Shocked by USA court ordering mum to stop BF

[mumyes]

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/breastfeeding-custody-dispute-judge-ruling-child-b2274776.html

Scary.

What an absolute bastard of a 'father'

This.

Well, formula then. It isn’t a dirty word. Women need to decide what role men, in a legal and cultural sense, should play in their children’s lives. On one hand we have posters screaming that more dads should take shared parental leave to minimise the effect on mum’s career, that her staying home for a year is ‘sacrificing herself to raise his children’. On the other we have ‘men should be very much on the back burner until the baby is much older and no longer breastfeeding or as attached to mum’. But of course either way he should be paying and seen as deadbeat/abusive for ‘not supporting her enough and prioritising his career’ or abusive through ‘wanting access to the baby when it’s breastfed’.

If we’re talking about what’s best for the baby then there should be a uniform approach as all baby’s needs are the same. But we’re not, we’re talking about what’s best for the mum, which is why the answer will be ‘well it depends on the circumstances’.

It's an important difference because there is clear evidence that breast milk is best. You can't just brush over the fact that this means the baby will have formula instead of breast milk. You need to factor this into your thinking about what is best for baby .

Is that benefit large enough to override a dad spending proper time with his baby, especially given she will be breastfed something like 80% of the time still? The court obviously don’t think so, and I’m inclined to agree.

You are entitled to your opinions. I'm just saying you should base it on facts - which are not that this baby can be given expressed breast milk. Also don't assume that the mum can continue to breastfeed if the baby is not being given the breast 20% of the time.

Article says dad wants, and court ordered, overnight visits. Jackasses, both the dad and the judge.

Women are gradually having their rights and their children stripped from them by men. Even in Iran divorced women are allowed to keep their children exclusively with them until they are 5 years old.

The baby was reportedly breastfeeding still every hour.

I can’t, none of us can really, because we don’t know the facts. The court will have considered all possible arrangements before coming to this one. They’ve decided that a relationship with her dad is worst more than 20% of the breastmilk she receives and that there is no other way of working around it. I don’t think that’s an unfair decision.

That’s more than a newborn, I don’t really believe that if I’m honest, not for a 7 month old (and yes I was breastfeeding at that age).

@disappointedyet

Your situation sounds a little similar to mine. I split with baby's Dad when I was preg and he was sending me all kinds of messages saying I should bottle feed so that he could have baby overnight from newborn age. It was really stressful at the time. He never took me to Court and in the end he turned into a huge advocate for BF.
Alot of friends and relatives had babies same time as ours and when he could see the trouble everyone had with vomming after every feed, reflux, special milk etc he was glad we EBF. I tried expressing and it never worked. My son is nearly 2 and I'm still letting him BF at night. He's never had formula. I have no issue with formula if it suits the Mother but this is fucking disgraceful. What an evil man. Swear the USA is so barbaric.

Came on to say exactly the same thing.

What we do know is that the mum reported that she can't express. You can't ignore that fact when making your argument. As I said before, you also cannot assume it is a fact that the mother will be able to continue to breastfeed. I am just pointing out that you have ignored the fact we do know and introduced as a 'fact' something we don't know. As also said before, you are entitled to your opinion. You are not entitled to ignore fact and make up facts in order to substantiate it.

Sounds a fairly stupid order anyway. A requirement that the mother "use every effort" is going to be near impossible to police. Are they going to require her to produce a blow-by-blow account of what she tried and when, how long the baby cried for, how much feed she took, how much she spat out or sicked up in distress, etc etc? It just isn't sustainable.

I did, I addressed that and said I still don’t think it justifies the baby not spending time with her dad.

It is not the first case in the US. Other mothers in the US have been told to stop breastfeeding so dads can have babies overnight.

@Cuppasoupmonster

Or how about the Dad in this case did what my son's Dad did and built a bridge and got over it? After all the initial animosity when I was pregnant he was there at the birth and throughout my time EBF I allowed him to come to my home to spend time with his son, I also took baby round to see his family and friends, let him take baby out in pram, we would go for meals together. All of this while we were very much not together. We grew up and were civil around each other because we wanted what was best for our child. He has grown from strength to strength a a father as a result and I love watching them together. Plus now he's an active toddler his day out with Daddy is a much needed day for me to get things done!

Sorry can't unbold my text this site is driving me mad. It keeps adding extra paras too.

Makes the father’s priorities pretty clear, and they have nothing to do with his daughters’ best interests.

This is absolutely disgusting, I'm fuming on her behalf.

How do you know any of that is possible for this couple? Maybe they live very far apart and this simply isn’t an option with his job. It would fit in with the longer visits. Like I said, the court will have considered this. But foaming at the mouth about ‘misogyny’ is always the default opinion on here.

Then he should move closer to his baby, that's his problem, not the baby's. She didn't ask to be born. And at such a young age prolonged separation from her primary carer is not healthy.

I'm not screaming misogyny just basic biology and common sense.

Did you breastfeed? I don’t think it’s fair to call bf mothers manipulative. I found that the urge to feed/ comfort/ soothe my child was really quite primordial. Logically I know it’s all hormones and chemicals but I’d of fought the severing of that time too through the courts if necessary. My pfb was a bottle refuser, fed hourly and Pumping was unproductive. Short regular visits are surely better for baby. Six months time and everything will have changed. Baby was five months old and already in court, how much time and space could he really have given her?

I don’t know about anyone else but my bf dc would never take a bottle from me. They know that your breasts are right there and will wail and try and suckle through clothing.

If he had time to take her to court then he had time to go and see her and fit it around the Mums breastfeeding. As pp have said she will be going onto solids soon fucking stupid all this disruption at this point.
I'm not saying the Mum is an angel, I don't know her or the case, the pair of them need to compromise and grow up.

This!

The decision to breastfeed (or not) has nothing whatsoever to do with anybody other than the mother and baby.

It should be utterly unquestionable.

What on Earth are you talking about? 😂

’Court cases’ don’t require presence at court twice a week for the best part of a year. Stop talking nonsense.