Will I eve get over the disappointment of not breastfeeding?

[Rararrara6897545]

Name change and don't want to give too many details but 2 DC and failed to breastfeed either despite desperately wanting to.

Reasons include traumatic birth, inability of baby to latch and poor mental health, poor physical health. I did express and re lactate at a few months (expressing a bottle a day) with my second but i still don't feel like I can say I breastfed.

It is years later and I just can't get over it. The guilt and distress I feel is massive. I still so sad about it and feel so bad every day. I am grateful I have happy healthy children but still can't seem to get past this. I feel so jealous of friends who breastfeed successfully and feel absolutely awful about this. Has anyone else been similar and got over it? How?

How old are your kids?

My son is 13 and I haven’t given it a second thought since I was pregnant with his brother 2 years later and even then it was only fleeting. Honestly you tried your best and it didn’t work out. Let it go. There are millions of people in this country happily and healthily raised on formula. In the grand scheme of life it really doesn’t matter

Oldest 6 youngest 3.5
I wish I could be like that and not even think about it. Not sure why it's such a big deal.

I didn't breastfeed either of my children. I'll be honest and admit that I never had a particular desire to breastfeed them and by the time I had my youngest, I was pretty much set on bottle feeding him from the get go.

I did however have a difficult birth with my eldest, an emergency c-section, physical and mental health problems afterwards, and he was a refluxy baby from hell who cried pretty much consistently when he was awake for the first 3 months of his life. I had a lot of guilt and mixed emotions about the early days of his life and even now I do still have feelings of guilt that I didn't enjoy it as much as I should have etc.

Do you think perhaps that your feelings about BF are in fact your feelings about everything else that went on when you had your children? Counseling has helped me. Along with time and seeing my children grow up into happy kids.

Possibly.... I really wasn't very well looking back. Counselling could maybe help. I'm having some mh treatment already.

It is years later and I just can't get over it. The guilt and distress I feel is massive. I still so sad about it and feel so bad every day

I don't think this is a normal, rational or healthy response to anything. Have you thought about seeking some kind of counselling? If you're carrying such strong feelings around all the time, it must be affecting your relationships with your DC and partner.

sorry - X post

Perhaps it might be helpful to think about, with hindsight, how would breastfeeding your children have made any difference to your life as it is now? Is it perhaps a bond you feel like you missed out on with your children?

There's lots I would have done differently now with hindsight. But then I can see that it really wouldn't have made much difference to where we are now. I know if I had BF my kids, it would have been much, much harder.

Yes I can relate but not quite as extremely. I feel sad about it. Planned to ebf all three. Mixed fed DD1 until she was 6mo, mixed fed DD2 until she was 3mo but far less successfully and currently mixed feeding DD3 who is now 6.5mo - success wise somewhere in the middle of the other two. Nothing is what I've wanted and though I feel sad, I've made my peace with it. There are so many very valid reasons.

I think that at this point you probably need counselling.

Breastfeeding grief and trauma is something that we often minimise in our society. The response is usually - oh it doesn't matter, they're healthy etc. But for lots of mums, it really does matter. It's part of the mother they wanted to be that didn't happen.

You are allowed to grieve for it. If you were failed by the people who should have supported you I'm so sorry. Nothing can give you back that time. It might be worth calling the National Breastfeeding helpline, for some counselling and a debrief about how you are feeling. Sometimes processing your grief in a safe space can really help, and that's definitely part of what the helpline is for.

I was set on breastfeeding dc1. I had a traumatic birth and really struggled to get any decent latch. My nipples were in a horrendous state. It was having a huge negative effect on my mental health. I gave in and gave a bottle. I felt awful. Then I came to realise it was what was needed. A lovely friend who wasn't at all maternal but worked in the world of stats knew how I was feeling but sent me a really reassuring article on breastfeeding v bottles in non third world countries and that helped me further. By dc2 I had decided I'd give it a go but no beat myself up over it if it didn't work out. I hope you find peace with it as sometime we have to realise that things aren't always totally in our control. 💐

Look around at your child's peers. Can you tell which ones were BF? Can either of your children remember how they were fed? Yes, breast is best and all that - in an ideal world but it's not an ideal world. I think you have negative feelings attached to that time and you have hung them on the BF issue. You really need counselling to separate the issues out. You have not failed. You say yourself you have two healthy children.

