Friend is pissed off with me, WIBU to correct her?

[teenytinypontypine]

It is a breastfeeding one, sorry.

Group of 4 of us female friends out for lunch. I have an almost three y o who I breastfed for 13 months and FWIW it was fucking agony wasn't easy for the first couple of months but I stuck it out and am pleased I did. Other friend "A" has a 5 month old who is FF. I don't care a jot. Feed your baby however you like.

Other two ladies are both currently pregnant, due within a few weeks of each other around Xmas time, and over lunch conversation turns to feeding.

Friend A says she really wanted to bf but couldn't. She said her milk didn't come in because she had an elcs, so baby was starving and unhappy and she had to give up. "How long did you try for?" asks pregnant friend - answer: 18 hours. Cue sympathetic tutting from pregnant friends about how hard that must have been.

So, I sort of couldn't help myself but explain that your milk usually doesn't come in at birth, but more usually a few days later. And that newborn stomachs are v little and hardly take any filling at all. And that newborns physiologically are prepared for mum's milk not coming in for a few days so usually do just fine. Oh and that people having a section usually can bf. And yes, I know there are some circumstances where these things aren't true, but in the main this is what happens.

"A" got visibly riled - reporting that her baby was much happier as soon as she got a bottle. I gave her a big grin and said that's fine and clearly she is a happy, growing little girl and doing perfectly well on formula. But I told her I thought it was only fair to point out to pregnant friends some basic facts about bf. Especially as I am a fucking doctor.

Basically, she feels that by correcting or questioning her version of events I am judging her for not trying for longer. On the contrary, I couldn't give a flying fuck what she does wrt feeding, but I do care that she is spreading misinformation to pregnant friends. I have a duty as a bloody doctor to not just sit by and let someone's opinion stand as fact when I know evidence to the contrary.

So WIBU to correct her like that? Should I have just nodded and smiled and caught my two pregnant friends later to give them a more balanced view?

@womenbehavingbadly i'm sometimes think the inventor of gremlins could have been a parent whose done one to many night feeds.

@demander what a horrible thing to say. You really need to think more carefully about your posts, and react more gracefully when the people you offend are obviously upset (myself being one of them). If you were fortunate enough not to have experienced any difficulty breastfeeding then good for you; others are not so lucky and it can be a real struggle. They do not need your judgement on top of such an emotional and challenging topic.

@demander what a horrible thing to say. You really need to think more carefully about your posts, and react more gracefully when the people you offend are obviously upset (myself being one of them). If you were fortunate enough not to have experienced any difficulty breastfeeding then good for you; others are not so lucky and it can be a real struggle. They do not need your judgement on top of such an emotional and challenging topic.

And yet your post if full of judgements. Stick to addressing the issue.
And if you had problems with feeding, you did, if you have read and understood what I have said on this topic then you've no right to be offended, if you can't understand that, then, this explains a lot.
To be clear , I do not care if you have chosen to be offended. Don't judge or lecture me. You simply don't what is required.
Do you actually have anything to say to the OP? or are you just on here to whine?

Yes, just reeling at your ignorance momentarily, Demander.

I'm unsurprised by yours love, hey ho
Do you have anything valid to say on topic?

Demander I can read just fine thankyou.
The evidence suggest otherwise,
Don't accuse me of saying things I haven't said.
Don't you have a husband to argue with?
That's a rhetorical question, I don't give a shite :D

Are you going to put down everyone with sarcastic rhetorical questions, Demander?

If you —spend less energy being an arsehole and— scroll further down the thread you will see what I have said to the OP on the subject.

In the OP misinformation about bf was being passed on as fact to pregnant women. On what planet was it not the right thing to correct it?

This sounds like the friend was giving a health information presentation on breastfeeding. That is not what is in the OP at all. The OP says that the conversation turned to feeding and Friend A said that her milk didn't come in. She was relating her own personal experience. She in no way was teaching the other pregnant women that they should give up after 18 hours, she wasn't saying "if you don't get your milk immediately, you must give up" she was simply relating her own story - and god knows someone in the hospital may well have told her she needed to formula feed because her milk didn't come in.

What she got in return was the OP helpfully explaining that her reasons for formula feeding were spurious and non-existent. I know that would have made me feel like shit - and for what? If the OP was that concerned about her pregnant friends, she could have talked to them later.

Glad it all worked out for the OP though.

I'm married to a doctor and your head would have to be falling off to get him to give a medical opinion in conversation (watching medical tv is different unfortunately - he's banned from that).

FWIW it took a few tries but ds latched on and didn't let go! I had a bit of trouble with breast pads but ds doubled weight in two months.

Dd (21 months later) latched on within first hour and the nursing specialist said, "I wish that I could show the other mothers on the ward your Baby! You are doing everything great!"

That doesn't feel very nice to hear does it? I would never say that to my friends bc it is rude and unkind although true.

My dh also thought that he lost both ds and me bc my not elcs did not go well. Ds was an unexpected butt first breach. Dd had trauma bc cord was around her tummy and neck.

SO, I am a champion at bf but lousy at birthing. Would I ever tell this to pregnant women during their first pregnancy? What about correcting women who think that their ecs is a wonderful medal earning experience when my cs was critical medical necessity and I was not running laps but it was a long and painful recovery. I have had women scoff at my recoveries while telling me about their difficulties be.

