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

I could breastfeed but followed Drs advice not to since I was on antidepressants. For me it was a hassle to sterilise bottles etc and I would have loved to breastfeed but it wasn't in my baby's best interest.
Maybe 97% are able to breastfeed- that doesn't mean 97% should breastfeed. I think any reason not to is valid. If you don't want to breastfeed then don't. A baby needs food, care and love - however he gets it isn't important.

Oh and caesarean rates are also related to hospitals wanting babies to be born during working hours. Again, not the woman's body that has changed, just that obstetricians don't want to be up at night when the human body is more likely to give birth.

(Though there is some slight evidence that the numbers of babies born with big heads, and surviving, has increased since CS began to be commonplace. I'm not sure if it's a good thing that more babies are surviving or a bad thing that those babies are passing on their genes for outsized heads. TBH I'm not sure how reliable that study really was either - I can't remember where I came across it.)

Apart from "having babies too late" I can't see how any of the above is anything more than speculation.

I knew a number of women who were unable to have children back when articifial contraception was still a massive taboo in the society I grew up in (a nationalist part of NI - even years later when I myself went for contraception to the local health clinic I was quizzed about how long I'd been going out with this boy: I was 20 years old FFS!)

There have always been infertile and low-fertility couples: if the latter marry at 19 or 20 and never use contraception, they're far more likely to have a baby over the years than the same couple only beginning to try at 35+. But the couple's fertility is the same.

There's no evidence that I'm aware of that suggests that actual capacity for fertility is falling, as opposed to effective fertility, which is more life-style dependent.

I’d like to say in my experience, or maybe I am lucky in my area, the support now is brilliant, much better than this at least. With both of my babies there was always 2 breastfeeding specialists around on the postnatal ward, I got so so much support from them which was amazing! The midwife who did my day 2 visit was so knowledgable and able to support, feeding team came out as well for extra help and were always on call to come again if needed & the family hub’s here run multiple breastfeeding support sessions each week.

I was born in 1967 and my mum used to say similar about her experience as a new mum in hospital. She said the nursing staff ‘didn’t know what to do with [her]’ and were very impatient and tutted because she insisted on breastfeeding. She was the only woman in the ward who didn’t choose to formula feed.

It’s interesting what you say about the dining room situation. When I was in hospital after giving birth to my eldest in 2008 (I was 41!), I had my meals brought to me BECAUSE I was breastfeeding, so I didn’t have to go to the canteen at all. How times can change. The numbers hadn’t changed much though as there was only me and one other woman breastfeeding in our ward of about ten women. Also, there was only one midwife who seemed to know anything about establishing breastfeeding, but she was an absolute star and put up with me constantly torturing her for help😅

I breastfed my first for three weeks , I stopped for a number of reasons. Uncomfortable feeding in front of others, worried she wasn’t getting enough, lack of knowledge around what breastfeeding should look like and no support/ role models.

my second I did 3 months but ultimately felt similar.
Also with first two i return to work after 4 months and pumping equipment wasnt where it is now.

With my third I did a lot of reading as I really wanted to be successful, I also got a medela pump after much research. I attended breast feeding support classes and did 16 months.

If there's one thing we absolutely do not do now it's mind our own business about what other women do with their breasts.

Environmental impact is another be careful what you wish for point. Because even if we had really good data on the impact, pushing the issue when it comes to something only women can do is bad for us as a cohort. Men have higher carbon footprints on average than women anyway, so it's inequitable for greater expectations to fall on us.

It also raises the possibility that if we manage to create formula that's definitely more environmentally friendly, women who want to breastfeed might be subjected to pressure to ff for environmental reasons, whilst all the while having lower carbon emissions rates than men. Bugger that.

(This keeps posting before I'm ready- sorry!)

And lastly, breasfeeding is only free if you don't assign any value to the woman's time, labour or the calories and energy needed, assuming you're excluding any pure financial costs. Another bugger that. Our time, labour and energy have value.

It's often better to breastfeed an allergy baby because you can work out triggers before weaning.

To be fair, given your sister had allergy children, maybe the reflux your baby had was a subtle allergy too. This is why support is really important.

I could and did successfully twice.

@EricTheHalfASleeve Their babies either die, are breast fed by another woman or in modern times given formula.

Formula has only existed for 150 years.

What about the other 99,000+ years?

There are historical artefacts of babies bottles in existence- feeding babies animal milk or mixed cereal is not a new phenomenon.

Animal milk and cereals - agricultural products, so about 10,000 years old.

What about the other 90,000 years?

As others have said it’s a stat about ability of the mother to produce milk - it’s
obviously not the full picture, but everyone knows that?

Fwiw despite lots of people on mumsnet talking about their inability to bf, I don’t know a single person in real life who wanted to but couldn’t. My entire NCT group, all the women I met at baby groups, my colleagues, my school friends all bf. The only people I know who didn’t bf were my cousins and my SIL, and that was completely through choice.

I actually couldn’t get support. I had a baby in a private hospital with a lactation consultant on staff. But when I went home there was zero support.

There was so much psychological pressure to breastfeed.

