Back in the boom (shake shake the room), Ardal O’Hanlon quipped the arrival of Eastern European communities meant Irish people could finally use the WXYZ sections of their address books. Too late for the tattered book in my parents’ house. You know the one; every household has one. Ours is usually sandwiched between the latest regional phone directory and an envelope bulging with memorial cards passed on from grieving friends and relatives down the years. That dog-eared antique had barely margins available by the millennium, and now doubles up as a whistle-stop tour of the lives of the off-spring.

It’s no coincidence the only numbers scribbled in the back pages next to a ream of scored-through dodgy addresses (up-and-coming actually *flings nose in air*) include: Western Union, PPS numbers, NI numbers, bank accounts, and the numbers of payphones on many a draughty landing. There’s also the number of the local pizza delivery service. Emergency information, in short.

All of page X and most of Y (why? indeed) are taken up with a string of residential dots that join up to my current cell, while one brother squats all over Z. It’s no coincidence either that the more ..shall we say.. solvent..siblings have barely a page between them. Losers. But enough of this exploitation of any opportunity to project my personal failings on to them.

This week’s form-filling tasks involved listing my previous addresses stretching back over various criminally dodgy hair-dos. The final tally came in at well above twenty. Barring the mothership, I’ve been in the current one the longest. It’s no coincidence I’m…etc. etc.

I couldn’t remember if that flat where the crazy Spaniard cut up my beloved Rocketdogs in an impressive act of revenge was number 27 or 29. There was that street I remember because it sounded like vulva, and I still have occasional flashbacks of my first bedsit in Grosvenor Square. Nasty ones that feature woeful attempts at flirting with the professional cameraman who lived upstairs (“Oh, I like photography, too”), and almost killing my landlady who lived in the basement flat with my amateur DIY skills. Yikes.

Turning the corner into our road last week, I spotted the giveaway signs of another house I lived in three doors down even though I’ve never set foot in it. The living room blind hangs at half-mast as a mark of respect to the new arrival, nodding to day-light to come in but go easy. The blanket-draped handle of the pram the only visible sign of life.

Late at night, the dim glow from the corner of the upstairs window is barely noticeable. In the mornings, I occasionally pass the same midwife who ordered our blind up, our heating down, and straddled me on my own bed with a nipple protector. Glancing in my rear-view I see her pull up at their driveway.

I’ve heard of people returning to their former home-places unannounced because they happened to be in the area and fancied a nose-around. I’ve thought about knocking on the door with the offer of something, but I think we only exchanged hellos once by the milk shelf in the local shop. The thoroughly modern neighbourly relationship that could get you reported for stalking if you smiled.

I wonder what she’s done with the place. Moses basket or crib. Does the double-bill of Frasier herald the transition into normal morning time as she once knew it in between never-ending rounds of toast? If she’s not dressed by noon will she bother her arse getting dressed at all? If she isn’t dressed in another three months, will she make it out the door confidently by six? Who knows what goes on behind closed doors.

This fridge has no pâté. Quick! Call the parenting line!

Still, I’m curious if her best laid plans include trips to the cinema; whether she has friends and family nearby, and if she wishes everyone would just fuck off and come on over, at exactly the same time. Does she attempt a few selfies with the child for her mates overseas that won’t ever be sent but will actually look not so bad in hindsight. Will her hindsight rely on these photographic artefacts to jog her memory of these early days when she became a fugitive from certainty. Is she wishing she could sleep when her baby does or has she quit trying to grab hold of that mythical lifeline, and taking perverse pleasure in pâté and re-runs of One Born Every Minute by mid-afternoon instead. Does she wonder if she took a shit during labour and suspects everyone present protected her from the truth, or does she not…give a shit.

Might she, one day, a few years from now, recognise a half-hanging blind in a nearby house. Will she mentally push the door open and step inside to check what’s on the telly, anxiously note the room temperature reading, take comfort in the disarray, survey the contents of the cupboards, check the fridge door for photos of the baby’s Da at knee-level. Maybe run her eye over the CD collection to see how the child is likely to turn out. Will she scan the walls of the nursery for an infestation of animal stickers that threaten to bring her out in a rash. Will she baulk at the notion of calling it a nursery. Will she open the wardrobe to a dose of pink clothes that risk giving her diabetes unless she closes it again quickly? Will she at last be able to put a name on the feelings she felt back then and shake her head at the ruthless competition that ensued between them. Will she curse her inability to curate that phase from anything other than the splinters from mislaid memories?

And will she wonder if she’s the only eejit that looks up a house she’s never been in, longing to sit in it for just a little while longer.

Torch-bearers for breastfeeding are faced with the delicate act of balancing passion with purpose. Comparatively lower figures of breastfeeding in Ireland and the UK are frequently lamented and chin-stroked over. Likely reasons for these low rates are cited and fitted out with several column inches, more often than not by veterans of the game. And why not? No point drafting in a vegetarian to discuss the merits of a meat based diet.

