To hope that I can ask about FF without being shot down in flames?

[Darksideofthemoon88]

I'm interested in WHY people choose to FF if not for medical reasons (ie they can't because of medication they have to take, or because their baby was very premature and is unable to suckle) - I've seen a lot of threads where people assert that FF was best for them/their family/their baby or that they chose to FF without trying BF, and I'm curious as to why. Genuinely curious I'm not interested in fighting with anyone about what's best or right; I'd just like to read about why people FF because I honestly don't know. In the interests of full disclosure though (I know how MNs feel about this! ), I am a breastfeeding mother.

Do you presume I'm white, mc, highly educated Se Englander, minif ?

DS was hauled out by forceps which ripped me to shit. A year later i was operated on to 'fix' me: episiotomy sewn too tightly, nerves trapped in scar tissue. Son is nearly 3 and I'm still in pain. If they told me a vagina i mplant would take all that away and give me back my mooncup sex life, I'd bloody jump. I was in such agony, I hope you never experience such.pain.

On that chertful note, it's zzz time for me - and the new bastard mobile site is making it nigh on impossible to type

Actually what I can see is that grown women don't like anyone raising concerns about the decline of breastfeeding as the normal way to feed babies, because they think nobody should ever question other people's lifestyle choices, even when these choices have implications for their children

The original question
I'm interested in WHY people choose to FF

I'm guessing minifingers and the other bf evangelists saw the words 'ff' and hoiked their judgeypants so far up their own arses that they covered their eyes and didn't see what the actual question was!

Once again - This is a thread about why women choose to formula feed. You did not choose to formula feed so you can't possible answer the question.
The thread title made it very clear this was a thread about why women ff not a thread about ff versus bf.
Therefore the only reason you came on this thread was to judge and put down other mothers for the choices they make. You have not come on this thread to be kind or helpful or to promote breastfeeding. You have come on this thread with the sole intention of being nasty and unpleasant to other mums and to stealth boast about how much better you are than mums who ff.

I formula fed because that was what I wanted to do, it was as simple as that. My only regret with regard to breastfeeding is that I ever let myself be persuaded to try it in the first place. By day four of lack of sleep and a constantly screaming, starving baby I gave up and realised that my gut instinct to use formula had been correct all along.

Also, come the end of the pregnancy I really just wanted my body back. I also wanted to be able to let my husband and the grandparents do some of the feeds so that I could get the occasional break.

Those were my choices. It suited us well and it was no-one else's business anyway.

I'm back at work FT on Tuesday when my DD will be 21 days old. I work 8.5 hour days, 5.5 days a week. We are expressing/source/mix feeding at the moment.

The NHS budget for bf support and promotion is a tiny fraction of what formula companies have to promote formula so I don't think we can underestimate the power these corporations have over our so called feeding choices. This from catherinemm - do you honestly honestly think that heavily pregnant and making decisions that a mum to be is so stupid as to make any decision based on advertising? Nothing could be further from the truth.

What a Mum does often is based on a myriad of factors and reasons unless you have decided beforehand becase of previous experiences or for whatever reason (and nothing wrong with that). I had the best of intentions in trying BF but a horrendous birth and near loss of my sanity stopped me 6 weeks in. From then on FF just suited me and my life, I needed to know whether my baby had eaten enough, how much baby had had, I needed routine of some sort to restore that sanity. If I had carried on BFing I don't think I would have the bond I now have with my DCs as I was starting to resent DC1 during BFing. There was nothing special about it AFAIC, it was awful. It just is not for everyone, we have choices, we are allowed to take them. Advertising has nothing to do with it! The gut feeling of what to do right for your baby comes from deep inside.

One of the main things wrong with this idea that somehow cultural differences matter when it comes to breastfeeding is the problem that that in itself matters. It doesn't. Formula feeding is not akin to doing something awful to your child. Whether you come from a working / middle / upper class family absolutely nobody cares how you fed your child apart from a very small minority of busy bodies. You also have to wonder if some of the cultural aspects are skewed by some women in some groups feeling forced to breastfeed which is absolutely awful.

You also get odd women like me who don't fit anywhere - older mother, accepted into Oxford, full scholarship to private school, from middle class breastfeeding background but raised by single mother with health issues (hence the scholarship), living in rural south norfolk.

Still didn't want to breastfeed. I'm such a rebel ().

I also don't care about the decline of breastfeeding in the UK. We are lucky enough to live in a country where we have excellent hygiene facilities, good health care and an abundance of healthy food to choose from (including chocolate buttons). Choosing ffing in those circumstances isn't going to do any harm to anyone. If formula was that bad it would be banned or you'd have to buy it behind a little dodgy screen like cigarettes.

