Alice O’Dwyer from Trim breastfeeds her 4-day-old son, Malick, at the Sabina Higgins-hosted ‘Latching On’ event at Áras an Uachtaráin as part of National Breastfeeding Week. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA

When I was pregnant, the resolve to "be healthier" strengthened. Increasing the water consumption and not letting seven hours pass between meals were top of the list — endeavours I'd historically failed at over the years. I remember reading an article in a free magazine by this wellness guy slash mindset coach. It was nothing to do with pregnancy, but how, if you're trying to make a new habit stick, you need to set your surrounding environment up for success.

I bought two metal water bottles and always had a stray banana or a packet of nuts in my car. The guy's advice actually worked.

It's a bit like breastfeeding — today is the official start of our National Breastfeeding Week — it needs to be about support, never pressure.

Whether you or your partner breastfed or not, every parent has brushed up against this topic. It can feel like a two-roads-diverge decision.

You may have started, then stopped shortly thereafter. Or, you may have never started in the first place, because you made a conscious decision not to. Or, you could be a parent of a nine-month-old baby or a two-year-old toddler, who still nurses.

As Census night approached last April, there was much public conversation about the Time Capsule — the non-obligatory page at the back where you could write a message to the future, to be opened 100 years from now.

Trusting the Irish there was a run of witty ones, from "Have Mayo won an All-Ireland yet?" to someone asking for their Lotto numbers to be checked.

But there was a random one that struck me at the time and has stuck with me ever since. It posed the question: What if by 2122, breastfeeding was gone, died out globally?

But it's also absolutely not on an individual mother, home alone six weeks postpartum, her partner back at work, the visitors stopped, with a toddler to tend to, to ensure breastfeeding is still around in 100 years' time.

So often when we talk about breastfeeding it can activate shame: in those who needed to and chose to bottle feed and in those who chose to breastfeed

Like most public conversations, the terrain gets binary — we somehow manage to pit bottle against breast in news pages and radio segments.

For mums though, the terrain is a lot more complex, more coloured. There are a lot of things to consider — many factors that contribute to how best to rear their child.

Read MoreEverything new mums need to know about returning to work while breastfeeding

In private confessionals between mums it goes a bit like this: "Well done for getting so far, I tried, it was so sore, I had to switch to bottle at two weeks", or "I feel so ashamed every time someone asks me if I'm 'still' feeding" or "Tell me bottle feeding is easier? Does yours sleep better? Mine is on me 24/7 I want to pack it in".

Between mothers, whose choices are different, there's nothing but solidarity, but outside there seems to be some tinges of shame.

"It’s not just an individual thing, breastfeeding," said Sabina Higgins in Áras an Uachtaráin on Thursday, "it’s national, international and global".

Ireland has among the lowest rates of breastfeeding in Europe, and in the world. From Unicef to the World Health Organisation (WHO), scientific researchers who study the benefit of human milk try to work out why

We hear all the statistics.

In Ireland, about 60% of new mums initiate breastfeeding in hospital, within 72 hours of discharge that's gone down to around 42%. And by six months, 6% of Irish mothers are breastfeeding — that's in contrast to the WHO recommendation of breastfeeding exclusively to the half-year mark.

It is what it is, but when you see the stats in other countries, you can see why it's a point of real interest for researchers.

Globally, 41% of infants under six months of age are exclusively breastfed, found the WHO in 2019. And 70% of women continue to breastfeed their infant for at least one year.

But this National Breastfeeding Week, the HSE is reporting a 5% increase in the number of babies breastfed at the first Public Health Nurse visit between 2019 and 2021, bringing the overall figure to 59%.

It could be Covid, or it could be support.

Either way it all comes back to support, not pressure.

So often when you hear those low Irish rates, that only 6% are nursing at six months compared to the 41% globally, you could feel the pressure to breastfeed. You could read the statistics or hear the radio conversations during weeks like this and think it's on you, and inadvertently feel that the pressure is on to breastfeed.

But the pressure is on policy makers, departments of finance to give departments of health funding to recruit and train lactation consultants, and to inform nurses, GPs, obstetricians and everyone in between about breastfeeding.

The pressure needs to be placed on governments to fund real-life, in-the-community supports that assist women who choose to breastfeed

It's about setting up the surrounding environment for success, so that those who choose to nurse get the best shot, and those who choose not to, do so from a place of empowered agency.

Absolutely no one is intending to pressurise new mums into breastfeeding, but it's often how some feel. And when they try and it doesn't run in any way smoothly, unhelpful feelings get internalised at an already tender time.

On the other hand, for those who breastfed and they now have an avid feeder on their hands at age 2, they can often feel external pressure or judgement.

After a while, you start to realise that breastfeeding rates have little to do with mothers, and a lot to do with the priorities of governments and the allocation of their funding and the culture, and its beliefs, that surround all parents.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

It's hard to imagine a world, 100 hundred years from now, where the nursing function of every woman's breast has disappeared, as an American paediatrician once proclaimed.

People thrive in support, not one-off or one-woman injections of, but continuity of and wrap-around support. And in the absence of such support, where whatever goal hasn't been established, a person can conclude "it's me".

But in the case of breastfeeding, it's really a matter of "it's not you, it's them".

Women who feel they "failed at" breastfeeding need to be supported out of not internalising unearned shame, and those who do breastfeed need to not be shamed for doing so.

"Our matriarchs are the keepers of our flame,” says spoken word artist Emmet Kirwan in his new theatre show Accents. If we are to protect breastfeeding, and support those who want to try, it's about being pro-parent and pro-child first and foremost.

Read MoreWorking Life: I love to see confidence grow in breastfeeding mums 

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