Even so, I wonder about the quality of the debate on breastfeeding in this country in general. It is currently freighted with a lot of unequivocal assumptions that often transcend both purpose and passion. There is a tendency for the prevailing discussion to be fairly restrictive and pre-occupied with telling us what we already know, with the orthodoxy on the purported benefits going largely unchallenged.

The historical and cultural factors are probably a given at this stage, and we live in a world where women’s access to information (by choice or by thrust upon us) is unprecedented. Irish women aren’t beyond the reach of reason or reality of comparative scenarios elsewhere.

There is the over-arching assumption that if only women had more access to support, exposure to breastfeeding, and a better understanding of the “gift” of breast-milk, the current trends would be reversed. Mention is frequently made of the hangover of religious prudishness and so on. These are all valid concerns, and would undoubtedly lead to a more supportive environment, if eroded.

Few women, if anyone, would disagree with the underlying factors that contribute to historically low rates, but in making the case for the need for better support, and individual resilience, a more rounded and open discussion is required.

If the purpose of engaging in the debate is to facilitate the uptake of breastfeeding, then exposing the deficits in medical and community support, labour management, and calling out hostile societal attitudes is fair game. So too is speaking from an impassioned place of positive experience that too often competes with negativity on the airwaves of anecdotes.

However, openly making a judgement on the ability of women to currently withstand (or not) perceived pressures to give up is not. Nor is chalking low levels up exclusively to a culture of giving up. I’ve no doubt this is the case for some women, but not all, because I personally don’t identify with such a neat argument. Nor is over-stating the harm of formula and the far reaching benefits of breast-milk.

In walking this precarious trapeze, Zoe Williams of The Guardian comes closest to striking the balance for me.

“I could not have loved breastfeeding more if I’d been brainwashed; I experienced it as a kind of hallucinogenic experience. A bit like taking an E.

But I also had the strong suspicion that the claims made for its benefits – the higher IQ, the protection against obesity, the superior bonding, the warding off of disease both now and for ever, both for baby and for mother – were mostly bogus. A lot of the reasoning seemed syllogistic (babies born into low-income families end up fatter; low-income mothers breastfeed less than high-income mothers; therefore breastfeeding prevents obesity) or frankly lame. I knew a lot of mothers who formula fed; they didn’t seem to love their babies less. When I wrote a book about pregnancy, I included some of this lameness, while underlining the fact that, speaking for myself, I didn’t care whether or not the health benefits were real, I’d do it again even if it made the baby’s IQ go down.”

A year later, Williams attended a conference on infant feeding, which included a presentation from American academic, Joan B Wolf, who conducted a rigorous, close-range examination of the science behind pro-breastfeeding advice. She concluded the case for breast milk is hyperbolic. For more on this and other challenges of measuring benefits, and the questioning of current medical and scientific orthodoxy, see here.

We also live in a world where women are contending with busy lives and self-preservation comes in many guises. I know many women equipped with all the necessary knowledge who chose not to breastfeed, or gave up, for reasons concerned with vanity, convenience, mental health and so on. Each as legitimate as the other. We can assume that many women do not continue with breastfeeding due to frustration, lack of support etc., but I suspect that is not the full picture and until such time as the issue is unpicked more thoroughly, and credibly, the current cul-de-sac of chat will leave the majority (I jest) of us a little unsatisfied.

A rigorous discussion on attitudes and perceptions to breast-feeding in Ireland should address issues concerning entitlement, biases inherent within the health system and corresponding intimidation, the perception of breastfeeding as being a predominantly middle-class activity (having at one time in Ireland been associated with poverty), lack of support, affordability of resources, and the right to private choice versus the pressure from public health policy. Women need ownership of the discussion as much at the activity, but large swathes of them are missing. Advocates can’t presume to speak on their behalf, so an in-depth study in Ireland would be useful. And timely.

As Williams states: “In order for breastfeeding to have the no-alternative, liquid-gold status it enjoys in public health, its benefits would have to be so much more pronounced and demonstrable that you wouldn’t even need to demonstrate them. Furthermore, breastfeeding activists (or lactivists) shouldn’t have to borrow risk factors from the developing world to make mothers in Eastleigh feel breast milk is the only safe foodstuff for their children. …And maybe, for the public health effect the establishment is after, the inflexible approach is the right one, since it definitely keeps mothers plugging away.”

Meanwhile, all sorts of reasons will continue to be authoritatively cited including prudishness, vanity, and other cultural barriers. Non-breastfeeding women will continue to be excluded from the wider debate.

A few other unhelpful narratives not often highlighted: women giving expression to the awkwardness they feel about their bodies and its functions is just that, not a judgement of the successful and uninhibited breastfeeding habits of others. If there is a sincere desire to support women to overcome barriers to breastfeeding then ridiculing them with a basic biology lesson will probably only serve to undermine that objective. If they have an idea how they got pregnant, it’s likely they will have some understanding of the biological function of breasts. They’re not stupid. Support begins with hearing and understanding fears, not minimising them, or the challenges concerning the reconciliation of primal functions and sexuality, or modesty. Simplifying this with statements of the obvious has done little but patronise the very women requiring support.