To wonder why how you feed your baby is such an emotive subject?

[Absofrigginlootly]

Currently 3&1/2 weeks into BF my pfb/DD

Have had no end of feeding issues due to tongue tie, poor latch, constant cluster feeding, fractious baby and no sleep (alongside fertility issues, anxious pregnancy and very traumatic delivery)....

At my best moments I am feeling proud of the fact I've kept going so far. DD is putting on weight beautifully and following her centile line exactly. Lots of the daytime she seems happy and content.

At my worst (desperate!) moments (usually 3am when DD has been cluster feeding for hours and is being very fractious and i feel completely EXHAUSTED!) I think about all the advantages of FF (namely being able to share the feeds and have some physical/mental space from her for a while)......

But what stops me?! .....Guilt? Obligation? Self pressure? Desire to do what's deemed "right" or "best" for her?! Reading some of the feeding pages where people talk about expressing off pure blood etc (!) but still keeping going BF part of me reads it and thinks "gosh, why put yourself through it?!" ....but then I'm doing the same! Why.....? I don't know really if I'm honest.

What are your thoughts? Why do women persist despite the difficulties? Societal pressure? Guilt/obligation? And if you decided to FF, how did that make you feel? We're you fine with your decision?

Ps....please don't let this turn into a "breast is best"/ BF vs FF bunfight.....I am just genuinely interested to hear your thoughts, mainly as it may help me understand my own feelings that aim currently struggling with

Thanks :)

Good for you for feeling proud of feeding your child - :)

FFS
Let me see...
....hours trying to get her to latch following a huge postnatal bleed, sheer agony for weeks, 2 hour feeds for wakes, 3 bouts of mastitis and 7 hour cluster feeds for months. Yes I was feeding her but it wasn't easy in the least, it was a series of challenges, which I overcame. So yes thank you I will feel proud.

Why the fuck does it matter to other people what I feel proud of? Is it a British thing, this fear of being proud? It's in the same vein as people who roll their eyes over morning sickness and say "for gods sake pregnancy is not an illness".

I bet my bottom dollar if I said I was proud of FF no one would make sarcastic arsey comments, it would be all "good for you hun"

do people not have differing ideas of what it means to be a mother? I always thought they did. MN wouldn't exist if everyone thought the same!

And yes, it really fucks me off when people aren't allowed to be proud of themselves. Just because you chose not do/couldn't do something, doesn't mean I can't be proud of myself. I certainly feel bad for you if you wanted to and couldn't, and if you didn't want to then I am glad you did what you wanted to do. This goes for everything in life, not just childbirth and feeding.

Ffs Olympic medalists are entitled to be proud of themselves, and that doesn't mean they look down on people who will physically never be able to achieve the same thing.

Agree with 70hours and BananaPie about the pride in feeding your child and making them thrive. It makes me cringe as well because the unspoken words are in the air and actually, why should anybody care what you did/do or what others did/do? It's horribly judgemental.

Babies thrive on milk; that's breast and/or formula, formula and/or breast (alphabetical order). It's ridiculous to suppose otherwise.

Therefore, all feeding methods are good and it's about time women stopped commenting - unasked - and littering forums with 'helpful' feeding advice. Mothers feed their babies, that's the only thing that IS important.

70hours any health professional who tells a woman to just carry on with no further support shouldn't be practising. But I take your point, I sometimes see it on MN when someone with a newborn is reporting "feeding all the time" and people pile in to say it is normal, when it isn't always and she really needs RL support. Well meant and intended to be supportive but not always helpful.

I have also seen mothers post that they really want to continue bf but are having x problems, and again people piling in to tell her to just stop bf - it's that "giving permission" again. Again, well meant, but again it is not listening to what the mother is saying. No needs permission to do anything, they need support to understand what is going on and what their options are.

I too am proud of lots of things but not things that come naturally - and Princess. Surely everyone knows that being a mother means feeding you child - it was your comment of the kind of mother you want to be that is a bit ......,,,, judgemental ?
And FWIW I couldn't give two shiny stars how people choose to feed their kids - however having to justify either decision is just plain wrong - mothers unite not fight is my motto -

JapaneseMargaret Sat 22-Nov-14 09:15:05
I wish someone had just told me "it's ok to stop."

Exactly. It's sad that this is exactly what so many women need, because to pressure to breast feed is so all-consuming.

It shouldn't be like this.

