feeding at this point is feeling some background to music. So, you know, little jaws, lip, sticky shaped, pinchy, not great words, but, but she's latching, that's positive. You know, she's feeding, that's great. And you know, antenatal expression, that's all good, so you're going to be heading home soon. How did her feeding carry on in the next few days after that? 

Eleanor Nightingale  10:51

From her perspective, it was pretty great. She never actually lost weight on her weigh ins. So she did really well with the weight gain. The milk came in on about day four, quite impressively. I've always had not breastfeeding. Currently, I went to fairly recently, but I always had a really strong letdown. The proper spray across the room sort it made feeling in public challenging, because she would often pop off after she'd induced the letdown to to back off a little and then I did once throw somebody at the next table.

Emma Pickett  11:27

What was, how did that? Did they notice? Did they realize? 

Eleanor Nightingale  11:30

No, they didn't. I was mortified, but for me, it was getting increasingly painful. 

Emma Pickett  11:35

Okay, was it? I'm just wondering, let's just rule out some stuff. Sometimes after a forceps delivery, we have a little bit of what we might call nerve bruising that can sometimes impact on latching. And we've got so many cranial nerves that need to work properly for breastfeeding to happen, and occasionally after forceps delivery, they may not all quite work as effectively as we need to, and that can cause pinching and latching issues.

Eleanor Nightingale  11:57

I think that was some of it she did. I did get her some cranial osteopathy by the when she was about five and a half months, and that helped with the latch, as well as with a bunch of other things. So I definitely think there was some tension.

Emma Pickett  12:13

So you mentioned, we're five days in, she's taking milk. You're still uncomfortable, you're still in pain, and then you told us at the beginning that around six days your face changed.

Eleanor Nightingale  12:25

Yeah. So I was in the garden sitting at a table with Hattie in a moses basket next to me and James pottering around, and I tried to take a drink from my water bottle, which had a spout top, and I couldn't, I couldn't do the suction that you need to do. And that was really strange. And I just kept spilling it down myself. And I got out my phone camera, and I looked at myself in it, and the whole left half of my face had dropped. It's like, it's like, if you see somebody who's had a stroke, 

Emma Pickett  13:01

because for a young woman, you know, you've seen all the sort of TV adverts about the signs of a stroke, is that what flashed into your grandmother had a stroke?

Eleanor Nightingale  13:09

Yeah, yeah. I didn't call 999 which in retrospect, I definitely should have done, but I called the pregnancy Advice Line, got through, and they said it's probably Bell's Palsy, but go to a&e immediately, and thankfully, we're less than 10 minutes. So call my husband. Tried not to scare him too much, got the newborn into the car seat, drove us all to the hospital, decided to ignore the signs saying, you know, you can't bring any children in with you and only one person, because Hattie was still well. The other part of the first six days is that her sleep was terrible. I mean, even with all the stuff I've now read about normal newborn sleep, her sleep was bad. She wanted to feed about every 20 minutes, and a couple of nights, she screamed for four and a half hours straight, just no matter what we did. Okay, that's intense. So my sleep deprivation was extreme. I was struggling to sleep even when my husband had her because I could hear her and I just couldn't relax enough to sleep if she was screaming, and we're in a small house, so there was 

Emma Pickett  14:26

Yeah, so you're at in the a&e, and are you thinking in your head? Is some of this because of the fact I haven't had any sleep for five days, or because of what happened in hospital? Is that 

Eleanor Nightingale  14:38

I just felt I was completely overwhelmed. I was terrified. I was having a stroke. I still wasn't really healed, obviously, from my stitches. I was extremely sleep deprived. My nipples were very, very painful, and I was standing in an an EQ and. Next to my husband, holding the newborn waiting to be checked in. And then the person on the check in said, Do you feel otherwise normal?

Emma Pickett  15:10

There's a question for you, 

Eleanor Nightingale  15:11

with all those things going that's the question, yes. Interestingly, I didn't know the significance of this till later, he asked me to raise my eyebrows, and it turns out that if you have a stroke, you can usually still raise both eyebrows. Interesting, because of the nervous pathways. If you have Bell's Palsy, you can't Okay, and I very much could only raise one so that was what he was checking for. 

Emma Pickett  15:36

This is the receptionist and all this? No, this is a triage nurse person?

Eleanor Nightingale  15:40

This is a triage person. 

Emma Pickett  15:41

It's a very clever receptionist, if they know to that. Okay, so you're doing the checking in, and someone's doing that, 

Eleanor Nightingale  15:47

they're at reception, and he's triaging people and sending them left, right, okay, I got seen within an hour, pretty great by somebody who said, Yes, it is Bell's Palsy. The only thing to do is start taking steroids immediately. The sooner, the better, and most people make a good recovery. About 90% of people make a good recovery. If you haven't seen any change in three weeks, call your GP,

Emma Pickett  16:19

gosh, and then that's it. Here's your prescription, Eleanor, off you go take your newborn and your nipples and your vagina back to your house and put up with it. Wow, that's intense, isn't it? That must have been a very difficult moment steroids and breastfeeding. Where are we with the safety of steroids and breastfeeding?

Eleanor Nightingale  16:35

Apparently, fine. Yeah. The advice is that in a situation like that, you just take them and you carry on, not thought to have any major impact. So that was fine. There were these tiny little tablets. Had to take seven of them at a time, and I was already on, you know, half a dozen medications, at least,

Emma Pickett  16:54

to do with sort of blood, loss of blood and iron and, 

Eleanor Nightingale  16:57

yes, antibiotics, injections, iron tablets, pain, you know, the whole thing. But I got home, we picked them up at the pharmacy, and it turns out, the biggest predictor of recovery from Bell's Palsy is the number of hours between onset of symptoms and taking that first steroid tablet. 

