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.

ok, adding my controversial two pennorth.

i have four healthy, ff children. i am pregnant with a fifth. i wanted to bf my first but didn't like the sensation, wasn't comfortable doing it and switched quickly to formula.

i do not believe breast is always best. i think there are many women who make themselves ill trying to breastfeed and for what? its surely better that baby has a happy, stress free mother than one constantly wound up about the next feed.

also how about mothers with addictions? illnesses? bad diet? i have watched a woman judge me, look down her nose at me for formula feeding whilst she sat breastfeeding her child whilst under the influence of alcohol and smoking. but i am 'poisoning' my child with formula!!!

also the arguments about breastfeeding being the norm in the past, you mean when many children died because their mothers couldn't produce the milk they needed and there was no alternative? you mean in the days of wet nurses?

it is a choice, but its not one mothers should be judged on.

flame away!!!

I don't think breastfeeding will ever be lost. For lots of women that's the default option for feeding (as ff is for many women) and there is a huge amount of money being pumped through the nhs to support that. I just think it's a shame that many people seem to forget that and feel the need to educate women about breastfeeding as if they live in some sort of bubble where all the breastfeeding promotion has passed them by.

When I had my son in 2012 the maternity wing was absolutely plastered full of posters about the benefits of breastfeeding. You literally couldn't look anywhere without seeing a breastfeeding is best type leaflet. I'd have to have gone in with blinkers not to have been exposed to that and then it is backed up by midwives and health visitors. So it doesn't need evangelical type breastfeeding mums to add to it- the information is there, it's heavily pushed and women are still formula feeding.

But jelly, this is not the sixties or 70s. This isn't America either. I'm taking of the UK, where MN is based, where I live, where my DC were born. I'm talking of the past 20 years, not 50 years ago.

I'm talking of coming from an NHS area where what you speak of didn't happen, where nurses weren't and aren't allowed to promote FF at all, much less a brand.

BF Support and knowledge may have been wiped out but that's missing the whole point - for far more of us than the BF militants care to admit this is not an issue of "if you'd had better support you'd have been one of us" it's a simple matter of all the support/knowledge/browbeating in the world wouldn't have changed the minds of those of us who chose to formula feed, who never wanted to breastfeed.

It's the view that it would or should which is infuriating!

NB - I'm all for BF. If that's what you want then I'll support you all the way.

I have found this very interesting. In my world most breastfeed and those who FF would actually express regret that they hadn't been able to. Before this thread I'd not really known why people FF. I've appreciated gaining this knowledge without too much of a bun fight.

I BFd. I did it because it was convenient, free and would make me thin. I felt shallow doing it for those reasons and would rarely admit to it! I did like the fact I could extend a day without having to think of where to get milk. I hated the idea of spending money on it. I gained three stone and wanted to lose it. BF worked for me for those reasons.

I'm actually surprised that more hasn't been made of the cost and weight loss angles. I know the latter isn't necessarily the case for all but it is for many.

Anyway. I've really enjoyed reading this. I feel much better informed.

When I had my son in 2012 the maternity wing was absolutely plastered full of posters about the benefits of breastfeeding. You literally couldn't look anywhere without seeing a breastfeeding is best type leaflet.

This ^

However clearly it didn't permeate to my uterus as DD wasn't having any of it and just screamed at me whenever I tried. Cue lots of confused looking midwives and HVs.

Bought Aptamil as the breastfeeding Midwife bod said get Aptamil. Wouldn't have been able to pick an Aptamil advert out of line up. Don't think I'd even heard of it before.

However clearly Apple and Aptamil are in cahoots as my phone has capitalised the brand name throughout. Spooky!

I think
jelly's posts are very interesting.
And i agree with with the points made in them.

It has been enlightening to read people's views.
(I know i hid tt but i changed my mind, hoping to get more knowledge)

The "freedom" aspect interests me. I fed my ds until 22 months. I wanted to continue until the "magic" 2 years but as i was six months pregnant I felt i wanted him to stop before he had to compete with his sibling. I know it would have ok to tandem feed but Im not sure I was up for it.
Then with Dd, who is 18 mo, I am ambivalent about continuing. Again I feel some self-generated pressure to get to 2 years bf her, but I am keen to not have to be so tied to that bedtime and especially the torture of the 5 am feed. So some days if there was a magic way of stopping without hysterics I would do that so she could stay at home with Dh and i could book myself into a hotel room with a massive gin and tonic

Ha, Amanda, I'm currently sitting in a hotel room miles away from husband and child as it's my weekend off. I got a lot of judgy ' I couldn't possibly leave my child for four nights' but it's bloody fantastic. Baby is 15mo. She was always going to be fine!

Enjoy

I think the weight loss aspect of breastfeeding is a bit of a red herring - lots of women don't actually care about losing any weight after having a baby and also if you are bothered and want to then ff makes it very easy (as long as you don't have a velcro baby!) to give a bottle and go out for a long weight losing walk / jog with a buggy as you are not tied to a sofa for cluster feeds etc.

I'm actually surprised that more hasn't been made of the cost and weight loss angles.

Child benefit covers the cost nicely.

I dropped every pound of my 3 stone baby weight by week five (I formula feed). I have many, many friends from my online antenatal group who are struggling enormously to lose weight due to being pinned under comfort-suckling babies whilst gorging on cake. Of course, they cannot get up off the sofa to make nutritious and slimming meals due to a baby that refuses to be put down.

Crossed posts, Fairy!

I have to agree about the wl aspect.
It worked for me. And i was eating a lot. But even though bf uses up calories, if you are stuffing your face its a bit like walking a mile for every deep pan pizza. Not useful.