We are individuals. If we are lucky enough to survive childbirth and bf (or not) and have healthy babies, we should be grateful and kind. I am not sure that you were kind.

Way to make a ffing mother feel inadequate.

Nobody believed me that DD2 had a weak suck. She would try to feed for 5 minutes, exhaust herself, fall asleep for 10 minutes, then wake up hungry again. Finally, at 12 weeks, the HV suggested mixed feeding. She then refused the breast except at night until 32 weeks, then it was ff only.

I still feel like a failure, even though I bfed 3 of my 4 DC, DS2 for 23 months!

Bing I bfed until 23 months. He needed breast milk, I gave it to him. The night after his last bf, I asked him to sit on his sister's bed for a story, he just did it. That tells me he was ready to give up.

YANBU OP. Facts are not offensive, and your friend was flat out wrong about her milk not coming in. It's exactly this kind of misinformation that meant your friend didn't bf in the first place. If someone had gently pointed out to her when she was pregnant that her milk might not come in until day 4/5 after an elective cs, she may well still be breastfeeding herself.

I think OP if you had been honest and truthful in a way that was more sympathetic to your friends experience she wouldn't have been as upset .
You could have saved the situation by drawing your friend into a discussion about the first post birth poo , a scenario every pregnant woman needs warning about

YANBU. I hear things like this all the time but I can never face saying anything. Nobody wants to hear it unfortunately.

You were out of order OP,no wonder you’ve pissed your friend off, and probably prevented your other friends from ever sharing parenting struggles with you in the future.

It is not your duty to educate pregnant friends, you were there in the capacity of friend not their doctor.

This is how you lose friendships, wind your neck in.

"It is not your duty to educate pregnant friends, you were there in the capacity of friend not their doctor."

Bollocks. Doesn't matter whether she's a doctor or not. The other two women were being given as fact misinformation, and something needed to be said.

I bet if the OP has asked whether she was right to correct someone who was telling pregnant women that ff babies were going to be less intelligent or some crap like that she wouldn't be being abused the way she is being.

I do sometimes wonder, in my more paranoid moments, whether the companies that market formula have some sort of viral advertising campaign online................

@demander yes I had already replied to the OP, you should have searched for my previous posts as I did yours, which have offended many more people than just me.

It is not judgemental to call someone out for being offensive and crude, which you clearly don't like as many people have done so and you've realised you are wrong.

I'd quit now if I were you.

Also, my response to you was directly addressing the issue of the OP: offending people who are trying to BF. Which you are still doing.

Can we please note that demander is a lone voice on this thread and speaks for herself alone.

I was recently speaking to a scientist doing research in this very area ( so you know, a real expert with current data).

She said that it appears that breastfeeding may actually be getting harder for women in the UK ( on a macro level obviously) due to a number of factors including higher incidences of multiples, larger weight babies (leading to numerous factors in itself), birth complications etc.

So perhaps the premise that breastfeeding is usually straightforward needs some proper inspection?

You will probably get roasted as most people here may have FF. I think you were absolutely right to correct this misinformation. Establishing breastfeeding can be extremely hard and it is an easy mistake to make to think that the baby is hungry and not getting enough food when all that suckling is to stimulate more milk production.
It annoys me that people that run a marathon get congratulated but those that manage to breastfeed through all the hurdles (it literally was months of blood, sweat and tears for me) get treated as smug and we can't celebrate the massive achievement.

People just get so over sensitive and the sad thing is that they did not have the right information which is why they failed and yes it's right to try and stop the incorrect information from going to new mothers.

I struggled to bf for 12 weeks with a baby who was tongue tied and had bubble palate. The tongue tie was fixed at 6 weeks but by then he had dropped 3 percentile lines and had only put on 7 ounces in 7 weeks. I cried every day for 12 weeks, in pain and feeling like a failure before finally going to ff.

If I was at lunch with friends now and told that story and my doctor friend said well actually you can still feed with tt and bubble palate, what she should have done was x,y, and z I would be devastated. My actual friends have been nothing but supportive.
I'm sure your friends will have A LOT of breastfeeding information given to them, you shouldn't have humiliated her in front of them.

I had a c section and my milk didn't come in. After being on me for 6 hours the midwife took my son away so I could have some tea and toast. She came back a minute later to tell me that my son was starving and needed formula. As my nipples were bleeding and my son screaming, I agreed for him to have formula. I don't feel guilty about this at all. The environment and support within NHS hospitals is really not conducive to breastfeeding. Nurses and health care assistants constantly leave your curtains open after they pop in to see you meaning that your boobs are on display to the gathering of visitors to the family in the next bed. There have also been examples of babies dying because they were not fed (rare, but it has happened).
fedisbest.org/2017/02/given-just-one-bottle-still-alive/

The guilt trip given to mums who formula feed needs to stop.

"If I was at lunch with friends now and told that story and my doctor friend said well actually you can still feed with tt and bubble palate, what she should have done was x,y, and z I would be devastated"

This s bvioussly a completely different scenario. But.

If there was something you could have done that you didn't at the time know about, would you rather a friend went though the same ordeal that you did?

"The guilt trip given to mums who formula feed needs to stop."

And the silencing of women who breast feed needs to stop.

And a HCP who tells a woman that her 6 hour old baby is starving and needs formula needs to be retrained at the very least.