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.

I don't think you are being at all unreasonable for asking OP. Not sure why some are giving you a hard time.

Witch do you mind me asking what you mean by the weird sexiness of it? Do you mean from your own view, or other people's perception of it being sexy?

My DDs both bf well and had excellent latch, tongue tie being snipped on day 3 here. I produced plenty of milk.

I chose to switch to ff pretty quickly (mix fed for the first ten days or so) because I really disliked bf'ing. There was nothing about it that I found enjoyable or comfortable, even though it was not particularly painful for me.

I have been called all kinds of selfish, especially being so lucky with the boobs/milk production/latch combo, but I was unhappy doing it. I find milk hard to handle in the best of circumstances, but the realisation that it was coming out of me was unbearable.

Over here it is a non debate. The only people here who even asked about it were my ob gyn and the dds' paediatrician, for obvious reasons and that was a bf/ff question, no need for reasons/justification.

Otoh pretty much everyone in the uk that I was in contact with asked and gave unwanted advice. And the cats bums faces when I said "I ff because I didn't enjoy bf'ing" were pretty funny.

I think new mums over there are under pressure to give reasons for their ff and c sections etc. But you don't need reasons. Like most other choices in your life they are your choices to make for you and your child. I decided that my babies would far prefer a happy relaxed mother to one that actively disliked feeding them.

Dont think yabu op. I think its vety interesting!i was having this conversation with my friends today. If i can have kids naturally then ill give first feed but then ill be ff purely as i don't likely the idea of bf for me. I don't even like my nipples being touched so i couldn't bf.

Ff is easier, you can share the responsibility of feeding, your not tied to the baby, it often does help them to go through the night - in my experience, it's easier to ff in public than bf esp when you have other children, you know their exact in take, you don't have to worrying about mastitis, thrush, you can eat what you like

I ff my first and bf my other dc, not for my love of bf it was because it was much cheaper than ff. tbh I prefer ff as I think it is easier but I'm tight lol

I think we need to acknowledge that this is mainly a cultural issue.

We're a bottle feeding culture. Health promotion of breastfeeding by the NHS is a fairly recent thing, and in terms of expenditure is hugely dwarfed by the marketing spend on formula.

On the assumption that most breastfeeding mothers around the world have the same sort of equipment, there is something going on in the UK which is stopping women breastfeeding for more than a few weeks, and it's more than just a lack of formal and medical support: women in developing countries with terrible health infrastructures have massively more success with breastfeeding than we do, despite a dearth of midwives and health visitors, and despite having much larger families and no maternity leave to speak of.

Most women give up breastfeeding in the UK citing 'problems with supply' or 'mastitis' or 'frequent feeding', or 'baby not satisfied'. Why don't these things cause similar numbers of women in developing countries to stop breastfeeding?

My personal view is that decades of culturally entrenched bottle feeding have shaped women's ideas of what normal life with a young baby is like, and that breastfeeding is felt to be emotionally unsupportable by many women because it doesn't 'fit' with our idea of what looking after a baby should feel like.

This, and endemic and casual formula use by the majority of breastfeeding mother has caused most of the problems IMO.

I have twins.
I had an open mind about it when pregnant, but pretty much switched over to FF from day one or two. I continued to express breast milk for around 3 weeks, so each DT had an 1-2oz daily for that time.
My reasons were:

1. One twin was jaundiced and had a high fluid requirement and FF was easier. I was much more bothered about avoiding an admission to the neonatal unit than how he was fed.
2. So DH or other family could help with feeds and I wouldn't be tied to being the only person who could do the feeding.

minifingers what problems do you mean? I didn't have any problems.

It may be cultural but we are lucky enough to have a choice. Some of us choose to make that choice. Like lots of other choices we have that people in the developing world don't have.

Would also add, OP, that many women are not convinced that breastfeeding has any important benefits, no matter what doctors and researchers say.

Whether this view comes from a good knowledge of the evidence and a conviction that it's not strong enough, or a determination to ignore the evidence, or from a belief that in relation to breastfeeding we can all safely rely on what our eyes tell us rather than the science, I don't know.

I started BF with my first, but I genuinely hated the feeling. I can't describe it, it wasn't painful, just weird. I couldn't tolerate it for even 5 minutes, so switched to FF & I FF my second.

It's also worth pointing out that all these threads usually head the same way. Like all parenting issues on mumsnet, especially BF vs FF, people are heavily invested in their OWN choices, be it feeding, buggy, schools etc etc.
They will often fight tooth and nail quoting evidence, surveys, reviews (delete as appropriate for the topic concerned) in order to convince YOU that your choice is inferior to theirs.
Just saying.

