Dear Boobs

My breastfeeding experience By Claire Foskett How it inspired me to write a book

My breastfeeding journey started in June 2017 when I had my first daughter Nora. In hindsight, I had a pretty ordinary breastfeeding experience – though I didn’t know it at the time. However many books I read and however much the antenatal classes told me, in the early days I often found myself thinking ‘Is this normal?!’. Then I’d look online and see that hundreds of other women had been through the same thing. I loved breastfeeding but I wasn’t prepared for all the added extras – the leaking, the restrictions, the sheer relentless monotony of it all. I felt like knowing what to expect might have made those frazzled, foggy times a little clearer..

After a few weeks of breastfeeding I started writing poems about what me and my boobs were going through. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the poems but I wanted to share my experience somehow. There seemed to be a lot of organisations supporting breastfeeding, lots of serious instruction manuals available, and plenty of online forums with posts from sleep-deprived mums – but very little published on what breastfeeding is really like. The ideas kept coming and, before I knew it, I had written about 20 poems. I decided to embark on publishing them as a book. Life took over and the book took a back seat as I committed myself fully to breastfeeding, despite all the boob admin involved! When Nora was 5 months old I went away to a hen do. I pumped every day for weeks so that my husband Daniel had enough milk to feed Nora while I was away. Throughout the hen do weekend I had to duck away from the festivities multiple times to pump and dump. And I thought my boobs were going to explode as I sat waiting for my delayed train to take me home! Despite the discomfort and effort involved, that weekend was so important for my sanity – so I felt like it was worth it!

I couldn’t wait to start solids and share the load more with Daniel. We started at 6 months, but it wasn’t the instant fix I’d hoped for. I was surprised and disappointed when, weeks later, Nora was still breastfeeding multiple times a day and once overnight. At 8 months I went back to work and Daniel began shared parental leave. We switched Nora to formula for daytime feeds whilst I continued to breastfeed her morning, bedtime and once overnight. At 9 months she finally started sleeping through and I felt like a real weight was lifted. I was still having to pump in hotel rooms when I

went away with work, and found myself thinking how great it would be when I could wear whatever I wanted and not have to think about outfits that work with breast pads and leaky boobs! By the time Nora was 1 year old she was only having one small feed a day, at bedtime. It felt like the right time to stop breastfeeding but, having wished my breastfeeding time away, I suddenly started to feel sentimental about our journey ending. I set a date for our last feed and cried as she pulled away for the last time. She never again showed any interest in boobs and so that was that!

In 2020 we got pregnant again and I was inspired to revisit my book. I set myself the target of publishing it before the baby was born, but a few things delayed the process and the book was still sitting in draft form when Avril was born in March. One of the main delays was, bizarrely, due to Coldplay. I’d crafted a poem entitled ‘Feed You’ – an adaptation of the lyrics from Coldplay’s song ‘Fix You’. I’d contacted them to ask for permission to adapt their lyrics and, after 4 months of chasing, their team eventually replied and declined permission. No reason was given other than that it was the artist’s prerogative. So I had to remove the poem and create an alternative. In the end the delay worked out quite well – by the time Coldplay replied I was 2 months into breastfeeding Avril, and doing it all for a second time had given me some new ideas. Some of the new poems were written as Avril hung off me for the twelfth time that day, and the final poem is The Man’s Perspective, written by my husband.

My book, ‘Dear Boobs: A book of poems about the love, leaks and let-downs of breastfeeding’, was published in May and I would love you to read it and hopefully have a giggle! If you’re an expectant mum, I hope the poems give you a head start and an honest insight into what to expect. If you’ve started (or finished) breastfeeding, I hope they reassure you that other women have been through the same challenges. It isn’t a how-to book and it doesn’t provide any advice or solutions. I’m not a qualified breastfeeding professional, I’m simply a woman who volunteered her boobs for service for a year and wanted to talk about it.

‘Dear Boobs: A book of poems about the love, leaks and let-downs of breastfeeding’ is available on Amazon as a paperback (£6.99; with illustrations by a wonderful illustrator called Paul Hawkins) and as an eBook (£1.79; no illustrations): https://www. amazon.co.uk/dp/152729448X. and in my online store: (£6.99): https:// claire-foskett.sumup.link/

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