in thinking breastfeeding needn't mean martyring yourself?

[kentishgirl]

Hi - sorry to start yet another bf thread, and I realise this might be contentious, but so many of the bf threads on here make me look like . I realise I'm probably a bit out of date with current thinking on all this, but bf sounds like so much hard work these days...and a little bit of me thinks some bf mums kind of enjoy being a martyr and it's competitive about how hard and such a sacrifice etc etc. This is not about mums who find it physically difficult or impossible to bf.

I bf in the 80s for 11 months. Babe had the odd bottle of formula if I wasn't around.

What puzzles me a bit is this stuff, that I read about on here a lot. Is this the reality now of bfing for everyone/most mums, or is this a minority who just talk about it a lot?

Cluster feeding - having a baby whacked on to you nearly non stop for weeks. Er...this wasn't 'a thing' when I bf. Sometimes babies were hungrier than other times. But no one sat there constantly bfing. Feeding on demand was a thing - but flexibly and not to the exclusion of being able to live a normal life. It just meant it wasn't feeding strictly to the clock. You expected to feed roughly every 2/3 hours within a couple of weeks once feeding was established.

If a baby cried, then it wasn't assumed to be hunger. You'd think 'well I only fed him half an hour ago', check nappy, play, distract, give water, is baby tired etc. It was accepted that there are times that babies just plain old cry. It's an easy solution to pop them on the breast, but it wasn't seen as their really needing a feed.

Longer and bigger bfs - it sounds like babies are on and off the breast all the time for a few mouthfuls these days. We used to do a good feed, if baby started nodding off or losing interest, you'd tap their cheek/stimulate them to get them feeding again. So you'd have a more 'normal' spacing between feeds, they didn't on the whole get hungry again a short time later.

Is it just me, or just the threads I read, that make it sound like every time a bf baby squeaks these days it's straight on to the breast, and there are women who literally have no life of their own or time of their own for months on end, because of this? And isn't this awfully off-putting to new mums about starting to breastfeed?

I know more mums start breastfeeding these days, and that's great. But so many drop out and switch to formula instead, whereas I think in the past, a higher proportion of those who started breastfeeding, continued with it. Is the new 'baby led' attitude to bf a bit of a double edged sword because of this? More try, but it's harder, so more have to give up?

Mostly from internet posts about virgin guts I should think!

I don't think it is a case of someone saying it is one or the other, all or nothing - more it's a case of no one mentioning that mixed feeding might be an option.

What was the ridiculous advice you got, Misfitless?

Not challenging you - there has always been a load of rubbish around related to feeding babies!

Genuinely interested as to which bits you now think were impossible/martyrish :)

hollie, it is possible the 'virgin gut' thing has been responsible for this increase in unneeded distress and worry, but in reality, very few mothers have heard of the virgin gut, and also in reality, it does not even say all the benefits are destroyed!.

It's the scaremongering and stat twisting re formula and it's "risks" you see everywhere I'm sure that has got a lot to do with it.Kind of ridiculous considering the vast maj have both and few are ebf.

"It isn't a bandwagon it's an alternative of view by many."

It's not an 'alternative point of view' it's the only acceptable point of view apparently, and anyone who diverges from it gets flamed.

I'm really sick of it.

People should be able to express a range of views here including the one saying that breastfeeding is important for babies, continuing breastfeeding rates are generally too low in the UK, that formula and formula feeding is not held up to the same level of critical scrutiny as breastfeeding, and that a mention of the evidence is seemly and fitting when we are having a GENERAL debate about issues connected with baby feeding, without constantly having to refute accusations that you can only see one side of the debate or that you are uncaring about the feelings of women who can't/won't breastfeed. This debate is hugely, hugely dominated by voices insisting that it doesn't matter how a baby is fed, that there is nothing whatsoever problematic about widespread and ubiquitous formula use by all mothers, including breastfeeding mothers. It should be ok to present a different point of view, but in reality it's not - and attempts to express an alternative point of view are generally met with personal nastiness.

