Welcome to Breastfeeding Psychology

Phoebe was a first-time mum. She had wanted to breastfeed, but it was painful from the start. She was told that the latch looked “great” and professionals dismissed her pain and concerns. Her baby lost “too much” weight and she was advised to start pumping and formula top-ups.

The pain didn’t improve and so Phoebe started using nipple shields. Eventually a tongue tie was discovered and released, but by 6 weeks, Phoebe was understandably exhausted and relieved to swap to formula feeding. Looking back, she feels she was unheard and let-down by professionals, and that she failed at feeding her baby, or advocating for him well enough.

Phoebe still feels upset when she sees other mums breastfeeding, and worries that she is judged for bottle feeding. She can’t really bear to remember the intensity of those first few weeks, and also can’t seem to forget it and move on. Sometimes when she sees photos of her baby as a newborn, strong memories flood back and it’s like she is right back in it again. Her husband and family don’t understand and are quite dismissive of her feelings.

She worries that she hasn’t given her baby what he needs, both with milk, and with being so distressed and preoccupied. Phoebe comes to us and we understand what she has been through. We understand that while she made the best decisions she could at the time, she is deeply grieving how she wanted to feed her baby, and her start to motherhood.

We know that the pain and lack of support she received are traumatic, and we use CBT together to process her memories so that they are less overwhelming and distressing.

We help her to feel more compassionately to herself, and to focus on what is important to her about being a mum. We are here to listen and provide evidence-based psychological treatment.

Jenny was a mum of two. She was still feeding her 3 year old at bedtime and through the night. She was feeling low and depressed (and feeling guilty for feeling this way!) and also worrying about lots of different things all the time.

She had always thought she had quite low self-esteem, but since having children she was more overwhelmed and not able to do the things that usually helped her mood.

She worried that if she sought help they would think she was either “weird” for feeding a 3 year old, or advise her to wean her toddler in order for her to feel better.

We understood Jenny’s situation, and are supportive of natural-term breastfeeding. We helped Jenny to develop a psychological map of her low self-esteem that had been present since childhood.

We worked together to understand her patterns of low mood and anxiety, and used CBT to improve her mood, and be more skilled in handling anxiety when it came up. We didn’t blame her problems on breastfeeding, or consider weaning as an easy fix.