I chose to bf mainly because of the benefits for my baby. And a little for some of the health benefits for me. But one the reasons this thread interest me is because I suspect that the ease of separation issue is a big factor for lots of women. And that is what a lot of ppl have said here. It is true that my babies/ toddlers have been less "leavable" than the babies of my ff friends. Maybe that is a coincidence? Maybe it wasn't an issue for me as i don't have anyone other than dh to leave them with?.

But i don't want to put ppl off. It has been nice really. Very convenient for me.

I didn't lose weight when I was Bfing.

I was teeny when I got prg with DD. I was about 6.5 stn. I put a stone or two. I BF for 6 mths and kept a fair bit of that weight on till I stopped BFing.

That is another point. To those of you who feel judged for NOT BF, it is is any comfort at all, I thought I had done well by BF DD and DS1 for 6 mths.
After being a member of several internet forums I now know that was rubbish and not even classed as BFing by some people

So you can't win whatever you do.

No point in worrying.

I just wish we could be more relaxed about everything. I hate anyone to feel judged for any reasonable parenting choices. I'd like all breastfeeding women to be made to feel comfortable for feeding in public whenever and wherever they choose (cedar falls aside! - as it's strictly no children etc). I think equally ff parents should be able to get on with it without anyone judging.

Parenting brings out the worst in people when it comes to judging others. Unless someone is neglecting their child what on earth does it matter? And unless someone is seriously bonkers than no way can they consider ffing neglect.

I didn't really gain much more than the weight of the babies during my pregnancies, so the weight loss would have been a moot point for me.

But I have often read on here, about Mothers who say they gained weight due to breastfeeding...because it making them ravenously hungry/gave them a sweet tooth/meant they couldn't get out and exercise, due to cluster feeding.

So the weight loss aspect, obviously depends on the mother and their personal situation.

"i do not believe breast is always best. i think there are many women who make themselves ill trying to breastfeed and for what? its surely better that baby has a happy, stress free mother than one constantly wound up about the next feed."

Maybe.

But then as individuals we don't actually know how the way we feed might have impacted on our children's development or health.

If it's true that breastfeeding prevents a good number of SIDS and breast cancer deaths every year, and has a strong impact on the number of babies being hospitalised/gp visits for gastric and respiratory illnesses in the UK then I think it's fair to argue that for some families trying to breastfeed is definitely worth while, even if the mum doesn't particularly enjoy it.

TBH - the thing that absolutely fascinates me about these threads is the dogged resistance to the idea that breastfeeding might make a significant (though unmeasurable at an individual level) positive difference to a child's health and development and that this needs to be factored into our consideration of feeding choices at the point in our pregnancies when we still have a chance to make a choice.

I think people want breastfeeding not to matter to babies. They want to think the benefits are overstated. They want to grasp every piece of piss-poor reporting or badly designed study which casts doubt on the importance of infant feeding choices.

And I think - well, fine, if you want to do that then do. But stop accusing people who do see the medical evidence as convincing and important of being 'militant' and stop trying to stop people talking about it because you find it emotionally uncomfortable to consider it in this light.

Personally, I think as research into health and development becomes more sophisticated it'll be harder for people to keep insisting that how a baby is fed makes no important difference to them. I'm particularly fascinated at the moment with this research: here which shows differences in the brains of a socially similar group of fully breastfed, partially breastfed, and fully formula fed babies, identifiable by MRI scans.

I once asked my MIL why she bf hers out of curiousity and she said "because i would do anything for my babies". I was bfing at the time and even i found that to be one of the stupidest and most ignorant things she's ever said. My fault for asking i guess

Maybe I should put it this way:

I didn't 'choose' ff, ff 'chose' me.

Anyway, DS is growing up trilingual, so boo to the bf-banging-on people

Well my grandmother smoked heavily and drank a lot and lived a fit life until her late 80s

All that your saying mini is what most women know, yes it is designed to make those who for some reason could not bf or simply did not want to feel awful, like tgey have failed their child, and do not care about them which is wrong. You could not pick in a group of adults those who were breastfed and those who were not! They are still intelligent healthy people! Fat lot of good bf a child then weaning it on rubbish, like some on here say they have witnessed, it cancels out the benefits of bf.

well said mini.

There is no doubt in my mind that as soon as you stop coming across as militant, people will stop accusing you of being militant, minifingers....

Morning all,
We're receiving a few reports about this thread and have had a quick squizz through it. Do report anything that you feel breaks our guidelines, of course, but also if we could ask you to try to stick to the facts and remain kind at all costs, that would be great in keeping the thread temp from running too high. Thanks!

Morning YetAnotherHelenMumsnet

Or can we just call you Yetti for short?

But piss poor bits of research supporting bfing are quoted from the hills by the bfing brigade,not so much when it's the other way round.

Bfing didn't matter to my dc.I was scrupulously careful and must have made 100s of thousands of bottles without a single incident.There is no breast cancer in my family and I am a slim shaped pear with a healthy diet big on fruit/veg.I am not at risk from breast cancer.We were all formula fed with no allergies or asthma so the risk of allergies was v slim.I weighed it all up and was right ffing didn't matter a jot to my dc.They are all v healthy(along with the vast maj of the huge ffed population)and bright. Their diet,example set by my eating habits and home environment mattered far more.

You know childhood diet,lifestyle and examples set by parents are going to have a far,far bigger impact on childhood health.Focus on that if childhood health matters so much to you.Clearly anybody overweight or with sugar in the house should be judged,can we judge you,are you ignoring what has far stronger research to back it up? Personally if you are overweight and giving your dc bad examples as regards food I think I have more to judge you over than you me.

Oh and just saying "might" is never enough in my view to make yourself miserable over.