Breastfeeding isn't easy for all mothers...?

[faithfulbird20]

What do you think? I honestly find it the most hardest thing in the world...finding the right tops, cloths, you're feeding one side the other side decides to leak a waterfall, baby doesn't want to latch properly, mild tongue tie, sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard and annoying, breast milk has leaked on baby's clothes, baby needs changing. Breastfeeding in front of other people, family etc...

@RubaiyatOfAnyone

I bf dd2 for 15 months after being unable to with dd1 and feeling very guilty about that.

I can honestly say i hated every last feed - it HURT for 15 months (got mildly better about 10 months when i reduced to just wake-up and bed-time feeds) for no reason that all the experts i consulted could work out. I leaked milk constantly. I couldn’t take unnecessary but useful otc medication. I couldn’t shift any weight. I just felt my body wasn’t my own and was constantly in pain. Awful. To add insult to injury, dd1 is healthy as a horse, but dd2 got bronchiolitis, every cold going, and became allergic to dairy meaning i had to give it up too.

I am so glad i never have to do it again!

SSH! That’s not the narrative people like on MN

There are so many reasons why people find it hard or easy, or both at different times.

I'm feeding my first, he's just over 3 years old now.

We got of to a good start for the first 3 days. Then he got very poorly very quickly and we were in hospital. I wasn't allowed to feed him. I exclusively pumped for weeks. Long story short, we managed to get back to bf with supplemental formula, then exclusively bf when he was 5.5 months.

I've been very lucky in that I've never had excessive leaking, never got mastitis, no tongue ties to deal with. I was worried he'd forget what to do after all those weeks of not being able to feed but he hadn't at all, and it was the biggest relief.

I'm really proud that I carried on pumping. At the time it was all I could do that felt useful. It was all worth it and the extra milk I built up got donated to the milk bank.

Of course but isn't, however it is easier for many than is often portrayed. It's often described as near impossible, I found it very easy after the first few days as did a lot of my friends. Some of my friends found it unsustainable or didn't try. Any of those options are fine, babies were fed and thrived.

I hate threads like this as it just gives the message to pregnant women that they are setting themselves up for failure. In fact I'd go so far as to say some women encourage others to "fail" to make themselves feel better about their own outcome (I don't actually mean you OP, I mean previous threads on here have shown this). So many people are vocal about how hard it is, successful breastfeeders are assused of gloating or superiority if they say they had an easy time of it. Not breast feeding isn't failing your baby and is perfectly acceptable. Breastfeeding your baby isn't failing your baby and is perfectly acceptable.

Don't get hung up on other people's lives, live your own, you are doing the best you can for your children and any pass or fail rate is something you have set in you own mind. Mix feed, give up or continue BF, whatever you choose is your decision so own it and be proud of what you are achieving, you are mothering your newborn and toddler simultaneously and successfully by keeping them fed, warm and entertained. The method of feeding is irrelevant.

I found breastfeeding really easy - never had any pain/soreness/mastitis etc. Baby doubled her weight in 3 months. Like with PP, I didn’t like the inconvenience - the leaking which no pads could control, smelling of sour milk, soaking through the bed sheets at night, having to get the boob out in the cold outside, painful engorgement, having to do all the wake ups etc. I gave up at the 6 month mark which felt like a good compromise between imparting the health benefits and getting ‘me’ back.

But you'd have every other fertile older woman you know to advise and help you because they would all be experienced with breastfeeding. Mothers today have often never even seen anyone breastfeed before they have a baby.

I don’t really understand this myth that all the elder female relatives of a new mum would flock to their side to impart secret breastfeeding advice. Every woman has different boobs and different babies, it’s not like because your mum found it easy you would as well. Maybe they’d never come across tongue tie, oversupply, thrush etc. Plus many women didn’t live near their family, or didn’t have a good relationship with them etc.

I think most women just had to figure it out, I think it helped they were generally fitter and slimmer than women today as things like PCOS can inhibit milk production.

I think the better message would be that the first weeks can be very hard, but that it is well worth working past the early struggles.

@CeeceeBloomingdale

I think it’s the other way round actually. Too many women miss out on the magic of their newborn and baby days to fruitlessly pursue breastfeeding at the cost of their mental health & enjoyment of their baby. It’s not worth it.

