Why are breastfeeding rates so low in the UK?

[Olivebrach]

So related to the news about the Royal College of Midwives changing their policy saying mothers have the right to formula feed and the stigma around formula needs to change ect..

I get it that for people that breastfeeding doesnt work out for/isnt easy, they shouldnt be made to feel like a failure. And the 'breast is best' mantra can be upsetting if that is what you desire to do but it doesnt work out.

But considering the breastfeeding rates are so low in the UK (1 in 200 babies are breastfed at the age of 1). The "mantra" and policy atm currently isnt working to up bf rates..? Clearly more people are formula feeding.

So in your opinion..
what should be done to increase breastfeeding?
And why do so few women end up breastfeeding?

AIBU to think the rates need to improve?

I bf my 3 babies and have never expressed - I never fancied it and it really isn't necessary. Mine wouldn't take a bottle, but by the time I weaned would have a sippy cup. I really wouldn't even think about expressing when you are establishing breastfeeding.

I expressed with my first. It was a nightmare. I never got Much and I spent my life either feeding or attached to a pump.

It is pretty much impossible with further children unless you have full childcare for the older ones or want to have no life whatsoever!

It really is quite ridiculous when you
Think about it.

I’ve always found that there seems to be an expectation that breastfeeding just happens; baby is born, they just crawl on up and latch on, and then it’s straight forward from there on in....folk always say ‘it’s the most natural thing in the world’. I alway pictured some earth mother in a white cotton dress, flowing hair.... ......

The reality is obviously very different! Natural doesn’t mean easy! Breastfeeding is hard work, it takes time to learn how to do it and there is a lot of pressure all on mum; it’s time consuming, exhausting and can sometimes be painful, especially in the early weeks.

But that’s the reality of it. I know some have an easy time breastfeeding but many don’t, and that’s doesn’t mean that they have failed. More support is needed from healthcare professionals, particular feeding experts who can come and spend one on one time with new mums at home in the early days post birth, but I also think that if mums-to-be were made more aware of that side of breastfeeding (the dark side ) BUT that all of that doesn’t mean you are failing, then I think rates would be higher. It’s so easy to think, “my baby is feeding ALL THE TIME, I must not have enough milk” and then think they need to top up with formula. But breastfeed babies do feed all the time, that’s just how it is. If we lowered our expectations on what our breastfeeding journey is going to be like, then we would probably put less pressure on ourselves and then maybe we’d take the highs and lows without feeling like we’ve failed or need to stop.

"Stigma against formula". That has made me laughbout loud. The stigma is against breast feeding which is why rates are so low.

I (or my area) must be in the minority as with all three of my children I had access to so much support if I wanted it. I didn't want it, as I FF after a couple of weeks... purely because I didn't like breastfeeding. I also found with number three that the health visitor didn't push breastfeeding at all and was so supportive of my decision to FF - I was shocked. The support given must vary substantially from area to area, which is such a shame for those who want to BF but can't.

There is no stigma against formula.

I never doubted I would breastfeed. That was the norm around me. I couldn’t do it and gave up by 2 weeks as my baby was starving and failing to thrive. Before I even left the hospital the drs had me I on a regime of trying to feed every 2 hours (and failing) expressing and then topping up with formula. It nearly killed me. Each time I failed to feed it made me really upset and then I had to sit therehooked up to the pump to just get a dribble of milk (i started out well with expressing but my supply seemed to dry up quite quickly) before reaching for the formula.

I’d try again next time but I’d focus on the colostrum and expressing for some feeds rather than trying to do it for every one. I was totally unprepared for how hard breastfeeding was. I was also totally unprepared for the pain. It hurt more than labour for some feeds. In hindsight that was a sign something wasn’t working. The pain wasn’t just about cracked/bleeding nipples (I had a different sort of pain from that) but was acutely agonising and made me dread my baby waking up.

I was certainly unusual and seemed to be the only one bottle feeding at most of my baby classss. For me the decision to stop was definitely not a cultural one, it was a practical decision. I’m not sure whether better post-natal support might have helped. Possibly but I think I would have needed so much support that it would never have been cost effective for the NHS to have funded.

Before I even left the hospital the drs had me I on a regime of trying to feed every 2 hours (and failing) expressing and then topping up with formula. It nearly killed me. Each time I failed to feed it made me really upset and then I had to sit therehooked up to the pump to just get a dribble of milk (i started out well with expressing but my supply seemed to dry up quite quickly) before reaching for the formula

I hear this quite often and have wondered whether all this expressing, force feeding, regime imposing, topping up etc isn’t counter productive. It seems to only serve to destroy a mother’s confidence in breastfeeding, when she can’t express, the baby doesn’t want to feed 2 hourly, not getting any rest because of the feeding/expressing cycle. It’s no wonder mums think they can’t do it and turn to ff.

Not saying this wasn’t right in your case, i don’t know you or your circs :), but generally I wonder if this advice is correct. Knowing how little m/w, hv and dr’s know about breastfeeding it wouldn’t suprise me if it was over medicalising. It’s well established that pumping doesn’t establish supply in the same way as a baby so surely the logic would be to dump the pump and spend the time feeding more?