Alternative points of view are on MN daily most without problem.Maybe it's the way you present your opinion.

I love this post from Khaleesi

*I'm exclusively breastfeeding my daughter (first baby, 7 weeks now). I've been completely baby-led, on-demand, with cluster-feeding, popping her on the boob as soon as she squeaks, etc., etc. I wasn't doing it because I want to be a martyr, I was doing so because I was basically told to in antenatal classes, by midwives and lactation consultants on the postnatal ward, by health visitors and community midwives. As I've gotten more confident in myself as a mother I've started to develop more boundaries (i.e. "No, little lady, you can't suck my nipples raw for 5 hours"). I think a lot of women aren't trying to be martyrs, they're trying to be good mothers and breastfeed "properly" - i.e. the way the NHS tells them to. The messages they're getting is that you have to completely martyr themselves in order to breastfeed. For example, I asked my health visitor last week what I could do about these hour-long feeds my daughter is fond of. She didn't seem to understand the question. "Oh, that's perfectly normal!" she said. "Are you uncomfortable?" And then she wanted to talk to me about different positionings that would allow me to breastfeed for hours. I was like "I'm not uncomfortable, I'm bloody BORED!"

But so many drop out and switch to formula instead, whereas I think in the past, a higher proportion of those who started breastfeeding, continued with it.

It would be interesting to see if drop-out rates have climbed in recent years. There's this push to breastfeed "perfectly". There's very little support, I think, for women who want to mix-feed, or supplement, or switch to formula before a certain point. I had to literally hide my nipple shields from the lactation consultants and midwives when I was in hospital because nipple shields aren't kosher at the moment. I think a lot of women get the message that you have to breastfeed perfectly or not at all. They don't' get support for, say, keeping their supply up whilst supplementing and then end up exclusively formula-feeding. *

I also want to add that this business of keeping on going when its obviously not working, the things people are told - oh just keep on persevering blah blah blah. Are people forgetting that years ago, centuries ago, people would have realised breast feeding wasn't going to be possible, that it wasn't working, and they'd have handed the baby to a wet nurse or to their sister, or aunty, perhaps even their mum, to be fed. And that to me is what FF feeding is - the modern day equivalent of giving a baby to someone else to be fed because its whats best for all concerned.

I breast fed 5 children, one of them up to 2 years and 9 months, its the norm where I live, but it just seems to me that the cause for BF is not progressing in many places because women are scoring an own goal with the job they are making out of it.

everyone is told as soon as baby cries put him on the breast you don't want baby self soothing and using their fists etc that will lead to baby not wanting to breastfeed and you will end up using a bottle of POISON! (formula)

okay so maybe not that dramatic but i sat in on a breast is best group they did tell them the baby goes on the breast for every squeak as they left the person i was waiting for gave me a look and i did point out of course babys nappy needed changing too so she might want to try that also we obviously got the giggles and i was asked to wait outside next time

Blimey, I am certain I don't lead a sheltered life, but I have never heard of babies not being allowed to put their fists in their mouths in case it puts them off breastfeeding....it can be a feeding cue, of course (do you think that's what your colleagues meant, deaky?).

Cariads - the figures show that more women are bf, and more women are breastfeeding for longer, so there is no greater 'drop out' rate than before (in fact, the opposite). I do agree with you that merely telling women who are struggling to 'persevere' is useless and unkind.

Deaky I've bf three children, and i've never heard that argument, not ever!

When did BF get so complicated? I BFd each of my 4 DCs to well over 2 years but all of them also used bottles as I was back at work by the time they were 6 weeks old. We did often settle down for a long feed in the evening (which was nice after being away for 10 to 12 hours) and they fed on demand at night, but it never felt a particular chore (just a lot easier than getting up and faffing around with formula etc).

