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?

Giles I don't normally even bother engaging with that self richeous crap but the condemnation and smugness has just done it for me.

Secret I try

A disclaimer though, I'm not anti breast feeding or anything. If you do it, I think it's fab. I honestly do. My SIL is bfing my niece and she has been through hell with it and I'm so proud of her. But with the best will in the world, it's not for everyone. And more to the point it's no reflection on how good a parent you are.

And YY to your post Secret

When my daughter was in the neonatal unit, and my milk was decreasing after having pumped for several weeks, I tried to breast feed with no success. I really wanted to bottle feed as I couldn't take the stress of my milk going and the struggle any more, but did feel guilty and depressed about it. Thank goodness for the lovely psychotherapist attached to the unit who told me not to worry about wanting to bottle feed and the best thing I could give my child right now was a happy mum.

The massive weight of guilt immediately lifted off my shoulders and my mental health improved enormously. My daughter was then bottle fed.

My daughter is now nearly six years old and is doing really well.

I am all for a mum's right to breastffeed wherever she wants, but also for a mum's right to bottle feed without criticism or judgement.

Diana, I am not anti BF either. I nursed my first daughter until she was 3. It was a lovely experience but I had not wish to do so with DD2. I try to support my friends in whatever baby feeding choice they make.

Exactly Secret! We live in a time where bottle feeding can be done safely with decent formula and proper equipment. There is no need for people to be made to 'persevere' if they feel it is beyond their capability.

Just realised I have run out of formula... May have to succumb to the peer pressure and whip a tit out. It's an emergency!

God, these threads make me roll my eyes so far out of my head they need their own passports.

So much sanctimony, finger pointing and smugness.

Yet more than a third of UK children are overweight/obese.

If only their parents put as much effort into worrying about feeding them, after weaning.

Bottle fed babies don't feed on demand. Bollocks to that. My 2nd would 'drink' anything up to 84oz milk a day.

1. that's not an error
2. it was prescription formula
3. there was a reason behind it
4. my GP knew about it

And seeing as I might as well go for gold in the bad mother stakes, his preferred method of consumption wasn't in my arms 'mimicking the closeness and comfort of breaftfeeding' but led out flat in his bed. He never took a bottle when held.

Suffice to say even now he marches to the beat of his own drum.

Seriously OP, ignore the posters who are spouting bullshit r.e. breastfeeding. When they get to primary school no-one will know who was bf and who was ff

YANBU. I had such a hard time breastfeeding: DS had jaundice and tongue tie, I had PND and an infection in my stitches, I could barely sit upright but was trying SO hard to BF. I phoned the midwife unit for advice and they launched into a lecture about how "Breast is Best...". After I put the phone down I just cried and cried. I gave up shortly after the phone call and FF my boy.

Minifingerz, the gulf between breast and bottle feeding health wise is demonstrably not significant enough to possibly warrant your "worry" for the bottlefed infants in question. That is wholly disingenuous.

What you fail to realise is the extent to which your advocacy is appropriate is entirely reliant on context. Is breastfeeding great, for the most part? Of course. Should be it spoken up for when people mock it or categorise it has somehow distasteful or weird? Absofuckinglutely.

But when it requires the potentially tiring, psychologically and physically taxing use of a living body and a safe alternative is available to those who find it to be manifestly impossible, difficult or otherwise unsuitable, it is at best socially colourblind and at worst utterly spiteful to present this advocacy to those who have elected not to breastfeed for their own reasons.

When the "increased risks" afforded by modern formula are so utterly piffling relative to palpably harmful or unwise acts, it would be the act of a madman to actually worry about the child imbibing it. An otherwise healthy bottlefed child that is happy, well-nourished and from reasonably robust "stock" is vastly more likely to sail through life in good nick than a sicklier child who's been on the breast for a couple of years.

It's what comes after the breast milk or formula people should be more concerned about.

The very fact it's difficult to find unbiased correctly tailored to each at age of a persons life, nutritional and dietary information that's not sponsored by the very people flogging you the products people are advised to be eating.

Milk is the easy part. You can't really screw up the milk. Make a bottle or pull out a breast. Job done.

With regards to things being a national health issue. It's every stage after fgs requires the work. Everything availability and pricing of food to support available to help educate or teach people to cook etc

When babies are crawling around picking shies people really are gonna wonder what the fuss was where the milk came from.

But when we have pockets of whole generations of people who through no fault of their own have grown up unable to cook or prepare food.... I think that's where the support and money would be better placed.

A child won't remember being breast fed or bottle fed. They will remember their parents living off junk food or microwave meals etc

Licking shoes
Dyac

I always wonder how do they know breast is best? They haven't actually done a massive catch up survey across the country to see how breastfed babies fared as opposed to formula fed, have they? When babies or young children get colds, they aren't all miraculously logged somewhere on the big survey of the century. Doctors don't even ask if your baby is breastfed or not. They don't care. Who is it best for? The government? Because they will be able to supply less free formula milk to the low paid? My parents were bottle-fed, they are now extremely healthy and in their eighties. I was bottled and am fine, so are my children, who were also bottle-fed. Didn't do them any harm at all.
It also annoys me when people do that condescending look at you and say "mine were breastfed" as if you are the scum if the earth.