"It may be cultural but we are lucky enough to have a choice."

Maybe for adults.

I'm not sure it's been particularly lucky for several generations of babies that the vast majority of their mothers have made a choice not to breastfeed when the vast majority are perfectly fit and able to do so.

DD lost a pound in weight in the first four days. We were admitted to hospital for four days. I was traumatised - my baby had been starving and I didn't realise. They nurse even asked me "how did you not see it?"

So I pumped for three weeks so I could see exactly what she was taking. It was unsustainable once DH went back to work, so we used formula.

Sometimes I'm made to feel like a failure, but my little girl is thriving and her needs come before my emotions.

I bf ds for 1 year, because I wanted to, I wanted to probably because I had heard so many positive (and was aware of some of the potential problems) experiences about it from my group of friends/work colleagues. I had seen friends bf. It seemed the normal thing to do.

My SIL ff, because she wanted to, she didn't want to bf as even the thought of it gave her the hebe-jebbies. All her friends ff from day 1 so she didn't have any positive stories about bf and had never seen anyone bf before having her own baby. The whole concept of bf was alien to her.

I think it is cultural and (for some) it depends on influences from the people around you.

I breastfed ds1 for 14 months and bfing ds2 now (right now - as I type whilst simultaneously doing Spiderman stickers with my eldest, when did I get so good at multitasking?!) I think our culture isn't set up to make breastfeeding particularly convenient and I can totally see the appeal of formula - I'm just too tight to fork out for something I can make for free. I can definitely say without doubt though that there is nothing even remotely sexy about it!

I tried but dd lost too much weight. I was pressured into giving her formula by the midwives and felt like a failure. It was ruining my experience of being a new mum and I decided it wasn't worth risking pnd.

Minifingers, I think attitudes like yours are extremely negative and actually skew research. Why come onto a thread which is obviously going to be full of formula feeders to drive home that you think it is the wrong choice? Now I'm older, have had multiple children and am not impressed by medical professional, but when I was younger and wanted to stop breastfeeding (because I didn't enjoy it) I was pressured into coming p with a medical excuse as to why I couldn't. Obviously some people do have genuinely serious problems but in this country I'm sure that many mothers are over-monitored, over-medicalised and under so much pressure to breastfeed that actually finding out the true picture of their experience of breastfeeding is extremely difficult.

The UK is the only place where I have been asked about my feeding choices, it's a rare topic of conversation but still does arise here. When I visit otter countries or speak with my foreign friends there has never been a mention of how I feed my babies. It seems like bedtimes, to be a british obsession.

I did combination feeding from birth until DS was weaned. He would only feed from one breast, he absolutely refused to feed from the other one. Interestingly enough, a few years later I was diagnosed with breast cancer in the breast he wouldn't feed from. I had very slow growing cancer and it was probably there when DS was a babe. I was told that he would confuse the breast and the bottle, but he didn't. I know a lot of people think you can only do one or the other, but if anyone is having problems I would advise them to give combination feeding a try.

This is going to sound judgy and it isn't meant to be, but here's my observations. I can understand why the OP is asking the question she is. 'Because I wanted to' isn't a REASON - it's summarising your decision, behind that will be a series of actual reasons why that person 'wanted to'.

That's what OP is asking, and I can see why - not surprisingly, people are very hesitant to give their actual reasons in case they get jumped on, so they just say 'I wanted to' or 'it worked for my family', so in a way the next logical question, if you're interested in the topic, is WHY did you want to or WHY did it work for your family. Just as you may respond 'But why did you particularly like the Ford Focus?' in response to 'I particularly liked the Ford Focus' on a car choice thread, for example.

Personally I think that Purplepoodle above is honest about a lot of the actual 'why':

Ff is easier, you can share the responsibility of feeding, your not tied to the baby, it often does help them to go through the night - in my experience, it's easier to ff in public than bf esp when you have other children, you know their exact in take, you don't have to worrying about mastitis, thrush, you can eat what you like

All of those are good reasons to FF which may really help during the newborn period. But they are all mother-centred. They help the mother (and father), and weighed against that is the fact that bf is better for the baby. Few people want to come out and say, I prioritised these kind of reasons above the consideration that breastmilk would be the best nutrition for the baby. It simply sounds like they put their needs above those of the baby and that would invite judging from others. Even though overall choosing FF for those reasons, in their opinion, would provide the optimum CARE LEVEL for their own baby in their own particular circumstances.

That is me trying to summarise with an impersonal tone, I've probably failed completely and will also get flamed.