I don’t think medics generally know the best way to establish bf. So they create all sorts of ways to fix things...

Limon

I do wonder if mums who find bfing difficult or who are unsuccessful at it project their negative experiences - even inadvertently.
My own mum said that she didn't have enough milk to go longer than 6 weeks but, I wonder if she (in the early to mid-1960's) had had positive help to feed she may have been more successful for longer. I got to 18 months with Ds and she said "I think it's time you stopped now" and I did although I was ill - not baby related really and certainly nothing to do with bfing. With Dd I carried on until she was almost 5 years old and quite literally ran out. Mum did try to get me to stop earlier again with her but, I said no, that I'd stop when Dd and I were both ready. She never brought the subject up again. I felt that there was a certain amount of envy there from her. She had a habit of saying things like "well, I couldn't take the pill, so, you probably won't be able to either" .
Whenever I see a mum bfing her LO, I always try to give an encouraging smile if she catches my eye. It's wonderful to see and for me was really wonderful to do. I fed wherever I happened to be whether in church or walking around a store or in a restaurant; most people didn't even realise.
I suffered from mastitis, internal breast thrush which was sooo painful (Dd had it in her mouth too) and cracked nipples some of the time - especially with Dd but, I'm bloody minded and sought help to get through it. I even carried on feeding her when I had Norovirus and my supply seemed to diminish but, it came back after about a week/10 days; Dd was 10 months at the time. She wouldn't have a teat in her mouth if it wasn't me so, I kept going.

I'd really love to see breastfeeding rates rise and would encourage anyone to persevere with it.

People have always supplemented or tried to replace breast-milk, it just happens that in the modern UK it is possible to do so safely (no starving, infecting or poisoning the baby). Once the negatives of formula feeding are hugely reduced but the negatives of breast-feeding remain, more people will switch to formula. This is going to be especially true if you only find about about the negatives of breast feeding during a two week stint largely during the middle of the night whilst full of hormones telling you to sate your hungry baby - there is a huge push factor of mismatched expectation. There is also:.

1. Pain - why would you undergo extreme and recurring pain when it is unnecessary (and can harm your relationship with your baby if you start to associate them primarily with pain) - both in setting up feeding and any infections/injuries sustained later.
2. Equality - why would only one of you do all the waking and feeding when you could share it with your partner, meaning more sleep for you and more bonding for them (win-win)

@BestZebbie

1. for most women the pain is temporary
2. anecdotally seems mums still do most night feeds whether they BF or FF, I’d like to see stats on the “equality” here. I had baby in a bedside cot and BF lying down, not sure how much more sleep I could have gotten.

@BestZebbie

1. I'm sorry your experiences was "pain", but that isn't the case for everyone; for me there was some discomfort from the long feeds, but lanolin was like a magic healer; even during early cluster feeds I would never have described it as pain
2. putting a baby on your boob is a lot less faff than making up a bottle; growth spurts are rough breastfeeding but the norm is two or three feeds during the night, one of which is at our bedtime and none of which are stressful. You're extending from your own experience that feeding a baby isn't enjoyable; for me one of the joys of being a woman is being able to breastfeed so my partner loves bottle feeding him expressed milk, but I prefer to do night feeds and not just because of the time taken to express milk.

“I couldn’t do it and gave up by 2 weeks as my baby was starving and failing to thrive. Before I even left the hospital the drs had me I on a regime of trying to feed every 2 hours (and failing) expressing and then topping up with formula. It nearly killed me. Each time I failed to feed it made me really upset and then I had to sit therehooked up to the pump to just get a dribble of milk (i started out well with expressing but my supply seemed to dry up quite quickly) before reaching for the formula”

There is so much wrong with the regime they imposed on you- it would have been practically miraculous if you had been able to bf doing that. I hope you don’t think for a second that it was any way your fault. You were so very badly let down. I am so sorry that happened.

Hmm Lanolin made not a jot of difference for me and as for pain just being temporary- 6 weeks is a long period of temporary and far too long. Nobody should just endure the pain I endured for a week let alone 6.

And as for faff. Ffing really is no faff at all,a complete doddle you can do practically in your sleep.Sooooo easy compared to breast feeding when breast feeding doesn't work. It's like a lightbulb going off-"wow this is why people enjoy having babies". Prior to feeding being enjoyable and finally having relaxed,happy and non starving babies I started to seriously question my determination with IVF.

And sorry even if breast feeding had worked it would never have defined me as a woman.

@cowparsley2

It's like a lightbulb going off-"wow this is why people enjoy having babies"

No - I enjoyed my baby because she’s my baby, not because of how I fed her. As far as I can see babies are hard work no matter how they are fed - saying ff is easier isn’t always the case as I know a lot of parents who struggled with ff (bottles etc). Made me glad I could just pop a boob in my babies mouth some days!

@CowParsley2

It’s impossible to make a bottle in your sleep, don’t be ridiculous.