I agree totally with JapaneseMargaret. Women should feel empowered to make their decisions - without censure (from other women). The pressure to breastfeed is relentless. The only important factor is whether the mother a) can, and b) wants to. At no point should she be pressurised to start or continue if it isn't what she wants to do.

I also think that if women were a hell of a lot LESS judgemental about each other, then feelings of 'pride' expressed by other women wouldn't feel like jibes.

Cross post with lying and I agree with all you say !

Oh I could have wrote this thread!
DS / PFB is 7 weeks old and has had nothing but breast.
I have to admit I dont struggle with breastfeeding but I am shattered and I find it very difficult to do anything! I have started expressing but it's a long process atm I'm trying to stock up so I can do simple things like going to the hairdressers and out for a meal on my birthday! I have cried and cried over the thought of giving him formula and I have no idea why!
I blame the breast feeding support workers who do guilt trip you into it xx

Brill post, soverylucky, that's the very nub of it, I think.

jemima it is horrendous that someone who is there for support would say something to make you feel guilty.

Should just say with two older children now - I do wonder about the guilty newborn days -

And no one could look at a class of 4 year olds and work,out which ones were FF or BF - so once again I say 'what's the big deal' and 'who cares'

soverylucky I see what you are saying and don't disagree but I can't see how "if you wanted to bf but couldn't then ff" can't be emotive. If you lose or don't have something you really wanted and you are surrounded by other people having it then it is upsetting and we should acknowledge those feelings of upset. It's not as easy as saying "do what you want to do".

But agree absolutely that no one should be commenting on other's choices - which is what I was saying before- daft to judge.

Life is full of choices. If we all did what was statistically best for our babies then we'd all drive the safest car, have the safest puschchair and keep moving house to the area with the lowest crime figures. Feeding choice is the same, you weigh up the pros and cons for yourself and your family and make your choice accordingly. Although they have the best of intentions no doubt, I blame HVs for a lot of this angst because they are so obsessed with their growth charts. I wonder if that's why bf is so much more common in some cultures, as one poster's mentioned, I don't expect they have HVs breathing down their necks. IME and that of many people I know, HVs promote bf till they're blue in the face then completely undermine what they say by total overreaction when your baby slips from their correct centile and then they insist on ff top ups. So then you feel a failure whilst those who bf with no problems (and there are some!), or those who have overcome bf problems, feel that they have in some way achieved something amazing, and then the whole cycle of judgement starts.

I think another big issue is that whatever the statistics say, you look around you and see plenty of FF children doing just as well as the rest without hospital admissions, eczema, allergies etc etc, and when difficulties hit with bf you wonder what the point is when the evidence of your own eyes tells you there is absolutely no difference in how bf and ff children thrive, their health and how well they do in life.

x post 70s - hear hear about the class of 4 year olds.

Excellent post Hurley and therein lies the quandary - if there was evidence of hospital wards full of FF babies then maybe a harder sell at BF would be needed - but there's not. -

I think you sum it up well, hurly. and it is easy to say "who cares". But if new mothers care, and they want to experience bf, then they should be supported to do that without being told that they are silly to care, that they are just trying to martyr themselves etc.

Also I don't know if all mothers who want to BF really care about the statistics as such - many will but many will just want to experience bf just because they see it as part of being a mother. Others don't see bf as an essential part of the transition to being a mother ( and again, i am just observing this, not implying I think it is wrong!).

Even if every child in hospital were ff and every healthy child were bf there should be no "hard sell" of anything. Only evidence based information and non judgemental support.

Going out now - but princess some people want a natural childbirth as they see it as part of being a mother but can't have it - does that make the a lesser mother - no - maybe we should work on feeling good whatever choices we make and supporting all - because at the end of the day neither the way you give birth or feed your child are that important as long as baby is happy and thriving.

Women shouldn't give advice on feeding? Seriously? If I hant had MN support I would have stopped breastfeeding. Which is not what I wanted at all. It mattered to me and it's irritating when people say how you feed your child doesn't matter because it does to some people. I didn't want my child to have formula, that's just how I felt, were those feelings invalid or judgemental? No! Because it was how I felt about my baby.

And agree with Princess re being the mother you want to be. Dont know why she's been attacked for that. Everyone has visions of how they wish to parent and they should have support to fulfil that, not people Projecting their own experiences onto them.

Take a bow for that, 70hours

Also 70 if you don't feel proud of 'what comes naturally' then fair enough but why sneer at people who do?