AIBU to ask in what way have I harmed my baby by not bf?

[LostMarbles99]

Before my baby arrived I decided I was going to ff. Ds is 10 months now and I still get little pangs of regret that I didn't try to bf.

There have been lots of threads on here recently about bf/ff and one person said how they felt so sad the baby didn't even get the first feed from its mother.

I totally get that some people cant bf but I didn't even try. Was this really wrong of me? Be honest?

[MadAsFish]

Oh I love how all these breasftfeeding fanatics make me feel so much better about having been unable to breast feed past three months (and only partially at that).
I tried everything but when I got to the point of pumping for an hour on each side to get half a feed, I had to give up.

[notundermyfoof]

Madasfish don't feel bad, 3 months is really good! Any breastfeeding at all is better than none and you obviously tried really hard. I don't think anyone is judging women who don't bf for a long time, its more not understanding why someone wouldn't try at all.

[annieorangutan]

I ffed my first but after bfing no 2 I loved it and definitely will do it again. My second goes to 40 hrs childcare with me a week and has not had 1 day off sick in well over a yeae, despite starting at 7 mths. Its such a chance from getting all the bugs with dc1 and made working a lot less stressful.

[Wuxiapian]

YABU.

You have not harmed your baby in any way.

[Minifingers]

3 months of breastfeeding means your baby has been breastfed longer than about 3/4's of the UK population.

And believing that breastfeeding has important benefits - and saying so on a thread like this - does not qualify you as a fanatic. Ok?

[Caitlin17]

whatshallwedo oh of course, thank you, I'm such an idiot for not thinking of that and of course nothing else I did made any difference at all, or the fact that both his (non breast fed parents) enjoy excellent health.

Who knows, maybe if I'd put up with the misery until he was 3,4,5 he'd be Nobel prize winning Olympian.

[Writerwannabe83]

Choosing not to breast feed means he missed out on all the benefits of breast milk but you certainly haven't harmed your son by giving him FF. It wasn't poison last time I checked....

[BlingBang]

... unless you were one of those poor souls in China!

[Writerwannabe83]

- good point BlingBang. By the way, just before anyone starts shouting at me, I'm smiling because the witty comeback made me laugh, not the actual poisoning

[PopiusTartius]

In my family (me, DS, DD and DH) I am the ONLY ONE who was not breastfed.

I am also the only one without any allergies.
I am also the one with an IQ higher than Einstein and Carol Vorderman, apparently.

However, despite this high IQ I got completely sucked into breastfeeding longer and more intensively than I planned, esp with DS1. THAT I do regret. I was miserable and tied. If anything did harm in the first few months it was that.

The plural of anecdote is not data, I grant you. But it's as near as fucking dammmit in this house.

Make and own and celebrate your choices. Enjoy your little one and be happy and everyone can fuck off. It makes no difference when they are eating chicken nuggets off the dog in 3 years anyway.

[Goldmandra]

Wouldn't it be lovely if we lived in a world where one person's experience was statistically significant?

Just think of all the money that could be saved in research if you could just ask some random person on the street what they or their parents did and safely use the result to write health policies.

Only one person need participate in each drugs trial.

You could use one case study to plan vaccination programmes.

The experience of one person could be used to safely write all education policies. Actually, I think Liz Truss already does that!

You could use one experience of someone getting a job at their first interview to justify withdrawing all JSA and one fraudulent claimant to wipe out the need for DLA. How much would that save!

If only it really worked how so many MNers think it does!

[Jenny70]

It is known to be the best food for your baby, and you've chosen to give him a poorer substitute... time will tell if he develops any health problems as a result.

But you will make many more parenting decisions that are sub-optimal... you may stay with a partner who is abusive, you may feed them beef mince that is actually horse, you may give him a cold sore, you may leave a door open and he jams his fingers, you may work on the day it's his nativity and he feels the only lobster with noone to watch him.... you make the best decisions you can, and try and minimise the guilt when you know things are not ideal.

[AlwaysSnoozing]

I think my DTs did better on FF than BF purely because I was stuck in the misery of MH issues, BFing for just two weeks meant the stress, fear and worry increased (or rather, BFing didn't do it, but the way I reacted to it, did) and despite a ton of support from all sides (as I was a teen mum, there was loads!) I chose to FF. I had only the most basic of bonds with my DTs until after I stopped and bonded much better afterwards and also made sure their needs was met quicker and better, so I think, personally, stopping FF was best for us all. It was only slightly less than a fortnight of BFing.

