Woman's Hour - Being a barrister, Historian Suzannah Lipscomb, Stopping Breastfeeding

Episode Date: February 15, 2019

New research highlights how many women leave the bar mid-career. So why is it so difficult for women to progress in a career as a barrister? We hear from a barrister currently on maternity leave and another who has returned to the profession after having children.After our programmes on feeding your baby, you told us how hard it is to find help if you’re, for whatever reason, trying to stop breastfeeding. Whether its dealing with a baby or child who doesn’t want to stop, staying full of milk when you need to go back to work, or dealing with the emotional and hormonal fall out. You wrote to us about all of these things. So what should women be aware of when they stop breast feeding? And what can they do to help themselves and their babies? We speak to International Board Certified Lactation Consultant Clare Meynell and Clare Byam-Cook, author of 'What to expect when you're breast-feeding, and what if you can't?' Historian Suzannah Lipscomb uncovers the lives, behaviours and attitudes to love, marriage and sex of ordinary 16th and 17th century French women. Based on the evidence of over a thousand cases brought before the moral courts of the Protestant church of Languedoc. She joins Jenni to discuss her new book ‘The Voices of Nimes - Women, Sex & Marriage in Reformation Languedoc.We remember the author Andrea Levy We hear the fifth story of our family secrets series.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Helen Fitzhenry Interviewed guest: Arlene Small Interviewed guest: Sarah Langford Interviewed guest: Suzannah Lipscomb Interviewed guest: Clare Meynell Interviewed guest: Clare Byam-Cook

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Friday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. A couple of weeks ago we talked about feeding your baby. Today it's coming to a close. What is the best way to stop breastfeeding? Family secrets and we hear from Moira who told us about a problem she'd suspected all her life but only learned the truth as an adult. And the rare personal histories of women in 16th and 17th century France discovered in the court reports of the Protestant Church

of Languedoc. Now this week the Western Circuit, a body which represents the interests of barristers in the south and southwest of England, published the results of research into the number of women who are leaving the bar and the reasons why. We've also read about complaints from one young barrister who warned her male colleagues to cut out what she called their stag do behaviour. Two-thirds of those who left the profession in the Western Circuit over the last six years were women. Almost all the men who left went on to be judges or retired. The majority of women who walked away were in the middle of their career. So why are they doing it? Arlene Small is a practising barrister who specialises in family finance and children.

Sarah Langford's specialities are criminal and family law, and she's the author of In Your Defence about her own experience. At the moment, she's on maternity leave. I spoke to them earlier this morning. What significance would Sarah attach to the new research? I don't think that there has been a report which has broken down practice area like this has done. So we've got stats, we've got statistics from the Bar Standards Board who are our regulators about how few female QCs there are and how few women barristers there are. But what is really significant on the ground from someone who's done it is where we lose barristers is in court based practices like crime and in family areas

as well. And that's because of the practical difficulties of the job when you've got children, especially very small children. What are the practical difficulties? It's a very unpredictable lifestyle, especially at the junior end. You don't necessarily know where you're going to be, sometimes tomorrow, sometimes next week. And you don't necessarily know if your trial's going to get up and running. You don't know how long you're going to be at court, which means that you have to have very flexible childcare,

which, if you're paying for it it means it's very expensive childcare. And the rates, as we all know, in criminal practice are incredibly low. So you are in a situation where you're probably paying more than you're earning to allow you to have this flexibility. Arlene, how important would you say the research is? Historically, it's an area that nobody has really wanted to address. We've just all ploughed on as if it's all fine. I always think of that image of the duck going across the water looking quite calm, but underneath we're all paddling furiously.