Emma Pickett  17:15

Okay, gosh, okay,

Eleanor Nightingale  17:17

so I was lucky. It was less than two hours, because we went straight to hospital. We were seen within an hour, and I picked them up straight away. He said, Go and take these straight away. But he didn't emphasize, you know, this is really crucial. Don't leave it another hour, kind of thing, okay? But thankfully, we picked them up on the way home, and I took it straight away.

Emma Pickett  17:38

So you are taking these pills thinking, Gosh, what happens if I'm in the 10% that doesn't get better? I mean, are you a positive person? Are you a sort of expecting Doom person? Where were you thinking at that point about sort of your long term recovery?

Eleanor Nightingale  17:52

I'm a have a plan A through F person. And I think, I think it's hard to imagine, if it hasn't happened to you, having half your face paralyzed is like. 

Emma Pickett  18:03

So obviously, it's a visual thing, and we'll talk in a minute about what impact that might have on your confidence. But it's also a practical thing. I mean, you talked about not being able to drink for one so there's inflammation going on. That's obviously what the steroid is acting against. That inflammation is causing nerves not to work properly, which then means muscles don't work properly. So you mentioned not being able to drink out of your water bottle. What other practical things were difficult?

Eleanor Nightingale  18:29

So drinking and all breastfeeding mums will relate to this. I think was really hard because I had no control over the left side of my mouth. I couldn't use a straw because I couldn't suction, so I had to use an Open Cup. But when I used an open cup, it would all spill out the left hand side of my mouth. It was, well, it was humiliating. I had to prop up my lips with my finger while drinking with the other hand in order to get any sort of volume of liquid in, which meant drinking was a two handed affair, which when you have a baby who wants to feed every 20 minutes, and you're not very cold, and you're not very confident with the latch is really hard, yeah. And obviously, you know, to tell you how important hydration is with breastfeeding, yeah. And then calories chewing was really difficult. And, and this doesn't happen to everyone, but half of my tongue, the taste buds went and everything tasted wrong. It took, oh, my husband was trying so hard. It took us three or four weeks to figure out a good routine of what I could eat. It had to be stuff that you didn't have to bite and tear, because I couldn't do that. So sandwiches and stuff are out. Nothing too soft because it's spelt out. So no soups. Nothing really saucy. Strong flavors were good because they sort of overrode the fact that half my mouth felt really wrong. Things like pasta with. Small bits that I could manipulate to the side of my mouth that was working were the way to go.

Emma Pickett  20:06

Gosh, there are some. There are some new mums listening to this, thinking, shit, I'm never complaining again about my first I could drink caliber water cup, or I could eat sandwiches. I didn't have to think about all this, this whole just the mental effort that goes into right? Okay, we're, you know, we're going out where I'm like, what I'm going to take with us. How am I possibly going to be able to manage I lost a lot of weight. That's not a great time to be losing weight either. And James is off work for a while. What was happening? 

Eleanor Nightingale  20:32

He was off work for four weeks. So this happened, yeah, about a weekend. And the other thing that wouldn't necessarily occur to you about facial paralysis is that I couldn't close my eye. Okay, my left eye and I did get a GP appointment a week in to talk about what we were going to do. They gave me a physiotherapy referral that came through six months later.

Emma Pickett  21:04

Gosh, so I'm guessing a really dry, uncomfortable eye happens super quickly when you can't even really

Eleanor Nightingale  21:11

right. So one of the major risks is permanent vision damage. But this GP was awful, clearly not educated about breastfeeding. Never mind. Do motherhood? She told me, and I didn't know this, that one of the triggers for Bell's Palsy, along with blood loss, is major sleep deprivation. You see it in Army veterans who've had an injury because they've had the trauma, the blood loss, and they've probably been up for many, many hours. And I said, Well, I'm a breastfeeding mother. I appreciate that, but it's not as easy as get more rest. I have a one week old. And she said, Oh, just express and get your husband to give her a bottle. Just Uh huh. And I already I knew about issues with bottle preference. I didn't want to go down that route. I'd never expressed any volume other than the colostrum, and when a couple of weeks later, we did give in and try at the end of our tether, turns out we have a bottle refuser.

Emma Pickett  22:15

So we've kind of skipped over your breastfeeding issues to just talk about the bell put Bell's palsy for a minute. But let's not forget, on top of this, you've got sore nipples. You were getting the lipstick shape. Something else was going on. You mentioned, you know, at five months you had the cranial osteopathy appointment, so I'm worried that you're going to tell me you're in pain for five months. I'm hoping that's not the case. Did you get some early support with latching and petitioning?

Eleanor Nightingale  22:37

I did try. So, so that also links to this GP appointment where she told me I had to tape my eye shut at night with a very elaborate series of moves. I got a sheet and everything that required two hands in the bathroom. 

Emma Pickett  22:53

You can't just pop a bit of micropro on the lid and pull it down. It's got to be what some sort of pad and the whole thing.

Eleanor Nightingale  22:59

Yeah. And I said, Look, I'm having trouble latching my baby. I need two eyes to try and latch her. Because I realized that, you know, the latch couldn't possibly be great, even though everyone who'd seen me said, Oh, it looks good. Can I get some breastfeeding support? And also, I just can't, I can't be taping up my eye every 20 minutes, you know, I feed her, I put her down, I go into the bathroom, I put the light on, I take my eye I go back to bed. I try and sleep every 20 minutes. And I said to James when I got home, look, I just, I just won't take it. Look, if I get the vision damage, I get the vision damage. I can't face the thought of it. 

