Val Finigan will always remember Christmas 30 years ago – not least because the memories inspire her every day in her job. She was a new mum to her daughter Laura, in the middle of training to be a nurse, and surviving on £50 a month.

She was also attempting to breastfeed her first baby – and finding it an emotional battle.

“All over Christmas it was awful,” she recalls. “I was sore, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I remember just sitting there crying because I was finding it so hard. But I just had to find my own way through it. I couldn’t afford to spend £5 on a tin of formula.”

Today, as the new consultant midwife for infant feeding working across the whole of the Pennine Acute Trust, she is happy she persevered, since she understands the benefits it provides for baby and mother.

Indeed, in a bid to encourage women and their children to reap these benefits, on November 1, Saint Mary’s maternity ward in Manchester stopped routinely providing formula milk free of charge while they are in hospital, a practice already followed at Bolton, Tameside and Salford hospitals.

But it’s the memories of being left out on a limb which make Val so determined in her work. “I’m passionate about a woman’s right to be supported,” she says. Her new role is a progression from her earlier post as the infant feeding co-ordinator across the four sites of Royal Oldham, Fairfield, North Manchester and Rochdale hospitals.

But the inspiration goes back right to her early days in the NHS – where she started work as a health care assistant 35 years ago, receiving an MBE for her efforts – when she worked the midwife night duty at the Royal Oldham.

“During that time I really got involved in supporting women with their feeding,” she explains. “At that time there wasn’t much knowledge, breastfeeding was a lost art and skill. It was a bottle feeding community.”

After completing training to become a certified lactation consultant, Val took responsibility for implementing practices and procedures at the hospital which eventually led to it receiving Baby Friendly accreditation from the World Health Organisation and Unicef charity in 1999.

The award is the gold standard for recognising maternity hospitals which have implemented steps to support breast feeding and ensure safe bottle feeding. North Manchester received the award six years later, and Fairfield Hospital is currently at stage two of the process.

The University of Salford, where Val holds an honorary research fellowship, is also at stage one – a key milestone in ensuring Baby Friendly practices are embedded in the curriculum of the midwives and health visitors of tomorrow.

Val and her team’s work begins in pregnancy, when they start providing information about feeding, so women can make an informed choice about how they want to move forward. Val insists: “We provide scientific and unbiased information so then they can be the decision maker.”

This includes facts like a bottle-fed baby is five times more likely to suffer a urine infection because formula milk does not contain the same antibodies and anti-infective properties as breast milk. It also informs parents-to-be that bottle fed babies are twice as likely to inherit an allergy like eczema or asthma which is in the family, and tells them there’s a greater risk of obesity, both in childhood and later life.

When presented with such a list – together with the information about a reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancer in women who have breastfed – it’s a no-brainer that most new mums would ideally want to feed their child themselves.

But the hopes and ideals of an expectant mother can soon turn to despair when the reality of being a new mum hits home. And when their world has been turned upside down, and they work to survive on a few hours’ sleep each night, the last thing women need is to be put through a guilt-trip by their harshest critic – themselves.

From the sheer panic of just what on earth am I meant to do here? Through the fears about whether your baby is taking enough milk in, and the often contradictory advice you will pick up from health workers, friends and family, the whole thing can feel like a minefield.

Val admits it’s not easy, but insists this is where she and her team can help. First by providing practical, hands-on support – sitting with women as they are feeding to offer assistance on placement and positioning – and then providing them with indicators of how many nappies a baby should go through in a day to keep track of if they are feeding enough.

She also says all staff now work to a standardised framework which should mean the same messages are being passed on by different members of the trust, and are always at the end of the phone to offer guidance and reassurance, if needed.

But, equally, Val stresses if a woman has made the decision not to breastfeed, she and her colleagues will not judge them and ensure they can move forward happily and safely.

As well as ensuring the water is the right temperature and the bottles sterilised, this can also mean making sure a baby is held close during feeding, with lots of skin contact, which Val says has been found to boost the emotional and social development of the baby.

Research like this is another key area in Val’s new post, which will see her continue to contribute to the University of Salford’s research agenda.

The 52-year-old will contribute to new policies and guidelines and share her findings with local, regional and national conferences on feeding issues, at the same time as presenting local women’s experiences – gained through the clinical role which still forms 50 per cent of her job.

It’s clear that despite the varied role – which also includes leading a group of ‘peer breastfeeding mentors’, and has even seen her produce a book dispelling breastfeeding myths called Saggy Boobs – working practically with women and their babies is still one of the things she loves most.

Val says the key to achieving a balance between offering support and ensuring they don’t put mums under unnecessary pressure is in communication. “It is challenging,” she admits.

“But it comes down to communication skills – proving that you are listening to the woman and acknowledging what they have said, providing them with knowledge and information to make a decision, and then helping them to move forward.

“It’s certainly not about telling them what to do and we’d never want them to feel guilty or pressured. We want them to have a positive experience.”

This is something she steadfastly believes can be achieved – particularly because she had her own happy ending after that awful Christmas all those years ago.

Not only did she come out of the other side feeding Laura, but when son James came along 11 years later she enjoyed a completely different experience.

“It was amazing, because I knew what I was doing,” she says. “Every woman should be empowered with that knowledge.”

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