to think breastfeeding is not 'convenient'?

[SolasEile]

So I might be feeling a tad bitter because my 3 month old is in some crazy nursing strike phase and I'm frustrated from having spent months trying to make breastfeeding work only to have it all fall apart now, 3 months in... but... surely breast-feeding is a hell of a lot less convenient than formula feeding?

When I went to NCT classes the message was that breast-feeding is so easy and natural and convenient and while it might be a bit tough in the early weeks, once you and baby get used to it it's so convenient as you can just 'pop them on' the breast anywhere and no need for bottles or mixing up formula and so on.

I'm not finding that to be the case. My DS was formula fed after 8 weeks and I could feed him anywhere. I just brought sterilized bottles with me and readymade formula in cartons and managed to move country and fly longhaul with him at 3 months old.

Now with my DD, she is EBF, and feeding her is a gigantic pain in the arse. First of all, you have the issue of breastfeeding in public which I'm still not 100% confident doing. I have a nursing shawl and have tried to feed her a couple of times but I find it very hard as she is a messy feeder and we were using shields up until recently. Secondly I have a very fast letdown so she gets fussy at the breast and will currently only feed in one position (laid back) and usually feeds best when she has just woken from a nap. When she is tired she will not feed for love nor money and just screams the place down from frustration. This makes getting out of the house really really hard as I have to time her feeds so carefully.

At this stage I'm tempted to just pump and bottle feed because feeding my DS out and about with bottles was never an issue at all. I am starting to regret having made the effort to breastfeed. It just is a crap experience and so much work for no reward, as far as I can see. My DS was perfectly healthy whereas my DD has had a cold almost permanently since she was born. We do have some issues with feeding so I am seeing a lactation consultant this weekend to double check on latch and so on but to be honest I'm fed up to fuck with breastfeeding. It just seems like a big con where we are told it's best for baby and it's 'so convenient' and natural when really it is just a gigantic pain in the arse.

So AIBU? To be fed up with breastfeeding and not find it convenient or easy at all? Or am I just unlucky to have had issues with both my DS and DD?
/Awaits flaming from lactivist / NCT people.../

Cherrypi hang on a minute! The op will not be "risking her babies health" by stopping breastfeeding. What sort of scaremongering, ignorant comment was that FFS!

Very convenient for me. So YABU to generalise. Up to you how you feed your baby though.

I found BFing incredibly easy - probably one of the easiest parts of having a baby. But I found babies on the whole very inconvenient. Swings and roundabouts.

cherrypi stupid, ignorant comment.

I think OP, you can kind of generalise that it is more convenient because it requires no equipment. Saying otherwise would like be saying using distilled water is more convenient than drinking straight from the tap.

What it doesn't address though is what if the tap needs a washer replacing? what if you can't reach the tap? What if the tap is worn out? Then, it may be easier to use distilled water.

Breastfeeding, with no other issues is undoubtedly more convenient. That's not to say that when other issues are present you shouldn't find an alternative that works for you. But your circumstances are not the same as others.

Just stop if you hate it. You know yourself the lines that some people will trot out to convince you to carry on even though most are bollocks Do what works for you, if that means ff them so be it. Like you found ff far and away easier than bf.

I thought it would be convinient and it sort of was/is. I like bf at night and when out and about.

I've had to mix feed though as he was failing to thrive and after dreading it I've been quite pleasantly surprised by how easy formula is. I just use the ready mixed and he takes it room temperature so it's very simple.

My experience was similar to your's op, though I only managed it for 3 weeks.
I found formula feeding much easier and more convenient and so did some other people I know.
I suspect that is one of the reasons many women formula feed.

Risk your baby's health

I never bf but don't understand why ff is described as a faff....sterilised bottle carton when out....anyone can feed ....job done.

YABU, it is not inconvenient for everyone. I find it very convenient.
However YANBU to find it inconvenient for yourself, you can feed your babies however you find most convenient.
bestzebbie you don't have to sterilize the pump after each use, pop it in the fridge and use all day then sterilize at night for the next day, you can wash with hot soapy water between each use if you prefer but breast milk is very sterile in itself.

