AIBU to think that professionals shouldn't immediately lecture on 'breast is best' without checking WHY you're not breastfeeding?

[Bellabelloo]

Every single doctor, midwife, health visitor, doctor has given me a disapproving look and lecture on breast being best and asking whether I've given it a proper try etc without actually asking WHY I'm not breastfeeding. When I tell them that I had breast cancer when I was 30 and that I had to have a double mastectomy it shuts them up pretty quickly.

But I do feel really upset by it. I feel guilty that I can't breastfeed. I already feel like less of a woman having had my breasts removed, and now I am being made to feel like less of a mother.

There are many, many reasons why women might not be able to breastfeed and I just think the medical professionals should just ask whether there is a reason a woman has chosen not to breastfeed before judging and lecturing.

That's not unreasonable, is it?

Another MouseClogs admirer here. It is refreshing to see some measured and critical thinking , delivered with compassion. Especially on a thread like this.

Congratulations on your baby op, I wish you all the best and hope you don't have to put up with any more hurtful lectures.

I think some people just don't realise how lucky they are.

How about just being truly grateful for being able to work through the pain where others couldn't, for having the time, energy,health, support system, etc hat enabled you to carry on working through the challenges that floored the rest of us. And how about, When you sit here typing these words on every thread despite whatever awful trauma the op has been through, you just stop and think fir a second that when you were successful and decided you wanted to spread the word at all costs , that this could be you. It could be you one day on medication that prevents you from being able to bf. It could be you who has to have surgery that removes your ability to breastfeed ever again in just a few short minutes. And it could be you who has all the joy of having your baby sucked out when you meet your former self on that ward spouting this stuff.

My opinion doesn't count for much I know.

But breastfeeding isn't a case of mind over matter. It's not a case of trying. It's not a case of not giving up.

It comes down to luck. Pure and simple. Luck that circumstances come together well enough in order for you to be able to. Just be grateful. And always remember it could have been different.

Yanbu. I was in a similar situation with my ds4. He had a severe cleft lip and palate so couldn't breastfeed. I remember going to the room on the pn ward to sterilize his bottles and there were all these posters all over the walls about the importance of breastfeeding. Fair enough in the antenatal ward or clinic but completely inappropriate in a room used only by hcp's and mothers who aren't breastfeeding.

Wow! Loads of responses. Thank you. Some made me cry. Others made me laugh out loud. And don't worry, I'm not taking Skerrywind's comments to heart.

Thanks too to Mouseclogs. X

Sorry that some of you have had similar experiences. I will definitely say something just in case it makes even one of them think twice before reprimanding another non-breastfeeding woman without finding out if there is a reason beforehand. I'm not saying they shouldn't educate the benefits of breastfeeding, just that there are situations when it might not be appropriate, and it doesn't take much time to ask first.

I feel sad I don't have the opportunity to experience breastfeeding, but feel so incredibly blessed that I have been able to become a mother - and I am definitely concentrating on that and cherishing my little boy.

Thank you. X

My daughter was prem and I didn't see her for nearly three days as I was ill after a c section and she was ventilated in NICU. I had planned to feed her and as everything else had already gone wrong I wanted to feed her as I'd planned.
They got me to express from day one and then I had everyone try and help me to latch dd so I could feed her properly. However she'd lost weight and because she was peg fed at first and so tired it was really really hard to establish feeding.
Then I got caught up on how much milk she was having as I couldn't tell and at least with the expressed milk I knew how much she'd had.
So I carried on expressing. She is 14 months. I know it's making fuck all difference. It has driven me to the point of a nervous breakdown. My older child has suffered. It has ruined - along with PND - the first 14 months of my daughter's life. It has contributed to the PND because I'm so tired as I'm still up twice in the night expressing.
And do you know what infant feeding support said when I spoke to them when she got to 12 months as I wanted to stop expressing and felt like I needed some support? They said oh well the WHO recommend carrying on until the baby is two. They told me to express more frequently if I wasn't getting enough milk for her. They told me not to give her any formula.

Consequently out of a sense of guilt and habit I'm still expressing but there is no difference between my dd and my friends' children who are a similar age but were never breast fed or only breast fed for a short time.
I'm a teacher. I couldn't tell you which kids were breast fed and which weren't.

The pressure to breast feed at all costs is completely over the top.

Congratulations on your baby.

Skating the advice you've been given to increase the number of times you're expressing for your 14 month old, despite the clear damage it's doing to your mental health and quality of life, is utterly ridiculous. Most babies over 12 months old don't drink formula anyway (at least not the ones I know), they're on solid food and whole cow's milk with vitamin supplements, so I really don't see any good reason to continue beating yourself up about it. If someone wants to (and is able to) carry on breastfeeding till two or beyond that's great for them, but at this point it's got to be a case of diminishing returns, and you have to think of what's best for your family overall.

