To think that "97% of women can breastfeed" is a load of crap

The local bf-ing support is brilliant where I live. I know that’s not everyone’s experience so I am really grateful.

I fully support those who want to try for a natural birth. But I’m also very lucky to have had 2 water births (1 at home). I have friends who were not as lucky with their vaginal briths, some with long term consequences.

I don’t think there’s an easy answer, and you can’t guarantee the women you’re denying a c-section won’t have a 4th degree tear/prolapse, which you could argue is worse than a c-section!

There are some women who just don't want to breastfeed. It doesn't matter what their reasons are for not wanting to do it, their views about what they do or don't do with their own bodies should be respected.

I actually felt more pressure to formula feed. I was the only one on my ward breastfeeding and most friends formula fed. I never had any explicit encouragement to breastfeed, from anyone. I had to wait hours in hospital for someone to help with latching, during which time my baby was the only one crying. Midwives are not great at assessing latch or tongue tie, both of which have significant implications for breastfeeding. Or that was my experience anyway.

The rate would be almost 0 in the 90s because weaning age was 4 months, and my mum considered me ready at 3 months as I was a big baby (I was breastfed other than this)

Mmm, and I wouldn't be surprised if our prehistoric foremothers also had 1% ebf rates at 6 months using those criteria. Even just babies nicking, being administered sneakily by a sibling or whining their way into being given early solids probably happened back then too!

Also agree with this - 1 top up, at any time, means you do not fall in this 1%.

This is why I’ve never really believed the 1% statistic - out of our antenatal group of 8, 5 were still breastfeeding by 6 months. Either we were an incredible statistic anomaly (don’t believe this - average area, average age mums), or the stats are recorded v badly

The other thing is that the statistics are really misleading!

When you hear of only 1% percent of babies ebf for the first 6 months, it sounds incredibly low. But then you see the stats of any breastfeeding at 6m is 34%, and honestly that's going to be a more reliable figure!

If you've given a single top up with a newborn, even on medical advice, then you're not in the 1%.

You've introduced the occasional bottle of bedtime, you're not in the 1%.

If you had to leave baby because of something unexpected, someone taken ill, being stuck in traffic without baby, and formula is given, you're not in the 1%.

If due to low supply, you mix fed, even if only briefly, you're not in the 1%.

If you started weaning early, either because you're choosing to (many do because it can reduce the risk of allergies, and 4-6 months is common in many countries), or because you were told to by a doctor, you're not in the 1%.

If the day before they are 6 months, they grab a breadstick stick off your plate, you're not in the 1%.

I breastfed my second full two and a half years. I'm not in the 1%. Most of my friends breastfeed for 1-3 years. Only one is in that 1%.

We make it out that it's incredibly rare, it's not. The criteria for assessing it is brutally inflexible. A baby's intake could be 99.99% breast milk, but it wouldn't make it into that 1%. So it gives misleading impression which discourages women.

The c section rise is a problem because on one hand the rates are staggering, on the other any push no matter how slight for ‘natural birth’ seems to result in horror stories about passed away babies and damaged mothers.

I liked breastfeeding and found it easy and not painful. Breast fed both DC til toddlerhood.

Given that other northern European countries have 90%+ breastfeeding rates, I can see that 97% might be a realistic to aspirational rate purely based on physical capacity. I think unless there is some specific genetic quirk that means British women are less capable of BF naturally, the reason for low take ups are socio-economic, cultural (the monolithic view of tits as sexual) and the dreadful quality of NHS antenatal and postnatal provision (the latter probably being the biggest factor.)

I always took these statistics to mean that sadly there is so little support for the 97% that physically COULD breastfeed that the ACTUAL UK rates for breastfeeding are so shockingly low.

https://www.ivi.uk/blog/rise-infertility-rates-uk/

I think I it’s about women who biologically can breastfeed.

I could have biologically breastfed, however, I take medication that makes my milk toxic for baby so I don’t.

i also do believe that with the right support most women can birth vaginally, but also fully understand that we need medical intervention for the women and babies who would have died in the past.

I think most women can. And most people are not disabled. There isn’t enough knowledge and support to enable them, especially if coming from an anti bread feeding culture.

Realistically we could lower c-section rates - not all emergency sections are true life and death emergencies, more that continuing down the vaginal birth path is riskier than a society we are willing to accept. That's a good thing. If we did half the number of emergency sections, some babies would be born fine, but many more would die or have lifelong consequences. For the mums, many would be fine, some would die, and the amount of life-changing birth injuries would increase.

Similar for breastfeeding. If formula and wet nursing were not options, a much higher proportion of mums would manage to breastfeed, but of those who struggle, some babies would die, handsome would survive but very much not thrive, be weaker, and more likely to succumb from illness and infections. Some would survive but malnutrition from birth would have long-term consequences.

So it's good that we don't have to give birth vaginally and breastfeed at all cost.

For what it's worth I had c-sections because I didn't want to risk vaginal injury and am delighted with my choices.

I chose to bottle feed my first and ended up breastfeeding my second. I didn't find breastfeeding hard, I just didn't want to do it with my first. Interestingly I have a lot of conversations with mums that had started and then stopped breastfeeding, that they didn't particularly want to do it, felt pressurised by the NHS, and quickly move to formula using lack of support as an excuse!

And that makes sense to me, because there's only so much that support can do with breastfeeding. No amount of support can that you sleep when you have a cluster feeding baby. No amount of support can let you properly heal from birth where you have a cluster feeling baby. Yes they can help with latches and holds, and bit of cheerleading, but not much practical support is going to make getting up 10 times a night any less difficult. So I think a lot of women mean it's very difficult/I was too tired/I wanted to share feeding, but say it's lack of support.