I really disliked breastfeeding. can't explain why, but I just did.

I didn't really get it off the ground with dd1, and switched to formula at 4 weeks. But with dd2 I was determined that it would work. I gave it nearly 5mo, no problems as such (after initial thrush), but still I really didn't like it. So I stopped.

My kids are now 7 and 4, and this really is such a non-issue in all of our lives. Sometimes when you're in the tiny baby bubble your perspective can be different.

Wow minifingers don't hold back, say what you feel...

I'm sure many of us from the generations where mothers have chosen not to breastfeed their babies don't feel too unlucky.

I was born in 1994 so my mum remembers feeling slightly pressured to breastfeed but nothing like the amount these days. She did it for a few days before switching to formula. I have health problems.

If you were to just read that, you could assume that my health problems came from being formula fed.
Actually it's a genetic condition that I inherited from my dad, that no amount of breast milk could cure. Not being breastfed hasn't impacted my life at all.

I think you make a good point Castlemilk, and yes, I'd agree that I big motivation in my own choice to FF was for my own benefit, to preserve my sanity and allow others to help out, to not be tied to the the DTs completely, and to avoid drifting into PND. I weighed up the benefits of BF vs the benefits to my own mental health and ability to cope, and decided to FF.

Often people make any decision about feeding babies at a time when they are incredibly vulnerable and often very tired. Everything is over whelming and they can see no other option. This is important to recognise and no woman should be criticised for any decision she makes in this situation.

I absolutely agree 100% too with this from minifingers:

*I think we need to acknowledge that this is mainly a cultural issue.

We're a bottle feeding culture. Health promotion of breastfeeding by the NHS is a fairly recent thing, and in terms of expenditure is hugely dwarfed by the marketing spend on formula.

On the assumption that most breastfeeding mothers around the world have the same sort of equipment, there is something going on in the UK which is stopping women breastfeeding for more than a few weeks, and it's more than just a lack of formal and medical support: women in developing countries with terrible health infrastructures have massively more success with breastfeeding than we do, despite a dearth of midwives and health visitors, and despite having much larger families and no maternity leave to speak of.

Most women give up breastfeeding in the UK citing 'problems with supply' or 'mastitis' or 'frequent feeding', or 'baby not satisfied'. Why don't these things cause similar numbers of women in developing countries to stop breastfeeding?

My personal view is that decades of culturally entrenched bottle feeding have shaped women's ideas of what normal life with a young baby is like, and that breastfeeding is felt to be emotionally unsupportable by many women because it doesn't 'fit' with our idea of what looking after a baby should feel like.*

I really wanted to BF. It took about 7 weeks to get it sorted. Until then it was hell. I got through it, basically, because at the time I was surrounded by hippies. So staying in bed, skin to skin for what seemed like weeks, dad taking over all the other stuff, no expectation of visitors and if they did come I'd as likely be in bed feeding (with ipad, not completely hippified) and that was seen as all ok and exactly what I SHOULD be doing. Hardly left the house for the first month. It helped that we were also living in an inaccessible dell somewhere practically off the map, so the prospect of a day at Bluewater wasn't exactly hovering before me. But - if my life had been set up differently, I might well have ended up stopping, and it would have been 'because of my supply/not satisfied' etc., but really, it would have been largely a cultural effect.

Sorry MoominKoala, I don't necessarily think minifingers is going down that route, more that our culture really really doesn't help facilitate breastfeeding, and I think we kind of don't see that because on the face of it, it's heavily promoted.

I'm quite enjoying this thread Castlemilk, I will happily say loud and proud that I probably did put my needs above my babies nutritional needs. However, think in reality it isn't that simple, I don't believe or accept that in the UK with good living standards and good food constantly available that there is that much of a difference between BF and FF, I also think that it wasn't just my needs but the needs of my other children I had to balance and that the amount of time would be so minimal it would pale into insignificance in later years.

On mn, and in life actually, there seems to be this issue where it is unacceptable to say you prioritised yourself over your children. That you didn't demand and insist on the absolute best for your children, that you didn't organise everything around your children and sod everyone else, all seem to be frowned upon. My life doesn't operate like that and I think it ludicrous to try to. Most people settle in one way or another, most of us buy good enough coats, give a good enough education, serve healthy enough dinners. To me arguing about BF vs FF, within the UK, is similar to arguing about whether a parent should work 3 jobs to afford holidays to broaden their child's horizons; there may be some small benefit in the long run, but it will be so small that its fine to be selfish.

And just to reference another poster, I'm not arguing that my choices are superior or that another choice is inferior, more that they should be seen as equally valid.