Forgot to say, well done for expressing so long! It's really not easy x

Dear OP

cant you head them off on this one? as without any shadow of doubt you are of course not BU

But a swift. "Don't even discus BF please, I have had a double mastectomy" will shut them up, surely?

They are not BU to ask, but they are BU to upset you

Skating I'm on your other thread. As said above and in that thread, in no way shape or form should you be increasing the amount you are expressing. At this point, if you don't want to stop completely you can certainly take longer breaks between expressing and, as it is, you've mentioned your DD is getting too much milk (compared to recommendations) so I think you should consider that as well.

Your mental health is very fragile at the moment. Lots of advice in your own thread that is worth looking at. You've had a very difficult time since your DDs birth and you need to stop punishing yourself for things outside your control.

Back to the OP congratulations on your baby. I can't believe the insensitivity of the HCPs you've encountered!

I also loved Mousechops post, summed the situation up succinctly and eloquently.

Jeez, so much for patient-centred care.

Yep, agree with stopfuckingshoutingatme, I'd be heading them off at the pass too. Although I am the mistress of the raised finger accompanied by 'I'm going to stop you right there before you make a complete arse of yourself ...' - you might want to be more diplomatic ; stopfuckingshoutingatme's suggestion is great. And I'd follow it up with - 'why is this not in my notes? It's upsetting to be constantly berated for having survived cancer' (yes, I probably would be that passive-aggressive). And if it is in your notes, I'd be pointedly asking why they haven't noticed it, don't they read patient notes?

And do you know what infant feeding support said when I spoke to them when she got to 12 months as I wanted to stop expressing and felt like I needed some support? They said oh well the WHO recommend carrying on until the baby is two. They told me to express more frequently if I wasn't getting enough milk for her. They told me not to give her any formula.

I'd like to smack them on your behalf. They blithely say these things...idiots.

@WhereYouLeftIt - I think I am a little bit in love with you for that amazing post!

I struggled with BF-ing all three of mine - with ds1 I was advised by the hospital to top him up with formula whilst he was having phototherapy for neonatal jaundice - I never got breastfeeding properly going after that (despite using a hospital grade breast pump to try to boost my supply - 10 days of pumping for 20 minutes after every feed, and I produced exactly the same amount as in day1 - 4oz).

Ds2 was ebf from birth, lost 10oz from his birthweight, and hadn't regained it at 6 weeks old (despite the HV turning up daily and saying 'I want him to have put in half an ounce by tomorrow). He got a chest infection and was admitted to hospital, where the main focus very quickly became his poor weight gain - the horrible phrase 'failure to thrive' was mentioned, and we were not allowed to take him home until he had gained weight - which meant formula supplements, which in turn spelled the end of breast feeding.

Ds3 was mixed- fed from birth - BF during the day, formula last thing at night and for the night feed. As long as he had two formula feeds a day, he gained weight - if I cut out even one, he stopped gaining weight. I managed to mixed feed for 12 weeks - my personal best.

The guilt I felt at formula feeding fed into PND, and I didn't fully move past considering it my personal FAILURE until I had cbt a couple of years ago.

I look at my boys now, and can see no harm that has come to them from being formula fed. All three are strapping, healthy lads, at or over the 6 foot mark. They all did well in school, ds1 got a 2:1 in law, and has a well paid job, ds2 and ds3 are both at university, doing well.

Reading this thread, what surprises me the most is the percentage of women who don't make enough milk/good enough milk - I have always joked (well - 'joked' to hide the pain) that I clearly make skim whilst other women make gold top - and I honestly thought that I should have been able to improve my milk and my supply - I still feel guilty that I didn't somehow (before the days of the Internet) work out what help I needed, and then find it whilst coping with a new born (and toddlers) and PND. I had bought into the mantra that everyone can breastfeed, and believed I had failed because I should have done something to boost my milk.

But maybe I am in that 1-5% who really don't make milk/can't make enough milk of good enough quality to nourish a baby. Wow.

@Bellabelloo - you are 100% a real mum. You have a miracle baby, and you are doing your very best for your baby, and I am so sorry that idiotic failures in communication between HCPs have led to you being lectured on breastfeeding even once, let alone on several occasions.

Why can't threads like this support the op who has been so hurt by the insensitivity of health professionals without feeling the need to rubbish the benefits of breastfeeding?

I worry about people who haven't made a choice as to how to feed their baby reading comment after comment insisting that breastfeeding makes no real difference to babies, on a thread where it would be wrong to argue with those sentiments (because not kind to the op) with reference to the evidence?

Isn't it enough just to say she has been treated with great insensitivity and it's crap that she's had her choices taken away, instead of using the thread as a golden opportunity to crap all over the medical research - knowing that nobody will challenge them?

It's not only lactivists who have axes to grind on this issue. :-(

These are not baseless remarks, minifingerz, they are supported by the scientific method. Not one person to my knowledge has claimed that breastfeeding is altogether without benefits - but there is plenty of data that substantiates the idea that at a population level, the effects are not so palpable as is often claimed.

