To think attitudes to BF have changed on MN?

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Been a MNetter for about 6/7 years (namechanger).

In the first few years I was struck by how incredibly rigid the majority was about breastfeeding being the only option - was on several threads where posters would not in any circumstances see FF was a legit choice.

In fact posters were scared shitless to admit to FF and would always preface it with medical reasons about why they couldn't bf.

I didn't bf and was once treated in a very patronising and offensive fashion by a breast feeding support nurse and told that when she saw a bottle teat in a baby's mouth it made her feel physcially ill.

Now I see many threads where posters encourage and advocate FF especially when bfing has become untenable and/or proving detrimental to mental health or marriage etc. There's one on here now.

Anyone else notice this? Why do you think it is? Is it a reflection of RL attitudes (I'd prefer to see it as supporting parents' choices rather than anti breast feeding - I'm in the first camp and certainly not in the second).

I think it's reflective of attitudes in RL, particularly the stance of the NHS. As I understand it, the original position was to push very breast feeding hard, but then they realised it was having a detrimental emotional effect on mothers who found it didn't work & was contributing to PND, so they backed off a bit.

I thought that thread was horrible actually, but I do agree with you.

I think two things, firstly yes attitudes have changed. It's much less "you must do X, pleeeease think of the children!!1!" and more about supporting a choice whatever that choice might be.

Secondly that post was in AIBU and AIBU has never been as pro-BF as the BF/FF support board. On BF/FF if someone says they want to BF it's not usually questioned, perhaps a gentle "It's okay to stop if you've had enough" but not as vehemently "Why on earth would you continue doing this, you're harming your baby, blah blah get over yourself" that was happening on that thread, and the kind of attitude I've seen on AIBU before.

Mabey in tgat op case she might need to as she has PND and needs to get help for it. Mabey it would help her PND if she did mix feed.

More women being forced back to work to keep wages down. Breastfeeding support bring cut. More people formula feeding.

I see a supportive responses on here oabout feeding granted I am not on specific feeding or baby related threads alot but generally we are supportive I see the odd post saying of course every woman can feed their babies but they are generally few and far between and are usually told to shush.
When I was pregnant with my first baby decades ago it was all breast is best etc I was going to bf anyway it was going to be easy baby pops out baby goes on breast it was going to be bliss I foundit stressful my baby found it stressful she was a dinky dot under 5 pounds she lost weight I had hardly any milk it was a terrible time a lovely auxiliary doing the night shift said do you want me to give herca bottle itvwas such a relief I tried for a further 2 weeks and gave up when her weight wasn't sustained. I think women are now not afraid to say bf didn't work for us whichvis a good thing imo,

I absolutely cannot understand anyone caring how anyone else feeds their baby.

I just don't see it.

Seriously why would you have an opinion?

If someone posted that they felt sorry seeing a ff baby I would post that I felt sorry for their baby having a daft twat for a mother.

I have been mumsnetting for years and really there are a few daft militant ones but not many.

In real life nobody cares how babies are fed and if they did they wouldn't go up tova mother with a bottle and say you are poisoning your baby they would be carted off

Exactly MrsJ

I really wanted to bf. I had to give up after 10 days. This was mostly for medical reasons.I was surprised how upset I was about having to give up as I thought I had an open mind about it.

I started a thread on here asking advice about my situation.Although looking back I think I was just after support and to find someone to tell me I was doing the right thing. The answers I got were mostly, you can't have been doing it right, didn't have enough coaching and need to join a support group. None of those things changed my situation and I felt I was having to explain things and people on here were disagreeing with the advice I'd been given confusing me even more.

I since found a new pediatrician who told me I did the right thing.dd gets hypoglycemic and with formula I can keep an eye on what she's taking. I also found that ff has allowed me to be a bit more active which I think has meant a quick recovery from my emcs. I was distraught at one point that I wasn't producing enough to satisfy dd and she was undernourished so stopping was beneficial to my mental health too. I am glad I tried though but I hate having to explain myself which I have had to do in Rl not just on here.

