OLD Meg was her name. A reliable old girl, doing her thing for longer than I’d been alive. Loud, methodical, and unsettling – much like the ward sister who set her on me. Meg, an industrial-grade piston-driven breast pump, had become a familiar yet unwelcome in presence in my room. Though she was infinitely preferable to the multiple strangers who’d been manhandling my boobs and my newborns over the previous days.

Silver, whirring, sucking and pumping with unrelenting gusto, it seemed more suited to bovine extraction than human. Yet here it was, attached to me. A human woman, who by all accounts, was born to do the very thing I couldn’t: breastfeed.

My body, seemingly in a state of denial, had refused to make enough milk. It seemed that the onslaught of early labour, an emergency caesarean and tiny, early twins had inspired a sort of biological “hell no!” response. It was thanks to this mammary non-compliance, that our faithful mechanical friend had been wheeled in to do the simple task my embarrassment of a body just couldn’t manage.

I remember sitting there, dazed, topless, and unable to walk, completely failing to compute my surroundings. I’d tried feeding my babies, and failed, and they didn’t have the energy to fulfil their end of the bargain. Meg was our last chance at nursing before giving up. I remember thinking how unnatural it all seemed, and feeling like an absolute failure as a mother for finding this all so staggeringly hard.

This experience is not universal, but neither is it an outlier. Breastfeeding, at times, is a mammoth undertaking. Talk to any new mother and if she’s willing to share, you’ll hear stories of cracked nipples, sleepy babies, faltering supplies, mastitis and more. Like the crappiest scratch card in the world, most mums have a good chance of having at least one at some point in their lactation career. Breastfeeding is a huge undertaking, and one that often doesn’t go as nature intended.

Nursing a child is a special, admirable thing, but it’s not a panacea. Mothers know this, and it’s why so many took umbrage with Jamie Oliver’s recent “breastfeeding is easy” spiel.

Breastfeeding is not easy. If it was, we’d all be doing it, all the time, and there’d be no need for any intervention.

And even if we did need an intervention, Jamie Oliver is the last person I’d want to be leading the cavalry of strident mansplainers, barrelling into a civil war mums have been caught in for years.

There’s a lot I like about JO, though. He taught me how to cook at 17, when I realised I needed more than 7p noodles and Quorn chicken to see the end of my first year of uni. His puppy-like exuberance took cooking – the mystical territory of bona fide adults – and turned it into something a clueless teenager (i.e me) could do. He somehow made it safe and easy. He has that quality about him.

This is his formula. Take a thing, make it less scary, and get over-excited about it. You only have to look at how he’s successfully applied it to numerous, successful public health campaigns.

And it works brilliantly for all things food. But I’m not sure it transposes to the world of women’s health.

With his wife Jules expecting a fifth little Oliver, it’s little surprise that he’s thinking about mothers. He’s had a good idea, and he wants to share it. Unfortunately, he’s put two and two together and gotten “potatoes” – he’s so far off the mark every mother in Britain has collectively face-palmed.

By so casually wandering into this subject he has touched a nerve. One that runs through the deepest, darkest parenting anxieties that every new mother experiences.

Of course, breast is best. This is not news. But those who don’t breastfeed don’t just do it because they don’t know that. They don’t breastfeed for so many more reasons.

In a matrilineal utopia where everyone wanders around with perfect hair, in soft linens with a baby hanging off each nipple, it makes perfect sense. But we don’t live in a Caravaggio painting or a Timotei advert. This is real life. And real life is often far more complicated than choosing to do something because it’s good for you.

There’s a huge confluence of factors contributing to the breastfeeding issue. Personal, social, religious, health, resource, finance, work, family, time, illness, and many more to boot. If only the answer to getting more babies on the breast was as simple as telling mums how good it is for them both.

In the mid-noughties, I was a moderator on a popular birth forum. I learned a lot about parenthood, and a lot about the mental shift that takes place when becoming a mother. It provided the training wheels that were vital in giving me both the confidence and moral support I needed entering into motherhood – but I also learned about tribalism. Breastfeeding was so often the epicentre of that social accounting.

Nursing is the standard we hold other mothers against. Parenthood, but particularly motherhood, is riddled with judgement. We’re all far less virtuous than we’d care to admit, and we’re all guilty of seeing a mother do something, and instantly turning our noses up. We forget that parenting isn’t about a societal thing. It’s as personal as it gets. It’s about making countless choices, and doing the best by your children with the resources you have.

Sometimes, that means breastfeeding isn’t realistic, or even a possible option. Sometimes it means plans go completely out of the window.

When we hold women to this standard, it makes the sense of failure doubly hard to swallow when we can’t breastfeed, or choose not to and are harangued for it. Breastfeeding has become something taken from mothers, and argued about in public, with little consideration for the anguish that mudslinging can cause. That’s precisely why Mr Oliver needs to wheesht. For now.

We need good ideas, and we do need orators and champions, but right now there is a lot more work to do. This isn’t a marketing campaign. Breastfeeding is about bodies and lives. For now we need to let the women lead. They have so much to say that needs to be heard. And no offence Mr O, but you’ve got a pretty loud voice. Until you’re sure of what you’re saying, you need to be careful you’re not drowning out others.

So, thank you, Jamie Oliver. Thank you for your interest, and your pep-talk, but we’ve got this for now. We don’t need a TV-friendly, Let’s Milk Britain campaign and supporting cookbook. Your ideas are virtuous, but your approach needs a rethink.

What’s going to help mothers is supporting them in their choices, being a good ally, and knowing when to keep schtum. Yes, breast is best, but it isn’t always the right choice. Instead of finger-pointing, give mums permission to believe in their decisions, whatever path they take.

Breastfeeding is undoubtedly a good thing – but we shouldn’t crowd out choice.

Statistics, encouragement and pamphlets only address as small part of the issue. They can’t make milk where there is none. They can’t make a child feed if it won’t. They can’t make breastfeeding fit your life if everything else says otherwise.

In future, if you join a debate, do it with a duty of care.