My children have had both breast and bottle (I express at work) and I have literally never given a bottle when I could have breastfed. When it works BF is extremely easy, quick, no equipment, nothing to wash, etc.

I’m sorry it didn’t work for you.

You misunderstood my post.

Breastfeeding sucked every second of my ability to enjoy my 3 being my babies. Formula feeding finally enabled me to enjoy them.

I couldn’t breast feed it wasn’t that it wasn’t easy or there wasn’t enough support - I was in hospital both me and baby very ill and people were literally falling over themselves to help me breastfeed. But I couldn’t. One helpful midwife told me it was the formula that was making my baby cry in pain with tummy ache )nothing to do with his fluid filled lungs as he had double pneaumonia) after years of therapy for ptsd from an extremely traumatic birth this is the thing that the therapist can’t help me with (I’ve managed to get over being sliced open in a panic before the general anaesthetic kicked in constant seizures spending a week with everyone expecting my baby to die. Yet all the midwives wanted to do was push up their breastfeeding stats😓. Breast is best Mantra needs to be banned imo. Tbh I think the aggressive campaign has been a victim of its own tactics. To hear “advocates” talk formula will poison your baby, he will grow up ill,obese and stupid. The mum will never bond as well (sod the dad). But people can see with their own eyes with formula fed babies this isn’t actually true. So to increase breast feeding rates you need to come up with more tangible benefits that outweigh the benefits of formula. Benefits based on what’s happening in the UK not generalised ones looking at benefits in Africa. What the campaign needs to say is, it will save you shit loads of cash, be a lot moreconvienient. Stop getting so up petty if someone looks at you breast feeding. Most likely they are thinking cute baby. You need to be more realistic, most breastfed babies I’ve known have actually not gained much weight, and had more colds etc. So people’s experiences often contradicts what they have been told. Most people come to the conclusion it actually doesn’t matter how the baby is fed.

@user1471426142 this is what they did with me too. Horrible. I'm glad @BertrandRussell has said it was their bad because for years I thought it was my bad.

I found breastfeeding cheap and very quick. My first baby it hurt a lot and he cried nonstop my second baby it didn’t hurt and they slept from the get go 5/6 hours a time, I wasrubbish at the whole ff sterilising and making up bottles but I think do what works for you , first baby stopped at a year, 2nd started to refuse at 8 months so went into a cup. We are all different

I get that breastfeeding is easy if it goes well but I found the switch from selfish individual doing what you want when you want to tied to baby and tedious breast feeding sessions umpteen times a day and night very difficult. And seeing partners life unchanged rubs that in. So it’s a psychological thing. I moved countries just before DS was born so had no local friends to share stories with. It was v lonely and I probably had some pnd, looking back. I was also a fidgety person, sitting about so much was hard.

Of course you can.

We had everything close to hand. Dp sorted the bottle in a flash,handed it to me and I fed practically in my sleep just like bfers do. Even better sometimes he did the lot and let me catch up on much needed sleep undisturbed leaving me better able to deal with the following day.

I've done both and ffing was monumentally easier. I knew many ffers and none found it hard.

YY re Breast is Best campaign needing to go. It encourages the stat twisters and over inflaters which causes many struggling parents(who aren't daft) to disregard everything on the subject.

My reasons for bottle feeding where:

• maternity leave to short/ not enough pay, I had to go back to work after 6 months, just not practical law or no law made no difference!
• forced to stay at hospital with 1st because baby would not feed / no milk 12h after birth (it can take up to 3 days for a proper milk supply), told by MW my baby is starving... so took to bottle feeding and could go home (Disclaimer: she was actually a very chilled baby throughout)
• sore, constant feeding, having a 6 year old on summer hols & oh on night shift, nobody to take the baby even for a short time made me stop with 2nd. Normal life but I was exhausted and literally on my own.

I think breastfeeding rates are low due to a number of factors. A lack of info about what to do, a lack of info about how tough it is initially and then how much easier it gets.
I very much believe that I breastfed because i’m lazy and mean, granted getting it established was hard but once it was I loved the ease and lack of faff. One less thing to forget to pack, no washing/ sterilising bottles, no getting up bleary eyed to the kitchen in the night, wanting to stay out longer, wondering if there was enough milk in the change bag/ where I could buy it and the cost of formula it’s so expensive!

I went to the breastfeeding class at my hospital it was attrocious, the class focussed on how breastfeeding doesn’t stop you doing things with a variety of props( including an empty vodka bottle) instead of being about the physical method of breastfeeding. The second half of the class involved a lady with her private business pedalling her bra measuring service where again she had props including feeding bras which she said caused mastitis and breast abscesses. A really productive afternoon, getting the fear about feeding.
I still feed my youngest who is nearly 2, I work shifts including nightshift and she just feeds morning and night, which she has done for the past year. It’s a quiet time for both of us, however if i’m not there she copes. I’m sad my breastfeeding journey is about to come to an end, and also I sad that it’s hard to speak to new mums about how they feed their baby for fear of sounding judgey. We run the risk of getting to the stage where we don’t talk about infant feeding at all. I firmly believe breast is best if possible, and appropriate for mum and baby.