So this report very much shines a light on what the reality of life is like for most, particularly women and parents at the bar. Why Sarah did you make the decision that you wouldn't return after having a child? I did the maths mainly I looked at what I would need in place and the kind of child care I needed I looked at we've got quite a big chambers and I looked through our kind of roll call of chambers trying to look for a woman who was in court every day and had under school age children I found one and she gave me the system that she had set up and I couldn't match it with what my resources were and my family support wasn't in London or near where I lived and it just didn't work practically for me or financially for me. And I think reading it was incredibly emotional for me

because I felt very guilty about not going back. I thought maybe if I just tried a bit harder or had managed to work my finances in a way I could have done it. What's wonderful when you read this report is as well as all the statistics, like 29% of barristers over 14 year call are women that's all they all shed in the 10 to 14 years after qualification there are lots of personal anecdotes as well woven amongst them and they resonated with me so strongly they were exactly

how I felt and that was a it was almost a relief to be given permission to have made the decision that I made because I'm clearly one of many who've gone through the same difficulty Arlene you did go back after having your child you're in court this morning yes how did you make that work well can I just say that I I totally agree with everything um that's being shared about the refreshing nature of being able to read all those anecdotes and stories and think, actually, I'm all right. I'm normal. You know, I'm not alone. There are a lot of people who feel that way. I think generally guilt is the working woman's burden. And we're very good at beating ourselves up quite repeatedly about the things that we're not doing. And it was all about personal choice. I absolutely love being at the bar and I'm very passionate about being able to advocate for

others who can't advocate for themselves and so I think I probably did it in reverse I made the decision that I was definitely going to go back to the bar and then try to shoehorn everything else as far as arrangements were concerned but practically practically, how did you manage it? I mean, if you have to be in court in Leeds tomorrow and Manchester next week, how do you manage it with your child? It's a combination of things. I mean, I don't live near my family, but I have good friends in terms of a support network. And of course, there is my

husband who is incredibly understanding about the times when I say I'm on my way home and then I turn up sort of five hours later, having been delayed on a telephone call with a client or something like that. So I think it is important to have good networks. It's very important to have supportive chambers, my chambers, Clark's' room, thankfully they are not the sort of clerks who will put things in my diary and tell me about it afterwards. They're aware of my personal situation and so they will ring me and say, this is what we're thinking of doing, is that going to work for you? As opposed to, I've popped out for a sandwich and I come back and I'm going to Kilimanjaro in the morning. So they're incredibly sensitive to the fact that they want to retain women at the bar. And they're supportive, as I say, by managing my diary accordingly.

Sarah, what did you make of the complaints, which I read about in the newspapers yesterday, by Joanna Hardy, who spoke of male colleagues with stag do behaviour? Yes. I mean, that creates a very kind of, can create a very male aura in a court. And it is, again, as I said at the beginning, the criminal cases particularly that tend to be quite male heavy because they are very demanding on time and finances. So I recognised some of the comments that she said.

How often, Arlene, would you be asked to make the coffee, organise the dinner? Thankfully, I've never been asked to do any of those things. Which is what Joanna said she'd heard a lot of. Well, it's interesting. I think it also depends on the area of practice. I mean, she was talking, I think, primarily about the criminal criminal bar. And I do family. I'm at the family bar where I have to say there is quite a high volume of women practicing. And so essentially we're all getting coffee for one another, you know, that sort of thing. Or if there's a Chambers do, you know, inevitably or a case dinner.

Inevitably, we all sort of work together if we need to. But when I first started out and I did crime, I think everybody does crime when they first qualify. I do recognise that the situations that she was talking about only in as much as there clearly was a sense of the male barristers ruling the roost and the female barristers just being sort of tolerated but I had thought it had moved on so I was a bit surprised to see those comments. Well I think if I may it has moved on to an extent in that women have always supported other women I think probably quite privately and what has shifted in the last couple of years is that I think women are much more able to do it kind of proudly and publicly because at the same time that the stag do comments were going uh viral there was another picture also doing the rounds which is of a woman who'd returned to do a trial

with a vulnerable young defendant with her 11 week old baby who would refuse to take a bottle and she managed to set up arrangements so she could breastfeed the baby during the trial and that you know certainly I know from having spoken yesterday to one of the very few female QCs who went back after her baby was four months there was no way she could have done that so that's changed women are being much more supportive publicly I think for another despite an awful lot of talk Arlenelene, of diversity in the profession, how is your career influenced by the fact that you are something of a rarity as a black barrister? It's interesting, actually. I think when I first qualified, I mean, you could hear the sharp intake of breath as you walked the corridors,

particularly when I was doing crime and you're dressed in your wig and gown. And it was a mixture, really, because I think people from the ethnic background, I'm a black British Caribbean, and you would almost see a sense of pride in people's faces as you walked by, sort of recognising that you probably went through a lot to qualify and get where you were. And then there'd be sort of an equal look of surprise from colleagues at the bar who I think just weren't used to seeing black barristers around.

