I had no idea what was coming my way. 

Whilst every bone in my body has felt ready for motherhood for as long as I can remember, nothing was going to prepare me for the breastfeeding hell.

No book or instructions handout, no NCT class, no hospital workshop, no breastfeeding expert, no video, no hypnobirthing app, nothing and no one was going to prevent the two years of trauma that were to follow my child’s birth.

For two full years, whenever anyone would ask me when we’re planning to make another adorable little human, I would literally cease up in discomfort and go into panic mode, my stomach burning with pain and my throat drying up. 

For two full years, I thought it was the trauma of birth that did this to me. 

[Without going into too much detail- every contraction made me re-live the car accident from 16 years earlier. It was as if my spinal fusion was being smashed from the inside and I felt my back breaking over and over for eight longest hours of my life.]

It wasn’t until Lake turned two and I felt that she needed a sibling, that I was ready to address the wound and deal with the pain. I knew I wouldn’t want to bring another child into the world with so much fear occupying my cells. So I had my mum put together a cell memory clearing meditation for me to follow and I enrolled in The Journey course to help me through this.

What I uncovered through this intense healing process was that it wasn’t the birth at all which I was most afraid of, it was the first three months that followed birth.

And so in order to deal with the trauma and to completely let go, I went on to re-live the nightmare. My breastfeeding hell.

I remembered the piercing screams of a hungry baby that simply wasn’t getting enough milk.

I remembered the dozen or so midwives that came through our doors to ‘assist with the issue’ over time. 

I remembered each one of them attempting to get the crying child to latch by forcing her over my breasts while I bit my fist in agony and cried with her.

I remembered telling Elliot not to allow any visitors because it was too painful to put a top over the raw and bleeding scabs of my nipples.

I remembered the heartache of not being able to comfort and to hold my baby too close for that very same reason. 

I remembered Lake sucking only to peel the scabs off till blood ran down her cheeks.

I remembered the midwives panic because my baby wasn’t only not regaining her birth weight at 10 days old, she continued to lose weight. She slept for 5 hours at a time because she had no energy and cried when she was awake because she was so hungry.

Still they insisted that I persevere with breastfeeding and not give in to formula no matter what. 

I remembered sobbing in the shower from physical pain of my exploding breasts, the scabs, the blood, the blocked milk ducts; and the emotional pain of feeling like a complete failure in my first task as a mother that provides for her newborn in the most basic way.

I remembered how surreal and dehumanising it felt to literally be milked not only by strangers that came through our doors but even my own husband.

I remembered never being able to sleep, not because I was over-exhausted, but because I needed every minute to mentally prepare myself for the immense agony of feeding a child as soon as she was ready to wake up.

I remembered taking this innocent child into my arms and seeing only a mouse trap that was about to jam itself over my raw skin and send me into more silent screams.

I remembered wanting to slice off my breasts because I thought anything will be less painful than them blowing up till I saw skin tearing with my own eyes.

I remembered Elliot sprinting to Superdrug in freezing January to buy out shelves of any product relating to breastfeeding or soothing a baby.

I remembered how much I wept from the depth of my core when I tried using a hand pump to relieve me of the milk build up, only to feel the scabs of my nipples crack open and see nothing but blood drip into the bottle.

I remembered how exhausted I was to care when someone finally picked up on the fact that Lake was tongue tied to latch properly and had a severe case of asymmetry. (Her neck was jammed in one position and her head was always turned to the right, which meant that feeding equally on both breasts was not only difficult and painful for her, it was pretty much impossible, till we called in a cranial osteopath to release the muscles. This apparently happened as she was developing inside me- she was growing into a long baby inside a short mother so there wasn’t much room to move and she kinda found a comfy position to keep growing with her head turned to one side).

Meanwhile a fellow NCT mum offered to lend me her electric pump and I refused because of what happened with the hand pump. She insisted that I give it a try and had it brought to my house. I stared at it with deep fear for at least a week.

By the time we had Lake’s tongue tie fixed, by the time the osteopath’s magic work began to take effect and by the time I discovered how a miracle electric pump was going to give my nipples a break for a chance to heal.... my milk pretty much dried up.

The next round of painful experience began.

