'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

I bet, and well done on getting through that. But obviously needing special care shows the body doesn’t always ‘know what it is doing’? I’m not trying to be spiteful, just encouraging you to see other people’s situations with the same compassion and understanding as you see your own.

I said body knows what it's doing in regards to breastfeeding

If it always knew what it was doing we wouldn't have hospitals in the first place.

I've said consistently that their are times when formula is needed. What I'm against is when it's jusy decided not to when all the evidence states it's best for the baby.

My milk was the one thing I could provide for my child during that time and was absolutely the right decision.

I'm also aware I was fortunate in my breastfeeding as once I'd gotten over the hurdle (twice) of learning how to get her on and her learning to latch etc I've had an easy ride with no issues. I know it's not that easy for everyone.

I do wish more mothers fed until at least 6 months. Ideally a year, but it's not always doable. Colostrum is so beneficial at the beginning. Does wonders.

You don't have to give formula while you wait for milk to come in. Your body knows what it's doing and will provide enough food.

And much good it does when your baby struggles to latch.

Formula is not needed in most cases. My baby had jaundice and was in special care. I pumped like fucking mad and she got what she needed and we got rid of the jaundice and then we learnt how to breast feed again.

There have been a few threads recently where mums asked for advice because they struggled to get any milk out with a pump. I have two friends who, although they breastfed very successfully, could never get much out with a pump at all.
I’m glad that now if I’m asked in future for advice on this I can tell them to simply ‘pump like fucking mad…’
I’m currently pregnant with my second. My first couldn’t latch due to a severe tongue tie, and I got minimal milk out from expressing. We got there in the end, but formula top ups were needed. Silly me for not ‘pumping like fucking mad…’ I must have been slacking. I’ll remember to be more aggressive with the pump this time if the occasion calls for it again.

There seems to be a lot of accusations of ignorance and lack of understanding towards women who formula fed for various reasons. But in my experience the most misinformed, biased and ignorant statements tend to come from mums who breastfed fed or expressed with relative ease.

@Wouldloveanother thank you😊

@britneyisfree why are you so sure the ‘body knows what it is doing’ with regards to breastfeeding but not anything else?

@BeanieTeen You did what was best for you and your baby and that's only the correct way!

The hospital did have a great pump - I forget the brand but it began with M. They were very supportive and encouraging which helped.
All my aunts, my mother... they all breastfed so it's my 'default'. My friend comes from a family who always formula feed and she tried breastfeeding but didn't have any support and gave up after a few weeks. With her second child I was away and she admitted that as she didn't have my encouragement she didn't try.

I had my child after her so I've always been an advocate for breastfeeding.

Honestly I'm just sharing my honest thoughts, you can try and catch me out or tell me to give my head a wobble, you won't change my thoughts. Breast is best and formula is the only alternative to that if you can't feed.

@Wouldloveanother because it has sustained the pregnancy. Breastfeeding is the second part of the job.

But if your body sustains the baby adequately as par for the course, why did your baby develop jaundice? I’m not being mean, just asking?

You'd have to ask God babe

how convenient.

YANBU OP. 2 of my babies latched on perfectly and fed like industrial vacuum cleaners. One had reflux and it was a challenge to get more into him than he puked back up. The other 2 were disabled and 1 really struggled to latch and the other couldn't latch at all. Breast is preferable for some mums and babies but not all. And the whole breast is best message can be hurtful for mums who want to but can't.

*That’s not true either.

As I said before, even one bottle of formula in hospital and total breastfeeding thereafter won’t count as ‘exclusive breastfeeding’. Most people that I know who breastfed gave one or two bottles in the hospital while they were waiting for their milk to come in, usually because the baby was jaundiced or similar (so the responsible thing to do in those circumstances).

I gave my daughter a bottle in the hospital on day 3, none for about 2 months after that, and for the 6 months after that she had probably one or two bottles a week. Just when I was really exhausted and couldn’t face a pumping session 😆 I would say I ‘breastfed for 8 months’. But those statistics wouldn’t.