But again, thankfully, things have improved. And I would hazard a guess that if I were to qualify now, my experiences would hopefully be much different. What is interesting, though, is I think wider society is still expecting barristers to be predominantly white, predominantly male and elderly. And I was sort of, as I was reflecting on coming onto the programme, thinking about an experience that my husband had when he told somebody that I was, he was asked, what does your wife do? And he said, she's a barrister. And he was asked if I was white,

because just the possibility that, you know, I could be a black barrister was clearly something that was alien to this particular person. So that's been my experience. So if some things are improving, what actually at the root needs to be done so that women don't feel they have to leave their profession. I think when courts are listing multiple cases at the same time which mean that

you have no idea when you're going to get home obviously that has an impact on witnesses and defendants and so on as well or when you're dealing with a warned trial, which is a trial which might come in on any day, given a given period, that's incredibly hard to plan for. So on the most basic level, the ability to predict your diary is fundamental to making this balance of affordable childcare possible. What would you say needs to be done, Arlene? I think this belief that, for example, if you arrive at 10 o'clock, that you shouldn't expect to be seen before 12, or in the worst-case scenario, an announcement is simply made from the bench, OK, we're going to resume at 2, you know,

when you've been meant to be there at 10 o'clock for a 30-minute appointment. So I certainly think that more thought needs to go into how the diaries are listed. And also I think there comes a point in the afternoon where you are thinking about your childcare arrangements and if perhaps there was some discussion beforehand by advocates as to whether we could support one another in saying to the bench or the judiciary, actually there are some time constraints. Judges are quite confident saying, I can't sit past two, I can't sit past three.

But as members of the bar, we just stay silent, don't we? I was talking to Arlene Small and Sarah Langford. It's never difficult to find out about the history of famous women. There's generally lots of material because there are documents for which they themselves were responsible or there are contemporary accounts. It's a different matter when it comes to what we might call ordinary women. Very little record of their lives exists which is why Susanna Lipscomb's The Voices of Nîmes, Women, Sex and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc, is so fascinating.

Her source material is the consistories or moral courts of the Huguenot Church of Languedoc between 1561 and 1615. Susanna, why did you want to focus on these women in a very specific period? It does sound very specific, doesn't it? But as you say, it's because most women who ever lived have left no trace of their existence on the record of history. And for these women, I have records. So most people who lived at this time couldn't read or write. And that's particularly true with most women. So they don't leave letters or diaries or, you know, autobiographies.

Most of them don't have status before the law when they're married. So criminal courts don't call them. They don't have anything to leave in wills, so we'd have no other record. But this church court, as it's called, consistory, run by the Protestants, did consider women worthy of being listened to, not because they respected them particularly, but because they thought that they were responsible for most sin, including sexual sin. So they summoned women before the courts, wrote down what they said, and women give details of their everyday lives. And so it's really just because I found this source that gives insight.

Now, both Catholic and Protestant women are recorded, and they're often very, very poor. There's no cost in going to this court. What sort of cases did the women initiate? So this is the extraordinary thing that women could do that. They initiated cases like, for example, if a man who had promised to marry them then refused to go through with it. So there's a woman called Isabelle Vielle who's a Catholic girl. She's probably 18 or 20.

And she says that a man called Claude Dupont has married her. She has witnesses to the promise of marriage it is and um and he denies it and says that it calls her a papist and a thief and a whore and a drunk and says he won't marry her um and so the consistory is faced with the decision between the two but she manages to both say that she'll do what the consistory says um and produce witnesses and in the end the case winning swings in her favor it almost seems that these courts empowered women because they seem to have been given equal weight to men. Yes, although their testimony wasn't quite as well respected as men, it is much more the case than anywhere else. And it is an extraordinary, ironic, unintended consequence of this moral discipline that it would serve as a mechanism for women to use.