Aeroflot - yes I was quite alarmed that someone with such an inflexible and frankly unkind attitude was a bf support worker. I only hope she was a keyboard warrior and endlessly supportive and non judgemental in real life.

Pictish - yes you're probably right re trends. That's actually most likely to be the reason.

Mrsnec - sorry to hear of your experience. But why do you need to explain yourself? In RL no one's ever asked me why I didn't bf. Did they you?

Yes I have found people want to know why. Family and friends even! It did feel wrong to tell them it's none of their business but that's of course what I want to say.

I have friends that are very pro bf and I thought I'd be like them. I'd go the opposite way now though.

I agree with pictish as well, it's probably trends -- I do think it is a bit less militant than it used to be. My favourite was the OP wondering if she should BF as she was a heavy cannabis user and quite a few people telling her the benefits of BF outweighed whatever harm might come across from the weed as if formula was worse than weed!

I don't see as many BLW threads either. Perhaps everyone's relaxing a bit.

Funnily enough, although I took a fair bit of bashing on here, I think I've found more militancy in RL, and from people who are supposed to be 'supporters'.

I gave up after 3 weeks when I still hadn't even produced a drop of colostrum and was really quite ill. The hospital's infant feeding coordinator, my lactation consultant and local bf specialist midwife (ie people whose raison d'etre was to get people to bf) were all completely supportive and said they felt it was the right choice for me and my family.

It was so-called peer supporters and friends who were militant, judgmental and critical. Which is very sad.

mrsnec/rally

Wow some people really are rude and/or unsupportive and/or superior! Sorry you both went through that rubbish.

I consider myself fortunate that no-one in a wide circle of friends, family and colleaugues asked why I wasn't breast feeding.

And a huge majority of people I know breast fed - in fact I can't think of one other woman I know who hasn't at least for a few days or weeks. No one made me feel judged or abnormal.

Maybe it's also because I was confident and comfortable in my choice in not even attempting to bf so I didn't have any conversations with anyone about it and expressed no anxiety over it.

On MN anyone who 'admitted' not bf-ing used to get roundly flamed - I know other people might not have seen that or felt like that but I 100% did.

I think people tend to be more supportive on MN than in real life, where I live, you can't win!

The midwives and doctors are bullying harpies who won't accept FF as a legitimate choice. Despite assuring everyone involved that I didn't want to try breastfeeding, when DD was born the midwife shoved her straight on the breast and I was too out of it to protest.

As it happens we both took to it and she is still being BF at 15 months, but now I get told regularly that I should stop admits really not the norm, and BF gets blamed for an issues.
Not sleeping? Its because of BF.
Poor motor skills? (I kid you not) Must be BF.

Add to that, I don't know a single person in RL who breastfed for than a week or two, and talk about like some horrible un-natural thing that should be frowned upon.

Sorry guys, rant over. and breathe

I breast feed my DS (almost 8 months old) and according to my grandparents absolutely anything and everything that is 'wrong' with DS (wind, a cough, poor sleeping, runny nose etc etc) is because I'm breast feeding apparently

I had nothing but support from mw's when I was trying to bf my two.

With ds1 my breasts didn't change at all in pregnancy, which I didn't think was that odd at the time. I had an awful birth and lost a lot of blood so was quite ill for days. My milk never 'came in' and other than a teeny amount of colostrum, ds1 wasn't getting anything so I had to start ff after about 3 days. The mw's I dealt with then were supportive, sympathetic because they believed it was because i'd been so ill that I just didn't produce milk.

With ds2 I was determined to try again. This time I had an amazing birth and was fighting fit an hour after he was born. So I started to bf again, but again not much happened. His latch was perfect so we were discharged after a day and I was told my milk would come in soon.

After 4 days, I was feeding every hour but ds1 was just screaming and screaming. I tried expressing and nothing came out. When the mw visited she poked and prodded and squeezed but could get nothing out at all and told me she thought I might have breast hypoplasia (very rare, not enough glandular tissue which often results in no or minimal milk production) and that I could keep trying, just in case, but should ff.

