I gave birth to my son ‘Bobby James’ in april 2009, he is now 7 months old and has been exclusively breastfed throughout his tiny life (with exception to the last month were i have introduced solids.)
Unfortunately two weeks ago Bobby caught a viral infection which developed into bronchitis. With the bronchitis his tiny airways became slightly blocked and so he found it difficult to breathe through his nose, and so he was breathing mainly through his mouth which as you can imagine made it pretty impossible for him to breastfeed.
We took Bobby to hospital were he had to have a tube inserted into his nose which led to his stomach, his feeds were to be poured down the tube. I found this whole process extremely stressfull, to see my only child going through such distress. Little did I know I was about to feel discriminated against on top of this stress.

The children’s nurse pulled back the curtain, ‘cow and gate’ bottle in hand and said ‘Ok Bobby time for your feed I’m going to pop this down your tube now darling’ to which i responded ‘Oh sorry, actually he his breastfed so I will have to express some milk.’ The nurse looked at me with severe frustration, checking her watch she replied ‘Tut! well I won’t get back round to you for another hour or so in that case, the ward is very busy you know.’

Like all the television advertisements, formula milk packaging and magazine articles state ‘Exclusive breastfeeding up until the age of 6months is the ideal diet for your growing baby’
Well what hope do young mums like me, and babies have if this is the kind of attitude we are faced with in regards to breastfeeding, from a children’s nurse of all people.