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Lost in Translation

To prepare for my travels I have started to collect the UK information base - who is saying what to fathers about breastfeeding. It turns out not many are saying much of anything, but there are still patches of good work. This work is not rolled out though, and one reason is the lack of evidence of their effectiveness. In this world of budget cuts and squeezed capacity I have found work that is promising, and some are really impressive, but the lack of longitudinal studies or a solid evidence base means that they wont get commissioned, so these good projects will lose out when it comes to funding or only survive for as long as the worker can carry on.

One of the reasons I wanted to focus on breastfeeding and fathers was my own personal experience of being an expectant grandmother.  My daughter was about six months pregnant and I attended an antenatal appointment with her. Her midwife handed me an invitation for a grandparents evening at the local maternity unit, an evening specially designed for grandparents to-be to keep up with recent information and advice.
All went well, until it got to the breastfeeding part. The midwife informed us 'grandparents' that we could have a 'granny' passport, which allowed grandmother additional visiting time while mum and baby were in the maternity ward to support mum with the early breastfeeding.
My ears soon pricked up, this would be our first grandchild and anything that gave me more time to babywatch was fine with me. And then the questions started... "can dads use it?" no, just women. "do these women need to have breastfed?" no they don't " Basically, any female relation, with or without breastfeeding experience, could use the passport which gave them additional visiting hours ABOVE THOSE OF THE FATHER. We (grannies) were also invited to an evening talk about breastfeeding, I asked if fathers could attend that and was told no. To round it all off, the evaluation forms arrived but only expectant grannies were allowed to fill them out (in fact my partner had the form whisked out of his hand) So fathers got no information, no extended visiting times and no  space within this 'support'.

Obviously riled by all this I had a call with the Breastfeeding coordinator, who informed me that the information was not correct at all. Men could use the passport - some new mothers do not have mothers themselves. The passport does not give anyone more visiting time that the fathers, and fathers were definitely invited to the breastfeeding invitation session, in fact she had wondered why there had not been any fathers there. This all got lost in the translation. 

Shoe-horning men into a service designed by women for women isn't easy, and it misses a lot of important factors, such as the fathers unique experience of fatherhood, the couple-relationship and the new parental relationship. The facilitators version of how the service should be delivered is the key and as couple navigate their way around our services and the new roles they have, we have not made it easy for them.

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