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

This is what I don’t get. Why do we as a species find it so hard to feed our young compared with other mammals? It doesn’t make sense at all. If only 50% of women could breastfeed to 6 months, then by far the biggest source of infant deaths in the past would be starvation, but it wasn’t.

97% may have the equipment but it absolutely doesn’t mean they can- babies, circumstances, health and many other factors impact that.

Those could have been for babies whose mothers had died though. It's not actually evidence that women who lived were unable/unwilling to breastfeed.

Prehistoric baby bottles with traces of animal fats inside:

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/september/prehistoric-baby-bottles.html

I expect most women who have had children can then produce breast milk so 97% sounds about right. Wanting to or doing it is a different thing. I didn’t breastfeed as I didn’t want to

Not 33% though. The risk doesn't multiply - it's highest for the first child because that's the unknown test of the mother's capacity to give birth. After that the next four or five at least are generally pretty safe (with exceptions). Then you get age starting to have an effect.

(My evidence for that is that when I was growing up in Northern Ireland, large families were still the norm, and the rule at our local NHS hospital was that the first baby had to be born in hospital, then the next could be a home birth - or in the separate midwife-run unit which was opened in the mid 70s - and then for 6th and subsequent babies they wanted the mother back in hospital, just in case. Even that was out of an excess of caution - just in case.)

97% of women can. That’s the point

Yanbu. Everyone has their own abilities and not every woman can bf easily enough to make a baby thrive. BF is not the panacea it's made out to be. Luckily for the developed parts of the world we do have safe water and formula to ensure a baby is fed.

I had masses of milk, was pumping and storing from day three and DC never even lost weight in those early days. I was probably first in the queue when milk producing ability was handed out.

A huge number of babies died. A woman living in a poor part of Africa today has a 1 in 8 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth over her lifetime. Women dying shortly after giving birth has been incredibly common for all of human history. Their babies either die, are breast fed by another woman or in modern times given formula. There are historical artefacts of babies bottles in existence- feeding babies animal milk or mixed cereal is not a new phenomenon.

Agree. Cluster feeding is either SO misunderstood, or women are using it as a reason to escape.

This is true, and there have been, and continue to be, a lot of very unethical practices by formula companies in the pusuit of profit. That needs to be addressed.
However, there is a need for an alternative to breastfeeding. There always has been and there always will be. For all kinds of reasons, both social and medical there never has been and never will be a time when all babies can be fully fed breastmilk by their own mothers. If you look at the history of infant feeding there have always been alternatives, be that other women's milk, other animals' milk or home made alternatives like pap. It's testament to the resilience of humans that any babies survived some of these things, though of course many died. (Google "murder bottles" from the 19th century.) Even when I was a baby in the 1960s the "national dried milk" I was fed was basically dried cows' milk powder with a few vitamins added. Modern formula is not anything like the copy of breastmilk that the manufacturers would like us to believe it is, but, for most babies it is an adequate substitute and it's definitely better than what we had in the past.
We need to remember that left entirely to Mother Nature a lot of babies and mothers who thrive today would die, never be born or even conceived. The past was not some kind of bucolic idyll where happy, rosy faced mothers all breastfed their bouncing babies. And ask any farmer about their animals - there are always a percentage of lambs, calves etc that need to be hand rearered. In the wild, animal babies who aren't fed just die. Lactation is not infalliable in any species.
The problem that we have here is that formula feeding has become the norm rather than the alternative, and yes, that absolutely needs to be challenged, as do unethical business practices. But if formula disappeared overnight it would just create new problems - or rather old problems. Women wouldn't all start magically breastfeeding, they'd return to using less suitable alternatives and babies would suffer. I'm all for beter control, but it is undeniable that formula has its place.

1.2 x 10 does not equate to anywhere near 33% love….

I had friends that quit because they said ‘they weren’t producing enough milk’. But they were topping up with formula, not feeding on demand or accepting that it’s a demand=supply situation. I’m so grateful I had knowledgeable people advising me. You need to let babies feed as much as they want to in order to produce enough milk. Feeding on demand is what establishes supply.

I had two emcs and EBF both. I personally believe you have a higher success of BF if

(1) you understand cluster feeding (ie your milk supply is not low, you are just establishing your supply. I genuinely think this is very misunderstood and

(2) you have sufficient support:

-no relatives who are quizzing/questioning and saying just give a bottle.
-family who understands cluster feeding

• A husband who is happy to run round bringing all food and drink to you and care for other older children

it will often be outside the woman’s control whether she has sufficient support.