I would say that a lot of the misconceptions I had about breastfeeding and the importance of only Bf, never using nipple shields etc were due to the NCT. I think the HVs I saw were more pragmatic. Maybe my NCT teacher was a bit evangelical. (She certainly had little time for hospital births for example and skipped c-sections altogether.) Nipple shields made little difference to dd. She stopped screaming but still didn't feed so they were really neither here or there but I definitely believed they were to be avoided at all costs which I think was due to NCT.

notquiteruralbliss I wonder if its kind of like how "housework expands to fit the time available" - breastfeeding expands to fit the time available (for some women). I've felt guilty, like I'm doing it wrong, because my girl only feeds 7-8 times per day, every 2-4 hours, and sleeps 6-7 hours at night.

In my experience, too much emphasis is put on the dangers of supplementing with formula at all. My dd was unwell after she was born and needed formula supplements. I hand expressed and fed her colustrum with a syringe but I had to top up with formula until my milk came in. I sobbed every time I gave her a bottle because I thought it meant the end of our breastfeeding relationship before it even began. My milk finally came in and except for that initial 36 hours we've been exclusively breastfeeding for 8 weeks now.

tiktok "I do think there is an issue that some women who use formula in a crisis moment/situation then worry that 'all the benefits of breastfeeding have been destroyed' but I really don't know where that comes from (it comes from somewhere, because I hear it often, but from where??? anyone enlighten me? I suppose there may be the occasional rogue HCP or someone's friend, but this should not be sufficient!)"

In my case this came from the crunchy mommy breastfeeding blogs I follow. But it also came from the midwives and the lactation consultant on the postnatal ward. It was the paediatrician and a more senior midwife that reassured me that supplementing with formula while my baby was unwell did not mean I wouldn't be able to breastfeed.

littlebearpad "I would say that a lot of the misconceptions I had about breastfeeding and the importance of only Bf, never using nipple shields etc were due to the NCT. I think the HVs I saw were more pragmatic. Maybe my NCT teacher was a bit evangelical. (She certainly had little time for hospital births for example and skipped c-sections altogether.) Nipple shields made little difference to dd. She stopped screaming but still didn't feed so they were really neither here or there but I definitely believed they were to be avoided at all costs which I think was due to NCT."

I didn't go to NCT classes, I just went to the NHS antenatal ones. But I also got the message that nipple shields were bad. Like I said upthread, I had to hide them from the midwives while in hospital. This is an example of breastfeeding evangelism that ends up actually undermining its own goals, i.e. getting women to breastfeed. There's no way I would have been able to keep breastfeeding without nipple shields. I was told not to use them because "it wasn't sustainable". At the time though, it was so painful that my husband had to hold me down every time I put her to my breast (and half a dozen midwives and two lactation consultants said that the latch was fine, she wasn't tongue-tied etc). Now that's not sustainable. I think the goal should be to work with women to keep them breastfeeding, even if "imperfectly" so to speak, instead of being breastfeeding purists.

Nipple shields are tools which have positives and negatives. They are not 'bad' or 'good'. As a bfc I have seen situations where they have helped and situations where they have hindered. Good bf support explains the pros and cons to mothers.

Good bf support explains the pros and cons to mothers.

Sadly I'm not sure there's enough of that about.

" I think the goal should be to work with women to keep them breastfeeding, even if "imperfectly" so to speak, instead of being breastfeeding purists"

I think you'll find that is the aim of health professionals pretty much across the board. And you know there are vastly more mums who are advised unnecessarily to supplement IMO than there are mothers who really need to supplement who are advised categorically and wrongly not to do so.