So we have servant girls like a woman called Marguerite Bress who brings a case against her employer who's an influential man in his 60s and she says he's raped her and you know she and he is actually allowed to interrogate her to cross-examine her before the consistory. But in the end, the consistory believes her word. Now, that doesn't happen every time. But the fact is that women could try to do it is sort of the limits of the possible in a patriarchal society. What sort of cases were heard for which women were believed to be responsible? Well, women were generally at the time believed to be responsible for all sorts of sexual sin. So adultery, sex before marriage, fornication, which obviously is generally testified to by a pregnancy.

Quite often that's how they find out. But also, I mean, it's women going to go dancing, which isn't allowed, or to have their fortunes told by fortune tellers, the bohemians. There are many people who travelled through Europe giving testimonies about people's fortunes. So there are all sorts of instances on which women are thought to be more susceptible than men to sin. There seems to be an awful lot of fornication, sexual assault, courtship and promises of marriage that were not kept. What do we actually learn about behaviour at the time? Well, first thing is that people have generally thought,

because of the severe consequences in terms of shaming to do with getting pregnant outside marriage, that people only really had sex before marriage in the context of marrying. Actually, I find lots of instances where that's not the case. I mean, this is hardly surprising if you think about human behaviour, really. But also, and this will not surprise any of the Me Too generation, there are lots and lots of cases of sexual assault. So a lot of girls serve, nearly everybody, ordinary women serve as servant girls between the ages of 13 and 28 or something when they're saving up money for their dowry. There are older men in the household and quite often that leads to rape and sexual assault.

You found gossip seemed to be a major theme. What do you mean by that? Well, because gossip is how people police the morals of a society. And women particularly seem to do this. So they would talk about what they disapproved of. And they would actually often act on it. So there's a case where a group of women burst into a man's house. He won't let them in, but they burst in. They say, you know, you're hiding a whore here. And they find a woman hiding under the straw and chase her out of the town. But before that, there's been all this gossip about what he's doing. So it's a way that people used, women particularly used their words to castigate others. You also found that women were often involved in violent arguments and physical attacks. What happened with Anna de Vellati?

Oh, yes. Anna de Vellati is a woman who discovers her husband having an affair with the maidservant twice, and she hits them around the head with a sieve. And it is true that women at the time appear to have been more violent than we've recorded up until now to each other, but also sometimes towards men. They're violent in their words as well as their deeds. The language is extraordinarily coarse at times. Their insults are very inventive. And there is this sense that they are vocal and they're bold. And I think up until now, we sort of thought that ordinary women at this time, you know, didn't have much power and therefore didn't behave as if they did.

But actually they didn't seem to know they weren't supposed to. So they actually do speak up. How much did they denounce other women? They did denounce other women quite a bit. I mean, part of the system of patriarchy rests on women upholding it as much as men. And so quite often one of the ways that you can portray yourself as a respectable woman is to denounce another woman for doing something. So that does happen a lot, yes.

So what would you say the record reveals about marriage and premarital sex? I have to say, I was quite surprised when I read your book to find out what was going on. Yes, it suggests, well, one, there's a lot of the latter around premarital sex and also about marriage. It suggests both that women are often striving to achieve it, but also that where, you know, because that's the how to get anything done really in the society. But also, more surprisingly, perhaps there are instances of women saying that they don't want to marry the person to whom they're engaged. There's a woman called Gillette de Girardet who's engaged and she says actually she's married to Jesus Christ and she won't marry the man she's supposed to be engaged to. She doesn't get away with it. She is forced to marry him because they can prove

that the engagement promises have happened and they're binding. But the fact that you have women challenging the circumstances that have been created for them is surprising in itself. Susanna Lipscomb, it's fascinating. Thank you very much indeed for being with us. Now still to come in today's programme after our discussions about feeding your baby a couple of weeks ago, what to do when it's coming to an end. How easy is it to stop breastfeeding? And of course the serial, the final episode of Lifelines. And now for the fifth in our family secret series, Moira contacted us through Instagram

and wanted to talk about a secret that has affected her whole life. She's now 52 and grew up as an only child with her mother and father in Swansea. Jo Morris asked her when her story begins. I think it begins probably when I was born because I think that my mum's illness happened pretty soon after I arrived, which is a bit sad, really. I've just always lived with it. I've never really spoken to anyone about it.

