Breastfeeding and attachment parenting - your thoughts

I don't know what attachment parenting is. It didn't exist in 1990.

I was however put under huge pressure by midwives, health visitor and NCT "feeding counsellor" to breastfeed.

Health visitor and so called "feeding counsellor" refused to give any advice about formula feeding and how to introduce it despite both knowing it wasn't working for me or baby and that I was returning to work full time. One of them made the awe- inspiringly useless suggestion that I could express for feeds when I was at work; despite being told expressing produced a dribble of milk. The NCT woman in particular just parroted "breast is best".

As for the " everyone produces enough milk" lie, I can assure you that is a lie.

26 years on and I still bear a grudge against both those women. I was at the point of really resenting my baby.

It is Only natural to use formula!!!! Not trying to start a ruck, honest!!!

Yes, I agree. I don't know much about AP so focussed on bf.

I think this attachment patenting thing is created to shift books.
I breastfed for about 2 years and still sleep with her most nights. On paper this is AP, but I also leave her for 8-10 hours per day to work.
I agree it is all about bugging women, and we spend time worrying about this crap rather than other things like how are children are feeling or what we need to be doing at work.
Also getting started to breast feed is a total nightmare so it is not natural to use formula as well.

But AP is about far more than BFing.

Interesting topic. I'm ebf 3 month old DD at the moment, so I'm right in the throes of all of this.

I feel very strongly that women should not be forced into doing anything with their bodies that they don't want to. However, my recent experiences showed me that there are a lot of women who want to bf and the support just isn't there. So women are under enormous pressure to bf but then receive no help to actually do so. I think it's probably a very difficult balance to get right - when does support become coercion? Do women want to breastfeed for themselves or because they feel that they should?

I also think that the health benefits of breastfeeding for the mother should be emphasised more - it isn't just a good thing to do for babies but can actually be good for women too. I think the fact that it isn't demonstrates that mothers are somehow missing from discussions about parenting decisions.

AP doesn't have to be all about sacrifice.

With my oldest, he hated being held and therefore never in a sling. With my youngest, he hated the buggy (later found out he was lactose intolerant) but loved the stretchy sling so he was basically in it for 12 weeks for all my waking hours. It had the bonus of keeping my hands free for housework and 2 other kids so it made my life easier. If I'd had a section or ds been bigger I might have made a different decision but that's ok too.

BLW looks like messy chaos to some who want to know how much their child is eating. I did BLW (well before the term was coined) so that my baby was distracted while I ate and because putting the baby in the highchair while I ate felt natural to me.

What I'm trying to say is that I think personality of parent and baby should determine how you parent not a parenting guru. The other thing- it's ok to change your mind with parenting. You might be anti-dummy but if baby is comforted by one, the world won't end.

AP is all about the mother. The father is treated as little more than a sperm donor tbh. Of course they hotly deny that

Well, I'd hotly deny that because it's flatly not true in my family. My husband is plenty more than a sperm donor, thanks. But hey, what would I know about AP, as someone who actually does it...

AP is all about the mother. The father is treated as little more than a sperm donor tbh. Of course they hotly deny that - there's plenty of ways he can be involved! He can get you an endless supply of drinks and change nappies! But the undertone is that he needs to essentially keep the hell out of the way whilst Mummy gets on with the nurturing.

DR Sears has now revised his new edition to rather begrudgingly say that of course he understands that it's often necessary for women to work - but he advises getting flexible hours so you can basically work as little as possible. Cos that's totally feasible for most women, right? And the idea that women might want to work for enjoyment! C'mon now, let's not be silly!

I'm not a parent, so I don't have a dog in this fight on either side. But from the outside watching other people parent, AP can very much be used as a stick to beat women with. That said, my overwhelming impression is that no matter what women do or don't do with regard to parenting, someone will be delighted to tell them they're doing it wrong!

Co-incidentally, I was listening to a podcast about AP this morning, on a show called Science Vs, and it was very interesting. They try to break down the science behind stuff, and well...AP doesn't do very well at all on the backed-by-research-and-evidence front. To me, that usually tells us there's an agenda somewhere - my first thought was that it fits nicely into a backlash scenario, as it can easily be leveraged to put women firmly back in the domestic sphere.

I agree with you. In fact I feel especially strongly about sleep training. I fail to see how teaching someone to sleep as well as they can is anything but good.

As an older parent I think it was easier for me to say "Fuck you" to those who wanted me to do it their way. It is much, much harder for younger mothers who perhaps have less life experience and faith in their own judgement.

I disapprove wholeheartedly of the pressure that is put on parents to parent in a certain way

This!!!

Any form of pressure put on women to do things is clearly wrong. Eg my mother was pressured to ff her babies in the 70s by medical staff when she told them she would like to bf. There was historically often an emphasis on the inadequacy of women's own milk.

Lots of mothers (me included) find bf easier than ff. It is certainly less expensive and very portable, so I honestly don't find it at all constraining.

Different strokes for different folks and all that.

I find the moralising around bf, sleep training (or rather not sleep training) etc incredibly offensive. I would not presume to tell people how to raise their kids, I will not tolerate other people telling me what to do.

I dislike the labels. I am not an AP, I FF for reasons of my own which were valid. I also stuck DD in a sling for most of her first year but imposed a strict bedtime routine. I couldn't give a tuppenny fuck if people disapprove. I disapprove wholeheartedly of the pressure that is put on parents to parent in a certain way.

I also loathe parenting labels.

I'm an attachment parent. I'm not around my baby 24/7, not are any of the other AP types I know.

I don't disagree that there are lunatics out there who think women's own needs don't count, and present that as an AP thing. But I have also had very good discussions in AP groups about the importance of balancing everyone's needs within a family. (Likewise, I have had some very non-AP people tell me that co-sleeping was an awful idea, even though it was saving my sanity sleep-wise: "what about your husband? Doesn't he want his wife back?" )

awful, agreed.

I think that a lot of those FB groups are set up as spaces where people can say things they'd never dream of saying IRL because they know they're among like-minded individuals.

I had the Sears parenting books when I had DS1 and at that time, because I wanted to breastfeed, I found them helpful. Looking back though I can see that the Sears' method is extremely constraining to women. I bf on demand and boy, was a slave to it! My DH went off to work every day and I was just stuck on the sofa for months feeding. I don't regret EBFing and baby-wearing, but I do think it can be damaging to the relationship between baby and DF, DM and older siblings, etc, because the baby is just stuck to the DM all the time.

In answer to your questions:

1. Anything that tells women what they SHOULD be doing with their bodies is anti-feminist.

2. AP enslaves women. They have to respond to their DC above and beyond all else. Self and DP come below DC - and that is wrong, wrong, wrong.

This is interesting and something I've just started thinking a lot about.

I've breastfed 3 children, DS1 and DTs, all to 13 months. No-one ever pressured me to breastfeed.

I do think that some women subordinate their selves and their needs for their young (and not so young) children for very many reasons.

I certainly felt that I put my life, my needs aside for the first 10/12 months of my children's lives but I did this because I wanted to do it. Could I have continued? I don't know.

Not with the twins I don't think, it was overwhelmingly intense having 2 babies attached to my body for a large part of each day.

A lot of the BFing/attachment parenting sites like to claim that it's harder to parent a toddler without breastfeeding but I don't subscribe to that POV.

Isn't feminism about choice? I chose to use my body to feed my children (and was lucky to be able to) and I am glad to have had that choice.