Breastfeeding - the pressure to bottle feed from Mother in law

[josiejumper]

Hi folks
Just wanted to engage in chat with ladies in a similar position to me! awaiting the imminent arrival of bubba no; 2. my DC is 3 years old, and DH is looking forward to the imminent arrival and time off work to watch all the summer sports!!!!
The MIL pressured last time by 'snidey' comments about breastfeeding. I managed to BF for 16 months only because i'm dogged and was determined to do everything humanly possible to try and prevent eczema and allergies (his father's are awful!!). I was very careful throughout pregnancy not eating nuts, blah blah and was keen to wait to 6 months before weaning etc. My son was born in the hot summer of 2010 and if i had a £1 for every time either my mum or my MIL told me to give my BF baby water in a bottle i would be a very rich mummy indeed!! My MIL alwys said 'my boys turned out alright and they were bottle fed' - debateable as both were on solids by2 1/2 MONTHS OLD, and now both have autoimmune bowel or skin problems. Ok not proven but thats my theory......
there is so much documentation about the pressure to BF, but i just wanted to start a thread about peoples experience from the opposite angle.... and what we do about it.
Anxiously awaiting the day this baby arrives and i am asked to go upstairs to feed him as 'father in law' gets embarrrassed!..

your thoughts welcome xx
JJ

Wow, i've never encountered anybody who has been under pressure NOT to breastfeed! Hmm, well I realise that bottlefeeding has its benefits but as somebody who happily breastfed a bouncing baby girl for 8 months, I am pro-breastfeeding and encourage everybody to at least give it a try! Why not tell MIL that FIL should just leave the room if he's embarassed? gosh, how immature! Maybe show her one of the 'benefits of breastfeeding' leaflets that are often in doctors' waiting rooms? And even if she did raise two children 'to be fine' on bottle milk, point ou to here that new research strongly proves the benefits of breast! Amybe she's jealous that it's a way you can bond with the baby and she won't b able to?

I think you can legitimately call it a generational thing, in that women in the 70s were encouraged not only to have induced births but also to bottle-feed - it was part of that whole sciencey Brave New World approach to everything when people thought they were living in the future. I know that my mum only fed us when we were brought to her, and that was every four hours, for the days on end when she was in hospital post-labour. She was told that she wasn't making enough milk, as were all the other mothers I would guess - and yes, her supply wasn't established, but that was because she wasn't holding her babies and feeding them on demand which is what is necessary.

As a result of that, she thought it was normal not to make enough milk, and every time my ds fussed and needed feeding she would say that I wasn't making enough milk, and I should switch to bottles. She just couldn't countenance feeding on demand and thought there was something wrong with a baby that needed to be fed more than every four hours.

I do think it sad that so many women in the 70s lost confidence in their bodies and what they were capable of in this way. And I understand that my mum's increasingly panicked calls for me to use bottles were a result of this unlearning of her physical capabilities. She has since said that she wishes she had stuck with breast-feeding but didn't know what to do, and I feel bad that she has looked at me and the (long and happy) experience of bf that I had with my ds with a certain wistfulness. So if your mil is coming from a similar kind of background, of course you need to be firm with her (I was firm with my mum) but also understand where she is coming from and the experiences she had and pressures she was under when she made her parenting choices, all of which may look different to her now which may well be making her feel sad, or feel defensive and wilfully cling onto beliefs that make her feel better.

Good post Wallison that is exactly as my mother described her experience. The child psychologist of choice of the time was Dr Spock?? It's thanks to him that women like our mothers were persuaded not to BF believing that they either couldn't or that it wasn't the correct thing to do.

One of the very few books we had in the house while growing up was Dr Spock, Wholet! It really was quite the thing to put your trust in science because it had all the answers (without wishing to extrapolate too much I think it relevant that the moon landing occurred just a couple of years previously). My mum also told me that not only was she and all the other women on her ward induced and given enemas, but the doctor made a remark to her that women in labour were "just like animals, really" and that this was a distasteful thing.

My DS is 3 months and my mil has made it very clear she thinks I should bottle feed. She tells me breastfeeding is cruel, he doesn't get enough milk, feeding in public is disgusting etc etc. In the early days when breastfeeding was really tough I found her comments very upsetting and would cry after her visits. Now we have it more established and I can see ds putting on weight and doing well I feel more angry than upset. I always respond to her comments with facts, but she doesn't seem to listen. She's already asking how long I plan to breastfeed for so I just told her that the WHO guidance was 2 years.

My MIL is 59

The mistake is to think that you need to engage in a conversation about it and explain or justify. Just tell her, mildly, that is what you are doing- everyone is different- it is your choice. If she pushes just smile and nod and repeat. If FIL is embarrassed tell him, pleasantly, that he can find another room- there is no need for you to do so.

Hmm, I think it's generational/socioeconomic. My mother breastfed (and had a home birth) in the 1960s: DP's mum breastfed too. But they were of the kind of university-educated demographic that was very much into the natural childbirth etc movement. I always assumed I would breastfeed. And MIL in particular was incredibly encouraging.

Wow! Thanks for all the responses; particularly like the view of putting milk in a bottle do other people can feed babe. That seems like a waste of time and my dh id more than happy for me to bf. With a toddler, not sure I am going find time to express in the first place. I really struggled with my first baby after 2 weeks bf and I had to express for 10 days to allow my nipples to heal. HV thought he had tongue tie but gp refused to refer me to a specialist because baby was feeding and it was just me that was suffering. I spent 10 days in the bedroom expressing while MIL said 'just use formula' - so many issues I know, and yes maybe I should have just given in but I eventually bf again and after the first month of struggling it became the most natural and convenient thing in the world. I take on board all the comments; supportive and challenging and will simply use facts not fight, and politeness not politics! I look forward to bonding and maybe I will escape to my own private lair occasionally!!

My MIL was awful, if I mentioned I was tired then she would say "well if you were bottle feeding then I could have him for the night". When I asked why she bottle fed she said it was so DP wouldn't get "dependant" on her. And she told me to wean extremely early, because she weaned hers at 6 WEEKS!!