I tend to agree from my personal experience its not convenient. Am still feeding as most of the inconvenience is mine and I have resigned myself to it until baby is at least 6 months.

For me its not a case of just feeding, due to massive over supply I leak from the other side during a feed so need to use a shell everytime, generally leak about 50mls a time too much for a breastpad to cope with. So if out I first have to put a shell in and I then have a shell of milk to deal with as well as a squirming baby!

Every morning I wake up in pain and soaking wet, have to always wear a bra and now have bad heat rash between boobs!

I am still going as stopping terrifies me as my supply does not adjust, we are doong one expressed feed a day but after 5 weeks boobs still not caught on!

I also hate how much guilt laden comments people throw out - how to make people feel crap.

One thing I love about my group of NCT mums is we were all told the party line but a couple have started to give up and there has been no judgemental comments at all.

Oh and I am 4 months in and EBF but its hard work for me.

I'm too lazy to faff with sterilisation, pre-boiled cooled water then knowing when bottles were made up and have to be dumped, or how much to take out on trips... So bf was definitely more convenient for us

But if you have a baby who thrives better on ff, then that's absolutely fine

I think I'd find all the endless feeding or expressing and freezing or sterilising pumps or taking out shields Breast pads with me and washing clothes with milky leeks on more of a faff

It's just your personal experience

Going by my circle of friends though I would say it is about 50-50. Totally anecdotal and not data-based of course but of the parent friends I have, sure, some say they had no issues with breastfeeding and never gave it much thought but a lot say it was a monumental PITA too and they hated it but stuck it out for the health benefits (thanks for the reminder, cherrypi!) or ended up formula feeding after a short time. One friend barely left her house for six months, she said, because her DD had so many bf-ing issues and she got PND as a result. She stuck it out for a year to the day, based on the health benefits advice, and then couldn't wait to see the end of it.

I guess a lot of my frustration comes from how poor the bf advice and support is too. Or it was for me anyway. So much of bf was misrepresented to me or I was given conflicting advice. I had very little support with bf from either family or healthcare services e.g. my DD was born on a Saturday evening and the lactation support services only operated on Mon-Fri 10-4 so I was out of luck! Thankfully DD had a much better latch from day one than my DS had so I still managed to work it out. My DH hates it and says I'm just spending all my time trying to make bf work for no good reason when our DS was FF from 8 weeks and is perfectly fine. My parents and ILs think it's weird and I could never feed in front of them as it made them uncomfortable.

Don't get me wrong - there are some aspects of bf that I like and I am trying to make it work but man it's frustrating! I feel annoyed that bf is 'sold' to mothers as convenient and natural when really it's been bloody hard work and much less convenient - for me - than FF. I envy anyone here who has had an easy and pleasant experience with it. I wish it had been like that for me.

Found my first a faff and a nightmare when out, mostly due to being unable to do it remotely subtly (big boobs, baby who wriggled, struggling with feeding covers) so generally avoided going anywhere. When I went to friends houses I fed in another room and felt miserable.

For my second I have ditched the feeding bras and wear a normal bra which I just lift the boob out of. Then I do the 'one top up one top down' with a regular vest and T-shirt. It's a breath of fresh air compared to trying to get on with all the 'breastfeeding' paraphernalia, which for some makes it SO inconvenient.

So YANBU to find it hard work, it can feel totally demoralising, but there may be a more convenient solution to what you are doing now and to ff. Up to you though!

It was the most convenient thing ever - right nutrients, right temp, right...there, no faffing with sterilising etc. Plus having freezer bags of breastmilk stashed in MIL freezer really pissed her off result

Yep, Noodle, similar issues that I have of oversupply and endless leaking. If my DD happens to sleep a bit longer than usual my boobs wake me up aching and leaking. It is such a nuisance. I have to change tops twice a night sometimes because even if my breasts don't leak, my DD will have some messy feed at 3am and leak milk all over me. Or I'll leak from the other side.

A. Giant. Pain. In. The. Arse. The amount of laundry I do is ridiculous between my milk-stained clothes and my DD's poop-stained ones.