Some of the things I'll be telling you today, I've never said to anybody. Why have you never told anyone? Just because it's never felt proper to. So tell me a bit about your family set up. Oh, I think my father was really, really deeply conventional, very conservative, small c conservative. And my mum was definitely not. They were quite different, I think. My mum was quite wacky and outgoing. Did you feel like there was a secret? Yes, because there was one.

And I knew that there was a secret. And I there was one and I knew that there was a secret and I kind of knew almost knew what it was I just didn't have a name for it. Even by five or six I was very very aware of things I was allowed to say around this subject. One thing that came to mind actually that I have not thought about since I was since I was a kid but happened when I was in infant school and I have never told anyone this I must have been pulled out of class and taken to the headmistress's office and there was somebody there who I can't remember but there was somebody there and I remember the headmistress put me on her knee and they were asking me questions about my home. Was I happy at home?

And those sorts of questions. I mean, I was a tiny kid. I can hardly remember now. But even at that age, I knew not to say anything about it. And also, I never tell my parents. So I was being questioned, I think, by somebody from social services. if such a thing existed in 1960 whatever it would have been I knew why they were asking me these questions I wasn't like an innocent kid just giving the right answer I was definitely aware why they were asking me these questions they knew something about my home circumstances which which weren't quite normal or, you know, whatever. So I always knew that my mum took medication, had an injection, took tablets, that sort of thing. And yet I had never been told.

But even at that age, I was aware of it. I was aware that it was something that I shouldn't talk about. And I was also aware that it would be a really bad thing to mention it to my parents. So I just dealt with it. I told them what I thought they would kind of want to hear. Which was what? Which was I'm happy, which was true, you know, which was true. I wasn't unhappy. I wasn't frightened.

So at this young age, you're being trained to keep a secret? Yeah, yeah. Without saying, you must keep this a secret, I knew that you must keep it a secret. It would have been a shame, a shaming thing for our family to have acknowledged, which is quite a big thing, really, isn't it? That something that somebody can't help, it's an illness, it just happens to be a mental illness, I knew that my mum was not suffering from, you know, being a bit nervy. And I knew it was serious.

Why does that make you laugh when you say that? Well, because it's just such a ridiculous catch-all. I'm not sure it really even means anything. Suffering with her nerves. Nobody ever referred to it as what it was. And my mum, Blessa, who was actually probably the most open of all the people involved, I think she'd kind of almost been trained not to say it as well. Did your parents ever explain your mum's condition to you?

Did they ever sit you down and say okay? Never. It did not have a name until my mum's psychiatrist who was then actually looking after her for dementia in her 70s referred to a historical diagnosis of schizophrenia at which point it was out and my father well he very nearly fell off his chair but that was the first time it was mentioned and it had never been discussed before and funny enough it was never talked about after that we didn't talk about it even after the word had been uttered by the psychiatrist. So you didn't come out of the meeting and then say to your dad, well. So this schizophrenia then? No, never, no. I kind of wish I had but by that stage we had 40 years worth of not talking about it. Why do you wish you had said something?

I wish I'd known what my mum went through. I wish I had a greater understanding of the illness and what it did to her. I mean I saw some things that I knew were odd like are apparently being related to minor royalty Prince Michael of Kent name check yes and I knew even as a tiny child that that was just wrong but I just went with it so I knew she had delusions at the time I just knew that it was a bit odd and definitely not right. I never had a rebellious moment where I thought right I'm 15 now and I must know what's going on or tell me what's going on. I think my mother would have liked to talk about it but my father was so adamant that we weren't going to talk about it that she didn't talk about it either we're much more open about it now we're probably not in the absolute best place even now but at least

at least I feel I can talk openly you know and say my mum had schizophrenia when we were kids probably quite little kids playing you know playing out in the street. And I think I must have had an argument with another child who just came back to me and said, your mother's mental. It's the time I remember thinking that it wasn't just our secret, or that actually it wasn't a secret, and that we hadn't contained it in our household. It's an impressive ambition to try and keep it secret that somebody's got schizophrenia in the actual house where you're living. I think it must have been quite frightening for her actually now that I do know a little bit more about it I think things like having delusions hearing voices and some of the you know some of the treatment like the electric shock treatment and that sort of thing was really quite brutal undoubtedly she was ill and she had some awful times, but she made the most of her life.

