A nursing strike story (not to do with NHS picket lines)
- Nish Manek
- Apr 25, 2023
- 12 min read
I’m writing this on day 11 of an awful nursing strike of my ten month old.
I don’t even know if I will publish it or who will read it- but feel the need to just process what it was like for myself if nothing else. (If you are reading this, then I clearly got brave enough to share it at some point!)
It was a grim time for me, a real low in my journey of motherhood. I vowed that some day I would write about it, just in case it helps anyone. I spent so many hours scouring the internet for ANY advice and answers I could get my hands on, and much of it was quite depressing.
But this story is of a longer strike, with a positive outcome. I hope it might help others to read a long, detailed story that has a happy ending despite it going on for a while…and it’s my way of paying back all the positive support and encouragement I received from some people, who I will be eternally grateful to.
I know I can’t guarantee this will continue positively now, and perhaps more strikes are on the horizon….but whilst the weight has been lifted a little, I want to share my story. I hope it helps.
What happened?
Rewind a few weeks….
My ten month old was still feeding 4-5 times a day (nothing at night), and loved it. She had been quite bitey and teething for a while, but nothing unusual. Her incisors were coming through one at a time, but she was managing fine. A few developmental changes coincided (eg bottom shuffling), but nothing major.
I was at my parents house for an Easter break. We’d been there a couple of days, and so she’d spent more time with her grandparents than usual. They’d been away for 6 weeks just before this so perhaps this was strange for her, but I’ve got no idea if this contributed.
One afternoon I left her for an hour to visit a relative, and fed her when I got back- except she bit me, twice. OUCH. The second time hurt so much I yelped, and handed her firmly to my mum.I remember being p****d off. It hurt so much!
Oh how I later wished I had acted differently…..I spent SO many hours of the days to come replaying that afternoon, the moments of my return, the seconds of my yelp. Because what happened next was utterly miserable.
My little baby, who’d previously been a milk monster and LOVED breastfeeding, went on a nursing strike. Who even knew this was a thing?? She just completely refused to feed. I couldn’t believe it, it was like a switch had flipped. I felt like my baby had been replaced with an alien- the most instinctive thing she ever seemed to do was suddenly gone. I was bereft.
I would offer the boob, and normally her mouth would snap open immediately and she’d kick her legs in excitement with a squeal. And she fed for ages each time… I'd get impatient. And spend way too much time on my phone.
But now it was like I was giving her my elbow to eat from. She hated it, and I was offending her. She would arch her back and protest loudly, crying. It was like a different child.
Google quickly told me it was a nursing strike, and to my horror I realised that my yelling after the bite might have triggered it. I felt SO guilty.
She went to bed that night without a feed, and my anxiety started to build. What was happening? How would she get through the night? She had always gone to bed after a long feed, and had been sleeping through for quite a few months by that point. Were we in for a rough night?
She made it through. But the next day, panic set in. She woke up howling in hunger, but still refused to feed. I thought she might just sleep it off and things would be normal again. How can a baby hold a grudge? I just couldn't make sense of any of it. Who was this baby?
It felt worse than a grudge. Nursing ‘strike’ felt like a weird term for it- because I had no idea what had really caused it, and what terms and conditions she was demanding to come back. Or if she even wanted to.
What happened next?
More of the same. Day 4 rolled around, and still no feeds. Lots of protesting. Even putting her in the breastfeeding position led to crying. Taking out my nipple was like waving a sword in her face.
Most websites had said it would last a few days, so I really began to panic now.
I pumped 3 times a day (which was a pain as it took ages), and she took some of the expressed milk in a sippy cup, syringes, spoons and mixed in with food (eg porridge soaked in breast milk overnight, milk mixed with dahl, rice, yoghurt, fruit etc). We tried a bottle once and she took it well, but I read about bottle confusion and decided we would stay away from them for now.
She had never been a big eater, but her appetite gradually increased and I kept giving her as much food as she would take, and water. She had always been on the bottom centile so I was worried about her weight even before this started, and now I was terrified she would lose even more weight.
After a few days, she developed bad nappy rash and had about three days of diarrhoea. But in between she was quite happy- in fact the contrast between my floods of tears and her little baby giggles were strange. She didn't seem too bothered by it all!
The diarrhoea and rash settled, but day 7 rolled around and STILL no boob. I was besides myself at this point- the one week mark was like the end of the world. I really lost hope she would come back to the breast.
I would offer many times a day. My breasts ached, my heart burned, and I kept reaching out to her- only to be rejected. Multiple times a day and night. I cried so much.
