One thing is for certain, breast feeding is not like riding a bike. Just because you’ve done it once, doesn’t mean it will happen again easily. And so my initial misplaced complacency was quickly stripped away when Nisha cried and fought her way through the first 4 days of feeding. Add to that her concerning weight loss, and I was getting worried. Luckily, Oxford is home to a world leading breast feeding clinic at the John Radcliffe hospital. I had benefitted from the sage advice of Sally, Chloe and Rosie the last time around, and so promptly turned up to the next available clinic day.

Its so easy to snuggle down when you are 12 days old!

Apart from a bigger room, the atmosphere was the same as 3 years ago. Walking in and being offered tea and a biscuit immediately eases the worry and you feel you could walk away a super-mum with amazing feeding powers. The advice hasn’t changed, but it’s always worth a reminder. The all important technique needs practice and it’s easy to spend a couple of hours there while you wait for baby to get ready. The room was full of mums with babies of all ages, getting questions answered and hanging out; no rush, no queue, just various stages of feeding, sleeping, and crying, all watched over by midwives with probably a century’s worth of experience between them.

I pondered on how many mums and children this team had helped in their time; it must surely be thousands. As well local clinics, they write articles and offer advice across different forums, including national newspapers. It reminded me that support like this is invaluable in the early overwhelming days, even if you’ve done it before (there was a mum at the clinic with her 4th baby).

Of course, Dads and toddlers are welcome, although they can’t do much. Nikhil’s verdict on arriving back home from the hospital was that it was all ‘quite boring’. For me though it was just lovely.