It's a shame so many people are ready with their judgy pants to judge others. I really couldn't care less if someone wants to breastfeed, or breastfeed in public or even to age 5 or whatever. As long as that child is happy that's great. It's a shame many breastfeeding mums can't feel the same way about ffers. .

Wow. I'm STILL trying to catch up on all the posts you wonderful people have added since I last had chance to read the thread. It's been fascinating , and I haven't disappeared in case anyone thinks I started a row and then hid (I'm up to the point where there's a bit of a Minifingers V everyone else argument going on). Thanks for the replies though - never thought I'd start a thread so popular!

I don't like the argument that women don't BF because of "lifestyle choices" as if that is a bad thing. Every choice is life is a lifestyle choice.

I don't know what I'm going to do but if I end up going back to work when the baby is 4 months, I'll likely FF, or at least mix feed. Is that a valid "lifestyle choice" or is that me being a bad mother? I don't have to go back to work - DH could support us, and I could dedicate the whole year to BF-ing, but I don't want to - I've worked hard at my career and I'm good at it. Is that a "lifestyle choice"? Partly because of my income, this child will grow up in a nice house & be sent to a good school & be well-nourished and go on nice holidays and have lots of lovely middle class choices. So do the lifestyle benefits of the income from the job that prevented me from BF-ing make it ok?

Now what if DH wasn't around and I HAD to go back to work - presumably I would be less of a selfish mum in that case and my decision to FF wouldn't be a "lifestyle choice"? Or is FF for any reason other than a double masectomy inexcusable?

BF bullies are illogical and can sod off.

*every choice IN life

I make that point to back up the fact we live in an ff culture, whatever the NHS says to try and turn it around. Obv individual choices are complex but we make these choices in the context of formula ads, marketing materials etc. the power of this stuff is incredible. I'm not saying I am better cos I didn't use formula - I expect and know that ads / marketing have influenced many other aspects of my life. Even the phrase breast is best was coined by the ad men back in the 50s to make bf seem ideal and unobtainable, something that may be hard so people thought about formula.

When women don't want to breastfeed from the start because they don't like the idea of it, I think that must be cultural? I know quite a few people who felt like that, I'm really interested in the psychology behind it. I wasn't "exposed" to BF at all before having my DS yet always liked the thought of it and even had dreams about doing it successfully and loving it before DS was born. No idea what made me like that!

One of the reasons I'm glad I BFed is because so many of my friends where it didn't work out felt incredibly guilty about it and I think NOT being able to could have made my PND worse. (I live in an area with higher than average BF rates)

I can see why people FF and mix feed 2nd and subsequent children even if they BF their first, having to juggle demanding older children and a cluster feeding, night waking newborn without family or paid support must be very tough. ..

I don't live in a FF culture at all - people who FF in my social circle are incredible judged.

Excellent post Gennz.

Makes me really sad to read people say that they dreaded feeds because they were in agony BF. No one should have to power through it in misery when there's a perfectly safe and healthy alternative.

Mini you have to look at those cultures highlighted more carefully. Having a little baby rely on you for life support 24/7 is absolutely difficult, especially if you throw in other children you may have in the mix, and many British families are of a nuclear variety, with no immediate support network. In African and Indian cultures as people have highlighted, tgey are surrounded by family and friends who help the mum, ensure that mum devotes all her time to the baby. Usually in the UK you might find a similar set up, in such cultures though not all of the time.

My friend is African, she lives here in the uk, no family nearby and dh works away, so no immediate support network. She bf her 2 dc until 2 year, she just had another baby, she has had to mix feed as she cannot be confined to the sofa bf and it's hard work without an immediate support network. Historically in those countries Africa, Asia, formula is expensive, clean not reliable sources of clean running water so women had to bf, plus they had an immediate support network to help, if baby could nit be bf by tge mum, there are friends, Aunties, sisters, in hand to do that. We don't have that in Western countries. The last thing on a new mums mind who is struggling is declining bf rates, and statistics, it's getting that baby fed whatever way and restoring a good state of well being as much as possible.

I don't think there is anything wrong with any mother choosing to formula feed for whatever reason at all. But I do care about the decline of breastfeeding in the UK because a wealth of female skill and knowledge has been nearly eradicated for the profit of big corporations. It's staggeringly naive to say the marketing of formula doesn't influence a pregnant woman's choices at all, marketing is insidious and highly effective. The formula companies are much more tightly controlled now, but they did terrible things to push their products and to erase support for breastfeeding and it is their fault that breastfeeding is now so hard for so many women.

They bribed doctors to recommend formula in preference to breastfeeding so women believed this man-made substance was superior to what their bodies could produce. They made formula more convenient through subtle methods eg funding the building of a hospital wing on the condition that the nursery was

"Actually what I can see is that grown women don't like anyone raising concerns about the decline of breastfeeding as the normal way to feed babies, because they think nobody should ever question other people's lifestyle choices, even when these choices have implications for their children."

