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.../

YABU to generalise that breastfeeding is inconvenient. I found it very easy and I'm feeding my second.
I don't use a shawl though I own one for very occasional use. (Ie for squeamish male friends and relatives). I never found it painful, I never had mastitis, I can have milk faster than the perfect prep machine. Feeding is around 20min. I'm going to Australia and i don't have to fret about formula on a 24+ hour flight. What's not to like?

So they arent selling a con as those sticking with it probably do find it very easy.

It's a double edged sword.

It was convenient to me as I just stuck my babies on. No faffing with bottles, heating up etc. I never had a problem BF in public and did it everywhere. Was convenient at night though meant it was always me. Was convenient as we holiday and fly a lot and just popped them on for their ears and to keep them quiet. It's cheap.

It was exhausting at the start though and was held a bit of a prisoner to a baby who seemed to feed constantly, wouldn't take a bottle or a dummy.

YANBU but everyone is different. I found formula feeding much easier. Due to previous breast surgery, my first baby being tongue-tied and having massive boobs I found it so, so hard (massive boobs and difficult latch made it very hard to be discreet and I'm rather modest by nature). It was such a relief when after weeks of HV and lactation consultants telling me to 'stick with it' a new HV said "are you enjoying it"? to which I burst into tears and she advised I stop. Expressing and feeding is definitely not convenient either. That was a continuous cycle of expressing / feeding / sterilising. Formula feeding was a walk in the park in comparison.

It sounds like you've had a crap time & you've done an amazing job to get to three months.

My DD was a bugger to latch on & we had to use shields - I lasted 2 weeks!

I think everyone's different. It will be really convenient for some & bloody awful for others.

You've got an appointment with the lactation consultant and you've got this far it's probably worth seeing what she says & plodding on for a couple more weeks, but if it still isn't working then so be it.

Ikwym re colds etc too, touch wood my DD has always had far fewer than her bf contemporaries, but I suspect that may be more connected to DH & I both working in schools & her defences having to kick in pronto !

There are exceptions to every rule, you must be one of the exceptions.

I found bfing very convenient, but then I hated the faff of washing/sterilising bottles, scrubbing teats, and then having to make up milk and wait for it to warm while dealing with a hungry baby etc etc.

I understand your pov, OP.

BF can be convenient but it depends on your lifestyle & environment. You haven't got a supportive family so that makes it harder. Ime it's easier with a pfb as you can adapt your day to suit them but if you already have DCs esp if they are at school, the new DCs routine has to fit in with being out and about at set times.

Also the new ready made formula cartons make ff easier if you can afford the expense. If you had to compare bf to making up dried formula fresh out and about then bf will usually win.

If you live somewhere with low bf rates where women tend not to bf in public this makes it harder too.

There does seen to be a lot more pressure on new mums to bf at all costs now than a decade ago. Eg I had mastitis and wasn't expected to continue bf after that.

But it must be easier now having much more support. Lactation consultants?! They never had them when I had my DCs. I was just expected to get on with it.

I guess a lot of my frustration comes from how poor the bf advice and support is too

YANBU about this.

But last week when I had to scoop DS up to take bleeding DD to A&E I was very glad I didn't need to think about bottles.

Equally though ff DD was fine and very easy. Ready to feed formula is fantastically easy to use. I appreciate it's much more expensive.

I don't think OP is the exception to the rule. Ime it's about fifty fifty. I found BF to be the least convenient thing I've ever done in my life. It just about broke me. There's a bit of faff involved with FF too, but at least somebody else can take a turn doing it.

Psychologically, there will be some mothers who love being their babies sole life support, but I found it horrific.

I only ever FF so I can't comment on how convenient BF is but I found FF very easy and convenient both times .
I remember going into Mothercare to feed DD and there were lots of ladies bf babies in the feeding room. I sat down, whipped out the bottle, fed DD a full bottle quick wind and back out while all the bf ladies were still sitting there.
Once I got better at it I could ff while pushing a trolley round the suoermarket and then once dd was old enough to hold her bottle - happy days!!!
We still did the snuggling on the sofa longer bottle feeds too which were nice but for the utility feeds ff was especially great. So was being able to go out and leave DH, GPS or other family in charge.
Worked for me bit other people find the bottles less convenient I know.

Has your baby got any symptoms of reflux? Some of the things you mention (difficult to feed, fussing at the breast, refusing to feed, only feeding in one position) are characteristic of my babies with reflux.

It is very difficult to BF a baby in public who screams and arches away intermittently thus drawing the whole room's attention to you at the precise moment your nipple snaps out of their mouth and entire milk spraying breast is exposed ;). This continues for 45 mins before you or they give up, then starts again an hour later because they've either chucked it all up or they didn't take enough in due to pain.

Yes very fucking convenient. I have however persisted as formula is harder to digest making reflux worse. 150 trillion feeds a day and night also made easier by not having to make up 150 trillion bottles.

IME a baby who is difficult to feed is difficult to feed on breast or bottle unfortunately.

ptomely why do you think the OP is an exception to the rule? I shared the op's experiences, and I know several others who also found breastfeeding inconvenient. Are we all exceptions as well?

I am completely new to BF'ing.

DS had latch issues, so I gave up after a few days and expressed for 6 long, hideous weeks. The we moved to formula and life was dandy. I never had any issues with FF. Found it easy, straight forward and it worked for us.

This time I m BF'ing, DD choice and not mine (I had to express for a week due to cracked and bleeding nipples and we did try a few formula bottles which were refused point blank). My baby has chosen to go back on boobs and I am going with it.