As a 1970s mum almost all the pressure was to not breast feed.

My grandma had babies in the 50s and had her breasts bound to dry her milk up because breastfeeding was seen as something inconvenient that poor women did. Bottles were better, because you could monitor it apparently.

I also had my first in 2008 and I was lucky in that I didn't have any problems with feeding. But I spent a lot of time on the MN BF boards and a common experience at the time was to have a midwife firmly grasp the back of the baby's head with one hand, your boob with the other, and push the two together, and that was their attempt to help with breastfeeding. Often with no warning!! I found this awful and still do. I hope it is no longer happening.

As an 18 year-old mum I got lots of free advice/criticism. A kind and wise midwife told me a mother's place was in the wrong and not to worry about it

There are probably more people who can't (percentage-wise, I mean) these days, because many of these people might have died because modern medical care wasn't available, and some mums will have had surgeries which leave them unable to breastfeed, which again couldn't have happened in the past.
But one of the biggest differences is this is probably the first time period people seem to use the term "fed is best" (maybe as I wasn't a mum in the noughties, I just didn't notice??) -some older mums I know said there used to be a lot of pressure to breastfeed.

Made me smile. I have always thought my being able to breastfeed was linked to thinking sterilising bottles mixing formula (it was more fiddly in the 70s) was too much hassle not to mention the ease of feeding baby in the night . Basically did I manage it based on my idleness gene

Around the world I think this is probably right. In western society probably not.

Yep some of us just choose not to breastfeed and that’s ok. In this day and age we shouldn’t have to justify ourselves or be made to feel guilty. It’s yet another thing that women are made to feel shit about along with working, not working, ageing, being overweight…the list is endless.

Didn’t breastfeed either of my children. No regrets. They’ve grown up with no detrimental effects from having been formula fed.
It is an incredibly tiny footnote in a person’s long life.

I haven't seen the data for that statistic, and it's quite possible that the data sample was skewed.

However, I agree with others that as mammals, if the number of women couldn't physically feed their children within a culture where it was the norm and supported well wasn't the vast majority, we'd be dead. Maybe not 97% high, a lot things in the human body can go wrong, and it may be that things in lifestyles we've changed to over the years has had an impact, but it's still most of us. A lot of the issues are cultural bias around breastfeeding, breasts, and mothers.

Also, I think you mean mothers with certain disabilities and conditions, not all of us, babies with certain disabilities and medical conditions that impact their feeding. As others said, being disabled doesn't automatically mean someone can't breastfeed. We just get a different flavour of shite for trying.

Part of the reason I got so much shite with my kids, particularly my older two, was because I was a young disabled mother. I spent my entire first pregnancy having anytime I dared mentioned intending to breastfeed being told that I probably couldn't. Midwives challenged it, telling me 'you know you don't have to try that', being told how I was the only one on the ward doing it, I wasn't allowed to leave hospital without my son having his sugars tested because it was presumed that I couldn't possible be feeding him well enough as I am. One midwife got social services involved about it, telling me they wanted to talk to me about it (social services thankfully knew it was all BS and went to handle that themselves, I never saw that midwife again). This was all at a hospital that supposedly was meant to be promoting breastfeeding - but it certainly didn't with me.

I got over that hurdle, I then got the remarks about how it's disgusting, how it makes others uncomfortable, how there is nothing wrong with a bottle. After about 3 months or so, I started to get the remarks about how it must be a sexual thing for me.

Mothers get shit on regardless of what we do. The idea that the pressure is all one way or the other is just not true - most of us just see the pressure that we've been under far more clearly.

And that's extremely short-sighted, because there's credible evidence that formula causes autism.

I've at least three autistic kids who were all breastfed for at least 18 months, never had formula (fourth is still on the waiting list for assessment).

There may be as others said some difficulties both autistic mothers and children face in breastfeeding - I know I would get very touched out to the point my skin felt like it was burning from too much touch. I had one child as a baby who wanted space/not to be touched while sleeping from 4 or so months old and so would push away when done with feeding when tired, which did cause some issues trying to ensure she fed well enough (even as a teenager, she's still the type to eat just enough not to be hungry and forget at times that she needs to eat).

Even if you take the public health aspect out, it's still an important discussion because of the very point that women should have choice. It needs to be informed choice though and if misinformation is not challenged it can't be. I don't really care how other women feed their babies, but I do care if they then go on to say and do things that influence others to make decisions that are not evidence based. Or not even that - people are entitled to ignore information if they want, it's a free country, but they do, in my opinion, have a right to receive up to date, evidence based information. It bothers me if people think they are making decisions based on facts but they have in fact been misled, often by anecdote.
I think a lot of people underestimate how much misinformation there is out there. There is plenty on this thread alone. And the quality of professional advice varies hugely. I had my DD in an area with fairly high breastfeeding rates and I got pretty good support in hospital, even in the 90s. She has just had her first baby in a part of the country with one of the lowest bf rates and I have been appalled by the attitudes and knowledge level of most of the HCPs she has had dealings with both in the hospital and the community. She's exclusively breastfeeding at 4 months in spite of rather than because of the professionals.
It is a really shitty thing to do to tell women that they are bad mothers if they didn't breastfeed, stupid if they misunderstood something or whatever, but surely we should be able to say "sorry, that's not actually true" or " sounds like you were misled by your MW" when people are stating things that just aren't supported by facts?

Anecdotally I think I didn't produce milk. I breastfed for about a week, pumped every night and after 7 days even the pump couldn't get a single drop. It just completely stopped, couldn't be explained. My mam couldn't breastfeed me or my sister and her Mam couldn't breastfeed her so I imagine genetics come in to it a bit too.

I don't really care what others think about it, I know what I experienced.