Bottle fed, not bottled!!

YANBU - this happened to my friend constantly and it really, really upset her. It literally takes a second to say 'Why?' when someone says they will be bottle feeding. My friend has had to sit through several lectures from well meaning health professionals, mothers at baby groups, total strangers... they shut right up when she replies that she has no breasts to feed with, so what do they suggest she does?

"always wonder how do they know breast is best? They haven't actually done a massive catch up survey across the country to see how breastfed babies fared as opposed to formula fed, have they?"

researchoverview

Research into infant feeding is really complex, and it's hard to do follow-ups and also to control for the myriad of factors which may impact on an individuals health.

We know breast milk is a massively complex substance which has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to optimise health and development, and we don't yet fully understand it, though we're finding out more all the time.

Because formula milk became widely used and culturally accepted (actually the cultural norm in the UK for babies over a few weeks old) long before anyone thought to do, or had the scientific sophistication to do, really good quality research into the medium and long term outcomes associated with infant feeding choices, the last 40 years have been in effect a giant uncontrolled experiment on babies, with nobody having a really clear understanding of the longer term more subtle aspects of how health and development of humans might be affected by their feeding as babies. It's also the case that there isn't much money in breastfeeding, so that research is a bit stymied by a lack of outside investment in research from industry.

It's a situation of 'lack of evidence of effect' being taken by many as 'evidence of lack of effect'.

That said, there is some really interesting research which doesn't rely on long term follow ups, like this from Brown University in the US using MRI scans Brown

minifingerz, you pop up on every bloody thread about formula feeding with your snide, nasty posts designed to make non breastfeeding mothers feel shit about themselves, couched in just enough poor science that people feel unsure about challenging you. Why are you so over invested in how other women feed (and give birth to) their babies?

Tri that's it isn't it?! You don't see mums on threads telling others they should try harder and bottle feed or any other such nonsense. Most women who bf or ff keep it as a personal decision and don't have an overwhelming need to spout nasty crap all over threads like this in order to make themselves feel better.

WE GET IT MINI YOU LOVE BREASTFEEDING AND FORMULA IS POISON...

I'm surprised the Dunedin Longitudinal study, which has been running since 1972, doesn't have anything conclusive to say about breastfeeding.

It seems to be able to tell us about everything else. This is significant, I think.

I agree that we don't know what formula feeding will mean for us as a race, long-term, but it's hard to get too worked up about it, when people who were formula fed are living their lives and reaching adulthood with no notable adverse effects. They're living and dying just like breastfed babies. You're never going to get buy-in while this is the case.

Breast-feeding is, unfortunately, often too difficult and problematic for many women in today's modern society to want to persevere. Especially as they can see that the outcomes are not discernible on an individual level. And I say this as someone who knows how easy it is, once it's actually established. This often takes weeks and weeks, though. If it can be done at all.

I'm glad I was able to breastfeed my two for over a year apiece, and feel grateful that I was able to give them that start.

But I agree with others that a person's diet for the period they're alive, post six months, is at least (if not, surely more) significant. This is what we should be focusing on, because this is where we can see such obvious and significant differences in outcomes. We can actually see them in front of our very eyes.

Great post Dowager. My babies are 11 months apart, and when the second one was born I just couldn't have even contemplated trying to breast feed.

@minifingerz - you don't think it might be just a tiny bit bloody tactless to lecture on the benefits of breastfeeding on a thread whose OP cannot breastfeed due to having had a double mastectomy for cancer, and who has been upset by HCPs lecturing her on the benefits of breastfeeding, without bothering to take her circumstances into account?

She needs reassuring that she shouldn't have to endure lectures from all and sundry on the merits of breastfeeding, and that she is still a good mother, whose child will not suffer because she cannot breastfeed them.

She doesn't need telling how wonderful breastfeeding is - she knows, and would love to, but can't - so perhaps this is not the best place for lectures.

Minifingerz, the gulf between breast and bottle feeding health wise is demonstrably not significant enough to possibly warrant your "worry" for the bottlefed infants in question. That is wholly disingenuous.

I worry about children who aren't fed, neglected or abused. 'Worry' about bottle feeding in the developed world..... ODFOD.

Minifingerz....That research link you attached, Brown, which tries to show breastfed babies have better brain development.........The smallprint shows they only looked at 133 babies. That's not a massive survey is it. So I would say the argument does not hold its water. My babies are now both incredibly healthy and both in top sets at school for everything and they were......Drumroll.....Bottle-fed.

Oh and you say the last forty years have been an experiment with Bottle-feeding....Bottle feeding has been going on significantly longer than that I'm afraid.