I BF for 11 days then I stopped. I stopped because mentally I couldn't cope with being that much in demand and out of control. I chose to stop. My DD was feeding successfully but to be the best mum I could to her, I had to stop and did so under the midwife's advice. What I'm trying to say, is that parenting is all about making the best decision in the moment. It's all any of us can do.

Yes if you want to, look I was set on breastfeeding I tried and tried it didn't work I switched to formula baby got fed baby is 19 this year and in uni how she was fed 19 years ago is neither here nor there

I’d say potentially OP you should speak to your GP now? I know you said at the time poor mental health but how are you feeling now? This could be directly related to how you are feeling rather than actually related to BF.

I understand how you feel entirely. I couldn’t breastfeed my son. I tried for 6 weeks begging for help, I finally diagnosed his severe lip tie myself and had that confirmed by a dentist. We didn’t stand a chance. I feel guilt and quite distressed and every time he gets ill I start wondering. I have had councilling. Every time I allow myself to drift into that thought pattern I remind myself of our bond. I’m hoping with more time it becomes insignificant. Hope you are ok op, it’s a hard thing to be dealing with.

Yes you will. I was terribly anxious when unable to bf as ff had never been part of the 'plan.' But from weaning onwards the importance of that one aspect of your child's care diminishes, both practically as milk eventually replaced with food but also emotionally as there are so many other aspects of raising a child that you will face. Honestly reading your message is the first time I have thought about it in years and I was in bits about what I saw as a failure in the early months.

DS is 6 and he never has any breast milk, he was early and couldn’t latch, I had a section, lots of reasons.
I felt really guilty for a year or so. Various health professionals made me feel fairly shit about it. They should be struck off imo.
Now I couldn’t care less. When they are babies it seems so important but now I truly believe it is probably the least important decision you make as a parent. It’s the first decision and when they are babies it seems vital, but as they grow you realise it isn’t. I have made lots of more important decisions for him since.
There’s a push back from the breast is best guilt brigade going on. The NCT now no longer push it and their helpline is to give support to anyone no matter how they choose to feed. I think that is great.
Please try to stop worrying about it op.

Oh, OP, I hear you so much. I won’t say specifically what triggered me, because it was quite odd, very public, and I’ve talked about it in RL and it’s quite outing, but my healthy, beautiful son was a toddler and I saw something in a public place that suddenly reminded me of the raw misery I’d felt when I had no milk supply 2.5/3 years earlier, and I burst into hysterical tears and ended up being taken behind the scenes and given a drink by half-frightened staff.

I’m a self-controlled and not unduly sensitive person, but it brought it home to me how grindingly awful it had been, how hard I’d tried in vain, and if I’m honest, how much trying and failing to BF (I tried a supplemental nursing system for two months, which was cumbersome when out, and there were some judgemental responses from strangers to me ffing) poisoned my sons first few months of life.

No advice — counselling didn’t help me — but it fades in time. Best wishes.

I felt a little like this about needing instrumental deliveries. But a year or so later it doesn't bother me anymore. Maybe a slight pang of sadness that I'll never push a baby out by myself. But never more than a fleeting thought, because it's totally irrational.

What you need to think is that you gave up what you really wanted for the sake of your children's best interests. That's what a good parent does. In an ideal world, you'd of been able to, but you did the best you could at the time and you should be proud you were able to see breastfeeding wasn't working and made a tough decision for their sakes.

You don't need to breastfeed to be a good mother.