I find it really hard to wish that she was anything other than what she was because she was great. If you could tell your mum now that you knew the secret, what would you say to her? It's all right and I'm interested in it. And you're a great mum whatever yeah that's what I'd say And that was Moira

talking to Joan Morris and next week the last in the series we'll hear Prue who's in her 70s and has found out a family secret and now spends all her time trying to find answers and then on thursday of next week you might be interested that we'll be discussing the power and fallout of secrets with

a psychotherapist sue cowan jensen now if you were listening a couple of weeks ago you'll have heard us discussing some research we commissioned about the feeding of babies what do women choose breast or bottle or both and why but of course at some point they all go on to solids and both breast and bottle feeding come to a close. Well some of you got in touch to say you were finding it hard to stop breastfeeding and whilst there was tons of advice about starting there was not much help when it came to packing it in. So what problems can it cause?

Eleanor Merritt told us she struggled to stop, especially with her first son. She had become depressed. When I had my second son, I was really mindful of that effect that it had on me over that two- or three-month period. And so this time when I was going back to work, I was perhaps fortunate that we tailed off the breastfeeding

rather than such an abrupt stop I kind of put it down to hormones I don't know if that's actually what it was down to if it was just a psychological thing or if it's a type of postnatal depression but for me when I was going back to work this time I made a kind of conscious effort to be a bit kinder to myself and talk to people about it and say my friends have had babies since and then they're going back to work I've just mentioned it to them because I'd never really heard about it and I just felt guilty and really bad at the time and didn't ask for help because I thought people would just tell me to get over myself and that it's always hard going back to work and it's just a period of adjustment. But I really felt an impact on my mental health.

And I wish I'd known about it at the time and been able to kind of take it into account. So I've got a really heavy supply of milk and my worries with stopping are leaking at work, leaking in public, getting really engorged and uncomfortable, getting blocked milk ducts which turn into mastitis which seems to happen if I drop even one feed at the moment then increasing feeding to get rid of it which just sends me back to square one. Towards the end of January last month I was at my parents and took the opportunity of having lots of people around to not give him a morning feed by this point I was just on morning and evening so I jumped on the train back to London. I didn't feed him before I left. By five o'clock I was in agony and I was sitting on the loom hand expressing into a tissue. Then went and played netball and just again so much pain running around feeling like I had this huge swollen melons on my chest. Very excited for when the baby would get home and immediately fed him when he did

it took about three days to my body's milk supply to adjust and then did the evening feed for a few weeks but on the whole another journey within parenthood and being a first-time mum of not really sure what I'm doing asking friends for, wanting to use search engines to find news but also if you read the top four articles it will say very different things. It's just really demoralising of where you go to get really sound advice. I guess it's a shame that within the support you get in the early weeks of having a baby things like this aren't covered where it's obviously a core aspect of a child's first year and your journey of a mum of knowing how to stop feeding well some women do just stop their milk dries up and there are no problems but how can it

be dealt with if there are difficulties like the one we've just heard about well claire byam cook is a nurse and midwife who specializes in feeding claire manel is a midwife and lactation consultant and joins us from Brighton. Now, you're both called Claire, so you're going to have to be Claire Mainel and Claire Byam-Cook. Forgive me. So, Claire Mainel, we heard there about a child suddenly stopping and the mother feeling depressed. What might cause the depression at that stage?

Hello, Jenny. I think some women can feel a bit lost or depressed, but we have to be remembering that this is a normal physiological happening and taken very slowly with the hormonal changes that take place can be easily managed. I was very interested in hearing the previous callers about taking time.

