# Becky's story - twins from NICU to exclusive breastfeeding

An episode of [Makes Milk with Emma Pickett: breastfeeding from the beginning to the end](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1697865705), 28 Sep 2026, 1 h 14 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2214940/episodes/19858802-becky-s-story-twins-from-nicu-to-exclusive-breastfeeding.mp3

I’m joined this week by the lovely Becky from Southampton to talk about breastfeeding her identical twins, Sully and Knox. Becky shares the shock she and her wife Sarah felt when discovering they were expecting twins. The pregnancy was monitored closely due to a shared placenta, and then growth restriction led to a 35-week C-section in Bournemouth because Southampton lacked NICU space. Her babies needed CPAP and NICU care, and Becky started pumping within hours and maintained three-hourly pumping while navigating inconsistent feeding support. After discharge, with crucial IBCLC support from Polly Smith, the twins gained strength and transitioned to mostly breastfeeding. Now nearly aged one they feed less, with a recent nursing strike linked to illness and teething, but Becky is determined to breastfeed them for as long as they need. My picture book on how breastfeeding journeys end, The Story of Jessie’s Milkies, is available from Amazon here - The Story of Jessie's Milkies. In the UK, you can also buy it from The Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill, London. Other book shops and libraries can source a copy from Ingram Spark publishing. You can also get 10% off my books on supporting breastfeeding beyond six months and supporting the transition from breastfeeding at the Jessica Kingsley press website, by going to https://bit.ly/JKPbooks and using the code MMPE10 at checkout. Follow me on Instagram @emmapickettibclc or find out more on my website www.emmapickettbreastfeedingsupport.com Resources mentioned - Breastfeeding Twins and Triplets https://breastfeedingtwinsandtriplets.co.uk/ Polly Smith IBCLC https://www.pollysmithibclc.co.uk/ This podcast is presented by Emma Pickett IBCLC, and produced by Emily Crosby Media.

## Transcript

This transcript is AI generated.
\[00:00:00\] Emma Pickett: I'm Emma Pickett, and I'm a lactation consultant from London. When I first started calling myself Makes Milk, that was my superpower at the time because I was breastfeeding my own two children, and now I'm helping families on their journey. I want your feeding journey to work for you from the very beginning to the very end, and I'm big on making sure parents get support at the end, too.
Join me for conversations on how breastfeeding is amazing and also sometimes really, really hard. We'll look honestly and openly at that process of making milk, and of course, breastfeeding and chest feeding are a lot more than just making milk Thank you very much for joining me for today's episode.
Today I'm talking to Becky from Southampton, who is breastfeeding her lovely twins, Sully and Knox. Great names, by the way. And we're gonna be talking about Becky's journey from giving birth to twins, the NICU, the triple feeding, and where she is today, which is just about to have two one-year-old twins, and she's still breastfeeding successfully and exclusively breastfeeding.
Thank you very much for joining me today, Becky. Sully and Knox are sleeping right now, is that right?
\[00:01:17\] Becky: They are. They're down for their morning nap currently, yes.
\[00:01:20\] Emma Pickett: Okay. If they do wake up, it's not the end of the world, just to say. Your wife is home, is that right? Your wife,
\[00:01:27\] Becky: Sarah. Is home, and she is, she's under control, so they shouldn't, they shouldn't need me, which is good.
\[00:01:33\] Emma Pickett: Okay. Okay. But as I said, if anything happens or that changes, not, not a problem. Obviously, they're, they're your priorities. Before I ask you a little bit more about your family, tell me about their names. Tell me about the inspiration for their names 'cause they're lovely.
\[00:01:44\] Becky: So it's a funny one. So we didn't find out what we were gonna have Um, so we didn't know, so we had lists rather than names before we, um, had them.
And my wife just always wanted a Sully. It was, it was her set boy name. Sarah said, "Sully's non-negotiable for me." So then it was about finding a name that went with Sully, and that's really hard when you're having twins and you know that they're gonna be identical. And we wanted to give them their own personalities.
Um, so it took us a really long time, and we had a list of a few names, but then just before we were going to give birth to the twins, we had a gig booked to see someone called Knox. And I would've been 34 and a half weeks pregnant. And throughout my whole pregnancy, I was going to this gig, and nothing was gonna stop me.
And it was in London, um, and I was traveling for it. And we didn't, we didn't make it to the gig. Um- Oh ... so which is fine. It's all, we've actually got tickets booked to go next year again. So that was part of it, and that ended up putting Knox onto the list of names. And then little Knox was born to a song by Knox.
So-
\[00:02:50\] Emma Pickett: Oh,
\[00:02:50\] Becky: wow. Okay ... it just meant that that was his name. So because each baby didn't have a name, we knew one of them would be Sully. So he was born to a song called Not The 1975 by Knox, and that just decided his name.
\[00:03:03\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. That was meant to be, wasn't it?
\[00:03:04\] Becky: Yeah, absolutely. Not a bit
\[00:03:05\] Emma Pickett: of decision-making there.
Yeah. Like the, the Puritans in America used to pick their children's names by randomly opening the Bible- Yeah ... and touching a word in the Bible. So you have Cotton and Increase and all these great names. And, uh, yeah, we should just play tracks. Random Spotify list. Whoever comes out, you get, you know, you get Adele or Britney or whatever you go.
Absolutely. Um, what's great about their names is they're both, they both have equal power. It's the- Mm-hmm ... so that, that there's a really good balance to them. Yeah. We've probably lost about half the listeners here who aren't- ... na- name nerds like I am, but I don't care. I've just been reading the, the autobiography of the pilot who landed the plane on the Hudson.
Um- Oh, wow. Brilliant ... the pilot Sully. That was his nickname.
\[00:03:44\] Becky: Yes, it
\[00:03:44\] Emma Pickett: was. Um, so that name is very much in my head. Yes. Um, okay, let's go back in time. Before we started recording, we talked about the phenomenon of same-sex couples always get nosy questions about how they conceive their children, and you kindly gave me consent to ask you a little bit about how Sully and Knox came into the world.
So you, you married your wife, and how quickly did you want a family? And tell me about that process for you.
\[00:04:07\] Becky: So actually, I didn't marry Sarah until the boys were three months old. Oh, okay.
\[00:04:12\] Emma Pickett: So at this point, pre- Ooh, post-birth wedding. Lovely.
\[00:04:13\] Becky: Yes. Um, so pre the twins, we were in a relationship, had talked. We'd been together for, um, quite a few years.
We'd been friends for a very, very long time. We'd been talking for a few years about having babies. I am 30, and we-- I had health checks done Privately when I was 28, just to be sure that there wasn't anything that was gonna crop up, particularly when you're, you haven't had the joy of being able to practice as such, being able to conceive a child.
We wanted to be sure that everything was fine. And in that it came up that my egg reserve might be slightly low. Okay. So that was, radar was, um, sort of there for that. So we said as I was turning, well, I was 29 at the time, "Let's give it a go. It could take ages. Let's go through the IVF process, collect the eggs, make the embryos, and just see what happens."
Actually, when we then had health checks done again, I was on average everywhere for my age. Um-
\[00:05:10\] Emma Pickett: Okay, isn't that interesting? So something nudged you. Yeah, absolutely. That, that first test- Yeah ... almost was heaven saying, "Get a bit of a move on me," and it turned out it wasn't actually the case. Yeah. Wow, okay.
\[00:05:18\] Becky: Wasn't the case. And e- everything was fine, but we were in the middle of the process by that point. We had it in our heads that we were going to try, and we'd made the decision we would have three rounds of IVF. I don't know why we decided three, but we said, "We'll have three, and if it doesn't work, we'll take a break, go on a really lovely holiday, and then we'll come back to it."
And we had the joy that, uh, we were both young enough that we could do that. So we went in, in the, um, November, started everything. Had the transfer in the January, and that was our first transfer. Um, and they almost didn't put the embryo in, just one embryo in, because they thought I was at risk of hyperstimulation, which means all the medication that's sort of been pumped through my body to collect the, um, eggs to make the embryos do all of those things, meant that my, um, ovaries were getting quite swollen and quite full of- Okay
liquid. Okay. Um, so there was a risk of hyperstimulation. But I was determined that I wanted it to be... I had set in my head that I wanted it to go in, um, that round. So we did the fresh embryo transfer and did a pregnancy test. Uh, how long? I think that was about three weeks after. You go up for a blood test.
Did a pregnancy blood test, um, and found out that we were pregnant. And at that point, they can tell on your levels of pregnancy, um, if they're really high, there can be a chance of multiples. And none of that happened. They just said, "Everything's normal. It's all on normal range." And off we went on our merry way and waited for a six-week test, um, that we would go up for a scan at six weeks.
So we went up, and I was really sick at this point. By the time we got to six weeks, I thought that maybe I just didn't handle pregnancy very well. Was really sick. And I had to travel from work up to, uh, we were using a clinic in London. Um, tra- travel up to London, and I was really sick on the train. And we got there and had the six-week scan, and they said to us, "Did we put two embryos in?"
And we both just looked at each other and said, "No,
\[00:07:19\] Emma Pickett: just one." Ooh, you know what that means when someone asks you that question, yeah.
\[00:07:21\] Becky: And at, at that point, I kinda thought, "Oh." And I was looking at the scan, and I could see, I'd, I've seen early scans before, so I could see that it looked like... I couldn't actually see a baby because there were two- sacks.
