This is exactly what my wife passed through. She had to have a C-section and could not produce enough milk no matter how hard she tried.

The midwives ignored her and did not help her at all but tried to give her a guilt complex all the time.

Someone should really have a chat with these midwives. They are there to help the mother and baby not to play doctor and meddle with vulnerable persons’ feelings.

Could the mothers provide themselves the nappies instead of having their babies wrapped in cotton wool?

Who is the bastard who attached a tag like that to a still born baby? Could a still born drink, suckle or do anything else? Unfortunately not.

Insensitivity does not have to do with a government but with staff. I had a child who passed away after two months during a Nationalist government and the government had nothing to do with the insensitivity.

When she was born, I waited outside the breast feeding clinic waiting to be directed on what to do to provide breast milk for her, because there is a stress on breast milk for NPICU babies.

Nobody bothered to suggest that I should rather not go there but have a one-to-one with the midwife. The pain of seeing happy mothers was excruciating. I had to take a photo and sit down and try and stimulate my instinct. The mothers looked scornfully at me as though I was some kind of freak.

Midwives have been given way too much power, yet there is no study that shows how many mothers who do not cope with this insistence of breast feeding fall into a depression.

I was told when to breast feed, but when my infant daughter was at the end of her life nobody bothered to tell me to stop expressing, only nature did. And there I was rocking her to her passage out of life with ice packs on my breasts and swallowing Panadols.

I then asked to give the 10 litres I had expressed to a milk bank, and I was told there was none. So I threw a small jar when my child was interred and had to find a way to reconcile with throwing away milk, which was part of my earthly bond with her. It is still painful to remember all this.

Authorities should ideally stop giving midwives too much power; they are only making mothers go on guilt trips. The second time round, I spent three months in hospital and so had time to think and observe. The midwife’s expertise is based on just watching the mother and baby and if they think the baby is taking milk they write ‘vigorous sucking’. But my child was not drinking. She was irritable after two forced breast-feeds and I expressed to see if there was any milk and there was none.

Once I opted out of not letting my daughter starve, the midwife’s attitude was “Din mhux qed ittija breast!” They ignored me did not help and made a fuss when I told them the plug of the bottle warmer was to high for me to stretch out to switch on because of my stitches.

That is the service one gets both with a C-section and formula milk. Chris Fearne had better not give them more power, because no scientific proof can back up their theories, and women should be free to do what is best for their children.

He is as useful as tits on a bull.

“Why everything has to be explained along officious description is beyond philologic.”

Which is why you are genius. You understood the entire problem.

To compound the provincial idiocy, they had to have the name in Maltese. “Zieme”.

V18 sucks. That’s official. It’s boring, straitjacketed, welded onto an official framework that makes civil servants of artists. They love it, because it gives them the Maltese Dream – it gives them security. But it’s not European culture. And to us on the outside, it’s boring.

More statwetti fil-vetrina.

Putting pressure on the new mother may cause undesired effects. I know one mum who went into a depression as she thought herself a failure because she could not breastfeed for many reasons.

Midwives and doctors cannot exert too much pressure because new mothers are vulnerable and it is their sacrosanct right to choose the method of feeding.

The baby’s health improved when she began giving the baby bottles.

Breast feeding may be good but to describe it as some panacea is irresponsible considering that it may lead to undernourishment-related diseases which may be life-long.

Mothers should be told of these risks.

One has to consider that bottle milk never killed anyone.