At the same time though I think back to the formula I had to use with my son and how artificial it was and the way he always smelled of it rather than the nice milky smell my DD has now and I don't want to go back to FF unless I really have to.

You're having a shit time of it. I did. I had nursing strikes, tongue tie and reflux so feel your pain.

I still loved bf and found it more convenient.

I think I get what you're saying...by promoting bf, some people with give a misleading picture that it is always easier for everyone.

I'd planned on bf all the way through my first pregnancy. It never even crossed my mind that I'd have a problem doing so because I'd read all of the information and knew it was "just" a matter of getting the right position. Imagine my shock therefore when that didn't happen.

I found it convenient when at home, especially when in bed.
I found it very inconvenient out of the house, since I have ginormous boobage and thus positioning the baby to feed was waaay to complicated without a comfy sofa to slouch on, and 2 pillows (one under boob, the other under baby who sort of lay along side me with head on my leg)

so I pumped to have bottles to feed him on when out of the house.

i found feeding in public really easy and convenient
also liked the convenience of night feeds

what i didn't like was that dd2 would not take a bottle (whether EBM or formula) and fed 2 hourly. Not going anywhere away from her for more than two hours either by day or night was certainly not convenient though, and so I switched to FF totally at 5mo.

Yes, Youll, I do find a lot of bf promotion to be misleading. When I talk about the issues I've had to NCT types / lactation consultants they always have this tone like 'Hmm... well you must be doing x, y, z if you have that problem...' in this sanctimonious way, implying if I have problems it's not because bf is shite and difficult sometimes but I'm just Doing It Wrong.

Thanks for the civilized discussion by the way, everyone. Considering this is AIBU it's all been very pleasant and interesting so far!

I found it more convenient to not have to sterilise bottles and get bottles and milk ready when I was going out, it was much easier to just 'pop out' when breastfeeding than bottle feeding.
breastfeeding didn't work out for me though. DS just couldn't latch on so I expressed for a week or so before getting fed up of him puking up what I'd just worked an hour for, hand expressing.
I breastfed DD for about a week but it was soooo painful and didn't find it convenient in the sense that it means mum has to do 100% of the feeding.
My DS was struggling with jealousy of having to share mummy so seeing me breastfeeding was very distressing for him.
Once DD was on a bottle, whether breast milk or formula, it meant DH could feed her whilst I have a play with DS. Everybody was happier once she was on a bottle.
Honestly the pain of breastfeeding was excruciating for me, it made me really short tempered, DD wasn't getting enough milk and lost a lot of weight, maybe I wasn't producing enough or maybe I was taking her off before she'd finished because of pain, I'm not sure.
Breastfeeding isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I know two health visitors and they both say that they're trained to promote breastfeeding but in their honest opinions, it doesn't make much (if any) difference to baby's health.
I do envy these mothers who find it a breeze but I just feel like too much pressure is put on us.
As long as baby is getting fed, is happy and loved, and mum is happy too, it doesn't really matter whether that milk comes out of a boob or a bottle or is made by mum or Aptamil.

I hated breastfeeding, I did it twice - for 3 months with DS1 and 6 weeks with DS2. It's not for everyone. If it's impacting on your life negatively then just stop, there's no shame in it.

The messages I got in antenatal classes were very much pro-breastfeeding but I felt very pressurised to continue once I started. I gave up and felt like I got a bit of my body back, I could have a shower and not to be interrupted by DS1 (he cluster fed from 5.30pm - 1am every night for the last 6 weeks). Both my kids were also fussy about feeding position and I would have needed a double duvet to cover me up rather than a feeding shield as they liked to sprawl when feeding.

You would not be "risking your child's health" if you decided to introduce formula, unless you mix it with red bull or something

I think yabu for over generalising, my experience was that once bfing was established it was really convenient in terms of being readily available, no washing bottles and sterilising and for someone who was skint the bonus of being free as well!!

It does have its draw backs though in terms of being knackering, messy and awkward at times!!

Op if you are struggling it is possible to introduce the occasional bottle if it makes life easier. However I think if you keep going you will find it starts to get easier anyway really soon.