It looked a bit weird to me. I couldn't see a baby. Um, and my wife was just stood there, and they said, "We think there's two babies." And I looked at her and said, "Twins?" And we hadn't thought about it at all. And she said, "No, no, they said maybe." Um, and the lady said, "No, no, there's two babies in here."
\[00:07:51\] Emma Pickett: I love the way Sarah's hanging on to the-
\[00:07:54\] Becky: She was like-
the possibility for some more ... "No, no, they said maybe, not..." And the color just, I just watched the color, I'll never forget, just watched the color drain from her face. And I just went into shock. I just laughed, laughed, and laughed, and laughed. And then, yeah, we, we were six weeks at that point with two identical babies.
\[00:08:10\] Emma Pickett: Wow. So, so one embryo, and one embryo was saying, "Damn it, we're gonna be two boys."
\[00:08:14\] Becky: Absolutely. '
\[00:08:15\] Emma Pickett: Cause with, with obviously with the IVF, you hear people talking about, "Oh, well, we're not, we don't want to implant too many. We don't want there to be a risk-" Yeah ... of multiples. Your body, your sons were like, "Nope, this is the way it's gonna be."
Um-
\[00:08:26\] Becky: Yeah ...
\[00:08:26\] Emma Pickett: did you have any experience of twins? Did you know any families with twins? Any,
\[00:08:30\] Becky: any- So interestingly, um, prior to my current career, I was a nanny For quite a few years. So I did nannying prior to going to university, and then during university I did night nannying. And when I was at university, I fell into twins and I specialized in twins.
Wow. And I had a twin family I worked for. And for the whole of my time, I did night nannying with other twins, and I worked with them during the day. So I had a lot of ... It's very different, but a lot of twin experience within those years. But we're talking 10 years ago.
\[00:08:59\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Still, that can't be common. I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone who's been in that situation.
The, the number of moms who've, "Yeah, yeah, I spent, you know, t- 100 hours with twins at night." I mean- Absolutely ... you must be a absolute unicorn. That's amazing.
\[00:09:13\] Becky: Yeah. It's s- so unbelievably lucky. And back then I used to always say, "One day I'll have twins." But there wasn't a single point during the IVF or talking about babies or going for the scan where it even crossed my mind that there would be two babies.
It almost feels like I was training my whole, you know, younger adult life for today. It's, it's crazy how life works. Yeah. It's
\[00:09:37\] Emma Pickett: amazing. Well, there's definitely a theory about manifesting and- Absolutely ... I spoke to Francesca on the podcast, who's a very big believer in manifesting what you want in your life, and so- I
\[00:09:46\] Becky: was listening to that this morning.
\[00:09:47\] Emma Pickett: Who knows? Who knows? Um, yeah. And, and actually she's a mom of twins as well. Mm. So you said that the f- the sort of color drained out of Sarah's face. Was that just thinking about life parenting twins, or was she worried about you and, and the pregnancy? What was going on? Um,
\[00:10:01\] Becky: it was everything. She, it, we were both petrified, even though I'd had all the experience.
Um, s- Sarah only ever wanted one baby. I always knew that we wouldn't just have one baby. I knew she'd fall in love with motherhood. But she was very sure that she just wanted one, e- to the point that she asked when we went for the IVF, and you have the very first appointment, she said to the doctor, "What's the chance of multiples?"
And he said to her, "There's no point even having that conversation. It won't happen." Um, so we were so shocked, so shocked, 'cause she was like, "You told me this wouldn't happen." Um, and so yeah, she, the idea of two babies, the idea of one baby was quite, quite scary for Sarah. She was excited, but also it's a huge life change.
She hadn't had any experience with children, um, at all really, other than friends and holding friends' babies, but it's, you know, it's not the same. So yeah, she was frightened and so was I. In, in a way I didn't think I would be. I went into panic. We haven't got a big enough car, we don't have the room, how much is it gonna cost?
All of those questions. Yeah. And she actually very quickly was like- Well, this is life. She's very practical, very practical. She was like, "We just need to get on with it," and came over that fear far, far quicker than I did. I continued to panic, I think until we got a new car and I was like, "Right, well, at least we can get two babies home from the hospital safely."
Yeah, really frightening
\[00:11:28\] Emma Pickett: at the beginning. Yeah. Wow. And, and did you know in your pregnancy, you know, how much maternity leave you were gonna be able to have? How were you sharing the parental leave between you?
\[00:11:37\] Becky: Um, so we- we'd always-- I was always gonna have a year, um, and it would always be me, but Sarah was gonna take off, um, a little bit longer than the normal weeks you get as sort of...
So sh- uh, her entitlement would be the same as paternity leave. Um, and she was always gonna take a little bit longer off just, just to have bonding with the baby. But when we found out it was twins, she decided to take off eight weeks. We, we'll probably get onto this later, but they ended up being a bit early, so she had neonatal leave, so she ended up being off for a little bit longer than eight weeks.
Okay. I think it was about 10, 10 and a bit weeks in the end. So that was always kind of the plan that she'd be off for longer, but she did end up off, being off, um, for quite a bit longer, which we are, I'm really grateful for. Um- Yeah, I bet. Yeah ... and then at the end when I go back to work, so I'll be going back to work.
It'll be a bit longer than a year because again, I've got neonatal leave and annual leave to take. So I'll go back, um, and there'll be 14 months and then she's gonna reduce her hours. She'll have the fun bit. She always says she gets to take over and she'll, she'll work, um, less hours, um, and she'll have them a couple of days a week, which- Okay
will be really lovely.
\[00:12:40\] Emma Pickett: That's great. That's great. And, and so you found out you're having twins, and what are your thoughts about infant feeding? Obviously, as a night nanny, you weren't breastfeeding the twins you're looking after. Um, what did you know about breastfeeding? What were your kind of feelings about breastfeeding?
\[00:12:52\] Becky: So I've never experienced breastfeeding twins. All of the twins that I, uh, obviously a night nannied were being bottle-fed by me, and the twins that I cared for during the day, uh, with a very, very lovely family. They had a three-year-old already, um, and she breastfed. She breastfed for a couple of weeks at the beginning, and I remember sort of her pumping and breastfeeding and one of the twins latched and fed, but I was never there.
It was quite-- I'd only just started my role when the twins were born, so we weren't very close at the beginning, so I was never there when she was feeding, so I had no experience of that. My experience of those twins was bottle-feeding them and formula feeding them. But I've always just had That gut feeling that I would breastfeed my children.
And I, I don't know if it's the need for a different, sort of a different life to nannying, that it would be a different relationship.
\[00:13:41\] Emma Pickett: Yeah,
that's
\[00:13:41\] Becky: interesting. But I just always knew, and it, it wasn't a negotiable for me. It was I will breastfeed. Um, and so when I found out it was twins, it was my first sort of fear that how on earth am I going to feed them?
Am I gonna be able to breastfeed two babies? And I, yeah, I did a lot of research at that point, um, reading and looking into things. I found Catherine Stagg quite early on, and she was my lifeline. Yeah. Um, her Facebook group was my lifeline from day, from pre-pregnancy all the way up to today. I still look now and try and find things.
\[00:14:13\] Emma Pickett: Fantastic, yeah. Breastfeeding Twins and Triplets UK. For anyone who's in the UK, that is the go-to for anyone breastfeeding multiples. Um, very, very supportive environment. They also are a charity, and they can even fund home visits. Mm. Um, and also Catherine's got her book and her website and all her resources as well.
Um, yeah, that's such a great resource. Just coming back to something you said I thought was really interesting, the idea about when you've nannied children and you're going to parent them- Mm ... it's going to be different. Mm. It's going to be ... You're not r- nannying your own children, and the idea that you'll be breastfeeding as part of that difference, I think is obviously
That makes a lot of sense to me. Obviously, there are people who choose not to breastfeed, and that's their personal choice. But I can understand the logic of that. You're, you're m- really highlighting that sort of biological connection with, with your children when you give birth to them So the pregnancy progresses.
You mentioned you were sick at the beginning. Did that carry on?
\[00:15:03\] Becky: It did. I, um, I don't remember it very much once the twins came, but Sarah's got real vivid memories of my sickness and my sickness being really bad, um, up until about 20 weeks and then it became sort of feeling sick but not being physically sick.
Um, lots of queasiness. I still had a very, very weak stomach. I couldn't open the fridge throughout my whole pregnancy. People had to-- Sarah would have to get things out the fridge and leave them on the side for me in the morning, um, because that would be a real trigger for me. So yes, it, it, it was quite bad, but I don't really remember it as being as bad as it sort of, Sarah looks back on it being, but it, yeah, probably was.
Um, and I didn't really have many other problems. I had two weekly scans because they were, um, identical, so that's just standard. You go to twin clinic every two weeks and have scans every two weeks.
\[00:15:53\] Emma Pickett: Tell me a bit more about that. For anyone who doesn't know, why is it considered higher risk if they're identical?
\[00:15:59\] Becky: So there's lots of different types of twins, but Sully and Knox have got-- they, well, they had one placenta and then, uh, their own individual sacs. And the other way you can have is two placentas, two sacs. Normally, they're non-identical, but can be a late split of the embryo identical. Or you can have one placenta and one sac, which is the highest risk of twins.
And the risk between identical twins with one placenta is twin-to-twin syndrome, which means that they can take each other's nutrition. One can take more, one can take less, and it means one twin can end up being really small, and that's obviously really risky. So they scan every two weeks to make sure that's not happening, and so that they can catch that very, very early on.
And what they'll then do is a procedure to stop that from happening, essentially I'm very lucky that that, that didn't happen to me. We didn't have any, um, risk of that throughout, but they did scan me, um, every two weeks regardless. They do with everybody-
\[00:16:58\] Emma Pickett: Okay ...
\[00:16:58\] Becky: from the beginning.
\[00:16:59\] Emma Pickett: Okay. So pregnancy progresses.
