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

I think it’s observational rather than actual research though. Women were perhaps a lot less well fed and many may have been on the cusp of amenorrhea after a pregnancy anyway.

It’s certainly not considered as an effective method of birth control in modern society - in fact you’re warned by health visitors and GPs not to imagine that you’re not at risk of a new pregnancy when you BF.

Personally I didn’t have a period for nearly a year after my first child, but for my subsequent babies, they came back after about 3-5 months. The only explanation I have is that the first baby was a very greedy boy and the others less so. But I’ve no idea if that’s why.

Yet you’re here ‘pressuring’ women into sourcing an all organic diet at great time and expense by saying the health benefits are justified? Which health benefit from organic food is quantifiably better than the benefits of breastfeeding? You sound like you’re really trying to reassure yourself of something.

I absolutely am not. They are very much related. Breast feeding is over inflated and but one parenting choice in many( and not one worth agonising over either).

I find it shameful the way it is over inflated and how mothers in this country are pressured into it in ways they aren’t with other far more worthy parenting choices.

Maybe if there was less over inflating , scaremongering and more support with mixed feeding the figures would be better. Just a thought.

Look you can either keep going with this and look a little silly in the process, or employ your logical thinking skills and realise you’re conflicting 2 debates where one has no bearing on the other.

Breastfeeding is better for babies and healthier for the mothers, end of. This isn’t up for debate, it’s a fact, and I say this as somebody who bottle fed my first after 5 months. Whatever you eat thereafter is a separate and equally as important matter, but your nonsense binary of ‘well if you don’t churn your own butter you may as well have never breastfed either’ is very silly indeed and reads like you’re a person with big breastfeeding hangups.

You’re also unknowingly defeating your own argument by making out breastfeeding is transient, unimportant yet somehow very energetically and mentally taxing for mothers, yet sourcing food from farm shops and cooking from scratch 3 times a day for 20 years is ‘what you should do as a decent parent’.

Do you bake your own bread on a near daily basis too? Because homemade gluten free bread is only good on the day its made really so I'd have to fit in working full time (out of the house 10/11 hours a day), cooking dinner and prepping my lunches, doing laundry, taking my children to their extra curriculars, spending time with them, and still find a couple of hours every day or two to bake bread. I'm afraid there isn't enough hours in the day, I need to rest and relax too.

If anyone reading this is interested in breastfeeding support, this is an excellent organisation who can help.

momab.org.uk/

Mothers through the ages have cooked from scratch whilst not having washing machines and other electrical devices.

I work full time and trust me cooking from scratch is a gazillion times easier than breast feeding even when I was on maternity leave.

Funny how those pushing breast feeding onto others don’t like it when other parenting choices (that are far more important) are pushed on to them. Can’t wait to hear the excuse for children having any screens at all. We know the huge damage screens do, no child or teen should be given them. They cause far more problems to health and life than not breast feeding.

I think it would be more effective to rephrase it to babies being able to breastfeed to be honest. Less guilt / blame on mothers who want to breastfeed but aren’t able to.

I also think that there isn’t enough information given to new mums on the effect of having a disrupted golden hour due to medical intervention / emergency / hospital policy, that a tongue tie can have on milk supply, the fact it can take a few weeks to get a comfortable latch which can lead to mums understandably moving to formula because it’s painful, that let down pain is normal in the first few weeks and isn’t a sign that you’re ’doing it wrong’. Maybe 97% of women are physically able to breastfeed, but the amount of women doing so who want to but think they can’t, would be a lot higher if we reframed it to incorporate the babies role in breastfeeding too.

I lost a bit of blood and couldn’t have the full golden out with my daughter. She fed every 30 mins day and night for the whole fourth trimester, I believe she had an undiagnosed tongue tie, took three or four weeks to stop supplementing with formula and about 6 weeks to stop the painful latch. The only reason I persevered was guilt and shame about ‘not being able to do it because it should come naturally’ - it was such a strain on me mentally but I ended up breastfeding her for 18 months and loved it.

My son was completely different. No complications, lovely relaxed birth. latched straight away, no latch pain, just letdown pain initially.

its the babies not the mums I’m sure of it

I love how you’re refuting the extensive scientific evidence based on your own experience! Infant mortality has nothing to do with it. Have you used Google?

In the past nutrition and feeding approaches were both different so the contraceptive impact of bf lasted for 2+ years. When you add the length of a pregnancy on top it meant a gap of 3+ years. This gap remains in traditional hunter-gatherer communities.

