Both men and women are welcome to join ‘Friends of Breastfeeding’
THE THOUGHT that his wife would breastfeed their first baby never entered Tom Finn’s head before their doctor brought up the subject. His mother had bottlefed, as had his sisters-in-law and that was all he had seen.
“I started getting information about it, and was thinking ‘why doesn’t everyone do this? It’s free. It’s the best thing you can do. Why have I not heard about this?’ Once I knew about it, I was so into it, telling everyone about it.”
He is the only man, so far, involved in a new group called Friends of Breastfeeding, set up to support mothers who want to breastfeed. “We are trying to address the lack of culture for breastfeeding in Ireland,” explains Tom’s wife, Chris, who is spokeswoman for the group and still happily breastfeeding their daughter, Eliza, who will be two next month.
“We are very much about mothers who want to breastfeed,” she explains. “We don’t even want to engage in the breast versus bottle debate. We don’t see any need to get involved in that.”
The mothers who set up Friends of Breastfeeding met through an online parenting forum. “A lot of us were frustrated about our own experience of breastfeeding and the support we should have had really wasn’t there,” says Chris, a student nurse.
She and Tom, who live in Waterford, are both members of the organisation’s council. He is there, he says, “to give that different point of view, from somebody who has been in the middle of it” and he hopes to encourage more men on board.
Support from fathers is a key to successful breastfeeding. If they don’t understand why their partner is persevering through initial difficulties and keep suggesting it might be easier to give the baby a bottle, it undermines the mother’s confidence.
At the start, Tom says, like many men he felt a bit uncomfortable when with women breastfeeding in public – not with Chris but with other women. “Initially, because breasts are so sexualised, you have that in your head. But then it’s fine actually, you can’t see anything.”
They are introducing a scheme whereby participating businesses can display a Friends of Breastfeeding sticker to indicate that nursing mothers are welcome. People can also buy pins from the organisation, to wear in support of breastfeeding mothers.
Breastfeeding is good for men too, Tom adds, because they don’t have to get up for night feeds. “I don’t think men realise that because when we first had her, they were joking, saying, ‘I hate doing night feeds’. And I said ‘I never get up for a night feed’. And one lad shook my hand and said: ‘Good on you man!’”
- For more information see: www.friendsofbreastfeeding.ie
