How to support breastfeeding better is a question that has been asked and researched for many years. Lack of resources from subsequent governments remains a concern. To ameliorate this situation communities have found innovative ways to make the support happen. Maddie McMahon and Zohar Marer share the story of the charity, Maddie’s Miracle, and the use of a bus and tea to meet the needs of their communities.
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Community-led Initiatives
After waiting for decades for the UK government to prioritise women’s health and breastfeeding support, communities have learned that it is time to return to community-led movements and to gather, take the initiative and ‘do it for themselves’.
Over the years we have seen local breastfeeding support groups sprouting up around the UK, small charities and resources founded from the ground up by local residents, for their community. In this spirit of solidarity and taking action, a group of women gathered and created a new charity, Maddie’s Miracle, in order to serve the needs of mothers, babies, parents and families.
The charity was founded by two women, Maddie McMahon and Zohar Marer. Maddie had harboured a two-decade long dream to create a mobile breastfeeding support bus that could travel to where infant feeding support was most desperately needed. Zohar was experienced in the third sector and, as a mother, she was passionate about filling the gap in breastfeeding support.
With humble beginnings in 2019, the charity started as an online service provision and has grown to provide a variety of services. Maddie’s Miracle runs an online one-to-one Zoom video support service on a national level, an online support group and three physical support groups (with possibly two more opening in 2025). As well as our regular support sessions, we have also bought and fully converted a vehicle, creating a bespoke space to act as a mobile breastfeeding support vehicle, lovingly referred to as the Booby Bus. With comfortable seating, a kitchen and toilet, the bus can accommodate up to three mothers being supported by skilled, qualified breastfeeding supporters at any one time, together with more being supported outside under an awning.
As well as providing knowledgeable, evidence-based, skilled infant feeding support UK wide, the aim of Maddie’s Miracle is to draw attention to the woeful state of infant feeding support in the UK. With more than 80% of mothers reporting that they ceased breastfeeding before they were happy to, the lack of appropriate provision in this area for new parents is a shameful blight on our communities. The Maddie’s Miracle bus is designed to draw attention to this lack of care and because it is mobile, it can be invited to any town in the UK that is fighting for better breastfeeding support, or which wishes to highlight a community-run project to fill gaps in care.
Both Maddie and Zohar, as well as the team that they have gathered, have witnessed the suffering that can be caused by a lack of breastfeeding support. The UK has amongst the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world, with mothers citing lack of support and discrimination as reasons for stopping breastfeeding despite wanting to continue.
While breastfeeding has an element of instinct and reflex, it is a learned skill. In an ideal society, breastfeeding know-how would be learned by osmosis as children grew, surrounded by breastfeeding families. Until then, it is a skill that our healthcare system should invest in and prioritise. Breastfeeding is a public health matter and is therefore everybody’s business. Maddie’s Miracle commits to helping build a society that wholeheartedly supports parents to make free and informed decisions about how they feed their babies and children.
“We took the sorrows and heartbreaks that we witnessed around us and we transformed these into something positive and useful for our society.” Says co-founder Zohar Marer.
Our charity provides evidence-based breastfeeding support that is impartial and client-centered. The one-to-one breastfeeding support is tailored to the individual and is designed to promote self-efficacy and a feeling of personal empowerment in mothers and parents. These aspects of service provision are important because one size never fits all.
The Personal Journey of Infant Feeding
As mothers ourselves, we realise that breastfeeding and infant feeding is a personal journey. We each experience our lives differently and what may come easily to one individual, might be challenging or traumatic to another. It is important to never make assumptions.
We appreciate that there are many individuals and communities within the UK that carry different stigmas, traumas, conditionings or expectations related to infant feeding which may consequently result in this becoming a delicate topic that can lead to polarised debate. To add to this, formula companies conduct robust marketing campaigns that provide biased and misleading information, feeding into the confusion that new parents may often feel. Consequently, public discourse on this topic may be divisive and our charity’s focus is on providing clarification and impartial support through evidence-based research.
It is important to support an individual where she is at, and it is important to be accepting and to hold space for her feelings, perspectives and experiences. For many mothers, their breastfeeding journey changes the trajectory of their motherhood or parenting life.
Breastfeeding and A Brew
Many of us at the charity are doulas and therefore the concept of ‘intelligent tea drinking’ is at the heart of what we do. Doulas engage in the simple, yet effective, practice of using a hot beverage as a tool to support active listening, space-holding and facilitating a setting in which a mother or parent may feel comfortable and nurtured. Furthermore, this kind of nurturing atmosphere encourages oxytocin, which is the ally of breastfeeding.
