'Breast is Best'

[OddSocksandRainbowDocs]

It's National Breastfeeding Week and I've seen the phrase 'Breast is Best' banded about quite a few times.

Whilst I agree breastfeeding is scientifically better, some mothers (myself included) physically could not breastfeed so chose to formula feed instead. I was made to feel like a failure by a midwife for choosing to do so.

My little one is now one and a half. She is happy, she is healthy.

I don't know who needs to hear this but 'Breast is Best' isn't always the case. 'Fed is Best' is most definitely the case. It doesn't matter how you feed your baby, as long as the baby is fed, that is all that matters

So you see my point - fed is best just means ‘feed them anything’. ‘Breast is best’ means ‘scientifically, breast milk is the ideal’.

How about,

Whatever you choose to do for your own baby is your decision and your decision only and can we all stop talking about breast is best or formula is best and do whatever the hell we like... is best.

Can you tell I'm on baby #3?

So in real life you don’t actually want support for formula feeding. You just want people to shut the fuck up about breastfeeding because it makes you feel bad.

I tried to breast feed both of mine but failed. Dd had tongue tie that wasn’t sorted properly and ds had CMPA

I still know breast is best with formula as sufficient.

This is so heartbreaking. Bless that woman. But this exemplifies the attitude of some HCPs - railroad through breast feeding regardless of the bigger picture and the individual circumstances.

🤣🤣🤣

It really isn’t
it is rather full of women writing things you don’t want to read though namely fact about breast milk, breastfeeding and formula .

the women on this thread saying they feel like failures are not being told that by anyone on this thread. They are being told things like

• breastfeeding is often hard to establish in the first weeks for a variety of reasons NONE of which are the mother’s fault if she tried and it didn’t happen
• the vast majority of women are able to breastfed just that many need a lot of support and access to specialist services such as tongue tie which are woefully overstretched
• formula feeding mothers are in in the vast majority and cannot possibly have experienced the stigma and abuse that many breastfeeding mothers have on an individual basis within and beyond friends and family settings extending to the general public and complete strangers

Not one of those points can be objectively described as militant.

@Whiskeypowers agreed. 'Breastfeeding militants' is just name calling - disrespectful an unnecessary.

Precisely this

My baby ended up in hospital because he had lost too much weight because of the push for breast feeding made me feel like I was poisoning my child if I gave him formula.

Breast was definitely not best in my case for either me or my baby, and I should have given in and given him formula much much sooner.

All the while he was deteriorating to the point of being hospitalised I was seeing health visitors, breast feeding specialists and other health professionals and not ONE of them said to me, it's ok, maybe you should move to formula feeding now. They didn't even say it in the hospital when he was hospitalised for losing weight!

I eventually moved off the hideous breast feeding conveyor belt of trying to feed, failing and expressing (it's virtually all I did for 4 months) myself and my baby stopped crying all the time, gained weight and I was finally able to enjoy and bond with my baby.

Breast milk may be better for baby, but breast feeding is NOT always best for mother or child.

This topic always turns into an absolute bun fight...

Obviously, breast feeding is superior to feeding your child the altered milk of another species. You'd have to be an idiot to argue otherwise, it's just a fact.

I have never been able to understand why a mother wouldn't even TRY to breastfeed, but ultimately, I don't need to - it's none of my business.

But it isn’t and it’s scientifically proven as you said

I breastfed one child for 14 months.

Another for about 14 days.

No one, and I repeat no one, would be able to tell me which one was which.

No one cares about this stuff once they grow up. Do we spend our daily lives congratulating grown adults because they received breast and it's best?

Threads like this just go round and round in circles.

Just. Do. You.

Nobody is that militant? This thread is full of BF militants

Actually, what I see is that it might as well be National Formula Week, from the tone of this thread.

Isn't it funny how low the bar can be by which people will label women militants and fundamentalist? Are they gathering on the dark web to plan an attack on Cow and Gate head quarters? Are they burning bottles on the village green? Are they mobilising to riot on the streets, smashing in the windows of cafes that tell breastfeeding women to cover up and go feed infants in the toilets?