You're not vomiting anymore, but n- you're not opening the fridge, and the Knox tickets have been bought, and the- Yeah ... train tickets are there. And w- spoiler alert, we know you're not making it to the Knox concert. So what happened?
\[00:17:13\] Becky: So yeah, so the Knox concert, I, yeah, it was about 34 and a bit weeks. Um, and at 33 weeks, we went to 33-week scan, and they didn't say a huge amount, but I could tell by the way that they were scanning and measuring and remeasuring that something wasn't quite right.
So they scanned and they measured, then they went out and they said, "We're gonna get the consultant to have a look." So you have a scan every two weeks, and then you also have a consultant appointment every two weeks. But if everything's fine, you either don't see the consultant or you see the consultant for a couple of minutes.
So we got sent back into the waiting room, and we were waiting for quite a while, and I said to Sarah, "Something's not right." I wasn't that worried. I just thought they often got the measurements quite wrong or somebody else needed to measure them. Twins are really hard to scan anyway, and the bigger they get, the harder it gets.
And so if you've got someone that's not that experienced, it does take quite a lot of time. They're very quiet during the scans, and they scan the head 100 times. And you can see on the, you can see what they're doing, so you can see what the measurements look like. And then the consultant came out and said, "They're just not measuring.
They've not grown very much in the last two weeks. Everything's probably fine. They're quite small. Why don't you just come back in a couple of days and we'll re-scan you?" So went back at, I think it was about two days later, went back, um, and again, they were small. Um, Knox, who was twin two, was measuring smaller than Sally, not because of twin to twin, but just because of restricted growth at that point.
They felt that his cord, um, wasn't showing up what they wanted it to show. So from that point, we went back every two days for scans, and then at 35 weeks, I think it was 35 Yeah, it must've been exactly 35 weeks. Um, we went back in and they did the scans. And as I went, we went in, I said to Sarah, "We're not coming home today."
I could just, I just had a feeling in my gut that we weren't going back home. We had we, I'd just gone on annual leave and we had a week where we were gonna prep everything. I was gonna put my feet up, and I just knew it wasn't gonna happen. Um, so we went back in at 35. We- they made us wait for the consultant again, and the consultant came in and said, "I think we need to get them out now.
They're still not growing. Twin two is small." At this point they were telling us they were gonna be about four and a half, um, five pounds.
\[00:19:28\] Emma Pickett: Okay. Which is
\[00:19:29\] Becky: nice, to be honest, for 35-week twins. But, um, Knox was measuring smaller than they wanted him to be. But then they said to me, "So w- we need to get them out.
We need to book you in for a cesarean, but we need to check that we've got NICU space." And they said throughout the whole pregnancy, they might be born in Southampton, which is where we're from, but if there's no NICU space, you will have to go somewhere else. So we were mentally prepared for that. We knew that there was gonna be those conversations, but I'd kinda manifest- manifested that wasn't gonna happen to me.
Um, I'd decided it wasn't, that wasn't gonna happen, and they were coming in Southampton. So then they sent us back out for quite a while. They sent us off for coffee so they could ring around, speak to the neonatal team there, speak to the other neonatal teams, and then we went back in and they said, "We don't have neonatal space for you, um, but we also don't, can't find a hospital that does."
\[00:20:19\] Emma Pickett: Oh, no. That's scary.
\[00:20:21\] Becky: So that was a bit scary, and we were like, "Right, okay." So, and it was the evening at this point, so I was 35 weeks. It's the evening. It must've been 35 plus one, and they said, "Look, go home, have some dinner, pack your bags, make sure your bags are in the car, and we'll phone you- So we went off home, um, got a phone call back two hours later.
It was about 7:00 o'clock, and they said, "We're gonna have to get you to go to Bournemouth. Can you get in the car and go to Bournemouth now?"
\[00:20:46\] Emma Pickett: So for anyone who doesn't know UK geography, that's further along the South Coast.
\[00:20:50\] Becky: Yeah, it's about an hour.
\[00:20:51\] Emma Pickett: Not super close. No, not,
\[00:20:54\] Becky: not that close. It's the furthest possible option.
Um, the only other option was Basingstoke, and that was, I, I'd already said I don't want to go to that hospital, um, just 'cause I used to live there, I used to work there. Not in the hospital, but in the area. So it wasn't somewhere I wanted to go. So it was the furthest possible point they could've put us.
And again, in my head, I'd decided, well, they're gonna send us to Portsmouth, which is 20 minutes down the road, really convenient from where I live in Southampton. Convenient for family. It would've been great. So yeah, it's not very close. It was an hour. So we got in the car, drove down to Bournemouth, um, knowing that the babies weren't coming that day, but they wanted to put me on the monitors to check me.
They kind of very suddenly were like, "We need to monitor these babies and keep these babies monitored until they come." So we got to Bournemouth quite late at night, both me and Sarah and all of our bags, um, and went in and they put me on the monitor, um, and said to me, "The babies are gonna come tomorrow.
We're gonna book you in for a C-section tomorrow."
\[00:21:50\] Emma Pickett: I'm just imagining for a moment, I mean, you know, we're saying, oh yeah, you get in the car, you drive for an hour, you've got your lovely new car. But, but an hour away from home, I mean, you're gonna tell us about life with NICU in a minute. An hour away from home is a flipping long journey.
I mean, if-
\[00:22:04\] Becky: Mm-hmm ...
\[00:22:05\] Emma Pickett: if you're backwards and forwards and, you know, presumably you need to get stuff, and where's Sarah gonna sleep, and where, where are you gonna sleep when you're discharged? The logistics of that really cannot be underestimated. That is intense.
\[00:22:16\] Becky: Yeah. And
\[00:22:17\] Emma Pickett: you don't have close family or friends around necessarily.
Did you know anyone else in Bournemouth? Did you have anywhere to stay?
\[00:22:23\] Becky: No. No, neither of us did. Um, and we'll get onto it in a moment, but we were very lucky that we, um, we did s- we were in the hospital the whole time, but that was going through our minds. Well, other than that night. So when we got there, they said, they'd told us on the phone that they, we would be put in a room where there was a, um, partner bed.
So Sarah had packed a bag and was coming. And then they suddenly said, "There's a chair, or you can go home." But again, that's an hour, and the babies were coming, they told us, at 9:00 AM the next day. So we debated that for quite a while. She did end up going home, 'cause I said to her, "Look, these babies are coming.
They're gonna be small. We don't know what it's gonna be like. Go home and get some sleep." But even that's hard when they've suddenly put me on the monitors and told me that we need to worry, to just go home, drive an hour- And not be worried is really hard
\[00:23:14\] Emma Pickett: Yeah, and just that drive for her- Yeah ... drive in the dark knowing she's left you at home and- Mm
I mean, left you at the hospital. That's, that's horrible for both of you.
\[00:23:24\] Becky: Really horrible. Um, so yeah, we went off to sleep. They checked me through the night, um, and everything was fine. They, they were just small. There wasn't, there wasn't any other worries during that. Uh, my blood pressure was a bit high, but understandably in the situation that I was in.
And they said, "Sarah, be back for 8:00 AM. We're gonna put you on the emergency list in the morning, and as l- unless there's another emergency, you'll be the first ones out because we want the, because it's twins, we want to get them out nice and early so that we've got the whole day to do anything they might need."
Um, so Sarah gets back. As she's coming up, their, the neonatal team were in with me. We hadn't at any point, they offer you to do a tour of NICU and to have a convers- or Southampton do, to have a conversation with the neonatal team. Um, and we'd said no. We felt for us, and this is controversial, but we felt for us it was better to go in blind than to walk around a neonatal unit pregnant with twins, um, and be frightened for something that- Okay
might not have happened. I, I really
\[00:24:26\] Emma Pickett: respect you knowing yourself, actually. That's-
\[00:24:28\] Becky: Mm ...
\[00:24:29\] Emma Pickett: that's a really interesting decision, and I can absolutely understand that, actually.
\[00:24:32\] Becky: Mm. Mm.
\[00:24:33\] Emma Pickett: You haven't got the oxytocin of your new babies. These are, like, hypothetical- Yeah ... babies you don't know, and you've never seen a baby that looks like that.
That's not necessarily relaxing. On one level, I understand that.
\[00:24:43\] Becky: And it would've absolutely frightened the life out of Sarah and I. I knew that.
\[00:24:47\] Emma Pickett: How did this hospital take that decision? Did they understand that?
\[00:24:50\] Becky: It was fine. They did offer quite a few times, but they, nobody ever said, "You really should."
Throughout the whole pregnancy, my midwife kept saying to me, "Everything's going great. You probably won't need NICU. You'll probably just need transitional care." She said, "There's a chance. I can't promise you." But she was, she was sure throughout the whole pregnancy, and this is my twin midwife, not my, um, home midwife.
We have, you have a home midwife and a twin midwife that you see every two weeks. And so we had, we'd thought about the possibility of NICU, but we didn't think our babies are definite- even at that point, we didn't think our babies are definitely coming out and going into NICU. So everybody was quite casual about it until I got to Bournemouth, and they, and the neonatal team came out.
There was, like, six of them, and they had a conversation, and they were already talking to me when Sarah came in the room, saying that there's gonna be lots and lots of us in the theater. Because if you think of an ordinary C-section with one baby, you have the theater team, potentially a NICU team, the anesthetist, anesthetist.
But for us, we had a team per baby So each baby has their own doctor. You have your surgeon. There was two surgeons. Each baby had their own doctor, their own, um, NICU nurses. So they were just explaining to us that there'd be a lot of people in. And at that point I thought, "Mm, they think we're definitely going to NICU."
