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

YANBU. I would probably be counted as “able to breastfeed”, but had a terrible time of it (bleeding nipples, terrible pain). Nothing in the past decade has been as damaging to my mental health as the pressure to breastfeed and pushing myself to persevere.

Thank God for formula (and I wish I’d tried it sooner). I don’t know how my baby and I would have got through it in the wild.

(I am also highly skeptical of stats that say breastfeeding helps prevent pnd. I mean, sure, if it comes effortlessly…)

Heh. Sucky condition, isn’t it? 🙃 Sorry you’ve gone through that too! We definitely need some decent research conducted into the link and potential clinical interventions to mitigate the effects. Or at least manage expectations (My boobs were so bruised by the birth, from trying to eke out some colostrum 😆).

Some women find it hard, but personally I found it very easy. Baby just latched on without me having to do anything. They fed loads. I think a lot of women are unprepared for how frequently breastfed babies feed. And they don't sleep well through the night because they need to wake to feed. That part is harder to deal with.

That is interesting to know, I posted upthread about barely getting any milk for my babies, I also have ADHD 😅

Well of course they say that they couldn’t rather than admit they could have tried harder, because otherwise they are judged harshly - as this thread proves!

It’s great that you chose to persevere through what sound like extreme circumstances, but no one should feel any pressure to do that. It should be valid to just be able to say I don’t want to breastfeed without having to justify that choice.

Absolutely this. I get some women don’t want to, that’s their choice but I do think some women claim they couldn’t when actually, they could if they tried harder.

I was really unwell with sepsis and in HDU postnatally for several weeks. It was incredibly difficult but I made sure my baby was fully breastfed then entire time I was in hospital. It would have been ‘fine’ for me to stop and I doubt I’d have been judged by anyone given the circumstances but it wouldn’t have been true to say I couldn’t breastfeed.

Don't know how this figure was arrived at. What parameters and research methods were used. Bit it sounds a tadunrealistic.

I was one of the 3%. I took medication, pumped every 2 hours day and night. Nothing. It was heartbreaking. My youngest is 11 and I still feel the judgement of the health visitor who didn’t believe me.

A friend of mine, who is a few years older than me, was born with a cleft palate in 1960. Her mother had to feed her formula with a teaspoon as it was years before bottles with special teats were invented.

I tried desperately to breast feed , in the end I developed mastitis and made myself ill until I had post natal depression . My baby began bottle feeding and thrived as did I . Not all women can breast feed however willing to try!

So i had my kids in poland. Here you have to stay in hospital min 2 nights (thats if everything is ok.) I thought orginally a nightmare. But this gives you time to get bf established. You can call a nurse to check your latch or she basically pops the baby on for you. You are there for night two which is known as the worst night and are also with other women who are constantly feeding their babies so you know its normal to have to constantly bw feeding. I cant imgine bf alone at home...its hard.

It's interesting to me because according to my aunt, my DF who was born in 1917, was very frail and was carried around on a pillow for the first six months of his life. As it was during WWI, I wonder if my GM was producing milk but it was of a very poor quality? She obviously wouldn't have been able to access very good nutrition. Just a thought.

If it’s ‘can they produce milk?’, then I believe 97%. If it’s ‘can they produce enough milk to breastfeed?’, I call shenanigans.

I had all the support I could have hoped for and more than enough willpower…instead at nearly 8 months postpartum, I’m still pumping for half an hour out of every two hours from 3/4am until 11pm as I have every single day since it became clear I wasn’t producing enough for our little one at 2-3 months. I’m exhausted but just about manage to collect a total of 2 ounces a day to give her. Breastfeeding is massively painful because she gets frustrated with the low volume of milk, clamps down and whips her head around.

I also couldn’t produce any colostrum before birth even though I tried every night. And she didn’t want to come out of me at all, despite being induced six ways to Sunday, so I ended up with an emergency c-section because apparently my unstoppable force of contractions met an immovable object in her and it put us both in danger 😂.