So if you count mums like me, over a third of babies are still breastfeeding at 6 months old. Which is a very different picture to the 1% often trotted out.*

This is very true, and I think the 'all or nothing' thinking around breastfeeding can often be really discouraging to mothers who might prefer combination feeding. I encountered this a bit when my son was a baby- I bottle fed him for a few weeks and then went back to breastfeeding, and I wouldn't be included in the statistics even though I then breastfed him until he was 3.

Obviously I understand that giving formula can interfere with building up supply in the early days, but I know loads of mums who breastfed but had their partner giving some formula so they could sleep/have a break. It's a really good option for many people, yet I was never offered advice on how to successfully combination feed when I was losing my marbles with sleep deprivation and was keen to give it a try. Part of this was probably me projecting, but I really got the impression that my breastfeeding 'didn't count' if I have any formula because I wasn't EBF- I remember a HV saying to me, unfortunately we can't tick the EBF box because you've given baby some formula. While I know that's just how they measure it, the 'unfortunately' made me feel crap.

As has been said many times on these threads, mothers get it in the neck no matter what they do. The people who say they felt guilted around FF are right- some (but of course not all) health professionals and people in general can be very judgemental about it. I've also been shamed for breastfeeding too long/too openly/too often so there's no option that won't attract comment and judgement.

It would be good if we could accept that people have had different, but equally valid, experiences and work together to tackle the fact that feeding babies has become such an unnecessarily loaded subject and that breastfeeding support is so totally woeful for those who want and need it. It's really shit that new mothers get so stressed about what should really be private decisions, and I bet that stress and pressure does absolutely nothing to help increase breastfeeding rates.

@elliejjtiny Precisely that!

Where do the stats come from? No one except me and dh know how long our dc fed for - no one ever asked. I mean, when they were babies the health visitor asked but that was it. Only came up after that if I was needing a medication that didn't work well with bfing, but that would be my doctor not the dcs, iyswim.

It's hurtful that people who are born beautiful or rich have an easier ride through life. It doesn't make it untrue.

@BloodAndFire Eh?

Op you don’t understand your own argument. We’re not saying that its better to be fed than not at all. We are comparing breast feeding to formula feeding. Why do we need permission from you to say it’s fine to formula feed, why start a thread at all? The majority of the UK formula feeds. Just because some mothers have struggled and we’re not able to breastfeed thats on them for feeling guilty. No one is having a go at formula feeding. People are simply saying that the slogan ‘breast is best’’ is scientifically fact.

Exactly. If the OP had started a thread saying it’s better to formula feed your baby than not feed it at all, it would have been very short!

As I said earlier, ds1 had jaundice, and needed phototherapy. In fact, he ended up under two sets of lights because his serum bilirubin levels went up not down, when they started the phototherapy - and at that point, I was told I MUST supplement every breastfeed with a formula feed, and that I had to feed him every three hours.

I wasn't even given the option of pumping, whilst we were in hospital. I did get a hospital-style breast pump (rented from the NCT) once we were discharged, and I pumped like mad too - ages after each and every feed - and on day 1, I pumped a total of 4.5oz. On day 10, after days of intensive pumping, I produced 4.5oz. I never managed to produce more than 4.5oz any of the days.

Pumping doesn't work for some people.

As a new mother, whose baby was jaundiced, and was getting more jaundiced despite treatment, I relied on the advice of the doctors and midwives in the hospital, and gave ds1 formula. I knew, from my NCT classes, that giving formula would make it harder to establish breastfeeding, because the baby wouldn't have to work as hard for the formula as they did to breastfeed, so was likely to refuse to breastfeed, going forward - but I honestly wasn't given any choice in the matter, and didn't know enough to ask the right questions or to argue with the staff.

With ds2, I fed constantly - I used to joke that he had one breastfeed a day, starting when I woke up and ending when I went to bed - and then fed at night, of course. But despite this, he lost a lot of his birthweight - 10oz from a starting weight of 7lb2oz, and hadn't regained his birthweight at 6 weeks old.

When he was in hospital for the chest infection, the staff doing the handover at shift change outside the door of our room clearly referred to him as 'Failure to Thrive' - which was utterly terrifying to hear. And basically I was not allowed to take him home until I agreed to supplement his feeds with formula - and obviously the same thing happened - he stopped breastfeeding because formula was easier, and that was the end of that.

