To ask why you didn't breastfeed?

[MakingABoobOfIt]

For starters, this is NOT meant to be a goady thread, and I'm a longtime MNer but have name changed to avoid outing myself

I'm a Uni student, and have an essay coming up for which I would like to know reasons Mums decide not to breastfeed. Research shows that the majority of mums want to breastfeed but either start and stop pretty quickly, or don't start at all. So if this was the case for you, I would be so grateful if you'd be happy to tell me about what influenced your decision (friends, media, etc) and what might have caused you to decide to breastfeed (more support, less stigma, etc)?

Thank you in advance wise ones.

I wanted to and tried very hard for a month but didn’t produce enough milk as baby didn’t latch. I tried everything. It turned out my baby had undiagnosed cow’s milk allergy.

Surgery required straight after birth
Difficult birth to recover from
Poor support from health staff
Poor support from family
Baby not latching at all
Anxiety, obsessive thoughts
Fear of baby being hungry
Pain from constantly attempting
Taking up hours of time trying to get a latch and this was impossible with toddler to deal with as well
Remittance to hospital with baby dropping weight (better support but still not enough)
Feeling like I was failing everyone else's needs for the sole goal of breastfeeding
Ultimately stopped as had infection, mastitis, needed IV antibiotics and was in so much pain/ exhaustion that I could barely lift my newborn.
I still feel shit about it. Especially when people say things like 'well I just powered on through as breast is best' or 'i just kept going as would feel too guilty to stop' yet hadn't half the hurdles I had.
Exclusively pumped and expressed for a while which made me feel better.

Lack of supply so got advised to top up with formula. Tried everything health professionals recommended to increase my supply but nothing worked, couldn’t express much and struggled on for 8 weeks. Got s stomach bug which pretty much killed my supply and gave up which was for the best as was making me miserable and we were both happier bottle feeding.
If I have another baby don’t think I will bother to breastfeed

My child had/has PKU.

I breastfed DD for the first 24 hours until we were discharged. I told the midwives I didn't think she was actually getting anything but was told not to worry. Shortly after we got home it became apparent that we were both very, very unwell. I was re-admitted and diagnosed with a hospital-acquired infection and DD was admitted to SCBU with sepsis. She was tube fed initially, then progressed to being given very small amounts of formula by bottle. I wasn't allowed any contact with her, I wasn't even allowed visitors as I was infectious.

I was given an electric pump and told by a midwife to express every 2 hours and then dump the milk. So I expressed every 2 hours but produced nothing except blood. They kept saying "don't worry, your milk will come in tomorrow", but a week later, when we were both discharged, I still wasn't producing anything. I never produced anything. I had support from Midwives, HV's, a local BF group and helpline and my Mum who breastfed me very successfully. I poured over BF blogs and books and nothing I tried made any difference.

DD thrived on formula and was a very contented baby but I was devastated. For the fist three months of her life it was all I could think about. I know UK BF rates are low generally, but I live in an area where breastfeeding is very much the norm, I went to a lot of baby groups where I was the only one with a bottle and felt very judged by some of the other mums. I felt like a complete failure.

HCP's told me it was probably because I was so unwell after the birth, combined with being separated from DD that meant my milk never came in. But I'm not convinced to be honest. My breasts didn't get any bigger at all during pregnancy, I never once leaked any colostrum. So I wonder whether I may have had the same difficulties even if we hadn't have had such a rough time after DD's birth. Who knows.

We are currently TTC no.2 and although I would still love to breastfeed, if we do have another I may FF from the start purely because I was so distressed when BF didn't work out last time I'm not sure I could cope with that again.

my dd was in intensive care from birth and nil by mouth for a week, I expressed and froze what I could, when I tried to feel her from the source when she was a week and a half old I had a NICU nurse hanging over my shoulder with a syringe saying if she wouldn't hurry up and take it they'd use the feeding tube, I was also in an intensive care ward with 5 other families so not exactly a relaxing environment for me or the baby. I kept expressing for about two months but by the time I did that, fed her the expressed stuff from a bottle then settled her it was time to express again and I ended up like a zombie.

Sorry that was so long
I suppose I feel like a have to justify why I stopped.

Baby 2 months premature and I was very ill after. The drugs I had to take to get better meant the tiny amount of milk I managed to express had to be binned. After a few days of binning everything I'd express and my production getting worse and not better I accepted that formula was good enough and I was much happier to spend time with my baby in NICU rather than wasting hours expressing milk to be binned and I have no regrets.

Because despite being an educated "grown up" the idea grossed me out. Felt like that for an age, but was also working with farm animals and the link between cows/sheep feeding just grossed me out further. DTs were FF from day 1 (well, day minus 28)

Speakout get lost. This is the second time you have done this. The thread is asking for reasons why women don't breast feed. No judgemental responses required. This is not the place for it. Women are being honest about their reasons so just stop this now.

Breast feeding is very over rated

I believe a woman should choose and do what she thinks is best, be it breast or bottle...but to say breast feeding is very overrated is ridiculous.
How can feeding a baby the food that your body makes and is specific to your own child be overrated?

None of us would be here if females had not breastfed their babies thousands of years ago...so no, it's not overrated.
It's fine to choose formula, you don't have to slag off breastfeeding to justify your choice.