Emma Pickett  23:35

That sounds such a horrible thing to have to say to yourself just like, oh my god, this is I just got to give I just put possibility of permanent vision damage. I mean that, for a start, tells us how important breastfeeding was to you, the fact that that was, it was so important really, really something you're motivated to do. 

Eleanor Nightingale  23:50

But my husband's an engineer, he's not satisfied with that sort of solution, and he came up with the genius idea of a soft eye patch worn in reverse to gently hold your eye closed. If you have it with enough tension, just a soft fabric, one it will hold your eyelid down. If you wear it flipped very and that I could pull up and down every time I needed to break. Is there a Bell's palsy society because it feels like that needs to be? Is there really not because it feels like that should be in the newsletter. There's various facial paralysis ones, but nothing's that

Emma Pickett  24:27

sounds like an idea. I think let's so we just listening to this. This is trademarked James. No one else is allowed to use this idea. This is his idea. But this feels like the future of poor people who are being told to take their eyes and he was religious giving me eyedrops. I can imagine that he really does not want you to have permanent eye damage. I think that's pretty obvious. Not the other you wanted it either. I tell you what. One thing that's kind of coming up for me when I'm hearing your story is I kind of wish that somebody had helped you with baby self attachment. I sort of wish that somebody I don't. Who they would be, some fairy godmother would have arrived through your bedroom window and said, Listen, let's lay, lay back. Let's let Hattie be in charge of latching. You don't need to, you know, use all your eyes and, you know, be the boss, boss of laughing. But it sounds at this point maybe you hadn't had lot of positioning attachments to this point?

Eleanor Nightingale  25:17

No, very little. And everything in the hospital had been sort of, you know, make a hamburger jumper on 

Emma Pickett  25:23

so you're the boss. There's no self attaching, no laid back feeding, no. 

Eleanor Nightingale  25:28

Yeah, yeah. So they gave me a sheet of breastfeeding clinics, and I screwed up my courage and took myself to one the first week James was back at work try and get some help. And you know, I'd got this very unsettled newborn, I was trying to time it with her feed so that she would feed, but she wasn't too hungry. Going out in public was was a big deal.

Emma Pickett  25:55

That's an element we haven't even talked about. So going out and meeting new people, this is the time in your life when you're meeting new people, left, right and center, and you know, in the dream scenario, we're all meeting new mum buddies and going to coffee shops and going to baby massage classes and meeting our new soul mates who we know for the next 50 years. So how was your speech?

Eleanor Nightingale  26:14

My speech was affected. It's very hard when it's your own face and your own speech to gage how much, because it sounds so wrong to you, because you know your own voice so well. So it felt like a lot to me, but I was perfectly understandable, and I was told that if you didn't know me really well, you wouldn't necessarily have noticed the speech the face was pretty extreme. I mean, I did a double take every time I walked past a mirror, and everyone who saw me in public, it initially looked like you're pulling a very strange expression. So you could see people glance and then glance away and then go, wait. 

Emma Pickett  26:54

Okay. And how was that affecting your confidence? Were you quite a confident person before that? How are you feeling in yourself?

Eleanor Nightingale  27:01

I was, I mean, I'm a teacher. I'm used to standing up in front of a bunch of 15 year olds, who are always a hard audience, but it really knocked me. And I found the eating and drinking thing really humiliating. I found spilling down myself very humiliating. So going out to cafes was really hard, especially I couldn't really manage a hot drink, and even just going on a dog walk. Whenever I walked past people, I was waiting for them to stare at me, and they did. I mean, I don't think people can help it, really, at least not the double take, yeah. So I got myself to this breastfeeding group, got out of the car, and I couldn't find it, and eventually some other women who were doing something unconnected in the same building, I asked them, and they said, Oh yeah, that's usually in this room round here. And they went round and they looked, and they said, No, there's nobody there this week. You did usually on this day. Okay? And I just got in the car and I went home, and I sent a very stroppy email saying I turned up to this was referred to my GP, nobody there, and got reply saying, oh, terribly sorry. We've broken up for the summer, but we didn't put it on our website,

Emma Pickett  28:18

because people don't, people don't have babies in July and August.

Eleanor Nightingale  28:21

No, nobody.

Emma Pickett  28:22

Nobody has criminal things about breastfeeding, breastfeeding support system that's so dependent on volunteers and so dependent on volunteers that will have their own kids. I mean, you know, fair enough, absolutely fair enough. If you're a volunteer, you have your own childcare issues, but we have to communicate that at least. And ideally, there has to be slack taken up, and someone else needs to be in those sessions, and staff members and aid people need to be in those sessions. I'm really sorry, just when you needed that help and you dragged yourself out the house that wasn't available. So how long was it before you then got some face to face support? 

Eleanor Nightingale  28:54

Well, they the next one they could tell me about was a week away, and half now's drive, which with a really screaming newborn I couldn't face, and I was in increasing amounts of pain. And James said, right time for those lactation consultants we've heard about. So we found one, and she was able to come the next day to the house and get me some help, and she taught me about laid back feeding, which we'd kind of started figuring out on our own, but it was really good to have some support with that. And she also identified that I was having vasospasm after the feeds, which was partly what was causing the nipple shape, and helped me figure out how to get a heat compress for that, just to help with comfort and sleep, she suggested a battery powered one, which is genius, because I said, Well, I can't microwave one, you know, at two o'clock in the morning. I'm not going to microwave one at two o'clock in the morning after every feed, but a battery powered one with a button you can click that I can do good tip. Yeah, yeah. Was, and all of those things really helped. She said that Hattie had a really strong gag reflex, and that was why she was refusing all the bottles. She gave us some exercises to try

Emma Pickett  30:10

so she's so the lactation consultants may be thinking something anatomical for Hattie, possibly.

