Breastfeeding and MN. Why so different to IRL?

Support available in local area especially if there are problems makes a massive difference.

If I'd had less experience community MW - would have stopped bf pfb in early weeks - and if not access to bf support services possibly in first few months. I could access help so made it to 12 months.

New areas DS - vey much on my own with just on-line help - if I hadn't already bf - if there were protection supposedly with bf for things in my family they could have inherited - if DH and I were well educated with associated confidence if I wasn't so stubborn - I'd have stopped.

As it was I had HV, GP - pharmacists all making out I was odd or difficult for bf past early weeks. Toddler groups - where I was new I had a mother complain I was bf - other groups I was highly praised when frankly I'd have preferred not to garner attention.

All of that with only DH support it was a lot of pressure to put on myself looking back at frankly an already stressful time- 2 house moves in first 8 month post birth.

Third baby - only one took to bf no issues. Plus family by then had given up trying to influence me.

Incidentally I have breastfed all of my babies to 9 months, 16 months and now still going with no. 3 at 9 months

Really that's actually very interesting i wonder why.

It'll be this. MN skews heavily to a higher educated demographic.

Only one NCT person was still going after 6 months, most lasted about 6 weeks or less. The one still going after 6 months did it until about age 3

Yes, I'd like to know the difference between expressed bottle feeding and exclusive breast feeding.

I was lucky enough to get my son to take an expressed bottle, but all he had was breast milk and Calpol til six months.

I would think that medicine made a bigger difference than breast milk coming from a bottle tbh, and I doubt there's many babies that don't have Calpol in the first six months.

There are loads of posts on here about formula, perfect prep machines, how do you sterilise on holiday etc. so I don’t know how you’ve come to the conclusion that 99.99% on MN-ers breastfeed. But you’re probably not wrong that there are more BF posts and I imagine that it’s because you’re less likely to post about feeding if you’re formula feeding because the instructions are there on box, anyone can give baby a bottle. Whereas breastfeeding can be trickier, especially early on when establishing supply so maybe more reason to seek advice and it’s a simple fact that it does require planning to have substantial break from the baby. With the wedding thread example, if the OP was going to formula feed she probably wouldn’t need to post for advice as her mum could babysit and job done. Also, MN isn’t exactly representative of the whole population. See also all the posts about private schools but in reality only something like 6% of kids are privately educated! Breastfeeding rates rise with maternal income and education. And the stats are highly flawed because if baby has one feed of formula in the NICU that then won’t count as EBF even if you go on to breast feed until they start school!

Well you say that she will ‘apparently’ be EBF’ing an 8 week old. That sounds, to me, like you don’t believe she will be and your whole OP sounds like you don’t think that people do? You then say that you BF’d for 12 weeks so why are you questioning why others speak about how they also BF’d? Just weird.

Sorry quote fail @Gogogo12345

All three of my babies were EBF for six months and then I continued BF alongside weaning. They wouldn't take a bottle and I had to delay my return to work until one of them would take a cup at around 11 months as otherwise he wouldn't take any liquids. I carried on breastfeeding morning and night until they were around 12 months (youngest was around 14 months). And I had to miss a child free wedding with one of them because of EBF. Does that help?

I agree that the figures are likely out of date. I also think that ‘exclusively breastfed’ is a high bar. I breastfed both my kids beyond age 2 but they were never exclusively breastfed in that when they were under 1 they would have formula when their dad was looking after them (I never liked pumping). So breastfeeding was a massive part of my life for a long time, yet if exclusive breastfeeding is the bar then I am recorded as a non-breastfeeder. It doesn’t capture reality.

Not true - we started weaning at shortly after 6 months as my DH and I both fell ill so we delayed starting weaning by a week. The baby doesn't turn into the proverbial pumpkin if they haven't has solids the minute they turn 6 months . But the 1% figure reflects how rare it is for a baby still to be EBF at the point AND for weaning not to start until 6 months (I have no idea when people typically start weaning compared to the guidance - I expect there is a lot of variation though for individual babies).