Um, and I said to Sarah when they walked out the room, "They think these babies are definitely going to NICU." And she was like, "Oh." And, and that was sort of the moment that it dawned on us that they probably weren't gonna be coming straight out, and we weren't gonna be wheeling off down to our ward. Before then, we hadn't really thought about it, which potentially naive, uh, of us.
But again, all the twins I'd worked with, none of them had gone into NICU. Um, which is incredible if you think about it, um, when you actually look at the amount of twins that do end up in neonatal care. So yeah, and then we went off into theater, got on the table. They did all of the theater prep, went to put the needle in my back, and then lots of doctors ran in and said, "Have you done the medication yet?
We need the room for an emergency." So we had to get off the table- Oh, blimey ... go back, and go back to our waiting room.
\[00:26:54\] Emma Pickett: That's a nightmare. I mean, nightmare for the poor woman that's coming to give birth, but, uh, with an emergency. But oh- Yeah ... you just got into that emotional space, and then you were pulled out the room again.
\[00:27:03\] Becky: Sarah was stood in front of me ready, and the, ready for the needle. They literally had the needle to my back, um, to put it in. We'd taken our pre, our pre-surgery photos by the door, all of that sort of stuff. So then they, w- we wandered all on back to the waiting room. Put us back in the waiting room, and we sat.
And it wasn't very long at all. I mean, um, and all I kept thinking was, and I kept saying to the midwife, "Is the baby okay? Is the, is, is the mum okay, and the other baby okay?" 'Cause I just kept thinking about how frightening it must have been for her to have been rushed into surgery. Um, she was, it, it was a delivery that had ended up needing emergency C-section.
So I kept thinking about that and how frightening that must have been. Hadn't, I mean, it was frustrating, isn't it? It's, um, you get i- into the gear, but it, it was what it was. So we ended up actually going in, um, mid-morning. I think it was about 11:00 AM. And we went in, and they promised, "It's definitely happening this time.
We're definitely getting them out." Um, and then that was a beautiful experience. Again, we hadn't really prepped. Um, Sarah had felt really, really anxious about that bit in particular, being in the theater. She didn't want to see anything in terms of sort of babies coming out, stuff like that. All the gory bits, I suppose But it was, yeah, as beautiful as it can be.
People had my phone and were taking videos for me. I had the playlist, um, where I wanted it to start on specific songs, and they were doing, they were doing that. The surgeon was talking through every single step, how the babies were gonna come out. And then they were here very, very quickly. That all happened incredibly quickly.
And then they went off, and I hadn't necessarily prepared for that. So they both went off onto their own separate, um, stations and both needed some s- breathing support. So Sully in particular needed, um, I can't remember exactly what it was he needed, but he needed breathing support. He was put almost immediately onto CPAP.
And they did both cry, really cried when they came out.
\[00:29:00\] Emma Pickett: Okay.
\[00:29:00\] Becky: But then it all went very quiet and very, and I was just kind of lying there. Um, and once they'd done all of that, they brought Knox over to me Showed me Knox and said, "He's gonna go off to NICU now." Um, so he kind of popped him by my head. We've got a video of me, or it's a photo but it's live, of me sort of just with one finger stroking his tiny, tiny little head.
And then he- they said, "He's gonna go off to NICU now. Other baby's gonna stay in here." And they took him off, and then they started wheeling me off, and I was like, "Hold on a minute. Where's the other baby?" And so they lifted the other baby up, who had, um, he had a mask on, lifted him up to me to show me, and then popped him back down.
\[00:29:40\] Emma Pickett: Okay. So you're fr- on the other side of the room at that point, you're not-
\[00:29:43\] Becky: Yeah, so I'm on the other side of the room. Sarah was over with the babies. She put their nappies on, so she'd seen them, but I was on the other side of the room kinda just, uh, like you are with a C-section, just led there. But they'd started to wheel me out to recovery, and they were keeping Sully in, um, there just so that they could get him stable before he went off to NICU.
\[00:30:02\] Emma Pickett: Wow, what a rollercoaster of emotions.
\[00:30:04\] Becky: Yeah.
\[00:30:05\] Emma Pickett: Two sons in the world. It sounds like Sarah kind of got to task and, and- She did. She, yeah ... practical side of Sarah switched on, and she's there changing nappies and sounds like she's- she knew what she was doing. How are y- uh, you don't know how you're feeling 'cause it's just so many, feeling so many things.
\[00:30:19\] Becky: It's a real blur. I wasn't particularly emotional. It was almost like both of us just went into autopilot. Like, they're here, they're off, kinda just was what it was. Um, and I went off. I remember being put into recovery and them popping my placenta on my feet in a bag, and I remember thinking, "I must tell them that I want that."
And then the next thing I remember, I was in the room, my placenta was gone. Um, I never got, I never got to see it again. And I was back into, onto the ward. So then they took me onto the transitional care ward rather than ... And I'm, I'm very lucky that that happened, and I d- I don't really know to this day whether that was because they knew we were from so far away, or whether it was because they weren't really sure what was happening with the boys.
But instead of them putting me onto a postnatal recovery ward on my own, they put me into a transitional care ward where I had my own room.
\[00:31:08\] Emma Pickett: Okay.
\[00:31:09\] Becky: So everybody in transitional care in Bournemouth have their own room. It's a brand new, it's only been built a couple of years ago. It's really nice, to be honest.
We were lucky. Brand-new suite, um, that area. So everybody gets their own room, so we- they put me in there And it kinda just left me with Sarah- Yeah ... and we were just waiting. Wow. Waiting. No babies, and we just, we're just sitting there, and we were kinda just looking at each other. I had some tea and toast.
And I remember saying to them then, "I need a pump."
\[00:31:37\] Emma Pickett: Okay, I was just about to ask you, when does lactation come into your head? Really early on, by the sounds of it, you're thinking.
\[00:31:42\] Becky: Really. So I, we're probably about 90 minutes, um, post-birth. I think it was about midday, and they were trying to get me to eat.
And I was like, "I need a pump. Somebody needs to get me a pump. Find me a pump." And they were like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. You don't need a pump yet. Just relax." They're like, "Hey,
\[00:31:57\] Emma Pickett: I did my Katherine Stagg antenatal class. I know that I should be pumping within six hours of birth. Give me the flipping pump."
\[00:32:03\] Becky: I was like, "Get me a pump."
So I said to them, "Just get it for me. Even if I don't use it now, just get me a pump. Make sure it's here. Make sure I've got everything I need." And I hadn't even seen a pump really at that point, like in the physical person, other than a couple of like, you know, the kinda pumps that you have in your house.
Not a pump like that. So I kept saying to them every time anyone came in to do checks, "I need a pump. Somebody gonna get, is somebody gonna get me a pump?" Um, and I was trying to hand express, but didn't have anything to hand express into. I was just trying to get milk to come. I didn't really care if it was going across the room, where it was going, I just knew it needed to come.
I'm blessed that one of my closest friends is a midwife, and I had in my head, I remember her saying to me very gently, "If the babies aren't with you-" Then you need to get lactating as soon as possible because you won't have all of those bits from when the babies come on you and do all of that. And I hadn't thought about it when she'd said it to me, and it was a very gentle in-passing conversation, but it's all I kept thinking about then is Jess told me if the babies weren't with me, I needed to get my milk going.
So they did eventually bring me a pump. It was quite a while. It was about couple of hours, I think. I was probably still only about four hours post-babies. But as soon as the pump was in the room, I put it on and started pumping. Um, I think I probably got about 10 mil at that pump- That's great ... which is, uh, on reflection now today, at the time I was like, "Why is there no milk?"
Today I'm like, "Wow, that's incredible." Yeah, that's great. Particularly, I had a real journey with pumping, a real long, horrible journey with pumping. So now when I look back at that, the amount I was getting in those first few days was probably more than I've ever got since. So I got that. They gave me little pots, um, little bottles, pump, um, a couple of
Mm, I didn't have flanges at that point, so just a pump with the whatever it is, 21 millimeter, and I just popped it on. A big, great big hospital-grade pump, and they once showed me, "This is how you get it to work. After a couple of minutes, it'll automatically change. Off you go." And they left the room. Nobody showed me- Okay.
So
\[00:34:07\] Emma Pickett: you had one with a sort of stimulation phase- Yeah ... moves into extraction phase. As you say, you got the standard flange size. For anyone listening, we now know that most people need smaller sizes and need to get individually sized, but you were dealing with the standard. And, and pumping within a couple of hours or four hours, that's, that's still within that recommended window.
This is the one time where you absolutely need to get started with pumping.
\[00:34:27\] Becky: Yeah.
\[00:34:27\] Emma Pickett: You'll hear people say, "Oh no, you shouldn't be using a breast pump this early on." Nope. This, in this situation, you do. Um, we need that stimulation. You might hand express first to catch colostrum. Um, uh, um, I did a lovely episode with Amber who talked about turning the pump upside down to catch the colostrum so it doesn't fall into the bottle.
There are tricks that you use, but you want that stimulation of a breast pump up and running because ideally, if you, especially if you've got twins, you've got that high volume within the first sort of 7 to 10 days, you're producing that full volume even if babies aren't taking all that milk. I'd love to tell you about my four most recent books.
So we've got The Story of Jesse's Milkies, which is a picture book from two to six-year-olds that really tells the story of little Jesse and how his breastfeeding journey may come to an end in one of three different ways. Maybe there'll be a new baby sister, maybe his mom will need to practice parent-led weaning, maybe he'll have a self-weaning ending.