BF is proven to statistically improve health etc; but of course lifestyles associated with BF/FFing are related (and connected). On a smaller, individual scale, who knows? Sometimes FF is best for the mother and baby (like in m case).

[Phineyj]

Even the peer reviewed research shows a smallish difference in outcomes. It would probably be significant at a population level if everyone did it (bf) for an extended period, but given that at the level of the individual baby you can't tell, it is a big ask of women to do it if they don't want to. It is our choice what we do with our bodies - or it should be.

[MyGoldenNotebook]

I worry about this too. I did BF but only for two weeks as I had a mad panic about supply issues / mental health issues etc. I then couldn't forgive myself and developed pretty bad PND which I'm still being treated for. Much better than I was :-)

My fully BF husband has eczema and my DD now has a few small patches herself and I do wonder if she could have avoided that if I had BF longer. She also has a little cough on and off. I'll never know.

Essentially most sensible articles seem to suggest that for the baby of an educated, sensible mother in the first world it will make little difference. I'm trying to focus on making better choices in the future. DD is now 17 months.

X

[Feminine]

I wasn't breast-fed.

I'm really well clutches kitchen table most of the time.

I BF 2 of mine, and mixed the other. In real life I never meet mothers who care either way.

Maybe they are harbouring unusual opinions...that they bring out here.

Really seriously. No one other than here, ever even mentions it.

Not in the street.

Not at Mother & baby groups...

Not at Dinner parties

Not in the playground....you get the picture?

You will always have done the right thing by your baby. :)

[Monetbyhimself]

Lemon curd in cheap white bread. The type that sticks to the roof of your mouth.

[Feminine]

with formula Monet ?

[ImaginativeNewName]

You haven't harmed your baby at all and I say that as a bright, fit, exceptionally healthy and exclusively formula-fed ex baby.

[whatshallwedo]

Caitlin17 maybe he would but we shall never know.

[Retropear]

Are you going to ask that when he's weaned and not eating 10 a day or eats crappy meat or too much meat,too much sugar and too much fat?

Are you going to ask that when he starts sitting in front of screens or perhaps doesn't get as much outdoor or exercise time as he should be?

Are you going to ask that when you're not reading to him evey day or let him play with crappy non educational toys or not sitting down to a proper sit down meal?

No thought not.

Bfing is but one of many parenting ideals and choices.I'd give it as much thought as any other parenting ideal you didn't pull off(many of which will have a far bigger impact and are worthy of more worry if worry floats your boat).

It's a marathon not a sprint.

[Tailtwister]

This again.

You made your decision OP and that's it. No, you haven't harmed your baby by ff. For me it stands to reason that bf has been found to have beneficial qualities. It's made specifically for babies, changes over time as the baby gets old, has components that are impossible to replicate.

We all have to make decisions for our children and how they are fed as babies is one tiny part of that. I have had to make choices which I know aren't the absolute best in isolation, but are the best in the long run.

[Thatisall]

Serious answer? You haven't harmed him. Breast milk has 'extras' that formula cannot replicate. You haven't harmed him, he just hasn't had the extras.

Other answer? Why start a thread rehashing a conversation hat has already happened and already caused a massive hoo hah (I love the phrase hoo hah)? You already know the answer.

[Minifingers]

"Breast milk has 'extras' that formula cannot replicate. You haven't harmed him, he just hasn't had the extras."

Errr, no. Breast milk does not contain 'extras'. If someone came up with an artificial blood tomorrow which sustained life and health but lacked most of the elements of blood and was consequently associated, as formula is, with higher rates of illness and hospital admissions at a population level we wouldn't talk about blood having 'extra' ingredients and holding the artificial blood up as the 'norm' against which to judge it. Formula is a rough approximation which lacks most of the elements of breast milk , but is adequate to sustain life and growth. The fact that there are significant identifiable differences in terms of health and development between populations of breast and formula fed babies (which persist even after the research has controlled for a range of other variables such household income and education) suggests that the deficiencies of formula DO matter at some level.

It's also worth considering that breast milk, like blood, is an extremely complex substance with some elements being only recently identified (like stem cells); their role in the body still poorly understood and difficult to study.

The fact that scientists are now identifying by MRI subtle structural differences between the brains of formula and breastfed babies suggests to me that there is far more that we don't understand about this issue than we do understand.

And I often wonder how people are able to make such confident assertions about such a complex issue, when research is ongoing and is constantly throwing up new areas of interest in relation to the effects of breast milk on the body.

[Thatisall]

mini are you actually suggesting that the Op has harmed her child then?? Really??