I completely understand OP. I planned to ebf my daughter who's now 3. I was in labour for 5 days and she was very distressed on birth. She had no instinct to feed and never latched once. She became jaundiced and we had to use formula. I tried expressing but I never produced more than a couple of ml.

Every practical part of my mind knows it was the only thing we could have done. She's really healthy - far more than other kids her age, very bright, we have an amazing bond that I don't believe for 1 second would be any better if I'd succeeded BF. If we lived a few generations ago I doubt she would have survived in a world without formula.

That said it still haunts me that I didn't BF her. We're planning baby no 2 and I'm already getting obsessed with the idea of being able to feed the next one and I worry about the impact on my mental health if I don't.

You really aren't alone.

Many years ago the midwife arrived to find me on my hands and knees crying and in pain after trying to BF my son. She told me to get my baby on a bottle immediately and never let myself get in that state again . I mixed fed my daughter but it was not easy.
When my second son arrived a few years later I was determined to succeed but after struggling for a few weeks I had to give in .The midwife was amazed I had persevered so long . I felt so guilty when I gave up.
A few years ago I read an article on MN about women who have flat nipples and are unable to feed. I realised it was me . I was so glad I was not the only one and the guilt disappeared as there was nothing I could have done. Please speak to someone OP and don't beat yourself up.

I think there's a very romaticised view of what having a baby is like. Nice easy natural birth maybe in a birthing pool moving about in a few hours and baby latching on within minutes of birth and then happily breastfeeding for months afterwards.

When none of that happens as you thought it would it can be extremely traumatic. I've had counselling for the depression I had after my babies were born and this is help me to come to terms with the fact that I didn't breastfeed and it wasn't about the breastfeeding it was about not having the start to my children's life that I felt they and we should have had because of what popular culture says having a baby is like. I had a traumatic birth and weeks in NICU and I felt like I'd been cheated out of what everyone else has (in my mind ... obviously lots of people go through similar to what I went through but you don't hear those stories and after a little while everyone seems to think that we should be over it.) I think you need some counseling to help process your grief over your children start in life so that you can move on.

I think you need to get help for this. It's a long time to hold onto something that doesn't really affect your children, no need to feel guilty about it.
I bf for a few weeks, I'm sorry I didn't give up sooner as I hated it and it definitely contributed to my PND and inability to bond with my daughter at all. Going straight to bottles this time.

for you because I totally get this. I've been able to come to terms with it now but the guilt was awful at first. Please don't think you've failed. This is a long time to be feeling so beat up about it .
I also had a traumatic birth . DD wouldn't latch due to flat nipples so had to use shields . Managed to feed for one week when i got Sepsis. I was way too poorly to pump to keep supply and DD couldn't have my milk because of the drugs being pumped in me. It took a year to fully get over it but I think at least she got some goodness from me. She's now a very tall, thriving 5 year old and you can't tell if she's been B/F or F/F compared to other children .
Be kind to yourself OP.

My DC are the same age and I got over it by the time they were eating solids and growing and thriving. Probably earlier in the case of DC2. I think this much later you are not being rational or considered- perhaps you could visit a counsellor or GP to talk it through?

Yes you can. I couldn’t breast feed my first child in similar circumstances. Gave expressed milk etc. I was able to breastfeed my second child but totally different birth.

Please hear me now.

1. I tried a lot less hard with baby 2 than baby 1. It’s not about effort in our cases or many others. Anyone who says that frankly hasn’t been in our shoes.

2. this happened to you. It wasn’t a choice. You chose to breastfeed. But the choice was taken away from you.

3. More and more I believe it’s just not all about us. As mums, that’s hard. But breastfeeding is at least as much to do with how baby is doing, shape of mouth, if they are traumatised, exhausted etc.

4. It is one thing in a very, very, very long list of things that contribute to children’s wellbeing. Very likely you are doing most of these things (like talking to your child). No one will manage to do all of them.

5. please get counselling. You sound like a great mum and this weight over you isn’t right. You mustn’t keep punishing yourself for something out of your control.