It's a book that helps your little people understand that there are lots of different ways breastfeeding journeys might end, that we're there to support them through all of them, and also, we sometimes have needs too. Also on endings, we have Supporting the Transition from Breastfeeding, which is a guide to weaning that really talks through how to bring breastfeeding to a close in a way that protects your emotional connection with your child.
There are also chapters on different individual situations, like weaning an older child when there's still a baby feeding, weaning in an emergency, weaning in a special needs situation. Then we have Supporting Breastfeeding Past the First Six Months and Beyond, that's really a companion to sit alongside you as you carry on breastfeeding through babyhood and beyond.
What are the common challenges, and how can we overcome them? And let's hear some stories about other people who've had a natural term breastfeeding journey. Then we have The Breast Book, which is a puberty guide for nine to 14-year-olds. It talks about how breasts grow. It answers common questions. It talks about what breastfeeding is.
I talk about bras. I really want to leave a little person feeling confident and well-informed as breasts enter their lives. So if you want to buy any of those books, I am eternally grateful. If you want to buy one of the supporting books, you can go to the Jessica Kingsley Press website. That's uk.jkp.com.
Use the code MMPE10 to get 10% off. And if you have read one of those books and you can take a moment to do an online review, I would be incredibly grateful. It really, really makes a difference. And as you can tell from the fact I'm making this advert, I have no publicity budget. Thank you.
\[00:37:01\] Becky: So you said that you hadn't, didn't have a great journey with pumping.
\[00:37:04\] Emma Pickett: Tell me a bit more about what happened.
\[00:37:06\] Becky: Oh, so pumping. So we, so at this point, um, Sally and Knox are both in neonatal care. So I was pumping from that moment three hourly round the clock, um, for them. In the hospital I was, on reflection, getting probably quite a good amount, probably about 60 mil per side per pump, which is by the time, and that's maybe two days in, which is great actually.
That
\[00:37:31\] Emma Pickett: is good. That's good.
\[00:37:32\] Becky: But at the time I didn't feel like, I didn't feel like I could keep up with them as quickly as they were needing me to keep up, and I was adamant that I wanted them on breast milk, obviously only at the point. And so I was, so kept, kept up with them at the beginning, was pumping, pumping, pumping.
Maybe about day three or four, one of the NICU nurses said to me, I was pumping in NICU, so sitting next to the babies, "Have you got flanges? Have they given you flanges?" And nobody had talked to me at all about pumping. It was almost like what I was doing Wasn't, an inconvenience is the wrong word, but almost like nobody really had the time, nobody really had the knowledge to help.
So great, off you go, pump if you can pump, but that's about it. But one of the NICU nurses said, "Have you got flanges?" I said, "No." She came out with a little pack of, um, the same brand as the pump, little pack of flanges. Um, came out with a measuring guide, measured my nipples. Um, and this is sitting in NICU with, you know, all the other babies, all the other boxes, all the other parents.
Measured my nipples, um, and handed me some flanges. I put them in and tried with that, and actually it didn't make any difference. Okay,
\[00:38:44\] Emma Pickett: interesting.
\[00:38:44\] Becky: Okay. It didn't make me get any more milk. So that's in NICU, and then I continued to pump, so we continued to triple feed for a long time- Okay ... and I continued to
\[00:38:53\] Emma Pickett: pump.
I'm gonna pause you there for a second, and 'cause I'd love to hear about the first time you met the babies after birth. Tell me about coming into, into the room when they were in NICU.
\[00:39:00\] Becky: So that was very early on. So s- again, in the same way I was saying I need to pump, I was saying, "When can I stand up? I need to get to NICU."
And they kept saying to me, "You can't get to NICU until you can stand up and get into a chair." So I was like, "Somebody help me stand up then." Um, and again, they were quite, not, quite reluctant to do that. They wanted me to rest, right? They, I'd just had surgery, major surgery with two babies. They, they were working on the babies, and I think they probably didn't want me to get into them until they were settled and in NICU.
Nobody really said that, but on reflection, that's probably was part of it. So I think that Sally and Knox were probably about six hours old, um, and I was up and in a chair and down.
\[00:39:41\] Emma Pickett: Gosh, woman, six hours after you've had your C-section, that's amazing.
\[00:39:45\] Becky: I was like, "Get me to those ba-" I, I couldn't understand why they weren't.
I hadn't even met Sally at this point. He'd been sort of hovered over, but I, yeah. But actually, again, on reflection, probably should've just had a cup of tea and waited a minute, but I wanted to get to them. Um, so yeah, and then we went in. I was, in fact, I might have still been in my bed I think I was still in my bed at that point, and they wheeled me in in my bed, and they were in their boxes.
And I looked over. Yeah, I think I was still in my bed, and I'd said, "I need to go." Okay.
\[00:40:18\] Emma Pickett: I love the ha- the idea. They were saying, "Wait till you can sit in a chair," and, and you're jumping to the bit where you were wheeled in your bed. You were clearly a woman who wasn't taking no for an answer.
\[00:40:27\] Becky: Yeah. I remember being eye level with them.
But that was very brief. Took me in. H- I literally looked in both the boxes, said hello to them, and then out we go. And then the next time I was up in my chair, and they'd wheeled me down, and then they just kinda take you in, show you where they are, introduce you to ... So each baby has a NICU nurse every day or, um, yeah, a NICU doctor every day.
And they introduced us to who they had, and they'd already, at six hours, they have whiteboards behind, um, each baby. They'd already written their names 'cause we'd already told them who was who. They'd already written their names up on the board, and they'd, somebody had drawn little pictures next to each baby.
One of them had a panda. I can't remember what the other one had. But I remember Sally had a panda, which was very sweet. Um, and they had, yeah, they were in their boxes on their tummies, and they both had CPAP on.
\[00:41:15\] Emma Pickett: Okay.
\[00:41:16\] Becky: Which, for anyone that doesn't know, is a big sort of oxygen mask that goes over their face and over their heads.
Um, so we couldn't really see them very much. Um, and they said That they needed to be left, they needed to be left to rest, um, so they didn't come out
\[00:41:32\] Emma Pickett: Okay. And presumably they've got other clips as well and other monitors that are- Yes ...
\[00:41:36\] Becky: checking
\[00:41:36\] Emma Pickett: things like blood oxygen and, and So
\[00:41:38\] Becky: they both had a cannula in their teeny little hands, and then they have oxygen on their foot.
Um, and then a couple of, um, sticky bits on their chest, which is measuring heart rate and things like that. So yeah, covered in wires, both of them. Um, and on their tummies, um, just in nappies with,
um, blankets. And then they had in there already, again, you can't fault the NICU nurse for sort of the touches like that. So in there already they had two little hearts each, um, which was one for me and one for them- Mm-hmm ... that we can swap over each day, and little octopuses in their, um, in there. And so we sat down, I think I moved over from a wheelchair into a chair, and there's these big, um, great big hospital chairs next to each baby, and we just sat with each baby for a little bit.
For the rest of that evening, we sat, stayed sat. They made me put my feet up um, 'cause obviously I'm just, it was just post-surgery, so they made me put my feet up and we sat, um, next to them for the rest of the evening and I did my next, I think one or two pumps with them, and I pumped sat next to them. So there was pumps, so about four pumps for the transitional care ward for all of the women to share, and then in the NICU there was two.
\[00:42:51\] Emma Pickett: Okay. And they have an NG tube to- Mm-hmm ... to receive the milk. So they have a tube that goes in through their nose directly into their stomach, and that's how they're getting their milk.
\[00:43:00\] Becky: So at that point, their tubes were through their mouths- Okay ... because they had CPAP on their noses. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um-
\[00:43:04\] Emma Pickett: Okay ...
\[00:43:05\] Becky: so at that point they were in their mouths. But yes, NG tube, and they were not, they hadn't been fed then That was the other thing they said to me, "Are you gonna get the milk?" And I said, "Yes." And they asked at that point, "Do you want us to keep up with your milk or do you want us to give them top-ups onto your milk or formula?"
And I didn't really know what they meant. Nobody really explained it. So I said, "I just want them to have my milk." And it was only a couple of days later that I realized that they were n- obviously they weren't gonna starve the babies, but they were increasing the babies' milk at the rate I could increase rather than at the rate the babies needed to increase, I think 'cause there wasn't a significant difference-
\[00:43:42\] Emma Pickett: Okay
\[00:43:43\] Becky: between what they would've done. And at that point I said, if they, obviously if they need to be topped up, top them up.
\[00:43:49\] Emma Pickett: Okay. Any conversations around donor milk? Donor human milk?
\[00:43:53\] Becky: No. So in Southampton you have to be pre 35 weeks. So there were other babies having donor milk and I could see there were other babies having donor milk, but my babies were too old despite the fact that they were twins and incredibly tiny.
And in NICU. And in NICU. Um, they weren't allowed it because they were too-
\[00:44:12\] Emma Pickett: Okay. I'm hoping that that's not necessarily gonna be the case for a long time because the guidance is now that they have every- Yeah ... entitlement to, to,
\[00:44:19\] Becky: to donor
\[00:44:19\] Emma Pickett: milk. Absolutely. So.
\[00:44:21\] Becky: And if I was in there today with the knowledge I have today, I would've fought for it anyway.
Knox was born at 3 pound 11. He was tiny. There were babies earlier than him Way, way bigger than him. And it's not about size, but he also was very frail. Um, so he, yeah, he would've benefited from it. And if I had the knowledge I had today, I would fight for it. Um, but I didn't. So I was kind of just in this daze of- Dazed,
\[00:44:46\] Emma Pickett: yeah
\[00:44:47\] Becky: ticking boxes, nodding my head at things like them saying, "If they need dummies, can we give them dummies?" And me and Sarah were like, "Of course you can give their dummies. They're in boxes on their own." Um, but again, on reflection today, I should've thought about things like that a bit more.
\[00:45:00\] Emma Pickett: I don't know. I mean, just a quick aside on dummies.