My baby was literally screaming from starvation and I felt like I failed her yet again by not having enough milk and by giving in to formula.

For the first time in weeks, I could see the child was satisfied. Thank you Lord for baby goats!

The midwives still went on about how important it is that I don’t give up and continue to breastfeed. 

So I persisted and committed to trying any tip going that might help to increase breast milk production.

Again, there was no chance for me to sleep. I was a mum on a mission...

It felt like I had warm compresses on my breasts around the clock. If I wasn’t nursing Lake, I was expressing. If I wasn’t expressing, I was in a hot shower massaging my breasts to stimulate the milk production.

I upped my calorie intake and started loading on complex carbs like brown rice, beans and whole grain pasta. I was steeping fenugreek, raspberry leaf, stinging nettle and fennel seeds all the time to take as a tea. I started drinking dairy for the first time in years, because I heard that a glass of warm milk before nursing will increase my own milk. It did work for a short time and when it didn’t, I started to drink formula myself. (That was one of the low points of the whole mission). 

The next round of painful experience began. My baby got the taste for formula milk and was no longer interested in mine. 

It was also a big effort for her to breastfeed, while the bottled milk just flowed. 

It was difficult enough witnessing just how much she no longer wanted my milk, but when a stranger dining at my cafe made a remark like ‘I do hope that’s breastmilk in that bottle’, it left me in tears for weeks.

I knew how it looked to an outsider: A raw food expert with her own organic cafe, promoting natural living, that's free from animal foods - wasn’t even breastfeeding her own newborn. Instead she was feeding her dairy milk formula! 

I hated feeling like I had to explain myself to friends before I pulled out bottle feed, but the last thing I thought I’d be doing is avoiding my own beloved haven of a restaurant at the risk of the judging eyes.

It’s Breastfeeding Awareness Week and every year starting August 1st, I see hundreds of posts on the importance of breastmilk, as well promotion to stop the shaming of mothers nursing in public.

Although I am 100 percent in full support of this incredibly important initiative, I felt like I needed to write this post for a number of reasons-

1. I needed to do this for my own healing to be complete. I have a brand new life growing inside of me now and I am determined to bring this child into the world without fear. (Surprise!) 
2. I now know what to look for (ie. tongue tie, asymmetry, electric pump) the second time around. Hopefully someone else reading this will benefit from knowing these signs and won't need to suffer for as long as I did.
3. If you’re also struggling with so much pressure to breastfeed, while crying from unbearable agony, just know that all this pain and fear is being passed on to your child via the hormones in your milk. Yes, the goodness in your milk may outweigh the fear hormones and Yes, we don’t know what the animal that was being milked went through and what fear hormones it might be passing on via formula, but I do know this... As soon as I relaxed and the pressure (mainly in my own head) to breastfeed went away, the love and the bond between me and my child blossomed. Love is the ultimate fuel. Babies need our love just as much as they need food to survive (if not more).
4. Please whatever you do, DO NOT judge a mother feeding her child in any which way she possibly can. You have no idea how many tears she cried till the point that she could comfortably breastfeed in public. You have zero clue as to how often she was losing the will to live until she could soothe her baby with a bottle. Believe me when I say ‘she is doing her very very best’.

So much love going out to all the new mamas, the newborns and the judging eyes. We are, after all, the ones that need it the most.

xTanya

Trying cashew kale chips for the first time  

Funny flight story (‘funny’ because it’s behind us ;-))…

It took 4 flights, 4 taxis and 43 hours to arrive at my parents’ Sungate 11:11 in Vilcabamba, Ecuador.

The connecting flight to Madrid was a total dream with a 10 months old. I inquired both at Heathrow and at Madrid airport desks about a good seat for Lake and I for our remaining 12 hour flight to Guayaquil and was assured with great certainty that the flight is looking empty, that there will be no one next to us and that after take-off we will even be able to change to a four-seater row!

Soooo we board the flight with confidence, find our seat and spread all the toys, snacks and bags across our isle seat and the empty window seat next to us. Then 5 minutes before take-off, people start piling in! PILING IN!

And so many of them, some with 5 bags each, some with caged cats, some with caged dogs. It was like watching a movie, because that’s how surreal it all looked.