Breastfeeding is harder for some women but for others its a lot easier than going completely organic and upf free. Breastfeeding was hard at the beginning (few months for DD, few weeks for DS) but after that it was the easiest thing ever, much easier than cooking everything from scratch (and if I wanted to be upf free I'd have to bake all my bread myself too from specially sourced flours as me and DD have coeliac disease and gf bread and flour mixes are upf), I wouldn't have the time to do that and work full time so I'd have to quit or go part time which means I wouldn't have the extra money I'd need to buy all the more expensive organic foods. All of that is a lot harder than just opening my shirt and letting my baby latch on

Breastfeeding is harder for some women but for others its a lot easier than going completely organic and upf free. Breastfeeding was hard at the beginning (few months for DD, few weeks for DS) but after that it was the easiest thing ever, much easier than cooking everything from scratch (and if I wanted to be upf free I'd have to bake all my bread myself too from specially sourced flours as me and DD have coeliac disease and gf bread and flour mixes are upf), I wouldn't have the time to do that and work full time so I'd have to quit or go part time which means I wouldn't have the extra money I'd need to buy all the more expensive organic foods. All of that is a lot harder than just opening my shirt and letting my baby latch on

My periods came back at 19 months when I was breastfeeding. But my daughter fed a lot!

In most circumstances, it works for at least 6 months. Often up to 18 months. It was one reason why wealthy women used wet nurses, so they could continue to produce more children.

Bf doesn't work for that long as a contraceptive ime. My periods started again about three months after childbirth. While there may have been quite large age gaps between children that would often be because infant mortality was high rather than large gaps between births.

*Breastfeeding is incredibly difficult.
What you mean is breastfeeding can be incredibly difficult for some women

No. It is hard for most women. Babies wake multiple times a night for years on end. It is very very hard

Unless you have accurate data you cant say 'most women' , especially as you've added in another layer saying that babies wake up multiple times for years on end. That simple is not true.
I hot into the swing of breast feeding after 3 days. I had sore boob's and once the mid wife came out and showed me some techniques and helped with the amount of heat that was coming from my breasts it was absolutely fine.
Ds1 and got up at around 02.00 hrs and I think 05.00 but dh would get up and give them a breast milk bottle to let me rest.

I had colleagues who were virtually the same.
Babies dont wake up 'for years on end'

My expierence was that I was extremely anxious about breast feeding and it turned out to not be bad at all. I'm not the only one that feels like that,so I stand by my statement, 'breastfeeding can be incredibly difficult for some women'

Maybe in some cases. My daughter was only waking once or twice for milk from about 6 months and as we coslept she didn't always even wake me up.

THIS! I just found it madness with the midwives here. I had a. C section so my
milk didn’t come in at first so combi fed a bit- maybe1- 2 bottles a day along sides lots of cluster feeding. Well…you’d think I was pure evil. Every. Single. Midwife (and health visitor) told me I couldn’t possibly do both. One ever went so far as to say if my baby had had ONE bottle I might as well just give up and formula feed the whole time as she wasn’t really breastfed. By 3 months I was only breastfeeding as much easier (and cheaper). The health visitor was horrified that I’d both breast and bottle fed. How was the baby getting nutrients now I was only breastfeeding (had to point out ‘baby’ was 1 and on solids too)

Began to think I was the only person in the world who did both …until my Aunt said it was totally normal to do that in the 90s.

No. It is hard for most women. Babies wake multiple times a night for years on end. It is very very hard.

I'm confused.

I said that I am surprised when people make no effort to breastfeed and decide to formula feed before birth and was shouted down and called a lactavist.

If someone said that they intended to feed their child a diet of entirely UPFs and would make no effort at all to give them organic veg, even if that organic veg was provided to them for free, and I said that was surprising I think everyone would agree.

No-one would say, "Good for you, it's absolutely your right not to spend your evenings faffing around chopping carrots. No-one will be able to tell which child had a tin of spaghetti hoops for dinner."

So why are you pretending that it's somehow socially acceptable to judge people who don't BF but not people who don't feed their kids a healthy diet?

How is it ‘not a big deal’?

Actually for most of human history women naturally had babies every 3-4 years - bf acted as a natural contraceptive in most cases which enabled the child to be semi-independent before the next one came along. Birth gaps decreased as food became more readily available and small gaps didn’t really exist at all until breastmilk substitutes started to be used.

Nope I don’t. I think breast feeding is far harder than feeding organic and UPF free and for some reason we’re supposed to focus on only a year of a child’s life, not the other 17 and the huge distress breast feeding can cause to mothers, babies and families. Many women can’t breast feed and it simply is not a big deal in the scheme of 18 years.

So is breastfeeding. Think of the energy and materials that go into manufacturing and transporting formula, boiling kettles, sterilising - most of it going straight to landfill afterwards.

There’s evidence that vaginal delivery and breastfeeding are hugely beneficial for gut bacteria and decide the gut biome for a long time thereafter, with all those health implications.

For what it’s worth my children eat very few UPFs and the dirty dozen are usually organic in this house. You seem to think it’s one or the other which is bizarre - they’re 2 totally separate discussions.

I suspect its not very consistently recorded in the UK but in my country we get asked at baby clinic appointments which are held regularly at certain ages, one of which is 6 months, so the stats here are more useful.

Organic food doesn’t make a small difference - it’s hugely beneficial for wildlife, our planet and our bodies. UPFs,well we know the catastrophic impact on health they have but many think it’s ok to feed them to children for years on a daily basis. Your choice, I’m not going to lecture so please don’t lecture others re their very minor choice of choosing formula as opposed to breast feeding.