No, those bitches are saying words like "Breast is Best", fuckers 😁

'Breast is best' is overly simplistic and unhelpful.

But "breast is marginally better when you consider results at a population level but it will make no noticeable difference to your child nor will it materially impact their future prospects" doesn't have the same ring to it.

While breast milk is scientifically best, formula is fucking amazing. It allows babies to thrive when circumstances mean that they wouldn't otherwise.

Sometimes formula feeding is a choice, sometimes it's not. But actually, it doesn't matter why someone chooses to formula feed - what needs to happen is that every mother gets the knowledge and support they need to ensure that baby is fed appropriately - whether that's formula or breast milk.

I breastfed my two. But to get to the 'bloody amazing' bit I had to endure SO MUCH pain, while my nipples toughened up. To the point that my partner was telling me to give up, because he could see how awful it was for me. The latch was good, there was nothing 'wrong' as such. Apparently it's not uncommon with women with paler nipples especially (but not exclusively). I can totally understand why someone else might give up at that stage.

'breastfeeding lobby'

'Breastapo'

'Breastfeeding militants'

Not nice language to describe people doing a natural thing.

*Isn't it funny how low the bar can be by which people will label women militants and fundamentalist? Are they gathering on the dark web to plan an attack on Cow and Gate head quarters? Are they burning bottles on the village green? Are they mobilising to riot on the streets, smashing in the windows of cafes that tell breastfeeding women to cover up and go feed infants in the toilets?

No, those bitches are saying words like "Breast is Best", fuckers* 😁

Brilliant point, well made 🤣🤣🤣

Breast is best. No doubt.

But in life, we all do what we've got to do. If that's formula, then it's formula. I'm not sure why people get so upset about it.

Choice is important. Support is important. But children do fine on formula and I hate how people are made to feel about it. When DD was tiny she was hospitalised and moved from breastmilk to formula. I always felt a bit hard-done-by but I discussed it recently with a GP friend and she said it was probably the right thing to do. DD’s a big grumpy teen now but perfectly healthy and we’re really close so it all works out in the end!

I will say that I was incredibly lucky and had zero nipple pain. As in, zero - I would say they were numb actually. For me the issue was more painful engorgement and oversupply, if I didn’t feed DD every few hours on the dot they would literally start spraying everywhere 😷 they would soak through breast pads and saturate my bed sheets, I remember once screaming to DH in a National Trust garden to throw me a muslin and quickly because they were actually spraying through my top.

made the jump to formula at 8/9 months, god I was relieved to let those bad boys dry up 😂 pregnant now with DC2, I will breastfeed for a couple of months to impart the majority of the health benefit then see how I feel.

These threads always infuriate me because those that can breastfeed always blame lack of support/ and or perseverance for choosing formula. Whilst that is the case for some, it certainly wasn't my experience. I had plenty of support and I persevered for 6 months. But every single feed was agonisingly painful, to the point that I couldn't feed in public because how much pain I was in. I used to dig my nails into the sofa and count the time down to get through it.

It never got less painful, despite the latch being checked multiple times by so many people. I never experienced this beautiful bonding from breastfeeding. All of the pro breastfeeding parents on mumsnet are so quick to say if you persevere you'll get past the pain and it will become this beautiful pleasurable experience. This may be the case for some, but certainly not all of us.

Plus don't get me started on those that say breastfeeding is free - it really isn't! The amount of hours you spend feeding, easily equates to a full time job. Are we really saying womens time is worthless?? Because if this was a reverse, there's no way men would put up with their time being so devalued!

Also, I never found formula and bottles a faff. That's another popular argument people like to throw in.

I completely agree that the focus should be on the the support rather than the 'breast is best' slogan because at the end of the day it's not always what is physically, emotionally or medically best. Feeding shame has got to stop. Why is it one side against the other - why isn't there more information and support and combination feeding?

Six months @AliceBear91 😯

I know that pain, but only for a couple of weeks. No way I could have dealt with it for six months. That's incredible. You are amazing.

Plus don't get me started on those that say breastfeeding is free - it really isn't! The amount of hours you spend feeding, easily equates to a full time job.

Eh??