Where are the 99%?!

[Popplemama]

Just a (fairly) light hearted query but, after six months of EBF I was quite proud of myself for making the 1%.

However according to MN I seem to now be the odd one out for making it this far and for now thinking that enough might be enough?! To make it worse my lovely DD has had bottles, has now had formula (it was our wedding anniversary and I fancied a night off!) and I'm even fantasising about being able to stop (and wear normal bras and drink white wine...)

AIBU in thinking that MN is where the 1% congregate or are the BF surveys a bit skewed?!

I'm 1%er, for both babies. Neither have ever had formula or a bottle of anything. I've never owned any baby feeding apparatus other than boobs. Neither started solids before 6 months and went straight to BLW. It was fine, though I had to fend off a lot of advice to do things differently.

I think that "ebf (and nothing else) to 6 months" is seen as the ideal, not least by public health agencies. I managed this for lots of reasons including not going back to work, to having lots of family support (especially DH), having a pretty clear goal in mind and seeking out information and advice that supported what I felt was right to do.

I think it's a pretty ambitious standard to aim for though. Nearly everyone I know breastfeeds to some extent, but very few would make it in the 1% club (if such a thing exists).

I BF for a long time (weaned at nearly 3 for DS1 then nearly 4 for DS2) and it was a big part of my life. But as the boys have got older, I look round their friends and there is no way to tell who was BF and who wasn't. And not even the big studies seem to be able to show definitely that FF significantly disadvantages children or the adults that they become. So i believe I did the right thing for me and my children, just as others do, who do things differently.

BTW,
The socioeconomic differences alone between groups who do and don't try breastfeeding must be confounding.

Normally such studies account for such confounding. Controls and cases should match up for different aspects, such as age, social and economic status, etc.

I ebf 5, they self weaned between 10-14 months - number 5 is 11 months and still feeding at the moment.

The 1% purist thing seems bizarre.

Agree! Seems almost like a fetish or something. Reminds me of all the "you're not really a virgin if..." conversations back in high school in the 1980s. Who cares?

I BF both my children for a little over 2 years! Obviously, it was really tailing off after the first year. And they both had a taste of apple sauce and the like before 6 months old. They never had formula though. There was just never any need, but what difference would a bottle of formula have made if they had had one?

I fed until a bit past 6 months but don't count as the 1% because

1. I expressed all my milk and gave it in bottles, which rules us out from counting as BF or bottle-fed, apparently.
2. By 5 months all the milk I could produce still wasn't enough food, so we introduced solids and formula top-ups as well. I had had 6 months in mind all along as a target but when it came it was a bit of a shock to realise 'oh, we made it, I could stop now!' - but having realised that we started weaning about two hours later.

I'd never heard of this but seems like another stick for the majority of women to beat themselves with and another thing for a small minority of women to gloat about. I breastfed my daughter til she was 2years and 5 months, she didn't take formula because she wouldn't take a bottle- nightmare. I also have small breasts and while there was no supply issue, there wasn't any extra around so I didn't have bags and bags of expressed milk. While at the time I wasn't overly bothered as she was my first, had another came along I would've made sure not to create such a rod for my own back. I'm not in the 99% because I seem to recall a banana being ambushed at around 5.5 months- and I think to ignore the cues of a baby desperate to try food so that you can fall into an elusive group is a bit weird/controlling.

Agree Mari50.

I don't agree Mari. I think it's just interesting.

Bertie, can I ask where you weaning guidelines info comes from? You said a couple of times that the guidelines say to introduce solids by 6 months. As far as I can see, the WHO, UNICEF and the NHS haven't changed anything and aren't reviewing until 2017.

Have you read differently? Just like to stay up to date (I'm a peer supporter). I haven't received any updates from the people I trained with either.

Is it really only 1%?
I'm also part of that statistic then, twice over- well done you as it's bloody hard work at times.

It's 1% who have only ever given breastmilk at 6 months which is why it's such a small figure. Its 34% who are still breastfeeding (either exclusively or alongside formula, solids or a combination). The figures are from 2010 as well, so not particularly recent.

Smiling at all the sneaked banana's and handfuls of birthday cake and tit-bits from older sibs sneaking in at around 5 mths. "But baby likes it Mummy" - and protests loudly when it's taken away

34% still BFing past 6 mths. There you go then, that's more like it!

Juggling, in our house, it was a whole cucumber. DS was 24 weeks and at just the wrong height in the trolley at the farm shop. They did give us the half chewed/half sucked cucumber to take home with us.

I'm part of the 99% and happy to be counted. My ff DC (who ate solids from around 4 or 5 months) are now happy, healthy adults who work in professional jobs. They were never obese and rarely ill as children. They achieved top grades at school and went to good universities. Most of my friends' DC are the same as none of us managed to bf for more than a few days or weeks.