The dummy, it suggests that actually dummy use for premature babies is a good thing, not anything we should worry about. And, and the research suggests it's positive for breastfeeding outcomes. Um-
\[00:45:12\] Becky: Yes ...
\[00:45:12\] Emma Pickett: is Sarah having to go home? What's happening with where she's sleeping?
\[00:45:16\] Becky: So they said to us, because we were in Bournemouth, but also, uh, there was space for lots of parents to stay on t- transitional care.
It, again, we were blessed in that, in that respect. Being in Bournemouth meant that there was a ward and there was space. But they had told us there would be two beds, a bed for me and a bed for Sarah. There wasn't. So there was a chair, um, uh, pretty similar to the chair that's in most wards actually, that reclines out but isn't a bed.
\[00:45:40\] Emma Pickett: Okay.
\[00:45:41\] Becky: So that was her option. So she stayed, and she stayed on that almost every night. There were a couple of nights, particularly closer to the end, closer to them coming out of NICU, um, where she went home. We were really lucky that our stay was short. Um, but mostly she stayed and she slept on the chair.
The last four days we got an air bed in, in there, and she slept on an air bed on the floor. And we should've done that from the beginning, but it wasn't until I was getting a bit more with it and a bit more confident that I was like, "This is ridiculous. What can we do to make this easier?" But yeah, so she stayed.
She came back and we went, and thank God she did because I was Understandably. Um, just, I wasn't even, I wasn't tearful, wasn't anything like that. I was just, like, walking through it, and I just wanted to be in NICU 24/7. And they were like, "You need to go back to get your dinner." And I was like, "I don't want to go back and eat dinner.
I want to sit here and pump next to my babies." Um, but we did. We went back, and they convinced me to get some sleep and to rest, which I did, and then we went back at the crack of dawn, and then we sat with the boys all day. And Knox actually came out on day three, so he was the tinier baby, the reason they came.
Once he was out, um, he did pretty well, so he was off of CPAP within 12 hours, just onto a high flow, which is just a very little nose tube. Um, and still his feeding tube. His feeding tube moved over to his nose. Um, and then his only issue was temperature regulation because he was so dinky, so we just waited for that, and then he joined me very quickly.
I think it was on day four he was out and joined me.
\[00:47:21\] Emma Pickett: Oh, wow, okay. So he's, um, moving backwards and forwards as well and coming to visit Sally.
\[00:47:26\] Becky: Yeah, so wheeling in a cot, wheeling to and from neonatal to visit Sally for another week.
\[00:47:31\] Emma Pickett: Okay.
\[00:47:32\] Becky: Yeah.
\[00:47:33\] Emma Pickett: So you were there in total a week and four days-ish before-
\[00:47:37\] Becky: Uh, two weeks
\[00:47:38\] Emma Pickett: two weeks, okay.
\[00:47:39\] Becky: Um, but a week and four days before, yeah, before I had two babies on the ward with me, yeah.
\[00:47:43\] Emma Pickett: Okay. Okay, and you carried on pumping three hourly- Mm-hmm ... throughout this period, and they also c- had a bit of formula as well. Mm-hmm. Um, at w- what point did they first come to the breast? When was the first time they were hanging out at the breast?
\[00:47:57\] Becky: Not for a while. Um, and again, th- we had some struggles with the hospital. Um, they were, e- each individual was phenomenal, but they were incredibly inconsistent, particularly between the two wards. So I didn't even know until Knox was with me that I could try and breastfeed them in NICU. Nobody told me That I could get them on the breast.
So nobody came to the breast until Knox was coming out. The day Knox was coming out, that morning someone said, "Have you tried breastfeeding them yet?" And I was like, "Am I allowed?" Which is crazy when you think, you know, having to ask permission to breastfeed your own baby. But I said, "Well, if I'm allowed, let's go for it."
So I took this tiny little baby out, sitting next to his NICU pod, and tried to hold him in cradle. And I've got a large chest, um, that's quite low-hanging, and it just was all very fumbly, didn't really work. And the nurse said, just popped him in rugby and said, "This'll be easier for you." And I've never looked back, to be honest, since then.
And he kind of latched on, but it was a lot more of sort of he, again, he's 35 weeks, lots of licking, that sort of thing. Not a great big latch and feed, just kind of tasting it. And then from then they started to put his milk in, so then we were timing it. So he would go onto the breast, and then they would f- NG tube him his milk at the same time.
So Sarah would hold the tube, 'cause we were doing all those feeds. She would hold the tube, pour his milk in, and he, she would do all of those bits while they were sort of on the breast practicing. And then we did the same from Sul- for Sully from about day four. But every time Sully was coming out, his levels were going a bit crazy.
So he couldn't be out for very long 'cause then his oxygen would drop. Um, so he didn't try very much. I was quite anxious to try and feed him because it felt like every time I was trying to feed him or hold him, he then couldn't breathe. And everybody was sort of rushing around and panicking 'cause obviously all the alarms start going off and- That's scary
all you have to do is kinda knock something ever so slightly and all the alarms start going off and, you know, it could be that he's fine, it's just that his foot thing's knocked slightly or one of the cables is knocked slightly. So nobody really breastfed in what I would say was like a proper feed until they were on the ward with me.
\[00:50:20\] Emma Pickett: Okay.
\[00:50:20\] Becky: And then Nox was going on every time I was ... We, we started triple feeding essentially from the minute Nox was on the ward with me.
\[00:50:30\] Emma Pickett: So these are little 35-week goal babies, not big, and they're still m- and managing to get on and feed. I guess- Mm ... just to state the blooming obvious, it's, it's really disappointing to hear that only a year ago- Yeah
this is- Yeah ... this is the level of support you were getting. And-
\[00:50:46\] Becky: Yeah ... and
\[00:50:47\] Emma Pickett: as you said, it's not about individuals, it's about systems, it's about policies. You know, we've, we've had the UNICEF guidance for neonatal units for a long time now, and-
\[00:50:57\] Becky: Yeah ...
\[00:50:58\] Emma Pickett: it's really disappointing that there wasn't some sort of checklist that said, "Right, who's gonna talk to Becky about her feeding?
You know, w- within 48 hours, 72 hours, we need someone to sit down with her and explain the process, and talk about kangaroo care, and talk about breast time, and talk about what it might look like, and answer all her questions."
\[00:51:14\] Becky: Yeah. I
\[00:51:15\] Emma Pickett: mean, it just, people just focus on the baby's health, don't they? They just focus on looking after the babies and somewhere feeding's just falling away, and that's, that's not okay.
\[00:51:24\] Becky: Yeah, it's just so, it's such a failure because we all know how important breastfeeding is. It's not new. It's not a new thing. It's not, you know, it's particularly for tiny, tiny babies that need, you know, all the goodness, all the antibodies, and nobody, it almost felt like it was an inconvenience. It almost felt like a weekend they were a bit like, "She's still going on about this."
'Cause I kept saying to them, "Where's your lactation consultant? I need a lactation consultant. Every hospital has one. Where is it?" And they were like, "Oh, this NICU nurse in NICU is feeding specialist. Go and speak to her." So I did speak to her, and she was brilliant, but kind of was like, "Well, what do you, what do you wanna know?"
And I didn't really know what I ne- wanted to know. I just wanted help, but I didn't know what that looked like or what that needed to look like. So she helped me a bit with latch. I remember her saying that they needed to have great big open mouths like they were gonna bite a burger, and that stayed in mine and Sarah's head forever.
Um, but there was no conversation about breast compressions. There was no conversation about suck to swallow. There was none of that, and I didn't have, well, a little bit from the stuff I'd done research-wise, but not in the way I needed when I was three days post C-section with tiny, tiny babies and You know, I, I myself was getting weaker and weaker and tireder and tireder.
I was pumping every three hours. I had Knox with me after day four. I needed somebody just to say, "Let's sit down and help." And I had the NICU nurses saying, "You need to get TCU to sit and watch a whole feed." And then when I was on transitional care, I had them saying, "We're too busy for that. We're not gonna do that.
We'll watch you latch them on." It wasn't what I needed. They were latching on fine But milk wasn't, well, the weights weren't gaining essentially is what was happening Yeah, you needed someone
\[00:53:06\] Emma Pickett: to watch milk transfer and watch the feed and-
\[00:53:09\] Becky: Yeah. And nobody was telling me why they weren't gaining weight. So they'd come out of NICU.
They, so they came out of NICU with a brief, this is how much milk they need to have every three hours. But there was no, when they're breastfeeding, this is what you need to do, this is how much you need to get. None of that. So we didn't have a clue. Even post-discharge, we didn't have a clue how much milk these babies were supposed to be being topped up with.
So that was all very frightening, and we were gaining about 10 grams maximum. Um, NOCs dropped from second cite- centile down to the 0.4 centile. And at that point when we got Sally, so the day we got Sally with us, the day before we got Sally with us, one of the nurses on transitional care said to me, "You need to stop pumping at night.
You're dra- you're running yourself into the ground. Just stop pumping at night and have some sleep." And thank God I didn't listen to that nurse because I, and I turned to Sarah when she left the room and I said, "This is ridiculous. None of these people know what they're saying to me. Everybody's telling me something different.
If I stop pumping at night now, I will leave this hospital with formula-fed babies, and I'll never get it back." And luckily, Sarah listened to me and just said, "Let's just do what we need to do. Just keep waking up, keep doing it, and we'll just get through it." And I did keep pumping every three hours, pumping, tube feeding, then also bottle feeding.
