To feel upset about sil not breastfeeding?

[wheelygirl]

hi, new here so pls be gentle!

My dh's brother and his wife had a baby boy four days ago. She said she had a lovely birth and was out of hospital the next day.

We visited them yesterday at home and sil was bottle feeding. Now, I don't give a shit how people feed their children, I don't have any kids (am pg)But I got quite upset because her ds kept trying to breastfeed from her. He was refusing the bottle and kept nuzzling into her chest. Her breasts were leaking as well and she told me she was hand expressing and chucking it away. I asked her why she didnt give it to her ds and she told me that she doesn't want him to get used to breast milk. He had the formula milk then vomited it back up five minutes later. He was really crying and it made me feel awful when he was turning his head to her breast and opening his mouth.

She then went on to tell me that he hasn't even had colostrum because it was too much of a faff to get him to latch on. Colostrum is the important stuff right?

Why do I feel so upset about this? I felt her ds was doing something so instinctive and she should at least have tried to breastfeed. I understand that some women have great difficulty breastfeeding and formula is a more than adequate alternative but at least try and do it.

Aibu?

It is more than a quality of life issue for babies!

For instance my son had a type of Leukaemia when he was three. I spent a long New years eve in hospital with him, the ward was quiet and the duty consultant and i were chatting about outcomes, she tentatively asked how he had been fed as a baby, I told her that he was breastfed exclusively for four months until i began weaning him but he was breastfed until he was 12 months. She said that there had been studies that indicated that the outcomes were better for breast fed babies. Which leads me to think that the benefits are longer lasting than just through babyhood.

still, you'll notice I did not say the evidence is uncontroversial in every respect - I was speaking in general terms, and in general terms, the evidence that not breastfeeding produces negative outcomes is not weak, or controversial at all....in all settings, developed and developing world.

This is not 'spin'. It's actually important stuff - the stuff where the evidence is strong, as you acknowledge (principally breast cancer, gastro and chest infections but there are several others) makes a difference to the quality of life of many families in this country...yes, on an individual level.

The research 'problem' with any health behaviour in individuals is that you cannot point to one single behaviour and say, for certain, 'X caused Y' , and I'm including smoking and alcoholism in that.

The evidence that smoking causes lung cancer and alcoholism causes liver disease is 'only' epidemiological and retrospective anyway - you can't randomly assign people to smoke or drink. You find out that 'excess' mortality and morbidity occurs in smokers/drinkers, and work backwards from that.

However, there are people who show no ill effects of smoking and drinking, and who die age 90, so clearly the links between smoking and drinking and poor health are more complex, in individuals, than a direct cause and effect.

You say "not breastfeeding is unlikely to make any difference on an individual level to health." That's a totally illogical statement. Epidemiology is a collection of observations from thousands of individuals.

What I think you mean is that 'we cannot ever be sure what difference breastfeeding is going to make to any individual' and of course that's as true for breastfeeding/formula feeding as it is for smoking and alcoholism.

Note for the very literal-minded: I am not saying that formula feeding is the same as making your baby smoke or drink alcohol.

Hair i repeat change the record, you are repeating the same statements over and over again.

I couldnt give a toss if you cant understand why i did not BF or why i didnt want to, i have told you but according to you i am insecure

Well said Tiktok, so good to see some proper understanding of science in this thread. but - die thread die!!

Die!

Another post to contribute to the end of this thread....

Why the vitriol? I really pity some of the babies being breastfed from women with this bile coursing around their systems.

I really wish Mumsnet would move these threads where they should be as soon as they start. All it does is cause bad feeling and there's just no need for it.

Agrees with Zimm

seriously without wanting to be mean some of you will look back at your obsession with breast feeding in about 10 years/post-babies and wonder why you were getting so bloody worked up. Again without wanting to hurt anyone's feelings I do wonder what your husands etc think when the woman they married gets so wrapped up and obsessed in boring mumsy issues like this one. I adore my baby daughter and talk of babies but even I find this boring on here. The post by the woman who mentioned her kidney transplant I thought would help some people get some perspective on life and how lucky they are to only have this to get so worked up about, but clearly some of you are too wrapped up in your own agendas to notice what she had to say. I totally agree if you feel that passionate about this then do something productive about it-being a support to new mothers and your friends who've just had babies/ donating milk etc, rather than making sniping silly comments on the internet.

But this is in AIBU - where else should it be, Lying?

What you should have said was my baby didn't enjoy a bottle not I've never seen a baby enjoy a bottle, I'm not surprised yours didn't enjoy the bottle it was used to bf the same way as my expressed bottle fed baby didn't enjoy me trying to bf him! Have abit of sense

Of course bf can lower the risks of an indervidual contracting certain illnesses/ diseases, even so there are other factors that effect this and other things you can do to help prevent things such as breast cancer, I can't help thinking that breast fed or not, if you have a poor diet, unhealthy lifestyle for the most part of your life it won't make a blind bit of difference how you were fed as a baby ( regardless of what the more pushy bf think! )

The point is to balance all the pros and cons of bf/ ff and decide what is right for you and your child, bf is not always going to be the right choice for every women and regardless of what some people think it is not all about the child, the mothers physical and mental health is a very impotent factor for a baby to thrive, the constant statements that women should at least try/ should have tried harder , feeling upset for the poor ff babies is insensitive. Better a healthy happy ff baby then a physically and emotional over wrought mother, can't see how this can be good for breast milk or a baby's emotional health.

It should be in 'breastfeeding', tiktok

In fact I'm going to report every single one that I see here in future. It's not the issue that spoils things, it's the rabid excuses for human beings posting on it with such venom towards other women. I'm fed up with it.

