Jasmine Elkhershi’s baby boy Fionn was born in January 2022 and while still in hospital, she found herself “triple feeding” – pumping breast milk, formula feeding and breastfeeding.
“I was exhausted mentally. My son was refusing to breastfeed because he had a bottle,” she says.
Eight weeks later, still “triple feeding” and about to give up breastfeeding, she made contact with Offaly’s new community lactation consultant, Patricia Marteinsson. “She taught me how to latch on [properly] as my son hadn’t been really breastfeeding since he was six days old. Breastfeeding worked from then on.”
Many other mothers in the Offaly Cuidiú support group have similar tales of struggling to breastfeed in busy hospitals, with staff often more focused on a baby’s lack of weight gain rather than providing one-to-one support for breastfeeding mothers.
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Shocked at what few supports there were for breastfeeding mothers in the county, Elkhershi teamed up with Carolina von Ow, breastfeeding counsellor with Cuidiú, to set up the Offaly branch of the charity in the summer of 2022. Three years later, the Offaly branch of Cuidiú has 130 members, and exclusive breastfeeding rates for three-month-old babies in Offaly have moved from being one of the lowest in the country to one of the highest.
“In 2024, in Offaly, 49 per cent of mothers were exclusively breastfeeding at three months and 52 per cent of mothers were either exclusively or partially breastfeeding at three months,” says Niamh Ní Domhnaill, the secretary of Offaly Cuidiú.
So how did they do it? “It’s about meeting mothers where they are at. We sit in a group – often on the floor with our shoes off – chat and play with our babies and toddlers. Everyone can ask what they like. Nothing is ever a silly question,” says von Ow.
Support group meetings are held on week days and on Saturdays to accommodate everyone.
Originally from Germany, von Ow had experienced very few supports in Offaly when her children – now 13, 11 and 9 – were born. “In Germany, it’s totally normal to breastfeed – 90 per cent of mothers breastfeed for four months at least, but there is one-to-one midwife support for mothers in their homes there,” she says.
It’s so inspiring to see mothers who are the first in their family to breastfeed for years to go on to successfully breastfeed
— Carolina von Ow
As we sit and chat in an upstairs room at the Esker Arts Centre in Tullamore (the room is provided free to the group), mothers drop in with their babies. They are keen to acknowledge how important the professional support of community lactation consultant Marteinsson – who runs a breastfeeding support group in Banagher and the mother-to-mother support at Cuidiú Offaly in Tullamore – has been for them.
“It’s all about collaboration. If something is beyond our scope, we refer them to Patricia, their GP or back to the hospital. The public library has stocked up on books on breastfeeding. The pharmacies have lots of breastfeeding products and we loan out pumps and other equipment to mothers who need it,” says Elkhershi.
“It’s about creating a community around breastfeeding. It gives you confidence when you are part of a tribe,” says Ní Domhnaill.
The group is clearly proud of their achievements. “Offaly isn’t an area where breastfeeding has been the norm, but we do feel like the whole town of Tullamore has rowed in behind us,” she adds.
Crucially, there is a WhatsApp group that is often active in the middle of the night when mothers most need some support.
Sara Tarr from Birr, Co Offaly, is one of the mothers who drops in with her eight-month-old daughter, Aoife. “I joined Cuidiú when I was pregnant. The best thing I did was to join the WhatsApp group. I wanted to breastfeed. My mother had breastfed all of us, but I heard that it was hard,” says Tarr.
Aoife was born by Caesarean section and Tarr needed a blood transfusion afterwards due to low iron. “Aoife was marked down as a formula baby and they had fed her every time I asked them to bring her to me to feed. She was also a big baby and was jaundiced,” she says.
When Tarr was discharged from hospital, she went to Patricia’s Banagher breastfeeding support group. “People told me not to give up. That gave me hope,” she says.
“If I didn’t have the constant support from Patricia and Cuidiú, I wouldn’t have been able to keep going during that very intense early period. By seven or eight weeks, things had settled down and I was telling other mothers to keep going.”
Christi Steenkamp arrives in with her son, Luca (3) and daughter, Mia (nine months). “I was always very pro-breastfeeding because my mum in South Africa was big on natural birth and breastfeeding. But, when I started to breastfeed, it was excruciatingly painful. Luca wasn’t putting on weight. It was all very stressful and we started him on formula in the hospital,” she says.
Steenkamp continued to try to breastfeed, while also pumping and giving Luca formula with no professional or peer-to-peer support. He weaned himself at five months.
“Before Mia was born, I made contact with Cuidiú. I met the women before she was born and was put in contact with Patricia. Feeding was difficult again from the start, but with all these supports and tricks (eg how Swedish massage helps with engorgement) I learned and I exclusively breastfed her.”
Steenkamp is full of praise for Marteinsson – who would often stay on a WhatsApp video call for over an hour if needed. “I thought of stopping so many times, but then I’d contact Patricia or the group.”
All agree that Marteinsson’s greatest gift is her ability to help women with kindness and compassion when they are at their lowest.
One of the core themes of the HSE’s National Breastfeeding Action Plan is to “make breastfeeding everyone’s business”.
“Several generations ago, you might have had your mother, your granny, your auntie sitting at the end of your bed helping your baby to latch on in the early days, but that’s something we have lost as a society,” says Elkhershi.
[ Stop framing breastfeeding versus bottle-feeding as a question of mothers at warOpens in new window ]
In the 1980s and 1990s, only about 31 per cent of mothers in Ireland were breastfeeding when leaving the hospital and many mothers gave up soon afterwards. “Many women in the last two generations didn’t breastfeed, so often their first instinct is to give the baby a bottle if the mother is tired,” says Elkhershi.
“It’s so inspiring to see mothers who are the first in their family to breastfeed for years to go on to successfully breastfeed,” adds von Ow. “Several of our committee and trainee breastfeeding counsellors were not breastfed themselves, but have actually changed the norm in their families and communities.”