Yes, women really are getting told about the virgin gut by LCs, and that a single bottle will send their BFing into a tailspin, and so on and so on. I have lost count of the number of awful stories I have heard about rubbish, unhelpful and fanatical LCs. I think the industry needs a shakeup, to be honest. Perhaps we even need to consider a move towards actual "medical personnel with subspecialties in breastfeeding" rather than LCs, as the following article suggests:

healthland.time.com/2013/01/02/is-the-medical-community-failing-breastfeeding-moms/

"...doctors practicing today don’t know where to place breast-feeding problems—breasts are attached to the women, so shouldn’t they be the province of OBs, say pediatricians. And OBs note that breast-feeding is for infants; shouldn’t the baby’s doctor handle it?

This leaves breast-feeding problems either to the rare family physicians, or more commonly to lactation consultants who can assist with technical issues—improving the baby’s latch and such—but can’t write prescriptions, check hormone levels or offer a diagnosis.

That’s what a breast-feeding doctor—an OB, pediatrician or family physician with a subspecialty in breast-feeding medicine—would have done in Kelly’s case: a complete physical and medical history (yes, in fact, it is relevant if your mother couldn’t make milk) on mom and baby to see if any physical or anatomical factors were affecting supply. In the mother, they might check the shape of her breasts, to see if they were hypoplastic—a tubular shape that can indicate underdevelopment of the glandular tissue needed to make breast milk—or evaluate her hormone levels, ask if her breast size had increased during pregnancy. Perhaps they’d prescribe a galactogogue, a drug that promotes lactation. Today there are 88 physicians in the entire world who are fellows of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, and have “demonstrated evidence of advanced knowledge and skills in the fields of breast-feeding and human lactation.”

Re - yes formula use and breastfeeding existing happily alongside - I'm not aware of population based evidence showing high rates of continued breastfeeding alongside strong sales and use of infant formula. Can you direct me to these? You seem very certain that women can mixed feed from when - quite early on? - and still manage to breastfeed for as long as they had originally intended, given the right support. Our current UK breastfeeding mixed feeding rates and early cessation of breastfeeding due to perceived or actual supply problems hint at something else.
In the US, something like 80% of mothers in the Mexican-American demographic successfully mix feed. In areas where groups (like the La Leche League) have targeted the community to promote exclusive breastfeeding the number of women who breastfeed at all has gone down.
I'm posting from memory, feel free to do your own research on actual numbers.

I mix fed my daughter from birth, and for the better part of a year afterwards. One example doesn't make a statistic, but it does at least prove it's possible.
I never got any official support or advice on the subject after the first week, incidentally. But I don't think it's insignificant that I lived in an area that was overwhelmingly Hispanic, I wouldn't have even known mix-feeding was a thing unless the midwife had told me. Exclusive breastfeeding would have been impossible for me.

The last two posts are not uk. Lactation consultants have virtually no presence in the uk compared to the us. Obstetricians have very little impact on mothers' breastfeeding in the uk.

It is true that Hispanic mothers in the us do partial bf. They call it doing 'Los dos'. There are a few studies on it. The point is that Hispanic culture is very accepting of breastfeeding in a way that ours is not. The uk, generally, pays lip service to bf acceptance. Women are often embarrassed to bf responsively and freely and when there are problems it can be hard to find good help to resolve them. Formula is often the first suggestion when problems arise.

It's not possible to divorce the physiological from the cultural. Specific contexts have their own challenges. They have their own solutions, too.

Whoops...it's 'Las Dos' they do, not 'los' :)

Here's a good article about it with some social and cultural context:

breastfeedingwithoutbs.blogspot.fr/2013/10/las-dos-and-breastfeeding-diversity.html

And another one (this time it's 'los dos' :) )

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23958618

This presentation shows figures that indicate 'las dos' does reduce breastfeeding:

www.healthyplaceschicago.org/breastfeeding/Los-Dos.pdf

If a tiny baby will breastfeed, why wouldn't you feed them? This has been my policy with both my healthy, happy kids :-)

In the UK many of the African mothers in my community mixed feed from birth, and many continue to breastfeed for quite a long time. It does fascinate me how people with confidence in breastfeeding can make it work in a very flexible way for them.