Eleanor Nightingale  30:17

She said she definitely didn't have a tongue tie. Now, when she was about five months old, somebody else I spoke to who wasn't a lactation consultant, said, just looking at her, I think she probably has a tongue tie. And I said, Oh, no, no, we've told everybody. She doesn't. We've been checked. And she said, Well, I will get it checked again. And we did, and she did, and we got it snipped at six months. 

Emma Pickett  30:40

That's not, that's not an unusual story. Sadly. I mean, I will say this is an ibclc myself. Ibclcs are not trained in tongue tie diagnosis. It's not standard, but she did resolve the pain. That's obviously what she needed to have been resolved. So obviously the tongue tie wasn't so severe, yeah, that it was impacting that

Eleanor Nightingale  30:58

we never managed to get the bottles working. We gave up at six months. So I don't know if the tongue tie, snipping would have helped, but at that point, we just went to solids. 

Emma Pickett  31:05

So you so with the laid back feeding, you were comfortable, you weren't getting the nipple miss-shaping anymore?

Eleanor Nightingale  31:10

Laid back feeding, dangle feeding in the evenings, when she was very screamy, was really good. And ideas of things to do to help manage the letdown, you know, expressing into a muslin or something after she triggered it if she wasn't coping with it. 

Emma Pickett  31:27

So it's interesting, you talk about dangle feeding is helping, because I would have thought, with a really powerful letdown, dangle feeding is almost the opposite, because it would be kind of, there's no way Hattie's getting away from that letdown. But you've just, you just, 

Eleanor Nightingale  31:37

I think it was helpful in the evenings when my supply would dip because she was used to such a strong force. And actually, we think probably that compensated for her poor latching and her tongue tie, that she was just getting such an absolute jet of it that she managed.

Emma Pickett  31:56

That makes sense. So lots of milk going on. So I'm guessing weight game was fine, and Hattie was doing well. 

Eleanor Nightingale  32:01

Weight gain was absolutely fine. Yeah,

Emma Pickett  32:05

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  32:52

So let's talk about some of your sort of wider network you've obviously it sounds like James is really working hard to support you in lots of different ways. Was anyone else saying, Are you sure you should be breastfeeding? Shouldn't you be resting? We're worried about your Bell's Palsy. What we what messages were you getting from other people?

Eleanor Nightingale  33:08

My in laws don't breastfeed as a as a wider family. It's not a thing they're interested in, or most of them have even tried, as far as I understand. Certainly, my sister in law said, Oh no, no, we're going to do bottles. So they were a bit baffled. And I always took Katia another room to feed, because I know you can't see anything when they are feeding, but you could with her, because she popped off and then everybody got sprayed. So I was feeding in the bedroom, and also I felt more comfortable and it was a chance to lie down. So I didn't really mind that. The hard thing was, as you said, you're trying to go out and meet mum friends, but you're also trying to host everybody, because everybody wants to meet the tiny little baby, don't they? Relatives, friends, in laws, everyone. And I was feeling like I couldn't face people. I got James to speak to people in advance and say, Look, don't bring up the face. She doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't want to answer any questions. She doesn't want you to say it's not that bad or be encouraging. She just doesn't want to talk about it. And people were actually

Emma Pickett  34:25

really good system. I like, I just like the idea of James being right. I'm the gatekeeper. This is a story. This is what's happening. 

Eleanor Nightingale  34:30

My father in law did say, oh, it's not that bad, and patted me on the shoulder, which obviously made me feel 100 times better. But it was that was hard having these people come around for the first time to meet the baby, and seeing all these people who knew me so well double take at my face, yeah, and going through my head the whole time was, it's not changing. It's not changing. I'm coming up on that three week deadline.

Emma Pickett  34:51

I was gonna say, you're going to three weeks now, and you've taken the steroids the whole time. 

Eleanor Nightingale  34:55

Three weeks is such a long time, especially with a newborn, when every night feels like about a week. Yeah. And I just, yeah, I spend a lot of time crying. And it's, you know, what was? What is Depression when you can't eat, or you struggle to eat because of taste, because of the mechanics, you struggle to sleep because you have a baby who feeds every 20 minutes, you struggle to have any energy because you had a massive postpartum hemorrhage. What exactly does depression look like? 

Emma Pickett  35:20

Yeah, I can imagine you're ticking lots of boxes. You know, who knows where it comes from? It wasn't postnatal depression. It was completely understandable reaction to the situation you were in. Not that postnatal depression is not completely understandable, but there's not some mysterious hormonal cause here. This is a very obvious, you know, situational cause. You talked about Hattie waking every 20 minutes with that did not get easier for sleeping. It did not. It did not. 

Eleanor Nightingale  35:47

No, she's, yeah, two and a bit, and she's still a very wakeful child. She wakes three to five times a night now, which you know, for a two and a half year old.

Emma Pickett  35:56

Okay, okay, so did you master sort of feeding, lying down and trying to sleep while she's feeding.

Eleanor Nightingale  36:02

We did. My dear friend who is a GP or not, sorry, a consultant, said to me, it is safer for you to feed her side lying than to try and stay awake in a chair. 

Emma Pickett  36:13

That's that she's true of most people, but it's certainly true of someone waking every 20 minutes. That's for day, I'm sure.