I found it easy from day 1. Just luck I guess.

@Wondermule I don't see your point, I've said give up and don't dwell on it if it's not for you. Nobody wants to be miserable or risk post natal depression, that's not healthy for mum or baby.

However, there is another point of view. For every woman who struggles to BF, there is probably another who finds it easy. The newborn days were magical for me, I sat and held my babies for hours and loved it. Equally if I hadn't got on with BF I would have bottle fed in a heart beat, no point flogging a dead horse and I would not guilt myself for it either. I've not suggested someone sticks with something making them miserable, quite the opposite.

My concern is those who don't try as others have set them up for failure. If just one woman TRIES breast feeding and finds it works for them because I mentioned I found it a piece of piss then my work here is done. My success and someone else giving up aren't mutually exclusive.

I went into BF with an "if it works, it works" attitude. I bought formula and bottles as a back up. Much to my surprise it was easier for me than I had been told. I was glad I tried, despite knowing no one who had breast fed and not having heard one successful story before I had my first baby.

Nobody has suggested breastfeeding is easy for ALL mothers, but can we least acknowledge for some it is. It has become a taboo!

No, I don't mean that everyone who has ever breastfed is a breastfeeding expert, but at least they'd know what was normal breastfeeding and they wouldn't crowd you with comments like "Are you feeding AGAIN? He can't still be hungry. Oh mine all slept through from 3 minutes old! You're spoiling that baby. How many oz is he taking/how do you know how much she is getting?/[general discussion about other babies and amounts drunk to the point it seems like something crucial to know] Are you going to do that here/in front of Uncle Albert?? Should you really be having that brocolli/coffee/chilli/wine/cake? You should put her on a bottle now, she's old enough. You should space feeds [in a way which works with bottles]"

Plus if everyone you know has breastfed there is a general sort of folk knowledge about common issues such as pain when milk first comes in, how to spot/correct an ineffective latch, positioning tricks and tips, dealing with leaking, how to get sleep (and in societies where BF has v high rates bedsharing is still common) - bearing in mind this isn't perfect as bedsharing was prob also much more risky back in previous generations, although up to a certain point it's what the whole human race did.

Perhaps not for rarer issues but if we're going way back then childbirth/baby care was the preserve of midwives as well who would have had more specialised knowledge due to experience with more women/families/babies. Thrush would likely have had a folk remedy. Tongue tie is an odd one - some theories say midwives used to routinely check for it and detach it at birth although there's no actual evidence for this so it might be totally made up. Others say it's more common these days because we all take folic acid and it's caused by an overdose of folic acid although it's still much better than Spina Bifida of course so there's not much reason to reduce the recommendation. Again no idea if this is true - there don't seem to be any studies on it, probably because it's unethical to get pregnant women to purposefully not take folic acid.

There is a lot of subtle undermining in UK culture of BF and you can even get dodgy advice which actually causes BF problems - sometimes from HCPs themselves. And often HCPs don't have much experience of BF especially with the way our healthcare is quite fragmented, so midwives who see women in hospital will likely never see that baby again after about day 3-10, so don't know how these things play out over the next few weeks and months.

But also notice I didn't say that everyone you know having breastfed themselves was a perfect solution - there were a lot of babies who were fed alternatives to breastmilk and inappropriate foods was likely one of the causes of infant mortality. So difficulty breastfeeding has always existed, there has never been a mythical perfect time where everyone could easily breastfeed. The point is that you don't need 99% of babies to thrive for survival of the species. Naturally I think it turns out we have about 6-8 children per women, so you only really need a success rate of about 25% for the species to survive.

It isn’t easy to begin with but then having a baby isn’t very easy to begin with, you get used to it. I can’t personally imagine bottle feeding, it just seems so faffy and absolutely extortionate.

I expected it to be easy tbh but it was hard & painful initially. However my mum & friends bf so was reassured that everything was normal. Once got going no issue & no problems transitioning to bottle as I pumped for early morning wakings & to see how much they got.

Difficult at first but worth persevering for the benefits, ease and the closeness of it. Bed shared at night to make it easier to feed at night. It really helps when you are surrounded by knowledgeable women that support and respect your choices.