My sister who extended breastfed her children (yes, I wrote that correctly) - one of them had so many viruses and illnesses as a baby and the other had two severe allergies.

Despite this, she was on at me constantly about how it was so much better. My child was very rarely sick and had zero allergies. He was formula fed from birth.

My child seemed to get reflux from breastmilk and his GP declined to provide reflux medication (stating they don’t know the long term effects) and told me to continue to formula feed.

I understand where the GP was coming from. Especially after a common adult reflux medication was withdrawn from sale after studies showed it caused cancer.

I knew my child was getting everything they needed from formula. It was better for them. It was a choice to give formula. I don’t regret it.

I think it's probably a fair statistic. I gave birth in Europe in a country where every woman was supported through at least three days in hospital, with support at every feed (I had a week with twins, with two breastfeeding support people helping them latch on for every single feed during my stay). I then had almost daily health visitor support for a month. This was all included in the health system. It was taken as read that I would succeed in breastfeeding, but not in a judgy way - I think they just know that given the right support, it really is something very achievable for almost all women. I compare that to what I perceive to be the case in the UK (I am British, and have lived in the UK most of my life) and see a lot of judgement alongside very little support. Not succeeding is linked to a failure or lack of effort from the mother. I have little confidence I would have been as successful feeding my twins had I had them in the UK.

There is lots of pressure on new mums and the problem is that although midwives and the NHS promote the breast is best message, they cannot back it up. Breastmilk is absolutely the best thing for your baby. There is no argument in that.

As the GP said, the issues with breastfeeding are generally not in the first 24 to 48. So it doesn't matter how well trained your hospital midwives are, by the time many mums start hitting issues, they are at home. So what options are there for support? NCT, La Leche, ABM. All volunteers. Peer supporters, again volunteers. Health visitors who may or may not know about breastfeeding, it's pure luck of the draw. Mums are surrounded by people who don't know about breastfeeding and don't understand about breastfeeding. Totally agree that seeing a baby being breastfed is unusual - I fed all three of mine but the oldest won't remember me feeding the youngest. Women are told that breastfeeding is disgusting and breasts are sexual objects. And yes, the obsession with knowing how much milk your baby is getting, and all those "sleep experts" whose idea of getting them into a routine is feeding to a schedule. So many factors conspiring against mothers.

And one of the biggest scandals is that human milk banks, which collect milk from donors, pasteurise it and use it to feed the most tiny and most vulnerable babies in NICU are not run by the NHS but by a charity. And again, whether your extremely prem baby gets human milk or less than ideal formula for their underdeveloped gut is a postcode lottery.

Minding our own business is why we are where we are now.

Formula feeding is hideously expensive. I spent something like £50 a month on formula. It’s not as good as breast milk, which is free. And breastfeeding reduces the chance of some cancers in women. Not to mention the environmental impact.

I was formula fed in the 50s. National dried milk that you bought at your local health centre. Must have been widely used as the tins were everywhere particularly primary schools where they contained pencils, crayons, plastercine, word cards etc

Vaccine uptake is relevant because illnesses are contagious, and smoking is relevant because it usually has negative health impacts on other people not just the smoker.

But I'm not sure this is the road you want to go down. Otherwise it becomes the business of wider society that so many more breastfed neonates are readmitted for feeding difficulties, or everyone gets to wade in on whether we should be funding breastfeeding support when formula is an alternative and we could be spending the money on other things that would have wider application instead. I don't much fancy either of those eventualities. The least worst option is everyone minding their own business about what other women do or don't do with their breasts.

Errr they really couldn’t. When your baby is getting dehydrated and losing too much weight or maternal mental health is plummeting or you’re in agony and it’s clear you can’t- you can’t!!!

It is a fact that women give up feeding because it’s uncomfortable. Three of my friends gave up; two because their nipples we’re sore- to me they weren’t getting the baby latched in well enough but they didn’t want help and were happy to use that as a reason, the third because they didn’t like the feeling - that prickly sensation. I breastfed each for a year. I regarded discomfort as part of the package. So yes 97% probably could breastfeed.

Yes, breastfeeding is a very specific physical and sensory experience.

I suppose is the same way childhood obesity and vaccine uptake is our business. What individuals do is not our business, but mass societal decisions which had wide ranging health impacts are (eg smoking)

I had my first in the 70s and yes I was in for seven days. The sister was very anti breastfeeding. I was in a small minority of women trying to establish breastfeeding. We were punished by not being allowed to go to the dining room until she was satisfied baby had had enough milk. So on more than one occasion there was basically no food left for me. The other two women succumbed and started giving formula. I was a bolshy teenager and did not give in. My lovely GP and district midwife gave me lots of support and I fed all four of mine for a total of nearly five years.

I breastfed mine. I’m unsure how that should be a consideration to other women? It is simply none of my business.

Plus there may well be a correlation (rather than a cause) between formula and autism because autism is hereditary and god knows parenting a newborn is a sensory overwhelming experience for most people let alone neurodiverse ones and formula feeding maybe one way of lowering that sensory noise.

Your experience doesn’t speak for all. The many, many voices saying the opposite dispels your theory.