So we were pumping, tube feeding, a little bit of bottle feeding, and then I was, um, breastfeeding as well. In between all of it, 'cause they were telling me to wait till my breasts were empty from the pump to put the babies on the breast at that point, which I was doing. And on reflection my poor tired baby's then getting no milk because I'd just pumped it all out.
Oh, it, it was all a bit crazy, to be honest. Yeah.
\[00:54:56\] Emma Pickett: Yeah, lots of false information and people kind of making stuff up with, you know, with their good hearts in the right place- Well, it's not fair ... but they haven't got the right information or, or, and they're not listening to you. That's the key thing. Mm-hmm.
You're saying, "This is my goal. This is what matters to me," and no one is actually listening to you.
\[00:55:15\] Becky: Yeah. And I was on NICU with one baby being told one thing, and then I'd go back to transitional care with the other baby and be told another thing. And actually, lots of conversations happened after that happened, and I really hope, and they did say they would, but I really hope that they all sit down and they have some conversations about consistency-
\[00:55:35\] Emma Pickett: Yeah
\[00:55:35\] Becky: 'cause it just was so inconsistent.
\[00:55:37\] Emma Pickett: Have you had a chance to contact them and tell them about your experience and do a feedback?
\[00:55:41\] Becky: I haven't, no. And I left so- Going down the road a little bit, but we're almost there, I suppose, in what we've talked about. I actually discharged us from the hospital, um, on day, I think we were about day 13, 12 or 13.
So very tiny babies, very early on. On reflection, I, if you could take me back now, I wouldn't have. Um, I'm very, very lucky that we ended up with the journey that we ended up with and not with babies that just didn't gain weight. But what ended up happening is I said to them, "Enough's enough." I was in this room with Sarah, with two babies, and they were kind of just leaving us to it unless they were coming in and doing observations.
Everybody was fine medically at this point. The only issue was weight gain and small babies. And I said to them, "If nobody's gonna help me breastfeed these babies, I'm not gonna get anywhere. I will stay here forever because they're not, nothing's gonna happen." I had a lactation consultant that I had details of at home.
I had a midwife I knew really well. I had a health, health visitor at home. And I said to them, "I need to go home. I need to be in my own space where I can get my oxytocin flowing, where I can feel comfortable and I can feed these babies properly." And they put up a real fight, understandably, because again, Knox at this point was I think about three pound eight, so he hadn't gained back up to birth weight.
Sully wasn't much bigger. He was four pound three, um, and he was sitting at birth weight. They were small and they weren't gaining weight, and they faffed about quite a lot, pushed me back a lot, said, "You need to speak to the lead consultant if you want to go home." She didn't come out until I think about half past six, seven o'clock that night, and she had a very long conversation with me.
She checked our car seats because Knox was technically too small to be put in a car seat and driven an hour. I mean, any baby's too small to be put in a car seat and driven an hour, but Knox was specifically too small for that. And she sat with me for a long time, and I talked to her about the research I'd done, the work I'd done, the inconsistencies, how unhappy I was.
So I hope that instead of having a reflection that they took from that conversation- Yeah ... there was a lot of, by that point I was very, very tearful. I'd had a friend come in and visit. Um, I wasn't, we weren't gonna have anyone come to the hospital. It was, we wanted to just be us. But Sarah had called my friend and said, "I think you need to come in."
And my mum had been in a few times, and I was very tearful by that point, and I just was like, "I just need to go home and be in my own space where we can get these babies on the boob." And I remember she said to me, "I don't want to discharge you because my fear is if I discharge you now, at the end of September going into winter, you'll end up back in hospital within a couple of weeks, and your babies will get RSV because you'll end up on a ward because we're discharging you from Bournemouth and you'll go into Southampton."
\[00:58:30\] Emma Pickett: Crikey, that's a specific fear,
\[00:58:32\] Becky: isn't it? That's a- Which frightened to the real-life at us ...
\[00:58:34\] Emma Pickett: bit of guilt there. Yeah.
\[00:58:35\] Becky: Petrified us, and we were like, "Well, what do we do?" But I think by that point I'd, I had my list of reasons I was going. I'd had, had the conversation that I was g- nobody was gonna stop me going.
We'd had a nurse in passing say to us the day before, "You could probably go home tomorrow," and then it all changed. And so there was, again, lots of inconsistencies that by that point I was like, 'cause they were saying, "Wait till tomorrow." And I was like, "But I might wait till tomorrow, and you might tell me I can't go."
'Cause they were so, it was like in one breath they were saying one thing, in another breath they were saying another thing. So we packed up, called my mum, said, "We need you to come," 'cause at this point we had an airbed, a suitcase. We'd moved into the hospital. So we said, "We need you to come and get everything, please."
So she came up, and she walked us down into the hospital car park at eight o'clock at night in the pitch black and pouring rain, in the pouring rain with our tiny babies. And off we went and drove home, and we stopped in a car park in a services halfway 'cause babies can't be in the car for longer than half an hour.
And we got them out into the front of the car and kinda just stared at them. And then we drove home and put them back in- Wow ... and off we went. Um, and we came home and yeah, I, a- again, on reflection, if you asked me today, I would say we should have waited another day. We should have at least gone home and then, they shouldn't have let me go home at night.
We should have at least gone home the next morning. Um, but they sent me off with all my Steri bottles and my pumped milk in a bag, and the baby's medicine. They just had vitamins and iron And that was it, and I didn't hear from Bournemouth again.
\[01:00:09\] Emma Pickett: Okay. Wow. So you're now home in Southampton, and you've got the lactation support now that you need.
\[01:00:14\] Becky: So I've, I'd called my midwife that day and said, "Tell me what you can get me. Tell me when you can get out to me to weigh them." Um, and she was brilliant. She sent out one of the midwife support teams the next day, and then the following day my health visitor came, and then from then my health visitor came every day.
So at that point, I didn't have my lactation consultant, so we're a day, I think we're about two, just under two weeks old at this point. And I had her details. I'd already researched her. I'd found a lactation consultant local who'd had twins herself, who I was adamant I wanted. For the show notes, her name is Polly Smith.
Um, and she is the most incredible woman in the world. But I didn't have her at that point. I just had the midwife coming out. So yeah, at this point, I had, um, a health visitor coming out every day weighing them. I had the dietician I'd been referred to because they weren't gaining weight. And I had, um, the home care neonatal team from Southampton.
Now, I never met a dietician, and I never met the home care. They were just phoning me. So every day they were phoning, taking weights, and very, very quickly they said, "You need to put them on top-ups of special formula, premature baby formula." So we got that prescription, we went off, and we did, we did get the top-ups, and I was doing my milk and their milk.
So I put up a fight, and they sent me prescription for breast milk fortifier. Um, I actually never ended up being able to pump enough milk once I was home to get, um, to be able to mix it with a breast milk fortifier. So once we were home, I ordered a, um, hospital-grade pump to hire online, and I pumped and pumped and pumped, but it never worked.
So two and a half weeks in, I contact Polly Smith, and Polly comes out and sat here for an afternoon, I think, watched me feed and said, "You know, your suck to swallow ratio is not not really. It wasn't really there at all at the beginning. They were kind of suck, suck, suck, suck, suck, but not getting any milk.
\[01:02:10\] Emma Pickett: Which at that age, f- for a baby of that age and that size is not unusual. No.
\[01:02:14\] Becky: Very norm- And there, the conversations we had, she said, "This is all very normal." But what she did then say, bearing in mind I've got, at this point, a health visitor and a dietician and a neonatal care team, she said, "You're not giving them enough milk in your top ups, so they're not gonna get strong enough.
They're not gonna gain weight because they're not having enough top up." Because currently we were in a vicious cycle where they were too tired to efficiently breastfeed. Then I was giving them, I think they were having about 60 ml of, uh, my milk at that point in top ups. Um, and then I was pumping, and that was happening every three hours.
And she said, "Unless we up that top up and we get them a bit stronger, you're gonna be in this cycle for a long time." And it took for her to come out and her to actually do their weights and put their weights onto the system and work it all out for us to get anywhere with what we needed to do. So she left and we upped the top ups, and that was quite a hard moment for me because it felt like I was going backwards.
It felt like they were gonna, 'cause they were gonna have to have formula at that point because I wasn't producing enough milk. And so they had as much of my milk as they could, but they were then going onto this NutriPrem formula that I already had sitting, to be honest, in the haul, this premature baby formula.
But I wasn't using 'cause I was adamant I wasn't, I didn't want to So then they went on to that as a top-up. Um, and then we sat there for a very long time. Um, they were 12 weeks, I think, before we came off of top-ups. So we triple fed, and I-
\[01:03:45\] Emma Pickett: Okay ...
\[01:03:45\] Becky: continued to pump. Gosh,
\[01:03:46\] Emma Pickett: 12 weeks of triple feeding. Mm. That is in- incredible.
Um, what a lot of hard work that must have been. And were you still pumping through the night at that point as well?
\[01:03:54\] Becky: Yeah, every three hours, particularly at 3:00 AM. Um, even if it wasn't three hourly, I would still get up at, b- within those windows at 3:00 AM. And I became a bit, um, a bit neurotic about it, and I had to pump.