And MN individual posters may vary, but it doesn't make a difference to this collective bias towards the middle class.

I'm still BF at 15m. School friends BF til 18m. Bump and Baby friends all BF up to about 9m at least, though I'm the last one standing now.

Depends on your social economic bubble/area - higher social economic class more bf in stats I think still.

With pfb I was in BF area - most women bf till at least 5 months till ML was ending - often introducing food around same time- many others did so for over a year introducing solid around 5-6 months as well - didn't have anyone say there went beyond 2 - though if they did they may have learnt to keep quiet about it.

Then I move to an area no-one else BF. Few that did did it for 6 weeks then there was often a growth spurt with lots of additional feeding and HV would then recommend a bottle as baby was hungry and soon baby was fully FF.

When I had issue with BF in second area on-line pretty much was my only option for advice - HV were useless - bf support couldn't access with no childcare for toddler and my entire family FF and were vaguely hostile to BF so where else could I go for advice but somewhere like here?

No the figures aren’t out of date. Bf rates are very low in the uk.

your personal experience of your friendship group does not extrapolate to the whole country.

in reality peer support is essential to the success of breastfeeding. If you know people who bf, if your mum and aunties bf, you have a sense of what’s normal. When everyone you know bottle fed and are saying the baby should only be feeding every 4 hours, should be sleeping through at 6 weeks, that your supply can’t be enough if they aren’t, why don’t you ff so we can all help out, you don’t know how much baby is getting, you might be starving her etc, (my experience) you switch to bottles because you trust and believe them, and are now worried your baby waking for feeds means you don’t have enough milk.

i know women still putting rusk in babies bottles at 6 weeks because their mum said it would help them sleep through. People take advice from those they know.

mumsnet figures will be skewed because posters are using the internet for advice, so are educating themselves on bf- they’re seeking out a bf peer group so they are more likely to successfully bf.

my mum is convinced bf is unhygienic and formula is better because it’s “scientifically designed” to contain everything baby needs. That’s what she was told when she had her children. So I found kellymom, and parenting websites like this and educated myself on bf, and successfully fed mine due to that knowledge. Had I not had those resources I would likely have taken everyone’s advice and bottle fed.

Do you think it is in anyway helpful, on that thread, to say to the Mum to be - well it doesn’t matter you will probably have given up by then?

Mine were both ebf at 8 weeks and, at that age, it does take a lot of time, it isn’t the same as ff and so people are answering to the OP that, should she be breastfeeding - as she plans to do - then this is the reality of it.

The figures (which i think are from the NHS? Ive seen the 1% figure before I think) relate to exclusive BF from the breast. IIRC (happy to be corrected if I'm wrong) there is a different figure for people who have formula top-ups and/or who bottle-feed expressed milk.

So the 1% still EBF at 6 months assumes that there is no bottle feeding yet at all (either formula or expressed) and that weaning has not yet started. My breastfed DC2 would be in that 1% - he is a bottle refuser and we started weaning shortly after he turned 6 months.

No baby is EBF or exclusively formula fed either at 6 months as that's when solids are introduced.

A six month old's main source of nutrition will still be milk, but the E does not apply.

Mumsnet is very unrepresentative of the population as a whole so you're looking at a very skewed sample that gives a misleading picture.

Well if you start a thread about exclusively breastfeeding babies its going to a attract mother ,s that did just that.

Where do you see those statistics? I am seeing very different things when googling.

Anyway - agree that people are more likely to ask a question about something tricky, the subset of population who will find themselves somewhere called 'mumsnet' is self-selecting and the percentage of women breastfeeding varies wildly by area.

Personally I was still feeding by 6 months as was 99% of the mothers in my baby group. I only know a handful of people who were formula feeding at any point and they actually had more anxiety than anyone else due to the ridiculous judgement at baby groups etc.