Eleanor Nightingale  36:19

And she was stern with me. I didn't want to go sleep. She said, You don't have to. You can feed her side lying. You put her back in the next to me, but it's safer to feed her side lying than it is to try and feed her in a chair and stay awake. Yeah. So I did. I'm we figured out side lying. Feeling that worked pretty well. We figured out a shift system. I don't feel like you should say this, because it shouldn't be lucky, but I am exceptionally lucky in my husband, who took her while he was on paternity leave, from 2am every night, bringing her to me for every feed, and once he went back to work from 3am every night.

Emma Pickett  36:55

What a legend is. I mean, that's really lovely to hear.

Eleanor Nightingale  36:59

And he walked her round and round. He wore her in carriers, he held her on his chest, he did whatever he could, and then he would bring her to me to feed. And still I was having nightmares of him, you know, chasing me with the baby because, because I couldn't, I couldn't sleep. But we got to a place where it was where I wasn't googling. Can you die from lack of sleep? 

Emma Pickett  37:23

Yeah, yeah. You get to three week mark. You say your face isn't improving. Were you starting to Google? When do you know you've got permanent bells? Ballsy. What was going through your mind at that point?

Eleanor Nightingale  37:34

Yeah, a lot of fear. I I was texting my mum a lot, who is wonderful, and both a nurse and a psychotherapist,

Emma Pickett  37:46

yeah, that's handy.

Eleanor Nightingale  37:48

Yeah, she's very handy.

Emma Pickett  37:50

How was she feeling about your breastfeeding? Was she ever saying, Is this really what you need to be doing?

Eleanor Nightingale  37:55

No, never, because she knew how important it was to me. She was very supportive. She offered to come over at 3am and, you know, hold the baby for a bit. I said to her, I just want to smile at my baby. I can't squish my baby. 

Emma Pickett  38:08

We haven't talked about that, of course. So Hattie's coming up on several weeks old, and you've not yet been able to smile at her, 

Eleanor Nightingale  38:15

my baby, she won't know what my smile looks like. And I read one blog post I'd found from somebody who'd had a similar situation, and they said, I wish I hadn't told my husband, you can't take any pictures of me. I couldn't bear them at the time, but I wish I had pictures of our first few months with me in them. And that really struck a chord with me. And so I said to James, take lots of pictures. I don't want to see a single one. Don't post them, but take them, save them, and then we'll have them if I want them later. And now, of course, I'm so glad I've got them pictures of me holding my tiny baby that I otherwise wouldn't have. 

Emma Pickett  38:52

Yeah. Oh, that's lovely to hear. God, good, good, good blog post to come across at that time that that was meant to be, wasn't it could have easily just not taken any, and that would have been just a hole in your photographic record.

Eleanor Nightingale  39:04

And I have my very closest friend who doesn't have children. My birthday was 11 days after Hattie was born, and James said to me, Look, is there anything that you would like, or anything you would like to do, anything at all that we could make happen that might, that might make you feel a little lighter. And I said, I just, I just want to see Louise. And she came all the way from Birmingham, where she lives, just for the day, and we just had a day at home. She brought two meals with her. And I don't know if James said to her, don't say anything, but she didn't say anything about my face at all, until late in the afternoon when I said, I just, I just don't look like me. And she said, Oh, you do. She's and this was the most important thing anyone said to me. She said, Of course I can see it, but it's still your face. It's still Eleanor. And I hung on to that through the next. Three weeks when things weren't changing, that it was still my face, even if it didn't feel like it or look like it.

Emma Pickett  40:08

Yeah, that's a good way of saying it. Where did you get to with the smiling? Were you doing a smiling attempts and half smiles and slightly different smiles? 

Eleanor Nightingale  40:18

I'd read some things about Yeah, yeah. Physiotherapy exercises, trying to smile. It was hard because I could feel that smiling wasn't working. I could feel that I wasn't on one half. So whenever I did smile, I was reminded of it, because it felt like there was a tug on the left side of my face. But I would do these exercises. It said the thing, I said, red said to do them in the mirror, which was difficult, but I tried to. And then at exactly three weeks, I got the tiniest Twitch on the left corner of my mouth, and I ran to find James, and I said, Can you see it? Can you see it? Watch. And he squinted, and he squinted. He said, Yeah, it's there. It's there. It's tiny, but it is there. There is movement. And then I started to feel that everything was going to be okay, if you Yeah, but it took, it took another couple of months for it to resolve.

Emma Pickett  41:19

So in that time, you're still not sleeping, but gradually you're able to start eating and drinking, and you felt things improving, that which must have been a huge relief when you've had that experience. Do you then always wonder whether it's going to happen again? What's the what is the chance of reoccurrence?

Eleanor Nightingale  41:35

Well, I'm pregnant. I'm 21 weeks. 

Emma Pickett  41:37

Congratulations. 

Eleanor Nightingale  41:39

Thank you. So nobody can quite agree. I asked my friend, the consultant, to do a literature review for me, because I'm a maths teacher and I like stats, and I like peer reviewed science, and I have been speaking to a couple of doulas this time around, and I've decided to to have one for this birth who also does postpartum night support, which you can imagine, is a big deal of my fears this time around. And one of the ones I spoke to said, Oh, well, that'll be the epidural. And I said, I don't think so. And she said, yeah, yeah, yeah, they don't tell you about it, but that'll be the epidural. And that didn't seem right to me at all. And whatever I Googled, I couldn't find anything about epidurals and Bell's Palsy. And my friend, the consultant, looked into it, she said it's absolutely impossible, because the epidural is central nervous system and Bell's Palsy is peripheral. If it had caused that paralysis, your whole left side would have been paralyzed. It couldn't only be your face. So it's not linked. They think people are more at risk if they've had it before, when you are unlikely to be at lower risk. And with things like inflammation, it can make a pathway that's more likely to recur once something's been irritated, once it's like if you've had tendonitis or repetitive strain injury or things like that, even after it's cleared up, you're going to be more susceptible. But risk management, I met with a consultant this week. They're making a plan about managing my risk of hemorrhage, which in turn should manage the risk of Bell's Palsy, but there isn't anything to be done directly.