Why do you "worry" about such children? They are perfectly safe.

FYI op, if you are attracted to the idea of breastfeeding but are unable to, you might find the idea of paced bottle feeding appealing. It's about a way of bottle feeding which encourages mothers to be responsive to their babies and mimics the closeness and comfort which babies and mums can get with breastfeeding

here

The thing is, NOTHING is ever bloody good enough.

With DD I had trouble bfing and she was slow to put on weight. The MW came to my house every 48 hours for the first few weeks to weigh her and encouraged me to 'work harder' to bf her. I am sure this contributed to later undiagnosed PND, but that's another story. I tried and tried but she had a day or two when she didn't put on the minimum 10g or whatever the fuck they were looking for (you know, because she was an actual HUMAN BEING who didn't behave like a line on a graph....!).

So in the end they said I had to start syringing formula into her. I didn't want to but they said otherwise they would have to make a referral. So I tried. It was awful because she didn't like it, it wasn't what she was used to. Once, when we were alone downstairs at 3am, she choked, properly choked. After those syringing sessions she would have dreadful wind. And I'd done that to her, I'd made my baby hurt because I was told I had to

But I went all out with the bf, took supplements, did skin to skin, all that stuff. Eventually, very luckily for me, it happened to work and bf took off by about 4/5 wks. I was able to stop the formula top ups and move to ebf which I did for 6 mos and bf thereafter.

And you know what they said to me at my 6w check? 'Oh, she's partially formula fed. We don't count that as full breastfeeding.' And they refused to write her down as a bf baby.

It made me so angry, all the guilt, all the 'work' you are supposed to put in, and it's never sodding enough. Bugger that - life is too short - just feed your baby and don't let people's stupid judgemental comments get to you.

mimics the closeness and comfort which babies and mums can get with breastfeeding

Yes because us bottle feeding mums (and dads!) can't possibly be AS close to our babies as a woman that breastfeeds. I've heard it all now.

I did a lot of expressing and several times got told off for depriving my baby of my breast-milk whilst he was actually drinking it (out of a bottle)...

And you know what they said to me at my 6w check? 'Oh, she's partially formula fed. We don't count that as full breastfeeding.' And they refused to write her down as a bf baby.

I had the same. I did everything I could to get bf to work, but my milk didn't come in for a week and a half and I could never make enough to keep up, despite all the pumping, skin-to-skin etc, leading to an admission with dehydration and struggles with weight gain. My body had obviously not read the manual and didn't realise it was supposed to come naturally. I ended up mixed feeding and also got the cat's bum face and 'that's formula feeding then' when what I really needed was acknowledgement for what I had achieved.

This is another thing that's so wrong with the system, you have to either fit the formula box or the bf box, with nothing in between. Plenty of studies have shown that every feed you can manage gives some of the benefits (such as they are), and if mixed feeding was actually supported as a compromise position a lot more people might feel confident enough to give it a go. As it is, you're told to feed exclusively for 6 months or you may as well give up, which is often just too big a task if you're struggling with weight gain issues, or pain, or other children etc.

Does anyone know the guidelines for donated milk?

I donated some last time after DD2 was in neonatal because there was a massive amount backed up (I wasn't on any medication then)

I'm not at all preachy about breast feeding honest, I'm just wondering where it actually went. Slight derail I know but I always hoped it would help women in a similar position to the OP.

That's an interesting question, UM. Maybe it's used for poorly pre-term babies? I don't know....?

@Unborn I suspect it went to pre-term babies in NICU. There is fairly decent evidence that breastmilk helps certain premature babies reduce their risk of an infection called NEC which certain premature babies are at risk for. This is one of the few areas where there is a quantifiable benefit to breastmilk, but applies to a very specific population of infants; in general, healthy full-term infants are not at risk for this infection.

@dianamemorialjam hear, hear. How the hell is it responsive to a baby's needs to essentially withhold the full quantity of food she wants? I genuinely feel sorey for people like some of the strident posters here who seem to believe the love between them and their babies is dependent on certain physical rituals. I know my love for my babies, and my husband's love for them, and the love of the vast majority of parents - whether or not they are biologically related and whether or not they gave birth to the baby - springs from simply being sentient human beings and is not so fragile as to depend on physical rituals.

I feel sad I don't have the opportunity to experience breastfeeding, but feel so incredibly blessed that I have been able to become a mother - and I am definitely concentrating on that and cherishing my little boy

good woman, and definitely take a passive aggressive stance on this.

I HAVE HAD A DOUBLE MASECTOMY HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPOPOSED TO BREASTFEED

that's aggressive, but they should be shamed here into NOT even fucking asking , disapproving looks, fucks sake

Sycamore totally agree, my niece (by marriage) is a month old and I am so in love with her! Just as I am with my own children. The way my children were fed had no impact on the way I felt about them whatsoever.