We couldn't go out the house for longer than two hours because I had to be home for a feed and a pump. I wouldn't miss a pump. And Sarah will tell you to this day, if I-- It's very rare that I turn a pump on now, but if I turn a pump on now, she takes her straight back, and she says she finds it quite traumatizing- Okay
listening to the pump, hearing the pump because we... Yeah, all through the night, all through the day, every three hours, I was pump, pump, pump, pump pumping. Had a brilliant, brilliant lady from the, um... I don't know if we can talk about brands for pumps, but for the pump that I use, the hospital-grade pump, and she just kept sending me stuff to try- Okay, good
to try and get, to try and get my milk to come through the pump. She sent me different shapes, different types. She sent me the hospital ga- grade pump 'cause I'd initially bought just a branded one that wasn't hospital grade. Um, but we-- I never got enough milk. Still to this day, I can't, um, I can't get much, but I pumped and pumped and pumped and pumped and kept pumping for a long time until Sarah went back to work, and then it became Just impossible.
I couldn't ... They were 12 weeks old at that point, so they'd started to wake up. Um, so they slept a lot, um, a lot, a lot until they were about 12 weeks, then they started to wake up. So couldn't really put them down, didn't want to put them down to then put a pump on. So slowly the pumping then reduced, um, but the top ups didn't reduce much, um, until about four months.
And then at four months we got signed off from everybody. Um, Polly's still involved. Polly's still involved to this day, to be honest. Yeah. Um, I still text her with questions. Um, but we got signed off from everybody and they said, "You can stop the pop, top ups." And then we did very slowly, but it took a long time 'cause we were petrified that the second the milk stopped, the babies would stop growing.
Particularly Sarah was really worried that those top ups were essential to the growth of the babies. Yeah. And we both really struggled to trust breastfeeding and my, my ability to do it, and it was definitely a bit of trauma from everything that we'd gone through. So we kept a bedtime bottle right up until they started refusing it.
And even now, every now and then, some nights they have just one bottle at bedtime. If that can be my milk, then it is. But, um, and again, it's because that fear, even to this day, of them not growing, of them not getting big enough from those early days is still there.
\[01:06:30\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. I think everyone would understand that.
Mm. That makes, that makes perfect sense based on everything you've gone through.
\[01:06:36\] Becky: Mm.
\[01:06:37\] Emma Pickett: Gosh, what a rollercoaster. That's ... There's, there's a lot going on there in terms of I'm so glad you found Polly and found the support you needed- Me too ... once you got home, because that obviously sounds crucial. And I think one of the things that strikes me is this is a story of how you may not respond to a pump, but you can absolutely have enough milk for twins.
So we shouldn't use- Yeah ... pumps to measure somebody's lactation and how much milk somebody makes. It is not a way to judge how much milk someone's making.
\[01:07:03\] Becky: Mm.
\[01:07:03\] Emma Pickett: Um, so you gradually gained confidence because you could see that they were taking milk. You could hear them swallowing. The suck-swallow ratio obviously improved.
They started to need less from the bottles. Mm. The growth continued. So they were the evidence that told you that your breastfeeding was working even if the pump wasn't.
\[01:07:19\] Becky: Yeah. And they woke up a lot, so they started to cluster feed. So there wasn't time to bottle feed them and pump because they wanted to be on the boob all evening or all day.
And so it was becoming quite obvious that they're just, it, they just gradually phased out because there wasn't time for them. I spent a lot of time, I will forever be grateful that Sarah just allowed me to just, my sole job was feeding the babies. And I sat in the chair I'm sitting in now with the babies on me all day, every day, and they slept, and they woke up, and they fed, and they slept, and they woke up, and they fed.
And we had ... I was topless for about three months And we just went on and on and on, and that continued. I contact napped them in this chair every day for every nap until they were about 10 months old.
\[01:08:05\] Emma Pickett: Okay.
\[01:08:05\] Becky: And Sarah, uh, did everything else, everything else in the house- Wow, I'm getting through a tissue, so-
every other life admin. So she- Amazing ... yeah, she made it happen really in the background 'cause I, I don't know how I could've done life and, you know, cleaning and all of that sort of stuff. She just did everything. I just fed the babies for months and months and months.
\[01:08:23\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Well, you both worked incredibly hard to get to this point.
Mm. And what's very clear from this story is how very determined you are, and I wish I could talk to you for another hour, Becky, but it's considered rude to, to have an incredibly long podcast episode. Absolutely. So let's just jump to where you are now. They're gonna turn one very soon. Mm-hmm. How often are they breastfeeding?
What's a typical 24 hours?
\[01:08:44\] Becky: Um, so not very much at all. So we've gone, just gone through, we've just had hand, foot, and mouth, and lots of teeth coming, and we've had some significant nursing strikes. I actually thought Knox was done, um, which was heartbreaking. But he's not, he's back. But he, they don't feed a huge amount now at all.
So I'm very blessed that I do have babies that currently are sleeping mostly through the night, which I know isn't very common with breastfed babies. Um, and I do think the bottles probably had a lot to do with that, um, because they don't feed in the way that a lot of breastfed babies do. They feed for a purpose, and so they feed
Sully will wake up once or twice if he is gonna wake up in the night, and he will feed. Knox doesn't feed at all at night. If he wakes up, he kinda just t- gets his blanket and rolls back over or needs a cuddle. He doesn't want to feed. Then in the day, um, they feed to sleep for their naps. Sully feeds to sleep for every nap, so his is sort of four, five times in 24 hours normally.
Knox can go days with one feed.
\[01:09:35\] Emma Pickett: Okay.
\[01:09:35\] Becky: Some days he wants two or three feeds. It just depends. He's very, very strong-willed, and he will do what he wants. So- Okay ... um, I'm hoping we'll get years out of us, but I'm less sure now 'cause they are very busy boys, and they love their food. So we will see.
\[01:09:52\] Emma Pickett: Yeah, see what happens.
Just to tell us a little bit about a nursing strike, for anyone who's not experienced that or anyone who is experiencing that, that was, that was the hand, foot, and mouth, was it, the sores in their mouth?
\[01:10:02\] Becky: Yeah, I think so.
\[01:10:03\] Emma Pickett: They didn't want to
\[01:10:03\] Becky: breastfeed. It had already started, um, and, uh, it's a whole topic in itself really, isn't it?
But it had already started. They were already getting less and less interested as their food ramped up. They love food, and as that ramped up, they were going down to only really feeding after naps, before naps, um, so four times a day, five times a day maybe. And then their two bottom teeth came through, and that pulled Knox away a bit, and he was feeding once or twice, and then they got hand, foot, and mouth, and Knox was absolutely none of it.
Wouldn't have anything, wouldn't feed. He went, um, nearly three weeks with no feed at all.
\[01:10:34\] Emma Pickett: Wow. How did that feel for you? How did you find that?
\[01:10:37\] Becky: I was, do you know, breast-wise, absolutely fine. They were, they didn't, they weren't bothered. Um, started just feeding just on my right side, and we're not feeding on the left side at all anymore.
But I was devastated, absolutely devastated. Lot, quite a lot of crying, quite a lot of, "I can't believe I'm not gonna get to one." I recontacted Polly and said, "I need your help. I need to get to one." And Polly, who has been my level head throughout the whole of this, said, "Okay, we can get to one. Let's just start pumping again, and if it's 10 ml, that's still milk, and he's still getting all that goodness, and let's see where we go."
And so I put the pump back on every now and then. It's quite traumatic, to be honest now. Um, but I did put it back on every now and then to get a bit, and he came back to it eventually. But I was really, really worried that we weren't getting back to it. Um, I went on Catherine Stagg's page and searched all of that and put a post in there, and there wasn't that much where people had experienced it so young for so long.
They're quite little to have gone three weeks without.
\[01:11:36\] Emma Pickett: Yeah, yeah.
\[01:11:37\] Becky: He was 10 and a half months at this point 'cause it's very recent. It's only just really back to feeding now. That
\[01:11:41\] Emma Pickett: is a common age for a nursing strike, by the way. That n- nine- Is it? ... 10-month period is often when it does happen. But three weeks is longer.
I guess most people, they've got singletons, so they don't go, they don't continue trying and hoping for three weeks. Right. Whereas you had, you know, you had Sully keeping things going, I guess. Um-
\[01:11:55\] Becky: Yes. So I had Sully, and that's what Polly kept saying is, "Trust that Sully will maintain your supply." I've always had a good side anyway, so I just moved to the good side.
It's, it's enough to feed them both. If, if they wanted to go back to every three hours, it could probably do it. So I, um, just moved to the good side, stopped stressing about latching them onto the side they don't like, and that really helped. We're back for now, and we will see how long we go. Um, hopefully- Yeah
a long time, but we will see.
\[01:12:21\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. What an amazing story. Thank you so much, Becky, for your time. And- Yeah, thank you ... yeah, I'm just really grateful that you were prepared to give us that much detail about everything you went through, and, um, yeah, fantastic to get to this point. Happy birthday, Sully and, and Knox.
And, uh-
\[01:12:35\] Becky: Thank you ...
\[01:12:35\] Emma Pickett: and you know, when they end breastfeeding, it sounds like it'll be on their terms when they're, when they're ready. It sure will. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you think we needed to have covered?
\[01:12:44\] Becky: I don't think so, no. I think we've covered everything. Okay.
\[01:12:47\] Emma Pickett: So we'll make sure we mention Catherine in the show notes and her group.
We'll mention Polly in the show notes as well. Mm-hmm. And, um, yeah, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it, and good luck with the ending of your breastfeeding journey.
\[01:12:57\] Becky: Thank you.
\[01:13:04\] Emma Pickett: Thank you for joining me today. You can find me on Instagram at emmapickettibclc and on Twitter at makesmilk. It would be lovely if you subscribed because that helps other people to know I exist, and leaving a review would be great as well. Get in touch if you would like to join me to share your feeding or weaning journey, or if you have any ideas for topics to include in the podcast.
This podcast is produced by the lovely Emily Crosby Media.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.