Emma Pickett  43:28

And are you feeling in control about that? Or do you are you living with a sense of sort of fear and worried anticipation? Where are you feeling emotionally?

Eleanor Nightingale  43:38

I'm feeling much more in control. I mean, we had a long, hard think about how to have a second child, but whether to have a second child, and I came to the conclusion that, to me, the risk of it happening again and the risk of it being permanent is worth it. If I knew it was going to happen again and I knew it was going to clear up, that would be fine, because so much of it was the not knowing. And this time around, you know, I figured out so many things. That would be easier, but obviously I wouldn't. 

Emma Pickett  44:09

You've got youreye patch trick, obviously as well. We're going to be selling that to the market. We need to have another trial. So you need to find somebody else with Bell's Palsy to test the eye patch before we can make your millions out of it. So it sounds, I'm glad to hear you say you feel like you've got you're in control, because that sounds like a really positive place to be and and from what you're describing, I mean, I talk to a lot of people who have hemorrhag, and I talk to a lot of people who have tears. I'm not saying exactly your scenario, but you're the first person I've met who's had Belle Palsy as a result of that.

Eleanor Nightingale  44:40

Oh, yeah. It's not common at all. 

Emma Pickett  44:42

So because it's not common, it seems deeply unfair to imagine that your risk would be significant compared to the to the average person. I mean, it's really unlikely that you'll have that exact set of circumstances, and also unlikely you'd have a baby waking every 20 minutes as well in the first few days postpartum. Yeah. Your body was going through a heck of a lot. So you did recover. You did go back to doing completely standard face, doing all the standard face things must have been great being able to eat and drink.

Eleanor Nightingale  45:11

It was, I mean, I'm a chocoholic, and I couldn't even stand chocolate for most of that period. And yeah, the breastfeeding became much more comfortable after I'd met with the lactation consultant, and I also talked to the breastfeeding peer supporter from the NCT group, who was really helpful with ideas and also with just validating that things like vasospasm can be incredibly painful, even if there isn't anything sort of medically wrong. Exactly, if you see what I mean. Yeah, there's no infection or visible trauma.

Emma Pickett  45:45

Yeah, vasospasm isn't, doesn't get talked about a lot, but, but the intercostal nerves in the breast are not super kind. They send horrible referred pain everywhere. And it can be really deep, deep, deep pain. 

Eleanor Nightingale  45:57

It was, yeah, it was really painful. And it was, it seemed to be the worst at night when I was trying to sleep

Emma Pickett  46:04

after those luxurious 18 minutes in between feeds exactly weren't even getting to sleep. Then, oh, sorry, that's a grim combination, but I'm glad to hear things got easier. Do you remember your early smiling with Hattie? What kind of smile? How did she get on with her smiling?

Eleanor Nightingale  46:18

She did great. She smiled first at James, and I think I will always wonder if that's because he could smile at her and I couldn't. But my mum said to me, Look, you can tell when you're trying to smile, and that's the important thing. It doesn't look like a normal smile, but I can tell when you're trying to smile, and that's what matters. 

Emma Pickett  46:36

Yeah, and it smiles in the eye. I know that's a bit of a cheesy thing to say, but there's something that happens in the whole face with a smile, isn't it? It's not it's not just about lips. Yeah. And so I'm going to be a bit cheeky and ask you about your weaning, if you don't mind, because I'm a fan of talking about weaning. Tell me about the end of Hattie's breastfeeding experience. Was that something that was driven by you? How did you come about ending things? 

Eleanor Nightingale  46:57

Yes, so, I mean, she's always been an absolute boob monster, and I've loved it. It's been a superpower. Once we resolved the feeding pain, I loved breastfeeding even in the middle of the night, and I got confident doing it out and about doing it everywhere. When she was 19 months, we decided to nightween to see if it would help with the sleep we're very anti any form of sleep training. We were co sleeping fully at this point, but we thought we'd read the stuff that zihukwe has about. You know, after 18 months, we got her book, and the first night was tough. The second night was tougher. She cried a lot, but I kept her in with me. I didn't want her to lose that source of comfort. And we'd explained a lot. We'd read books, and by night three, she stopped asking, and it did help the sleep. She went from waking sort of five to eight times a night to three to five times a night. And then we kept the daytime feeds. We were sort of on a loose ish schedule around meals, not feeding her for sort of an hour before meals, and not feeding immediately after, but very approximate, mostly on demand still. And then when I got pregnant, I decided I wanted to fully wean her, because I have an amazing friend who is tandem feeding, and I think it's incredible for me. I found being touched out postpartum really difficult. I just was crying literally to have an hour Nobody touched me, and so I don't feel that tandem feeding is right for me, and I would hate to wean Hattie suddenly on the arrival of a new baby. So we bought a lovely book. My milk will go. Our love will grow very well, yeah,

Emma Pickett  48:54

cry when they buy it for the first time. I always say to someone, read it before first on your own in locked room, before you bring it to yourself. 

Eleanor Nightingale  49:01

I didn't. I cried. She looked at me, said, mummy, sad? And I said, Yeah, 

Emma Pickett  49:07

it's nice to sometimes it's good to be prepared, because if people are expecting to it could be tough.