At this stage, I’m still pretty optimistic about the extra space on this flight, I almost don’t notice the man telling a cat woman behind us that she’s seated in the wrong seat and needs to move herself, her cat and all four of her bags next to me and Lake.

I start to panic trying to work out how to keep the baby happy while I gather aaaall of our belongings to fit in a tiny space underneath my feet (anyone with kids knows just how much you need for a 1 hour walk, let alone a 43 hour journey!).

Lake senses my panic and starts to get squeamish, meanwhile the cat woman keeps saying something to me in Spanish. If you were to mute this whole scene, it probably looked a little like an over exaggerated version of charades, where she is gesturing for us to transfer to a window seat so that she and all of her stuff wouldn’t have to.

Then as everyone is loudly fussing and climbing over each other to get to their seat and competing to fit what ever they could into tiny overhead lockers, the cat woman starts climbing too and in the midst of throwing her bags onto the seat next to us (I’m still collecting our toys), she manages to bang Lake on the head with her cat’s cage.

Then the crying begins! By this stage it’s not only Lake crying either…

I grab my upset baby and me, shoot over to see a flight attendant, she helps us find a better seat, helps us make the dreadful transfer and just as I start to settle, she tells us there’s an even better seat. I’m a mixed bag of skeptical, pleased, annoyed and hopeful, but I go alone with it. She is right, the seat is much better and there is now a whole empty one next to us!

We are good to go at last.

We are buckled in, Lake on my lap strapped to my seatbelt, I catch a breather (and a few smiling faces that have just witnessed our musical chairs episode), everyone is in their seats, cabin crew have completed the prep for take off and are now nowhere to be seen as they disappear behind the curtains to take their seats. Relaxed in my seat, I’m about to begin my ‘take off meditation’ but before I close my eyes, I gaze over the tv screen:

“Enjoy your flight to Quito”…  Quito?? OMG!

I turn to an Ecuadorean man across the isle: “Quito?”, “Si, Quito” he smiles. “Noooooo!”

I practically tear the seatbelt off of me and Lake, swing her over my shoulder and jump out from our seat like a ninja turtle!

The “surreal movie” continues, except I’m no longer the one watching it, everyone is watching ME! In this movie, I’m the crazy woman with a baby over my shoulder, running towards the front of the plane yelling “excuse me, excuse me, I need to be on a flight to Guayaquil, my dad is there to meet his granddaughter for the first time!!!”

A flight attendant pops out from behind the curtain, explains that two flights were combined at the last minute and that the first stop is Quito but I get to transfer there onto Guayaquil and still arrive on schedule. I walk the walk of shame all the way back to our seat with everyone cheering and smiling my way, but I tell myself it’s because I have such a cute baby and nothing to do with the entertainment that her crazy mother just provided for a plane jam-packed full of spectators.

Moral of the Story?… Do not make fun of crazy people, one day they might be you. (And don’t call cat lovers ‘cat woman’, that’s not very nice.)

Weaning can be so confusing.

Even NHS seem confused.

First they recommend weaning at five months, then at six months and now they suggest that four months is the ideal time to introduce your baby to solids to avoid possible food intolerances later in life.

The food intolerance reason does make sense to me, but I had to go with my own motherly instincts here and follow baby led weaning (which I was soon to learn is an actual thing, though I’m yet to read the book)…

I let Lake lick fruits and my green smoothies here and there when she was four months. I added probiotics to her breastmilk when she was just a week old (via my own diet and by coating nipple in it). I added spirulina to her bottle once a week when she was about two months. When I finally decided to try out with her first ‘meal’, it was a banana and she only had 1 or 2 tiny spoonfuls. I was so excited to see how she likes it, that I blended up an entire banana, only to realise that this is not something to rush.

For her next few ‘meals’ instead of trying out different foods in a blender, only to see them wasted, I would chew them up in my own mouth like mama-bird and feed her from a spoon. We started this process at five months with just one solid ‘meal’ per day, which quickly escalated to two ‘meals’, that also became a little bigger each day. Then instead of fitting in food in-between her milk feeds, I took one milk feed away and then another and replaced them with watered-down ‘solid meals’.