Not having any more kids, gave my honest reasons, and couldn't give a fuck what others think.

Bf for 8 weeks. He was suffering colic and my supply was less than his demand. Actually cried at giving him his first formula bottle and felt like I was poisoning him (overdramatic I know but hormones!) Took him a week to settle with anti colic milk and colief then he was a much happier baby. He still didn't sleep and still fed every 2 hours at 8oz...very hungry baby! He went from 6lb 8 at birth to over 10lbs by 6 weeks and his demand just got huge.

parents to support each other rather than judging how you choose to make sure your baby is well looked after.

I wonder some of this is perception rather than reality. I have absolutely no doubt the judgers are there, MN is testament to that, but I don’t believe they are a massive majority. Whenever I breastfed and there were mums about, old, new and in between, without fail every single one of them would launch in and tell me their own story about why they FF. I didn’t care, it’s not my business what choices or reasons people have for doing what they do. I would respond conversationally (otherwise it would be awkward) and try to move the conversation to something else. Who knows whether I might have said something which sounded judgey, I tried not to. But if someone was feeling bad in themselves for not doing it, it’s possible something I said might have been heard the wrong way.

This thread is great. I’m actually really glad you posted this OP. It’s nice to see I’m not the only one who didn’t manage the EBF experience that I was led to believe would happen fairly easily.

DD was born by EMCS after a super fast labour (section happened two hours after first contraction) and she was in distress. DH held her for the first hour while they stitched me up. She latched straight away and seemed to do well the first night but the second was a nightmare. She cried and cried and I couldn’t get her to latch or suck. I was so frightened for her. The midwives were great. They helped me hand express colostrum into a tiny syringe. We kept at it all night. It was so awful that begged to be seen by the consultant and sent home the next day.

Once home DD screamed and screamed. She fed all the time. One day she did 22 hours attached to my nipples. On day 3 she’d lost 10% and they were talking about sending us back to hospital. She was jaundiced and that wasn’t getting better.

The next weigh in was pretty much they same, only a minute weight gain. She’s dropped from the 50th to 9th centile and was going to ploughher own furrow into the bottom of the chart. A tongue tie had Ben noticed in hospital but not clipped (why the fuck not) and the person who did them at hospital was on holiday.

By the end of week one DH and I had agreed to top up one bottle of expressed milk a day to try to get some weight on her. The TT wasn’t clipped until she was 6 weeks old and it was only then that she started to feed better and gain weight properly. By that time we were up and running with mixed feeding.

I don’t regret not being EBF now but it destroyed me at the time. The difficulties we had definitely contributed to my PND. The guilt was enormous. Now I feel more guilty that I was complicit in starving my baby to fit in with societal pressure to BF.

I will be mixed feeding from the word go next time. No guilt.

@wildbluebelles thanks for the advice actually this is my second degree so I'm fairly well versed on how to research an essay - funnily enough I hadn't planned to write the whole thing based on this thread. However, given the myriad reasons women decide not to breastfeed, I thought this forum might provide an interesting insight into common concerns. I don't intend to reference anyone directly (and obviously if I did I would ask first) however nowadays it's fairly common to reference internet forums, social media, etc in academic work, so don't worry yourself about my tutor being cross with me

And thank you again to everyone who has taken the time to post, especially as most of these posts are recounting some really unhappy memories. Breast or formula is one of a million and one parenting decisions you make, and it in no way defines you as a mum. You are all brilliant and doing the absolute best you can, regardless of how you decided to feed your babies.

random opinions from a forum do not provide any evidence or reliable insight either way

That’s just not true. Gathering opinion on an Internet forum gives a good starting point for an essay. I’m sure the OP isn’t just going to cut and paste these and say “job done”. But if lots of people say “lack of NHS support” that is a good jumping off point for the OP to research what is available. Or for those who have mentioned abuse or body image, then she can look in to that further.

Oh that's OK, you can be assured that I wasn't worrying myself....

Felt bottles were more convenient with a toddler and all my friends who BF tell me how little sleep they get.
I wasn't however counting on both DD's having CMPA and them both loathing the tastes of their prescription formulas!

@Swizzlegiggle I know SO many babies (including my own) with CMPA; I wonder if there's an increase in babies affected, or just an increase in diagnoses? Either way it certainly complicates things!

Poorly baby in scbu on feeding tubes . Tried to express but gave up after a ham fisted midwife made the experience extremely painful , and humiliating .

First time I didn't fancy it and second time my son was prem . They put me on the machines to express but my heart wasn't in it when it didn't really work . Both babies fit and healthy.🤷‍♀️

Long labour ending in 3 degree tear, retained placenta and massive PPH. Spent 2 days in hospital trying to breastfeed with very little support, but my baby just didn't want to. After hand expressing and feeding her I had a total melt down and a midwife told me that my baby needed feeding and that I needed to make a decision. So gave up totally and formula fed. Best thing I ever did for both of us and wish I had done it from day 1 and not put myself through the stress and trauma. 7 years on it still annoys me that I felt so pressurised by the midwifes in antenatal classes to breast feed, it was rammed down our throats at every class and it resulted in me feeling massive guilt for probably 2 years after.