Oh come on! If you're going to be snarky at least be honest about it!

You're not "questioning" our lifestyle choices, you're judging, pontificating and patronising!

What implications? How likely are they to occur? I don't believe you've answered those questions yet.

Do you send your children to state school, minifingers? Do you feed them meat or fish? Do you let them play rugby or go canoeing, do you vaccinate perfectly healthy DC against disease barely seen in the UK, do you leave them supervised by teenagers or agency sitters, do you allow believe it's okay for the family's older DC to babysit the younger ones, do you have a car or take holidays but say that piano lessons, additional maths, booster classes or independent education is unaffordable?

What do you do which has implications for your children?

Hoobs - from the SE, over 30 upon having her first child, degree qualified, living in one of the most pro BF areas in the country.

Bollocks! Fat fingers.

...nursery was a distance from the maternity ward so that mothers were physically separated from their newborns and bottle feeding by nurses was therefore built in to the design. This is all in addition to the atrocities they committed in the developing world that led directly to the death of many, many loved and cherished babies.

I have used formula and I will continue to do so. I don't think there is anything wrong with the product or the women who use it, but I am saddened that the formula companies have been so successful in destroying breastfeeding. I think that is important and I think it's a shame to dismiss it and say that the decline of breastfeeding doesn't matter.

There are many physical and psychosocial factors why women don't bf, to blame it on culture and the big bad formula companies soley is shortsighted, and does not fully address the issue. Some like some on here simply don't want to bf, they know about the benefits etc but have made an informed decision not to. Whether you agree with it or not, is quite frankly nobodies business but the parents if that child. You cannot march up to mums and force them, that why we have a choice.

I was always going to ff, no question about it.

I have massively sensitive nipples, there wasn't a chance I could have a baby sucking one and being able to not wriggle.

Happy with my choice

I don't think anyone is saying marketing doesn't influence people (I should hope it does as I used to be a senior marketing manager in top London company) but I think it's interesting that formula aimed at newborns is banned and breastfeeding "marketed" (or promoted if you prefer) and yet many women are still opting to formula feed. Many of those women will not be aware of the marketing input formula companies previously had. So they are effectively choosing to ff whilst going against the influence of breastfeeding promotion / marketing.

I think that speaks volumes that women are listening less to marketing and more to their own inner voice and lifestyle choices.

I do think (at the risk of being flamed) that exclusively breastfeeding is difficult to uphold in a feminist society - women want to return to work very quickly, childcare is shared between partners from a very early age, women want control over their own bodies and to be able to choose how to use their bodies - and if that's the choice people want to make that's great. We are lucky to live in such a free society. If women don't want to breastfeed then as a feminist society we should support that in the same way as we support those who do and can.

We can't pretend to be a feminist society and then chastise those women that make choices about their own bodies that we don't agree with.

Yes I agree jelly, back in the 60s/70s it happened and women were led to believe it was as good as breastmilk. Now I don't think that is so, most women do know tge benefits of bf but make an informed choice not to. At Midwives appointments formula or formula companies were not mentioned nor in the hospital when I had both dc.

"They made formula more convenient through subtle methods eg funding the building of a hospital wing on the condition that the nursery was a distance from the maternity ward so that mothers were physically separated from their newborns and bottle feeding by nurses was therefore built in to the design"

Where? Does the design still stand? This was one building, right?

Who in the companies have stated that they had any say in the design of the wing? Where's the proof that the formula companies made the site of the nursery a condition of funding?

And if - if - there's proof of that, who's to blame? The formula companies for chancing their luck or those in the hospital authorities who agreed to the deal?

IME, unless there was particular reason for it not to happen, e.g. the baby/mother was in ICU, the nursery wasn't used. Babies remained in their cots beside their mothers. Why would they be in nurseries, fed by nurses?

Exactly fairy women are influenced imo by their own circumstances and choices and we are able to make informed choices not that I will be feeding a baby again but if I did I would formula feed, how we feed our off spring should not be a cause

I'm talking about 60s/70s America, largely where babies and mothers were routinely separated and formula feeding was heavily, heavily pushed. But my point isn't that this has continued - it's been stopped. But a huge amount of damage has been done in terms of wiping out a lot of breastfeeding knowledge and support from a generation of health care professionals and mothers. A big shift in baby feeding took place and the repercussions still exist.

I agree that a feminist society has got to support the mother's choices, but also from a feminist point of view it's a shame that a female skill has been so badly damaged in favour of profit.

I don't think there is anything wrong with formula, I just don't like the idea that it doesn't matter if breastfeeding is lost, that's all.