I do personally find it annoying when problem say they couldn’t bf because of X reasons. I had X Y and Z problems but was able to continue because of My support network. Don’t think I wasn’t up crying heavily on every feed in the first few weeks because of the pain because I was. Mastitis? Yep. Sick baby in hospital post birth? Yep. Cluster feeding for hours? Yep. Colic? Yep.

Source for this please? I can’t find anything out there stating it’s anywhere near that high

Pre industrial era was prior to about 1750 if my history class recall serves me correctly. There’s only one.

This article from the University of Cambridge should help you - it picks apart the myth that loads of women died in childbirth

www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/09/19/childbirth-in-the-past/

If you look over the course of a woman's reproductive lifetime, that stat was much much higher (they generally didn't just have one birth each!) some scholars estimate a death rate as high as one in three/ one in five. The fact is no one knows for certain because things were properly recorded in those times, but a scholar's estimate is the best we have to go on. Childbirth was very risky for mum and baby before proper medical care

And I don’t agree with the c section breastfeeding thing. Every one I knew who had C’s had incredible flow (potentially due to the morphine), and very little issues with early pain (again potentially due to pain killers).

The establishment problems were more with the natural birth and of course the premmie mums had the worst time with it.

This fits with my point that women (and babies) have to learn to breast feed. If the woman is surrounded by women who have done it themselves, she'll pick it up quickly. If instead it's turned into a test of her qualities as a mother, with the experts around her "worrying" that the baby isn't getting enough etc, it becomes an obstacle course, and she's more likely to fail.

(Of course the other side to that is that those village women did feed their babies but at what physical cost to themselves? And many of the babies may have been quite skinny, underfed little things. They didn't die, but they many not have thrived. That wouldn't be an issue in the west where we all have more than enough food though.)

Is that 1.2% per birth? So what does that equate to if you have 8/10/12 children? Maybe you should use your maths?
And which period pre-industrial period are we talking about?

Yes, that's true.

It's a case of comparing risks.

Risks of C-sections vs risks of vaginal birth
Risks of formula feeding vs risks of an exhausted and unhappy Mum

We can all agree that in some cases the risks of breastfeeding are greater than the risks of not doing without pretending there are no risks to formula and it's equivalent.

No I think this is a myth perpetuated by our mothers and passed down.

So our peer group had mothers who gave birth 80s/90s. In those times mothers went in for 7 days to hospital with their first born. To give time to recover, establish feeding and learn basic care.

During this period the babies were taken into a nursery during the night to allow mothers to rest/ recover. Babies were fed by nurses using formula.

This cohort then had a lot of milk volume problems. Because next day milk is mainly calculated by night feeding volume.

In the early days this doesn’t really show up due to the amount babes are eating. But further down the line in the preceding weeks when babies are not meeting their growth goals.

Hence the early introduction of mixed feeding was common. And imo once you introduce mixed feeding it’s all down hill from there if you aren’t nearing the weaning stage.

So our mothers all ‘dried up’. And very few of them realise it’s because of this lack of night feeding. They think that it’s normal that most women can’t breastfeed past 6- 12 weeks. And this was a convenient thing because many went back to work early. So the whole narrative, their reality and the logistics just compounded one another.

But the issue is that we now ask our mothers, or inadvertently are given advice. And it’s completely incorrect. Hence so much false ideas about breastfeeding being the norm.

I had a long difficult labour and then a dd born with a very obvious physical disability (total shock to everyone missed on scans) I was determined to breastfeed tried everything - lots of support, threw money at it with a fancy pump etc but no success. I personally suspect that it was nature’s way - mum shocked at baby with significant abnormality, doesn’t produce milk and baby would have naturally died in past and probably seen as a blessing plus also nature’s way of ensuring potentially dodgy genes don’t continue from an evolutionary point of view.
Obviously dd was formula fed and thrived. It’s not something particularly palatable to voice but I think my body reacted to disabled baby and affected my ability to feed.

Am extremely quick Google tells me maternal mortality rate prior to Industrial period was c1.2%

Bloody 33% - use your brain!!

They did but I don't think that many died of getting insufficient milk.

Vaccines, antibiotics, and medical advances account for more babies living.

A lot of babies who died from "failure to thrive" were separated from their mothers- e.g. in workhouses, or because there was no maternity leave.