Australian comedian Anthony “Lehmo” Lehmann has opened up about his wife, TV personality Kelly Kearney’s struggle with breast-feeding.
Speaking to his co-host Jo Stanley on their Gold 104.3 radio show, Anthony discussed the “pressure put on new mums when it comes to breastfeeding over bottle feeding”.
“It’s everywhere. All the literature you read, the stuff issued by the government, it all says ‘breastfeed, breastfeed, breastfeed and here are the benefits of breastfeeding’,” Lehmann said. “But what that ignores is the pressure it puts on mothers who are unable to produce the milk and how that makes these mothers feel.”
He went on to reveal that their son Laddie lost weight because of the breast-feeding problem.
“Kel tried for days and days and days and wasn’t sure if it’s working – because you don’t know, you’ve never done it before. After four days, we weighed our son and he’d lost a third of his body weight,” Lehmann said.
“And then Kel tried a pump and no milk was coming out so we hadn’t fed him for four days. How do you think my wife felt? She’s thinking: ‘I’m starving my baby’.”
The radio host insisted that he believes people should feed their baby by any means necessary.
“Just feed your baby – that should be the number one guideline over and above everything else. Feed your baby,” he said.
His co-host agreed with his statement, saying:
“It may be because the baby isn’t latching on and not able to feed. It may be because you’re in a great deal of pain and you’re not able to feed yourself or the milk isn’t being produced. There’re lots of different reasons.”
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