It does take time and three weeks may not be long enough. So for any mother who's thinking about stopping, please take it slowly, one feed at a time, and get some help when it's required. But there are children who make their own decision yes to just stop why does a child say yeah okay that's enough no more um i think some children have a very strong mind and decide that food and um drinks in a cup are more interesting um and that can be quite hard for the mothers um but again, offering little feeds early morning and late at night, snuggly feeds, can be very helpful in sort of just elongating that for mum,

because she might feel otherwise rejected or, you know, sad that breastfeeding is coming to an end. Claire Byam-Cook, a number of women said they found it hard to find advice about stopping, even though there'd been lots of advice about starting. Why do you suppose that is? I think we just do focus far too much on why women should breastfeed and getting them started. And then the reality is who would they go to afterwards? Because the health visitors are very tied up with other matters. And most lactation consultants are helping solve breastfeeding problems. I mean, it would be great if we could advertise that there were clinics to prepare you. it is to do with teaching in the antenatal period because when I used to teach classes I placed a lot of emphasis on not just how to get it started but how to stop and one of the things I advised the mothers to do is you must introduce a bottle reasonably early on of express milk I'm not talking formula because in the early days a baby's very happy to drink from anything. If you go too long with breastfeeding, then the baby rejects the bottle, and the mothers don't expect this.

So I always used to prepare them and say, look, first of all, make sure your baby's happy to take a bottle, because you never know whether you'll need your baby to take a bottle, like your supply goes down, you're ill, or whatever. And secondly, if you have an absolutely firm date when you have to go back to work, you must think of it well in advance. Don't just think you're going to breastfeed till the very last moment and then give up because then you have the problems the other mother has mentioned.

But what about when you do get back to work? How can you prevent, you know, some women have lots of milk and it goes on even after the feeding slows down or stops. How do you stop leakage? Well, you can't necessarily. I mean, there are all sorts of pads that you could wear and gel pads to stop it. So I think in the same way when you're actually breastfeeding, you put pads in to stop it leaking through your clothes. But the main thing is, as the other Claire said, is prepare well in advance. And if you have a very plentiful supply, you have to leave many weeks to stop.

If you have quite a low supply, you can give up almost overnight. Claire Maynard, what if a child doesn't want to stop? How do you put him or her off? I don't think it's a question of putting them off. It's exciting them with other things and other distractions like fresh foods and drinks in a cup or a bottle.

You know, it's not an all or nothing situation. It's a slow progression forward which can be very exciting for children and for mothers actually. And Claire Byam-Cook, excuse me, what advice would you give to a woman

who's trying to stop but she does begin to feel engorged? Well, try and do it slowly so don't just drop three feeds in a row. Wear a very firm, supportive bra. Possibly take painkillers if you're in pain and wear cool pads, put ice packs on to soothe inflammation. But the main thing is to try and do it fairly slowly and base your advice on the more milk you express,

the more you stimulate the breast to get going. So don't keep expressing. So don't keep expressing. You have to get a balance because if you're really engorged, not only are you very uncomfortable, but you risk getting mastitis. So you might express a bit of milk, but every time you express a bit of milk, you work the breast back into action. So the main thing is do it slowly, firm supportive bra and prepare well in advance. And on this question of persuading a baby to take a bottle when you don't want to feed anymore, what's the best way to do that? Because a lot of babies don't want a bottle. They don't exactly and there's no easy answer. Certainly all the clients that come to me

with this problem have not found the softly softly approach work so a lot of them are told just offer a bottle every now and then and gradually your baby will get used to it but what I find is that the baby then starts crying even when the bottle comes in sight. So what I say is set aside 24 hours where you are really going to tackle the problem and don't feel guilty as the mother you know if you went under a bus tomorrow the baby would have to take a bottle so if you're doing it for a very firm reason like you've got to go back to work just get on 24 hours and there are lots of different bottles and I probably shouldn't name any particular one but I always use a particular bottle with a very fast flow teat.

