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Midwives magazine: Issue 4 :: 2011

Author: Clare Byam-Cook
Publisher: Vermilion
ISBN: 9780091923464
Price: £6.99

Review by Juliet Albert

This book is almost fantastic. Divided into nine chapters, most of which give excellent practical advice, it is concisely written and comes in a handy pocket-size form.

The author talks about what happens in the first few days, which is often completely ignored in other breastfeeding resources. She also gives an excellent description of what mothers should look out for after returning from hospital to avoid a dehydrated baby.

However, some of the information is controversial and clearly not research based. Sometimes I agreed with her opinions. For example, some breastfed babies do need a lot of winding; and, where nowadays many midwives simply go along with the advice that nipple shields will interfere with breastfeeding, they may be a life-saving device that allows for continued breastfeeding.

I also agreed that some mothers produce less milk than others. Measures such as expressing after feeds to try to increase milk supply may not help, resulting in a stressed-out mother with even less milk.

The chapters on common problems give sound advice on how to treat them. They cover a range of issues including thrush, sore nipples, primary engorgement, colic and reflux.

I disagreed with some of her assertions and advice. The described attachment technique is also questionable and, interestingly, she still calls attachment and positioning ‘latching on’, which is not in line with the national campaign to try to stop all the conflicting information given to women.