I continued trying for another week or so, but also gave ff. After a full 10 days and still couldn't get a drop of milk out I stopped. My breasts never changed size or shape from 4 weeks pregnant to having a 10 day old baby.

My MUM and MIL on the other hand...wow. I nearly went nc with them for the way they treated me with ds2. With ds1 I was 'ill'...could hardly stand for days, severely anaemic...so they both accepted I wasn't producing milk (which we thought was the cause the first time round) and stayed quiet.

With ds2 though, I was fine in myself. So I should have been able to bf. All this breast hypoplasia 'rubbish' was just an excuse and anyone could bf, I just wasn't trying hard enough. Bastards.

I never make a meal out of it, but I have been asked before in rl why I 'chose not to' bf, and i'll give an honest answer, that I didn't choose, I have breast hypoplasia which means i'm unable to. Maybe i'm a little paranoid, but I always get a 'Mmm if you say so' type response as if people obviously know i'm making excuses and chatting shit.

It seems more acceptable to say you don't want to iyswim - but are completed unbelieved if you genuinely can't.

For my part, if I ever post on this issue, I try to support women who formula feed - because I've become very frustrated with the attitude that ff makes you a 'bad' mum.

I hate that it is such a divisive issue and that it causes women so much pain at what is already a difficult and emotional time.

I was one of the lucky ones. I found breastfeeding incredibly easy and never had a problem with it from pretty much day one. I feel very fortunate to have been able to do that. It's made me sympathetic to women who couldn't breastfeed because I strongly believe it's got a lot more to do with the luck of the draw then anything to do with effort or understanding on the mothers part.

There is such a lot of tension and judgement around the issue. It actually torpedoed a few friendships that I might have made at mum and toddler groups. I was chatting quiet happily with a women once and felt that we had a connection. The subject of feeding came up and I mentioned I was breastfeeding. I saw a look of pain in the women's eyes and she drew away from me. She began to offer explanations for why she hadn't been able to breastfeed. I tried to make it clear that I understood and didn't really care.

I think it was such an emotional issue for her that she couldn't be around me, she never really spoke to me after that.

Secondly, now that my son is older I can compare him to other children who were ff and there is no real noticeable difference at least in my eyes. All the kids are of normal intelligence, thriving and happily bonded with their parents.

So depressing reading these stories.

I'm 3 weeks into breastfeeding dc2 and i'm just finding it so hard. Not so much the night just the day and evening cause i'm struggling to get anything else done. I really want to give up but i just know i'll just have the guilt to contend with then.

I'm not sure about attitudes on here, but in real life I get a hard time.

I'm still breastfeeding my 18 month old. She's my 5th baby. We co sleep and she wakes to feed 4 times a night. She still feeds every 4 hours throughout the day, despite drinking water from a cup and eating 3 meals a day. It's hard work, but I'm ok with it. I bottle fed my first 2, and breast fed the other 2. Swings and roundabouts really. Pros and cons to both. Overall, I'm happier breastfeeding.

Some of the comments I've had from family, friends and even strangers have been...

"Eww, you're just like a cow."
"It's just plain creepy"
"Bitty"
"Isn't it a little bit perverted?"
"You need to stop that now, it's getting weird!"
"You're making her too dependant on you."
"I honestly can't think of anything worse."

Even health care professionals act surprised. Some say "well done." One HV told me off for feeding past 6 months because it was "completely unnecessary and purely for my own benefit."

All 5 of my kids are healthy and happy. No one would be able to guess which ones were fed what. Over the years we've done puree, spoon feeding, baby led weaning, baby rice, jars, homemade food, rusks. It all seems to fade into insignificance now the eldest (14) is upstairs drinking lucozade and eating pringles!

Also, I never ever, not even once received any criticism for choosing to bottle feed the first two. It was assumed and accepted as the norm by everyone. I had never known anyone to breastfeed.

Is your baby happy, healthy, and alive at the end of the day?

Congratulations, you're doing this parenting thing right!

People need to stop trying to dictate what women can and can't do with their own bodies.

I find the whole subject of how other people feed their babies utterly tedious.