It's got a very flat teat and it's very fast flow because lots of babies, as soon as they feel a bit of plastic in their mouths, they start crying immediately. And Claire Manor, what would you say for this problem? How would you encourage a baby to take the bottle? Slowly but surely. As I said before, it's not all or nothing. And to be kind to the mother and to the baby,

it's best to take a longer time than 24 hours. It's a physiological happening of the body. And I think we should, we should respect the body and the mother's wishes and the baby's wishes to be able to move forward slowly but surely. Claire Maynall and Claire Byam-Cook, thank you both very much indeed for being with us. And of course, we would like to hear from you. How have you solved some of these problems? Now, we were very sad to hear this morning of the death at the age of 62 of Andrea Levy. We spoke in 2004 about the publication of her best known work, Small Island. And one of the questions I asked her was how she felt about

winning the Orange Prize for the book. I was very surprised to win it, actually, because, well, Rosie's work I know and also Margaret's work I know very well and the thought of actually being on that list was quite daunting and quite an honour, I thought, too. But you left your speech in your handbag and then admitted to failing A-level English as your acceptance speech. Why?

That's what euphoria does for you, I think. It makes you, it's like being drunk, I've realised. When I got onto the stage, there was a little girl in me that just wanted to admit that to the judges, just in case they wanted to change their mind. It was bizarre. And then I thought, why did I say that? But anyway, I did. What difference has winning made? It's just made my life a lot fuller. There are a lot more requests. I know that when we first had the book out, you are trying to get media attention

so that people know this book is around and we were chasing the media to see if they would do this and that. And then as soon as you win a prize, of course, they're chasing you. So that makes quite a difference. But how much does that hamper the time that you have to write? An enormous amount. That is the worst bit. So that makes quite a difference. But how much does that hamper the time that you have to write? An enormous amount. That is the worst bit. I haven't really had time to write this year.

It's been such an amazing year. And I mean it's been lovely and I wouldn't have it any other way, but I know my editors are sort of saying, oh, I hope we don't have to wait so long for the next book. And at the moment it's looking like it's taking a bit of time. Now, Small Island was inspired by your family's experiences of coming from Jamaica. Why Small Island? I went through a lot of titles. And actually, the word Small Island comes up in the book quite a lot.

Because in Jamaica, any other island is called a small island in the Caribbean. And it's a rather sort of disparaging term, you talk about small islanders. And also Britain, I think, was becoming a small island then, instead of being an empire and, you know, all the pink bits on the map. It was people were beginning to see it now as a small island and realise that they were small islanders. So it felt quite apt.

I was talking to Andrea Levy in 2004. Her death was announced today. Now, lots of you got in touch about women leaving the bar mid-career. Nadine tweeted, I left the bar after 25 years when my chambers failed to support me when my husband was ill. I ended up having to try and work from home. Some male colleagues were very macho and selfish, but some quite the opposite. Catherine tweeted, a retired judge told me

he always thought when women barristers appeared in front of him that come 3pm, were they concentrating on the case or were they worrying about little Johnny and what he was having for tea. Gail emailed, I qualified at the bar in 1978. 40 years later, I still practice, although semi-retired. I have three children and practiced throughout. Thought you might like to know that I took my first baby, now 31, to court with me to breastfeed in 1988. As they say, nothing new under the sun. And Emily emailed, I'm a female barrister of 15 years. Two years ago, I left the self-employed bar and went to work in-house for a housing association and I'm about to have my first child with the good fortune of all the benefits of a generous maternity policy and employer flexibility, I need. And then on ceasing to breastfeed, Debbie said,

My health visitor told me to go straight to a beaker, which I did with both my children. There's no need to go from breast to bottle. And Merid emailed, 25 years ago, I had to go back to work as a GP when my first child was eight weeks old. I would advise any mother in that position to go out for a very long walk, leaving your partner to get the baby to take the bottle. Now do join me for Weekend Woman's Hour tomorrow when we'll be talking about breast ironing,

a way to stop teenagers' breasts from growing and which has now been defined as child abuse. And measles cases in Europe, which have tripled between 2017 and 2018, the highest recorded this decade, according to the World Health Organization. Join me at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Until then, bye-bye.

Hello, I'm Gemma Cairney, and I want to tell you about Don't You Forget About Me, a brand new hub for great music documentaries from BBC Radio 4. Whatever your musical taste, we've got you covered, whether you want to discover the cult of Aphex Twin or appreciate the genius of Jeff Buckley. My whole philosophy and my whole discovery

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