I am finding it hard though, baby is cluster feeding and I am such a novice that when I feed I am confined to the sofa and my poor toddler is left to his own devices safely of course!!

We have barely been out of the house all together (I try to take toddler out for a run around when OH is here with baby) and I cannot really foresee ever getting the hang of it.

However I am doing it as my little 16 day old baby's face when I try to offer her a bottle just makes me so sad, she looks like she is being poisoned and she is clearly telling me what she wants so I have to listen??

Since we've been back on boob she has also been really clingy and I spent from 3pm yesterday until about 1am with a baby either on my boob or in my arms. She is too small for her sling just at the moment but I will be using that as soon as.

Sorry to take over your thread OP, but no you are NBU. BF'ing won't and doesn't work for everyone

hoping it starts to work for us soon though

There are health risks associated with formula feeding. You have to balance that risk with your own personal circumstances.

I also know many 'exceptions to the rule'

Certainly don't think you are on your own in your thinking Op

Bf when it works is very convenient, you can do it anywhere instantly with no bottles to wash/ sterilise , no formula to make up.
However when it's not working its a pita and with the advent of pre sterilised bottles and ready made cartons ff can be really easy now too.

i was also an exception with my son.
my daughter (second child) just took to it.

I found it really convenient. One of my friends found ff more convenient. Our NCT person just told us to go with what works for us. If you can express, then you have all the benefits of breast milk, with the convenience of a bottle, if that's what you want.

cherrypi what health risks? You make it sound that mums are putting their babies at risk by not breastfeeding when in actual fact it makes very little difference.
As I previously said, even the HV's I know say they see no difference in health between breast fed and bottle fed babies.
My friend's baby got chickenpox whilst being 100% breastfed so it isn't true that baby gets mum's immunity.

I think that actually, there's an arguement for telling woman some horrible truths about breast feeding - in many ways, it's shit. It can hurt even if you are doing it right. You are a lot more tied to your baby than if your FF. You have to factor it in to clothes choices. Your less likely to get the baby sleeping through the night early than if you FF. You will feel hungry all the time (just at a time you're thinking about losing weight). Feeding won't just be a quick 10 minute thing but a bigger faff and trying to feed discreetly can be tricky.

but there are health benefits to balance against that, and for me that won out, but pretending the downsides aren't there, just gives woman who do then have the downsides the feeling that they are doing something wrong or that they aren't cut out for breastfeeding. All the "formula feeding is harder" argument is clearly nonsense that if you have formula feeding friends who are even slightly organised, you can see that quickly.

OP - if you are ready to stop, then do so. But breastfeeding isn't the easy option, ignore anyone who tells you otherwise - it's hard work and that should be acknowledged, getting to 3 months is an achievement because it's hard work. If you do want to carry on, do so knowing it wont' be easy but you're doing it for other reasons, never for convenience - that might make it easier to deal with.

cherrypi would love to know what these health risks are as well.

I am persevering with BF as my little one has never really had any issues luckily, no reflux, no strikes, no constant feeding day and night all the time. She got how to latch almost straight away.

If she had been trickier given all the other things I have to deal with as well, I would probably given in a long time ago. Trust me having to express at 4am when baby is still asleep in order to relieve the pain is not fun, waking up covered in milk every day is also not fun, expressing every morning so the pressure is reduced so baby can drink without gagging gets tiring.

I have continually had the keep going it will get better, don't express it agravates the problem - I didn't for a week leaked even more, hardly slept as the pain was really bad and nearly caused myself mastitis so I'll stick with what works now.

If you want to carry on do so, lots of my friends have now gone to FF during the day, breastfed at night. As someone said earlier I strongly believe Happy Mum = Happy Baby.

Sorry I assumed this was common knowledge.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2812877/

It is increased risk from a low risk so you have to judge it yourself. My breastfed baby had chicken pox and my other one has a cold at the moment. I don't think it makes all breastfed babies super human. The scientific research is that there is an increased risk of health problems for people that are formula fed. This is not disproved by people that are healthy that have been formula fed just as the ninety year old woman who smoked sixty a day doesn't makes cigarettes healthy.

bf was massively more convenient for me. I never got to grips with bottles and formula as I never needed to.

I'm not dim enough to extrapolate out from that that my experience must have been everyone's though...

So I think you're being a bit unreasonable to describe it as a "con" that the classes said it was easier. For many women it is easier. For some, like you, it's not easier

Well, it is a con if they never mention that for some it is a total pia. I am from the total pia set but OP I would persevere by pumping and using bottles to go out, 3 months of bfing is good, 4 is good but if things don't improve switch to formula for some or all feeds, you've done well anyway, perhaps give it until the weather improves as you won't be going out too much in the cold.

That is the point i saw, it is ok for people to generalise and say "it is easier" but not to generalise and say "it is a faff"

MaryWestmacott exactly

I read somewhere once that breastfeeding starts out at (say) a 9/10 difficulty level, but usually drops down to more like 2/10 when both parties have got the hang of it, whereas ff starts at 5/10 and stays there.

I was lucky enough to have a pretty easy time of bf-ing to start with compared to the hell that some of my friends went through, but even then bf-ing at 3 weeks was very different than feeding at 3 months - baby got more efficient at feeding, latch improved, I had to do a lot less faffing around to position her right.

Obviously this doesn't apply in the OP's own situation, but I do think that the average short duration of bf in the UK contributes to a general perception that it's a huge inconvenient painful faff at best. If most people stop before 6 weeks, for whatever reason, most people's knowledge about what it's like is going to be based on what it's like to feed a teeny newborn, and that's not the whole picture.