All of these things are related to prolactin production, which is governed by dopamine (woot!). If you can guess, I have ADHD and it is likely my increased dopamine production actively inhibits prolactin.

Speaking to other women I know with the condition, they have confirmed having a similar experience with breastfeeding. Most ended up giving formula. If around 5% of the population has ADHD, this could have a massive impact on breastfeeding figures. There really does need to be more research into a potential link between the two.

TlDr; I think more women produce only a small amount of milk and give up than we currently assume is the case, and a narrative of ‘97% of woman can breastfeed with the right support’ might be a tad off base.

No. That 1% statistics is misleading as it excludes the vast majority of breastfeeding mums. The real figure is about a third.

It's not false.

Nature is very clever. It wouldn't have developed a faulty system for something so fundamental as feeding our young.

It’s obviously based on producing milk.

Yes there are other factors as to why a mother may not be able to breastfeed.

I think breastfeeding is advertised more, as when formula started being massed produced it was heavily pushed by doctors and hospitals. When my mum had me (in the 80s) she was pushed into formula feeding even though she said she really wanted to breastfeed me but felt that the doctors must be telling her to use formula for a reason.

It is great that we have formula as an option. I just think that professionals are trying to rectify a mistake in pushing formula and people seem to take that as a personal offence.

I think this has to be balanced by the significant health benefits to the mother of breast feeding. Lower rates of breast and endometrial cancer, lower chances of heart disease and post natal depression. Breast feeding is good for women. Well done for doing it for 3 years.

There seems to be very high rates of breastfeeding in some African Countries into 90%.. There seems to be a cultural normalization to formula feed cows milk in the UK rather than actually try to breastfeed. The 1st week of breastfeeding is painful and can be difficult but if the support was better more mums would breastfeed.

Not the same numbers that don't breastfeed though. Some babies would have died through lack of milk, but not the same numbers as formula feed now. There were also many other reasons in the past for infant mortality.

80% of UK mothers breastfeed at birth. This drops to 50% at 8 weeks, and 1% at 6 months. Not being able to feed clearly isn't an issue for most women. They could continue to feed past the first few weeks, they choose not to.

Well it makes sense. We are animals and that’s how mammals feed their babies. Before formula all babies had to breastfeed from someone, usually their mothers.

animals don’t have formula and those that can’t breastfeed the babies die. It is part of nature. We have a synthetic food we have invented as an alternative but the idea that most mothers have breasts that produce milk is logical

Not to mention having to go back to work soo soon with a baby, I know you can express ect but its not natural

I agree. My first child I was so scared of failing (and all the stories of pain and exhaustion) that I didn't even try to breastfeed.
My second child I tried, but didn't really put in the effort needed and I gave up.
My third child i was older, more sure of my meteor she had done a lot of reading. I fed her, but it was very very hard. She wouldn't latch for 6 weeks. We had a lactation consultant out, I pumped around the clock, feeding it back to her when I wasn't pumping. I offered the breast at every feed, I used shields to help her latch. At six weeks she latched, at 12 weeks we dropped the shields. She fed for nearly 4 years.

I wish I had breastfed my older children. But I didn't know better, I wasn't strong enough in myself as a woman to persevere together with my babies at that point. If I had had stopped at two children I would probably be I someone who said I "couldn't" breastfeed, since I tried with my second. But trying doesn't mean a few hours or a few days. Trying can mean weeks or months of perseverance.

I don't normally say this sort of thing, but something about this sounds off. Why would a paediatrician say something about you not breastfeeding when your child is 6? And you've also made another comment about your child having a cleft palate so they would know you couldn't anyway.

Regardless, you are misunderstanding. The 97% is about women who can produce milk, not that 97% actually can or will. I'm not trying to be critical, I tried and failed to breast feed. My boy just wasn't getting enough and he was distressed, so I'd never judge anyone on that. But I don't agree with your post.

False, those babies just died, or like was so common in the past, they had wet nurses.

Do you mean no colostrum either? It’s obviously possible that you are part of the other 3%