Eleanor Nightingale  49:13

But she would say, Hattie sad, mummy, sad, too. And I said, Yeah, it is sad that the milk is going away and we weaned very gradually. Dropped a feed a month. She was on about three feeds at that point, first thing last, 

Emma Pickett  49:24

did you notice your milk supply being hit by pregnancy? Was that an factor?

Eleanor Nightingale  49:29

I think it was, but it was also the time we were weaning. So hard to say which was which? I thought the bedtime I fed her to sleep every night of her life. I thought that was going to be a big deal, and it just wasn't at all. I cuddled her to sleep

Emma Pickett  49:43

so that that day when you finally dropped that bedtime feed, was that the last feed at that point?

Eleanor Nightingale  49:48

No, because I really loved our early morning feed. That was wonderful, and I wanted to hang on to that one. And also I felt that dropping the bedtime feed last would make it harder. No.

Emma Pickett  50:00

That's a good way. It's a good way of looking at it. I like, I like that logic. That makes a lot of sense. 

Eleanor Nightingale  50:04

And so we'd say to her, we'll have milk in the morning. Milk in the morning, right now. And she was fine with it. Cuddled her to sleep.

Emma Pickett  50:12

So when you say fine with it, literally, not, not upset, literally.

Eleanor Nightingale  50:16

The second night, she said to me, yesterday, milk today, no milk. I said, Yeah, we used to have milk at bedtime, and now we don't. And she said, yeah, so does that make you sad? She said, Yeah. I said, I know it makes me sad too. It's hard, isn't it? She said, Yeah, gave me a big cuddle, no actual tears. 

Emma Pickett  50:38

Oh, it's lovely that she can talk about how she's feeling. That's, that's really special. So, so that moment when you beloved over the book that was, that was actually a really important little, you know, threshold. There wasn't it. She just knew that feelings were okay, and it was okay to talk about emotions around this. So you had the early morning feed. 

Eleanor Nightingale  50:55

We had that for another month or so. I also wanted to get out of the first trimester, because I felt so awful. I mean, really awful, worse than I did with her, and I couldn't face the sort of getting straight out of bed. My husband still takes her from about four or 5am and then he does breakfast, gets her dressed, and when he leaves for work at about 7.20 he gives her to me so I get 

Emma Pickett  51:18

so that was your morning feed time, that sort of, that was your reuniting sort of snuggly time, okay, 

Eleanor Nightingale  51:24

for sometimes an hour in bed, which was so lovely, and I didn't have to get up. I didn't have to think. So we cut it, we cut it to 15 minutes. We cut it to five minutes. We read the book a lot. We talked about how tomorrow, there wouldn't be any milk in the morning, James prepped her that morning. He said, When we got to mummy, no more milk. And she brought me some books, encouraged by James, and she looked at me sitting there. She said, milk all gone. I said, Yeah, it's all gone. Where milk go? I said, Well, you've drunk it. You've drunk so much milk and it's in your tummy and it's made you big and strong. Said, yeah, all milk in Hatty tummy. Yeah, it is. And she was quite happy with that. She asked for three or four more days in the morning, she'd say milk, but she knew, and she didn't, she didn't get upset. She that was start of August, so not a very long time ago, we're now, yeah, end of September, and she was still when I got out of the show the other morning, she said she looked at me and said, Hatty miss milk.

Emma Pickett  52:36

Hatty is such a gem. I miss it too. Such a sweeties. And the way she can talk about her feelings is so good. I mean, you've obviously done such a brilliant job, you know, creating a little person that can talk emotionally and talk about how she's feeling. That's super special. What a lovely end to breastfeeding.

Eleanor Nightingale  52:54

It was. We talked about the last feed I made. I can't remember who I got this idea from. I made a folder on my phone of breastfeeding pics of the two of us, and we looked at that, and we took a picture of our last feed. I asked if she wanted to, and she said, Yes. So we took a photo of our very last feed together, and we put it in the folder. And sometimes she asks to look at it on my phone, and we look at the pictures, and we say, this is you as a tiny baby having milk, and this is you as a big girl having milk, and this is our last feed.

Emma Pickett  53:22

That's, that's great. She loves that's great. I love that. That's, yeah, that's a really special way of doing it. That day of the last feed when she popped off. How are you feeling?

Eleanor Nightingale  53:32

I was quite emotional. I held it together, but I was, I was worried about having sort of weaning blues, because one point earlier on, just after we'd night weaned her, we'd had a day where not for any deliberate reason, but she hadn't fed nearly as much. We'd had a long car journey, and just completely coincidentally, she hadn't fed very much. And it was only shortly after we night rained and I just felt absolutely miserable and terrible and hormonal, and then it clicked, and I said, Oh, my God, this is because I haven't fed her very much today. I've read about weaning blues, and I'm sure it's what it is. I fed her some more, and the next day I was fine. So I was worried about that, but I didn't have any of that. I just felt, yeah, I still miss it. It was lovely.

Emma Pickett  54:21

I mean, you were somebody that had such a drive to want to breastfeed and make breastfeeding work. I mean, obviously I talked to lots of people who who have that drive. But, you know, you literally said, half an hour ago, I'd be willing to risk permanent eye damage to make breastfeeding work. 

Eleanor Nightingale  54:34

I don't know if it was the most rational. 

Emma Pickett  54:37

Well, I don't know if it's rational. Is the word you need to use here. There was something deep inside you so so based on that, I would wonder whether you would be more vulnerable to weaning blues, but it sounds as though you were, you absolutely knew that tandem feeling wasn't right for you and you and you and you didn't want to wean abruptly. So you, because of that, you had that really clear motivation to wean, which is so valuable, and it just. You had that emotional strength to be able to support her through it as well. But yeah, it doesn't mean it's not sad. It doesn't mean there's not some sadness there.