There's a lot of unnecessary pressure put on new mothers to bf which is cruel as so many will fail. The general message from HCP and the NCT should be that bf is better but it's really hard for many people. There's no need to worry about giving formula as the baby certainly won't notice or care how it's fed!

"So DS1 would be excluded from these stats because he was given the odd bottle on the maternity ward as I was ill, even though I went on to BF him for almost 3 years? "

I will repeat again - this is not correct. The 1 per cent is meaningless because...well, I've explained before!

It also does not 'exclude' mothers who gave formula beforehand.

The survey asks questions at particular time points. 'How was your baby fed at x months?' and does not take into account formula given earlier.

The 'club' is spurious! No one is (or should) be judging people positively or negatively for being in a club where the 'membership' is not based on anything we actually know about.

Oh gosh, I belong to a "club"! Not a thing passed my darling second born's lips but that wonderful "liquid gold" until he turned six months, how great am I?

His older brother was FF from six days old and weaned at 16 weeks. But he doesn't count because we just lock him in a kennel in the garden.

SOH Perhaps I am paraphrasing, but certainly this was the advice I and everyone I spoke to received from health visitors - that's not even counting some of the terrible advice, like I was advised to wean at 4 months because of a misplaced dot on the weighing chart, and a friend was advised to start with quavers. WTF?

NHS advice is "around six months", WHO says "If complementary foods are not introduced around the age of 6 months...an infant’s growth may falter." and UNICEF Baby Friendly uses the NHS definition of "around six months" too.

So you are right that these three official bodies don't use "by".

But popular sources of information have a mixture:

Babycentre says "By about six months, you'll probably start noticing signs" (and lists one of the signs as "looking at you while eating" FFS)

Gina Ford says "if you decide to wait until six months..." as though it's a rare thing. She also talks about iron deficiency, saying "Remember the iron stores a baby is born with have been depleted by the time he reaches six months"

Cow and Gate and SMA are surprisingly sticking firm to the NHS wording of "around six months". Aptamil does even better by using language like "from six months".

Hipp takes a definite chair on the side of "by" with this statement: "Even if your baby shows no signs of wanting to begin weaning, it is still best to make a start at 6 months since this is an important step in their development. Delaying weaning may also mean that your baby doesn't get enough of some important nutrients such as iron."

Bounty is similar, using the phrase "By six months" and "Why six months is bang on" and includes a tale of a mum starting at 5.5 months because her baby didn't sleep well.

Boots' article is well informed and says "at six months". So does Netmums' article.

First google result on google UK for early weaning was this: www.madeformums.com/baby/is-it-safe-to-start-weaning-at-4-or-5-months/36085.html

And a daily mail article (I know, but it has a wide readership) claims "Babies weaned after six months are 'three times as likely to develop type 1 diabetes'"

It's not so much what the message is, but what people are hearing, if that makes sense?

I BF DD1 for the first six weeks and absolutely hated every single second of it. I was bullied into it by a couple of Nazi midwives.

BF really hampered my bonding with DD1 directly contributed to my PND, I believe. I felt huge relief when I stood up to my midwives and stopped BFding.

As soon as DD1 went onto formula she became much more settled and I felt much more in control and better able to cope.

When DD2 was born I just BF while in hospital, but she was FF from 3 days. She was a dream baby, settled and contented. I bonded with her immediately.

BF has its merits. But so does FF too.

OP I'm astounded that you haven't had a glass of wine since the birth!

Both my dc were boob monsters (ds1 finally gave up at around 4.5 when I was pregnant with ds2 who in turn still has a morning feed daily at 3.5yo) but I was not in to be sober all that time! I would sometimes have a glass of wine after the evening feed as it would be out of my system in the four hours before the next feed (alcohol leaves milk at the same rate as it leaves blood).

I breast ed both of mine until they were just over 23 months.

To be honest I've no idea how many people do the same and as long as the children of those i encounter are happy, healthy,loved and cared for I couldn't care less if they're being fed with formula or breast milk.

I have to say I was glad I could breast feed. I'm a lazy sod and the prospect of having to make up, sterilise and worse remember bottles was more than I could stand. Booby milk all the way here :)

I didn't make it past the first month of BF with either of my DC, but all four of my closest friends breastfed their babies well into their second year...yet I dont know a single person who exclusively breastfed for 6 months - never even one bottle of formula, a tiny bit of food etc.

My experiences similar to yours Skandi. Grim.

I hardly ever made up any bottles myself, . DH had a good system going , but I believe that things have changed in FF rules/making bottle up lately. The ready made cartons were a godsend.

It was grim wasn't it sparkling? BF made me feel trapped and bitterly resentful. The longest six weeks of my life. And DD still had epic colic regardless.

We used to buy the litre cartons of ready made SMA Gold. Cost a fortune but worth every penny.

It really was Skandi. 16 years on I am glad to say that the only time I ever think about it is when a thread on MN comes up, but it seemed to really matter at the time.