Now at 7 months, instead of five milk feeds over the course of 24 hours, she has three milk feeds and two to three solid feeds, which are usually a decent bowl-full. Hungry growing girl.

I try not to offer any snacks, so she understands her routine. Only water, which she happily accepts especially after rolling around all over the grass in the park.

I think it’s always best to introduce little ones to solids with a mono diet and slowly add extra ingredients.

Here are the foods Lake enjoyed immediately when they were blended up till smooth for her to swallow:

1. Avocado, flesh only
2. Peas, slightly softened in hot water
3. Apples or pears, cored and peeled
4. Banana, peeled
5. Sweet potato, boiled
6. Watermelon, so juicy, no need to blend, just let them suck

When it comes to recipes, I’ve tried sooooo many varieties, many not even worth mentioning, because the little lady just turned up her nose to them, no matter how hungry she was. There’s been lots of trial and error, but the below recipes are absolute winners in our household.

There are no quantities, because only you will know how much your baby eats. If you find that there’s way too much waste, store it in the fridge and try giving it the next day warmed only by some boiling water.

MY ABSOLUTE ESSENTIALS FOR WEANING

Hi guys,

If we are not yet best buds on social media where I announced the safe and natural arrival of my mini-me, then you might’ve wondered if she’s even here yet.

And she is!

Not only has she been here since 8:16AM 13th January, but I have no idea how I ever lived without my little lady Lake.

In fact she’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. Ever. I’d hear other parents say that about their children and I thought that it’s just something you say, like ‘My wedding day was the best day of my life’. Perhaps it is very much true for many, but both Elliot and I went to bed that night high-fiving each other because it was over. Heehee. Not that we didn’t enjoy it -it was the most incredible day with our favourite people, in the best location, best food, best speeches, best so many things- but we were just way too happy the planning was over and especially the first dance which we practiced in his work’s meeting room for just enough after-work hours for the security guard to get seriously suspicious.

Back to Lake.. she is the best thing that’s happened to me and Elliot, we can’t say it enough and can’t get enough of our delicious little girl.

Girl.

We knew that we were going to have a girl way before we were pregnant. How?

Every NYE we sit down with our note pads and list off all the amazing things that happened in a year. They don’t have to all be super happy, but they are all the things we are super happy they happened (everything eventually leads to happiness). In other words, we make a gratitude list to start off the new chapter in a state of bliss.

On 31st December 2014, we decided to fancy up our little tradition and along with Elliot’s sis, went for a walk to my favourite place in London, Holland Park, to burn stuff. Let me explain…

1. We wrote down our greatest wishes and desires for the new year.
2. We read them over, breathed them in and put ourselves in a state of feeling as though everything on that paper was ours right now.
3. Then to release all attachment to the outcome, we set fire to our folded paper. It was now up to the universe to get to work.

I personally wrote down 3 wishes, one of which was a happy healthy pregnancy in 2015. By the time Saskia and Elliot’s bits of paper transformed into magical fairy dust, we were all ready to head back for some warmth, except we didn’t, because my bit of paper hasn’t burned out. No matter how many matches I lit or how hard I tried to shield it from the wind, we could’ve been there all night waiting for it to be finish burning.

I decided it would be just as effective if I buried the remaining piece under all the fallen leaves and let nature degrade it when it’s ready. When my wish is ready…

Just before I went ahead and left it behind, I was curious to see what could’ve been on that paper which didn’t want to burn.

Then as I unfolded the wish list, it wasn’t what I wrote which shocked me, it was what I saw:

Wow, right?

I couldn’t have created this shape with a magic wand, let alone a match. That was the moment I knew that when we were ready to start trying, a little girl will be ready for us.

Do you ever wonder how many messages from the universe you might be missing? Or how to look for them? Or how to interpret them when they pop up? Or maybe how to receive them when you need some guidance?..

Then there’s nothing I could possibly recommend any more than getting involved in a Hay House World Summit this year!

In a month’s time I’ll be writing to you to let you know how you can get the very best advice, from the very best authors, in the comfort of your own home, completely free of charge. But like with everything super mega valuable, it will also be for a limited time, so make sure you’re on the list not to miss my reminder!

Have the best day!