No, it should absolutely not be in 'breastfeeding'.

That folder is primarily for support and information to do with feeding issues - though as in any 'conversation' topics can twist and turn.

In fact, in that folder, when topics and posters do get heated, someone will always point out that the thread should go into AIBU, where it is permitted to speak more frankly and (ahem) spiritedly :)

The OP was perfectly suited to AIBU, and the discussion as it has evolved is no more heated than you get every day in this folder.

To ask MN to have threads removed and replaced is being a busy-body, don't you think?

tiktok... If you think threads like this are of value, then fine. I don't. I think this is an ongoing pop at women who don't breastfeed for whatever reason. Busybodying in the extreme, I would say, but with the added 'bonus' of actually hurting other women.

I'm sick and tired of seeing this same old thing coming up here with the sheer purpose of stirring up a hornet's nest. Some posters are decent and some are obviously out for a fight. If you like to refer to that as 'spirited', that's your prerogative. I don't agree with you.

I can ask MN to do anything, they will do what they think is right regardless of my views. For now, I'm very happy to keep posting on this thread because it will soon fall off the end of the world... :)

But breastfeeding also produces negative outcomes as well. Principally for the mental health of many women. It comes across as thinking that mental health at the time of feeding is less important than the theoretical risk of breast cancer somewhere down the line.

It can also produce negative outcomes re. the asthma studies I mentioned.

What you cannot say is that breast is 100% best for 100% of people 100% of the time. So, breast is not always best. It simply isn't. There is absolutely no point in looking at breastfeeding out of any kind of context. Because breastmilk is provided by one human being for another it is, at best, disingenuous to just focus on it being best for the baby. We are not automatons or vessels.

To declare that all women should at least attempt to breastfeed because they have had a baby is no different to saying all women should at least have a baby because they have become pregnant. To condem, judge, query - whatever you want to call it - a woman who chooses what to do with her own body is didactic.

The OP's response has been dressed up as sympathetic, noble even, but we should be clear that she was taking a moral stance against a woman's right to choose. Feminism is not solely for breastfeeders.

And, on a last note, in my experience you get more support from the NHS if you are considering or wanting to abort your baby than if you are considering or wanting to formula feed them.

I think the OP knew that this would turn nasty

It's a guaranteed bunfight

You're saying that 'breastfeeding' is for support and information... well, I guess you'd include this thread then, tiktok, posting on it as you have been. If you say that it doesn't, then the breastfeeding topic needs to be expanded to 'fit' these 'fun' threads, surely?

... and maybe if it was a thread in 'breastfeeding', the responses would be more measured and actually useful. AIBU is a bunfight and it's unfair to post sensitive (important) threads on it because in all likelihood, the 'amusement' and entertainment value diminishes it. Posters have been really very upset on this thread and I think that 'trumps' the 'enjoyment' aspect. It's really going too, too far.

It doesn't have to be.

But you can hardly blame people for getting worked up when it strays from intelligent debate into people making statements that they are sorry for other posters' babies because they are miserable.

razzle, no one sensible thinks that breastfeeding is always 100 per cent the right/only thing to do 100 per cent of the time, so enough with the straw man argument, if you don't mind.

People who understand the issue and know that it's complex, personally and culturally, recognise that for some individuals, the emotional/mental price of breastfeeding is too high; people who understand the issue do indeed put it firmly in the 'woman's own right to choose what she does with her body' category, and saying what women 'ought' to do ('at least try' for example) is out of place.

So you are railing and flailing against a viewpoint that hardly anyone actually holds.

Not dead yet..come on thread....

lying, I don't think this thread is especially informative or supportive with women's own feeding issues, no....it would have no (comfortable) place in the breastfeeding folder, either.

This is fairly robust debate, which is typical for AIBU, and a lot less robust and combative than many threads here. It's not kind if people get upset, but that does happen on web forums when people's personal choices/experiences appear to be up for criticism, and in the end, grown ups have to make the choice to not read, hide the thread, or otherwise disengage.

Im pleased this thread is here after being told on another one that i had gave my DD's the equivelent of crack as i FF.

Its made me realise that i absolutely did the right thing by not BF when i wasnt comfortable with it

so i say op thanks for starting this thread

you get more support from the NHS if you are considering or wanting to abort your baby than if you are considering or wanting to formula feed them

Out of curiosity, just how much support do you actually need to formula feed a baby? Beyond knowing how to clean equipment, and how much they're meant to take? Of course there's more support for those considering abortion - it's a far bigger deal, surely?

I hated bfing.
I bf my first two for 6 months each and found it the biggest struggle ever, and believe me I gave it my all.
By the time my 3rd came along I wasn't prepared to go through it again, so she went straight onto the bottle - what a blessed relief it was...no regrets whatsoever!

OP - you are being unreasonable, and I am made slightly uncomfortable by the way you have worded your OP as well. Your apparent emotional involvement in this baby that is not yours, is inappropriate. It is NOTHING to do with you....that child is NOT suffering, and by Christ, if the mother of that infant read your OP, I would think she'd be compelled to scratch your judgemental, but inexperienced eyes out.
Hope bf goes well for you when the time comes - if it doesn't, then you'll be eating your supercilious words.

Then tiktok you and I have been reading different threads. There have been quite a few people on this thread who have firmly been appalled at women who don't 'at least try'. Including at least one emoticon.

I think you are immune to it because you simply don't notice it. So maybe you should read it back, the thread is dripping with it, including the implications in the OP's original statement that her SIL 'should have at least tried'!

But at least we are agreed that the 'breast is best' mantra is false.