I found it very very easy. I didn’t leak at all. I’m just putting that out there for balance for any first time mums to be...

Are you feeding AGAIN? He can't still be hungry. Oh mine all slept through from 3 minutes old! You're spoiling that baby. How many oz is he taking/how do you know how much she is getting?/[general discussion about other babies and amounts drunk to the point it seems like something crucial to know] Are you going to do that here/in front of Uncle Albert?? Should you really be having that brocolli/coffee/chilli/wine/cake? You should put her on a bottle now, she's old enough. You should space feeds [in a way which works with bottles

Yep I had all this from my MIL

I remember a cluster feeding nightmare when DD was about 5 weeks old, we had gone to MIL’s for the night and she was desperate for DD to be passed around some friends she had over. DD was having none of it and wanted to stay stuck to the boob for HOURS. They concluded either I was doing it on purpose so nobody else got to hold her, or that my milk wasn’t enough and I was starving her I pointed out she was putting on a pound of a week but they were having none of it!

But then MIL swears her milk dried up the day she left hospital when she had her kids - I wonder if she just assumed this because they wanted to cluster feed. But being a polite person I don’t say that...

I had my first long ago, no internet, no advice from anybody, except a very little in a book, no idea that it might be difficult.
And it wasn’t, at all. I just did it.
Same with the 2nd.

I know I was probably very lucky, but I do think it’s a shame that pregnant women now are so often led to believe that it’s almost certain to be very difficult. Is it any wonder that many don’t even try?

At the same time, I don’t think anyone should ever feel bad for deciding not to, or for giving up early because they do find it very hard. Let’s just be thankful that it’s so easy to buy bottles and baby milk, and can so easily use safe, boiled water.
Mothers in many parts of the world are not so lucky.

I hated every single moment of breastfeeding! It almost repulsed me

Honestly, seeing/hearing about how much people struggle with BF made me not even attempt it with any of my (3) children. I found bottle feeding easy and felt comfortable with my choice as I didn’t have to cope with any of the issues I had seen others go through.

BFing DS1 was so hard. Don’t think I have ever cried so much over anything. Spent so much time on money on lactation consultants and paediatricians, visited every BFing drop-in and HV clinic going (and cried). On balance I am glad I persevered (Mix fed over a year) and eventually it was a lovely experience but yeah, it was bad.

DS2 just latched and got on with it. Took a couple of weeks to completely master it but basically a breeze..

I found it ridiculously easy.

My two were EBF for 14 months each and never had a bottle. I just found it much easier to BF than faff about with sterilising, teat size drama etc.

I travelled about a lot so it was just easier for me to always have milk available, sterile, correct temp, on tap as it were.

I totally accept that some women have difficulties with it though. I guess in the old days, if you couldn't BF, your baby either went to a wet nurse if you could afford it, or they died

It's not easy AT FIRST for your first born but by 6 weeks it's far easier than making bottles up, cleaning bottles and of course free. Proper support (professional or peer mentoring) combined with a legal framework enshrining the right to breastfeed would help a lot. Dd2 latched within 10 mins of birth and never had any issues at all.

There are a small number of women who cannot breastfeed eg those who have had breast surgery for eg cancer but they are in the minority plus of course adoptive/foster mums but it's small.

You don't need special clothes (ordinary T-shirts work fine), and bamboo pads are reusable and can be put in the wash with the nappies and washcloths. A pack of 12 pads worked for both my kids

Same. 3 kids. Not easy births.

1. Ventouse
2. Emergency c section

3 normal delivery 3 weeks early .

Just stuck them on. Initial 'whoa' then it felt good.

tmi .. have nipples like chapel hat pegs !

And yes... who the hell wants to get up and bottle feed when you can roll over , attach baby and go back to sleep?

3 kids . Never 'got up' in the night once .. it's not woke virtual signalling.. it was pure laziness...

Proper support (professional or peer mentoring)

We have these now.

I found it really, really difficult for the first few weeks getting established but overall I think it's easier and less hassle than sterilising bottles and making up formula. I really didn't like feeding in public or in front of people at home, I found that really hard and often wished I could bottle feed when out and about. But I did enjoy the convenience of having warm milk on tap at all times. So it's swings and roundabouts.