At our groups mothers are provided with the opportunity to socialise around tea and cake while receiving breastfeeding support. While not all our services include a hot brew, the concept of listening, space-holding and nurturing is embedded within all our services. We aim to foster a sense of well-being for mothers at a time that may be the most challenging of their lives.
In surveys conducted by our charity, mothers and parents feedback that Maddie’s Miracle support has improved their mental health, sense of wellbeing and the physical health of themselves and their baby. These statements indicate a significantly positive impact. Mothers have stated that “the [support] group is a lifeline” and that Maddie’s Miracle online Zoom support has been “lifesaving” to them.
One mother shares her experience of Maddie’s Miracle, saying that:
“While the practical breastfeeding guidance on positioning, latch and milk content was invaluable and calmed my anxieties (therefore changing my breastfeeding journey), it was the counselling aspect of being listened to by someone who understands and actually cared that provided me with such a tremendous relief and mental health boost. It felt like my mind wasn’t going to fragment, but that I was in safe hands and could in fact continue – there was suddenly a way forward and a sense of hope.”
Both our Maddie’s Miracle Cambridgeshire and Dorset breastfeeding support groups have had midwives and student midwives visiting in order to learn about what kind of support the charity offers and to deepen their knowledge of specialist breastfeeding support.
Recognising and Respecting the Dyad
Breastfeeding and infant-feeding are not transactional acts as some many think, in fact they are more complex. These acts are expressions of a relationship. In our society, many of us may think of mothers and babies as separate entities whereby one may be removed from the other or may not impact the other. The mother-baby unit is a dyad and should be recognised and respected as such.
Mothers tell us that they experience this inextricable bond with their baby as a dyad. Scientific discovery supports this concept of an intertwined connection, by the fact that cells of the mother are within the baby and cells of a baby are found within the mother.
“Microchimerism is the persistent presence of a few genetically distinct cells in an organism.” Writes research scientist Robert Martone in Scientific American.
He goes on to explain: “This was first noticed in humans many years ago when cells containing the male ‘Y’ chromosome were found circulating in the blood of women after pregnancy.” Considering this vital information as the foundation of our approach towards the subject of breastfeeding, we gain a deeper understanding of the importance of breastfeeding to the mother, and of the potential anxieties and traumas that mothers can experience when they are unable to breastfeed or to feed their baby in their chosen manner. There is an innate and overwhelming urge for mothers to breastfeed that is deeply imbedded into their biology on what feels to be a cellular level. Denying mothers this need, through lack of support, lack of education and lack of supported choice, can cause detrimental harm to the mental health and wellbeing of mothers; and therefore, in turn, negatively impact the baby.
There are some in our society who simply can’t fathom the importance of breastfeeding and possess an attitude that formula milk is a suitable substitute. However, when one fully comprehends the multi-faceted complexities of the effects of breastfeeding in terms of its uniquely nurturing, ever-adapting nutritional content, the powerful health benefits are undeniable.
Many of us seem to have a different definition of the term ‘breastfeeding support’, at one end of the spectrum it can mean that a leaflet has been provided. We define it as holistic support throughout a mother’s feeding journey, provided by qualified, experienced infant feeding specialists. One thing can be agreed upon: breastfeeding and infant-feeding support must be fit for purpose in order to be labelled as such. We cannot call it support when it is not supportive. And it is not truly supportive unless it is unbiased and patient-led care with the key components of education, deep listening to the needs and choices of the mother/parent, addressing the best interests of both mother and baby and providing nurturing, non-judgemental information and evidenced-based research that allows the mother-baby dyad to unquestionably feel supported.
As a charity we encourage individuals to view breastfeeding with the respect and importance that is attributed to any other public health issue.
A Call to Action
We recognise the hardships faced by midwives, the NHS and those in maternity services and the wonderful work that they are all doing within current constraints. However, we appeal to all professionals working in maternity services to continue to deepen their knowledge of breastfeeding (and its relationship to pregnancy and birth), as well as sharing evidence-based research with their patients. We encourage the familiarisation with researchers such as Professor Amy Brown (a Maddie’s Miracle Trustee), and the breastfeeding information created by organisations such as La Leche League, Breastfeeding Network and The Association of Breastfeeding Mothers.
By each of us giving breastfeeding the reverence that is deserves, through further study and deeper understanding, we can then truly appreciate its impact on the individual and on society. This is our call to action, that we each do the work and evolve our perspective on breastfeeding and infant-feeding.
Zohar Marer and Maddie McMahon
Maddie’s Miracle Website: Maddie’s Miracle – Breastfeeding Support Charity UK (maddiesmiracle.org.uk)
September 2024