I kept wishing so much that I hadn't yelled. That she would even bite me again.. At least she'd be on the boob (yes I wasn't thinking clearly!). I hated myself. All those hours wasted on my phone when she was feeding.. Had I savoured it? Could I remember the sweet feeling of her last feed?
What did I try?
It felt like EVERYTHING. I had three virtual sessions with breastfeeding counsellors and one face to face, which I would highly recommend. Just having someone sit with me in the grief of it helped SO much. They really understood more than anyone how I felt.
When I got very low, I kept re-reading positive stories of long strikes that ended successfully, which gave me hope (and thank you SO much to anyone who shared these).
These were the practical things we tried. Nothing worked specifically until the end (see below), but who knows if it contributed:
Dream feed - worked twice on Day 6 as she fell asleep at lunch and at nighttime, very light suckling after literally forcing the nippled in her mouth and squeezing milk into it like crazy. But then it didn't work again despite trying many times. I often tried as she was falling asleep, waking up, and would try around 10pm too.
Daily baths just the two of us
Skin to skin a few hours a day where I could
Lots of cuddles, games etcs, time with me alone as much as possible.
Rocking her for naps on my chest, sometimes skin to skin
Tried the spinning chair trick once, which neither of us enjoyed!
Teething gel (anbesol) and regular calpol/neurofen
Sling time- facing inwards as much as possible, though she wriggled a lot and I’m not sure she enjoyed this
Attempted nursing whilst walking around
Attempted nursing with music on
Got some help with the eldest so I could really focus on her
How we got it back on Day 10 using bait and switch in the sling:
I sent my eldest to the grandparents and just spent all day skin to skin with my baby in the sling, facing inwards. Had done lots of this already, but then I tried to bait her with a syringe of milk.
As she woke up from her nap, I gently squirted expressed milk in her mouth from a syringe, then extracted and held the syringe near my nipple. So she latched on to the syringe there. I gradually pulled it away and replaced it with my nipple. After a moment of confusion she started sucking the nipple! I had never fed her in the sling before and it was awkward, but perhaps the motion and closeness helped too.
We also took the breastfeeding counsellors' slightly controversial advice and kept her much more hungry that day. I know this is a bit harsh, but I was desperate. So we kept her on barely any food and just sips of water all morning. Perhaps I'd been too vigorous in replacing feeds with snacks and EBM. I don’t know how much difference it made, but I think it helped. I also don't think I could have done it for much longer!
For the rest of the day I used the syringe like this, but by the next day she didn't need it! She was tentatively feeding with a less vigorous suck than usual, but she took the boob several times the next day.
I don’t know for sure if she would have just come back in her own time, but I just wanted to share what we did.
There are loads of good tips in these articles, so I won’t go into loads of depth:
And people’s stories of longer strikes I found comforting:
How did I feel during it?
In short, I was absolutely devastated. I think this sounds a bit crazy now I write it, but I honestly felt like I was grieving. It HURT so much, and not just physically from being full of milk that no one wanted. It hurt emotionally in a way I could never have imagined.
Feeding her was part of knowing her, and so when that stopped it was like I didn’t know her in the same way anymore. We had been a team, and then it was like in a heartbeat she was pitched against me. She wasn’t the same baby anymore. I wasn't the same mum to her anymore.
The voice in my head was incessant, and I’ve written down the things I told myself. Reading them now, I wonder if they seem silly or exaggerated, but I have to be honest. It’s simply how I felt at the time, and many other mums have told me they felt the same:
This was all my fault because of the biting
In recent weeks I had wished that she would feed a bit less in the day and I could have some space to breathe. I had occasionally complained to my husband and friends that it felt like being on call, ALL the time. And how much I wished to have a day off. So the strike was my punishment for wanting to be needed less.
My baby had been replaced with someone who loved me less
I would never learn how to comfort her properly again - feeding her was all I had known
I had failed her
She wouldn’t have the same closeness with me as her sister did going forwards
She didn’t love me in the same way anymore
She was going off on her own path, and didn’t want me
I had lost my baby
My baby was a stranger and I didn’t know her in the same way anymore
She wouldn’t grow up with the same immunity and protection as her sister because I had failed to feed her for as long
When she goes to nursery I wouldn’t be able to bond with her in the same way in the evenings like I did for her sister
I was a terrible mum.
I have no idea what I’m doing
She deserves better than me
A better mum would get her back to breast.