Eleanor Nightingale  55:07

And she was two, yeah, nearly two and a half. So that was good for me, because I'd always wanted to get to two years.

Emma Pickett  55:13

Yeah, and how are you feeling about your next breastfeeding experience?

Eleanor Nightingale  55:17

I'm excited. I know a lot more. I won't accept that pain is normal. I won't accept it looks fine. The latch looks fine if it doesn't feel fine, or if the nipple doesn't look fine. And I have, I have a toolbox of tools that I want to use. Yeah, good. The funniest thing Hattie did say upon weeding, though, when we were talking about it a lot, is we talked about how my mother breastfed me, you know, Granny fed mummy when mummy was a little baby, and then that night, at bedtime, we have a dog who's called scarfy scarfel. And we were talking about how we don't have milk anymore. And she looked to me and she said, when scarfy little baby, mummy gives scarfy milk? I love where this is going, Hattie, but there's a slight species issue. No, no, no, mummy gives Scarfie milk. When Scarfie little baby, oh, 

Emma Pickett  56:18

but then you have to break it so that scarfys Mummy is somewhere, and Scarfie doesn't get to see their mummy. And that's, that's traumatic. 

Eleanor Nightingale  56:25

So, yeah, we didn't go into it. I just thought, Okay, let's imagine that, if you like this, 

Emma Pickett  56:30

I'm sure there, there are some awful tabloid magazines that have people feeding puppies and kittens. 

Eleanor Nightingale  56:36

So Scarfie did get milk when he was a little baby. 

Emma Pickett  56:38

Yes, he needed doggy milk. Maybe that's a biology lesson to have later on, later on, when baby, when new baby comes, you can, you can have the biology lesson then, okay, yeah. So if somebody's listening to this, I'm wondering whether some people listen to this are going to be frightened of Bell's palsy, and they're going to be frightened of so and I'm that may be not a great word to use, but I'm aware that some people are thinking, Oh my God, my baby wakes up frequently. Does that mean I'm going to get Bell's Palsy? But it is. It is extremely rare. It doesn't mean it's not impossible. And it's good to know that if you see someone walking down the street whose face is not looking like your face, maybe that's what's going on. And have some empathy for people that maybe have facial difference, which I think is something as a society, we're not great at right, definitely. Did you find any resources? You're obviously Mrs. Google and Mrs. Research? Were there any resources about Bell's Palsy that you found particularly valuable, that you'd recommend? 

Eleanor Nightingale  57:31

Not really. You can google for some physiotherapy exercises, which at least made me feel like I was doing something. And like I said, the physiotherapy referral came through six months later. So that was a whole lot of use. 

Emma Pickett  57:43

I'm sure that poor physiotherapist spends the whole life going, okay, you don't need me. Fine. That's the next call. I mean, that must be just the entire day.

Eleanor Nightingale  57:51

They said, I'm calling about an a&e Visit you've had. And I said, No, no, I haven't been to any. And they said, Yes, it would have been about six months ago. And I just went. I don't, I mean, I had a baby about six months ago, but I don't think I went to an E and then I went, Yeah, yeah, I did, because I couldn't work out I'd been to triage maternity, triage postpartum for bleeding and clots and things, quite a lot as well. So I hadn't really separated the two. So it took me ages to figure out what she was banging on about, but the eyepatch terrific is golden. Yeah, definitely figuring out what you can eat, small, relatively dry, things like patch. 

Emma Pickett  58:27

You need a little blog. You need to write a blog with a little image of the eye, patch. And, you know, Eleanor's recipes. I'm not kidding. I mean, about, you know, any particular cups that were helpful, any other sort of practical tips?

Eleanor Nightingale  58:39

yeah, I mean, yes, you've got, you've got to drink, you've got to eat. But I knew that didn't help but take the pictures. Have somebody take the pictures and store them and not show them to you, not show them to anybody, but have them. Yeah, because you might want that.

Emma Pickett  58:58

That's that's a really good tip. Thank you. Thank you so much, Eleanor for sharing your story. I really appreciate it, and even if somebody isn't necessarily going to be touched by Bell's palsy in their life, just hearing your determination and I'm also really struck by James's contribution to supporting you and how how special that is, and a real story of how breastfeeding and chest feeding is often about partners as well family and friends. 

Eleanor Nightingale  59:25

And maybe somebody will Google this episode if they do have Bell's Palsy. And like me, they're Googling for anything and everything on postpartum and Bell's palsy, and just hearing that somebody else has had it 

Emma Pickett  59:36

and absolutely come through it and is in a great place. Yeah, and you can't,

Eleanor Nightingale  59:42

Emma can see, but you can't tell at all from my face now 

Emma Pickett  59:46

that I can testify I am looking at her face, and there is absolutely no sign of any asymmetry at all. No, yeah, so that's good, yeah. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And yes, and if someone is has googled and found you, you're not. Alone, where you know there are people who can support you, and it may not be that an area that's talked about a lot, but maybe you can find Eleanor somewhere. Well, I'm not going to give you her number, because that's not cool.

Eleanor Nightingale  1:00:10

If you message Emma,

Emma Pickett  1:00:13

the very few people for whom this will be directly relevant, I can definitely do that. That's very kind of you to offer, although, if you're busy with a newborn, you're allowed to be busy with your newborn, but yeah, thank you so much for your time today, Eleanor

Eleanor Nightingale  1:00:26

Thank you for having me.

Emma Pickett  1:00:27

I'm so impressed with all what a determined woman you are. And I'm really glad that things worked out well. Thank you. 

Emma Pickett  1:00:38

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.