I never got any advice on how to boost my supply, or how to make my milk better - none of my boys ever gained weight adequately on my milk - and in his baby photos, you can see how pale and thin ds2 was, before I started supplementing with formula - but I couldn't see it at the time, because I was so convinced that the campaign was right, Breast was Best, and I was 100% committed to making it work. And I believed that it was entirely up to me to make it work - so when it failed, that was clearly MY failure.

The support wasn't there 29 years ago, and it still isn't there. It's easy to have a campaign saying Breast Is Best - but it is much harder to put in place the resources, help and support necessary to help new mums to breastfeed successfully.

I just slept with baby feeding, I suppose that isn't encouraged but I never lost any sleep with 4 of them so no tired mum and no tired dad either. I don't think everyone should do it, don't think everyone wants to do it but it worked for us.

When I weaned them it changed, not waking in the night but one who was great, one night owl who didn't like going to sleep and two who liked getting up early but that is another story.

I was really lucky with my HV. She was very like Joyce Grenfell, no children of her own but an absolute star with anything baby related, new mum related and particularly breastfeeding related. I make lots of milk, GP said if I was a cow I'd win a prize which I'm not sure if he meant it as a compliment. Anyway I was having trouble as I was so engorged that baby couldn't feed. HV showed me how to get the milk with a saucer under the boob. She came in for a couple of days at the start of her shift, lunch time and on her way home. It was a success and then the local maternity hospital started collecting my surplus milk. I don't think I'd have succeeded without her but 4 babies later and 5 years of breastfeeding and all down to that help at the right time.

Looking back I don't think I thanked her enough.

The support wasn't there 29 years ago, and it still isn't there. It's easy to have a campaign saying Breast Is Best - but it is much harder to put in place the resources, help and support necessary to help new mums to breastfeed successfully.

This is the real issue with the “beast is best” slogan. Not that’s not true and “fed is best” but that the support that needs to be put in place isn’t. I successfully breastfed two children (first was outside of the UK and support was available, second I worked out how to deal with the problems using mumsnet and kellymom) but when the third wouldn’t latch on, the only input I got from the midwives was “don’t worry, you’ve done it before, it’ll be fine.” Obviously it wasn’t.

I should have said I never pumped like mad, never pumped at all.

As a new mother, whose baby was jaundiced, and was getting more jaundiced despite treatment, I relied on the advice of the doctors and midwives in the hospital, and gave ds1 formula. I knew, from my NCT classes, that giving formula would make it harder to establish breastfeeding, because the baby wouldn't have to work as hard for the formula as they did to breastfeed, so was likely to refuse to breastfeed, going forward - but I honestly wasn't given any choice in the matter, and didn't know enough to ask the right questions or to argue with the staff.

It was sensible advice they gave you, unlike your NCT classes. Honestly, in that situation, where the simplest, quickest and most sensible solution is to just give a bottle of formula - any parent who instead of focussing on the situation at hand is still obsessing about ‘breast is best’ needs to give their head a wobble. I feel sorry for them - and their babies. They are not thinking about their child’s well-being, they’re being incredibly selfish and self- absorbed. It’s not about the baby’s needs then at all, it’s about their own breastfeeding pride and obsession.
When a child is jaundiced and in need of sustenance then that is not the time to fanny around umming and ahhing about the marginal benefits of breastmilk vs formula and pissing about trying to get a tiny drop of breastmilk via a pump, delaying the needed feed. It’s completely losing sight of what’s actually important.
A little bit of formula is not going to jeopardise anyone’s ‘breastfeeding journey’. Babies can have a bottle and still learn to latch on to a nipple, hence why many women express or combi feed. An initial bottle of formula in an emergency will not dry up your milk instantaneously. And one bottle of formula instead of breastmilk in an emergency will have absolutely 0% negative impact on your child’s health in the short or long term. And no, I’m not a scientist - but some things you don’t need a chemistry degree to work out, an average amount of brain cells and common sense should do it.