I honestly know how ridiculous these sound now, but they are what I told myself at the time. It was gut-wrenching. I cried SO much, and it was like a dark cloud had settled over me that I couldn’t shake. I don’t think I smiled or laughed once in those ten days, and at times I was so angry at the world. It was a weight on my shoulders and I couldn’t see a way out of it all.
I was also so bloody confused. I kept analysing everything, and could simply not understand what on earth had happened. Or what I should be doing. Was there a magic trick I was missing?
It was like being in Big Brother. Every day the first thing I would hear on waking was a commentator saying…”Day x in the nursing strike household”, and my heart would sink. I was drained- physically and emotionally.
Every time I read a positive story about a longer strike I got some hope, but every time I read one that ended without getting it back, I felt crushed.
Everyone told me hormones play a role, and perhaps they’re right. I later felt guilty for reacting the way I did, but it was like I had no control over my emotions.
Emma Pickett sums this up so well in her piece:
“That feeling of loss can be significant.
This is not simply about rejection. Your child seems to be a different person. They are no longer your partner in the breastfeeding relationship. They might feel like your adversary. You have spent months developing an understanding of your child. You KNOW them. You can read them. You communicate. And now your child feels like a complete mystery. They are rejecting milk, but it can feel like your understanding of your child has been rocked and they are rejecting YOU. For the first time, this person feels like a stranger.”
What did other people say?
I think it took a while for even those close to me to understand my grief. People close to me later admitted they struggled to see why I was so devastated. These are the sorts of things people said or implied. I’m not saying they were wrong, but some of them were hard to accept:
She simply didn't want to feed anymore now
Since I was going back to work soon and she was starting nursing in a few months, the timing wasn’t too bad really
I should focus on the positives of having some independence myself now
It was just a food source- so if I got the milk in her another way it wouldn’t be much different. She would be OK.
I had to respect the fact she had chosen not to breastfeed anymore- all children just become more independent with time
It was on her terms
I would find other ways to comfort her
I had done so well to feed this far, and I was lucky
Again, all well-intentioned I know. And some of them did have some truth- but I couldn’t come to terms with what people were trying to tell me
On the flip side, these are some of the things that other mums and breastfeeding counsellors said that I took comfort from:
Babies under about 18 months simply don’t self wean. This is a strike, and it can be turned around
Some were very empathic that she WOULD feed again- and this degree of belief really gave me hope
Stop reading so much online- there are so many nuances to people’s stories that you won’t see
This is hard for her too, be gentle with her and comfort her. She is on your side.
Be kind to yourself. It hurts so much, it is OK to sit in those feelings.
Her being without milk for a few days or weeks is OK
You didn't do this on purpose- you are human, your reaction to biting was normal
Whatever happens, you are a GOOD mum.
I knew my husband understood when he said he realised how it might feel- he likened it to our eldest daughter suddenly not hugging him. For no reason. And you didn't know if she ever would again. And you would keep holding out your arms to her, aching for a hug, not knowing would happen- and it would be rejection after rejection. Who was this child?
He nailed it.
What did I learn?
Being a mum is so BLOODY HARD at times!!!! (not a new lesson)
How lucky I am to be able to breastfeed, and how much I took it for granted - and theres no guarantee she will continue as long as I want her to!
Feeding babies is such a sensitive issue for mums. Never assume what someone has been through, how they want to feed their baby, or what it means to them.
Sometimes just sitting in the bleakness is all someone needs when they feel they are grieving. Not always loads of advice or tips. Or telling them it doesn't matter much. Sometimes they are not ready for that, even if you are right. They just need someone to hear their pain and sit next to them in it.
Spending time just being present with my baby was so precious, not multi tasking or worrying. Just days on end at home, playing and cuddling- without a need to always be on the move. Baths together were such a treat, I don’t know why I hadn’t done more of those before! Savour those moments.
You can feel so claustrophobic as a mum, but it is temporary. Soon your kids will give you the space you crave and you will miss them like hell. You don’t know what you’ve got til its gone.
Parenting is all about filling them up, learning to let go, and trying not to grieve for too long.
Clouds do lift, and things do get better even if they feel like they never will (whichever way this would have gone)
The kindness of strangers and friends (and breastfeeding counsellors) can never be underestimated. Thank you to everyone who helped me, encouraged me, checked in with me, hugged me, forgave me, and sat with me through all of this,
I hope this story helps someone going through the same one day. You are not alone, and it is OK to feel bloody awful.
There is hope.
Thank you to everyone who reached out and offered hope, advice and hugs. I will never forget it.
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