Is EBF always worth it?

[Storm4star]

Not a TAAT, but I have just read yet another thread from a woman at her wits end of tiredness due to EBF. I have been here a few months now and it seems to be a common theme. I am honestly not trying to be goady or controversial. I know breast is best for baby but at the expense of everything else?? It’s great that more women are encouraged to breastfeed but have we gone too far the other way? Is it really worth sacrificing mums mental and physical health, her relationship, the amount of time she can spend with her other DCs just to breastfeed? AIBU to think fine yes let’s encourage breast feeding but to also encourage mums to do what’s best for the whole family, and to not feel a failure if they decide to switch to formula?

@speakout

I would also argue that the lack of understanding you demonstrate of the wider issues at play here, refusal to listen to what mothers on here are saying, as well as your completely uncompromising stance against formula, are an active part of the problem and contribute further to erosion of BF rates in this country.

speak out, you've just made my point for me.

Bf rates are higher with professional women because they have better maternity leave. If you have 6-12 months off on full pay (as you do in many professional jobs), or an income high enough to enable you to save, then you can have a decently long maternity leave.

If you are on minimum wage, and get statutory mat leave only, you'll likely not be able to save, and finances are more likely to be tight enough that you have to go back to work earlier. Which makes it harder to breastfeed.

Back in ye old days, maternity leave was rubbish for everyone, so even in good jobs women had to return earlier.

These are personal issues for each woman. I was scanning my 1989 diary yesterday. I had a 6 month year old (and a 2 and 4 year old) and worked full time. The wonderful descriptions of the huge pleasure he and i had from breastfeeding are some of the nicest bits I have ever read in my written records. For me there was absolutely no doubt at all that expressing when at work was the best compromise even though you could do a comedy show about various difficulties I had - getting ice at a conference to keep milk cool, finding a quiet loo at a business meeting with 50 people I seemed to be in charge of in my 20s etc.

However I would never say to women feed your baby in a particular way. i was absolutely delighted my grandchildren have been breastfed but I would not have said even one thing had they not been as it is not my baby. I hope their children are breastfed too.

I loved breastfeeding. At 6 months he seems to be biting me occasionally in the diary but we worked around that and it was fine. he seemed to feed by that stage at 6am and then quick one at 8am before I left for work and then I would pump 3 times at work and then feed as soon as i walked in the door at 6 or 6.30 and then I fed him about 10pm just before I went to bed and he would wake about 3.30am for another feed too. (I never fed a baby from a bottle by the way ever actually as my milk was used when I wasn't there by whoever was looking after him and if I were there I would breastfeed eg all weekend and holidays). So he was having about 5 or 6 feeds direct from me and then about 3 during the day of expressed miik.

I think he was having some banana by 6 months too and each of our 5 including the twins stopped feeding from me when they chose (I would have always continued longer than they woudl do it). there is a sweet description of the 2 year old - that she says she is feeding her teddy and she pushes up her top to put him on her breast and then also she sometimes asks to feed from me, something she had stopped a good while before and apparently she just sucked for a few seconds and then went off to play; it wasn't really a serious attempt to do tandem breastfeeding by her.

As people say above the higher your educational level in the UK them ore likely you will breastfeed but just do what you feel is right for you.

The only thing that can materially contribute to reduced breastfeeding, is the existence of an alternative substance to feed babies with.

Nonsense! Formula exists worlwide yet BF rates are higher in some societies than others. The existence of formula alone is not the predominant factor.

Of course it's not nonsense. If there was no alternative, breastfeeding would be it.

I'm not saying there's no place for formula - there is - but it's very existence impacts breastfeeding, and contributes to formula feeding cultures, of which the UK is clearly one.

All my friends EBF but I massively struggled. My baby was small and wouldn’t latch, he wasn’t gaining weight and it was incredibly stressful (and all I was told is stress can effect the situation). I tried nipple shields, phoned the local bf support line and attended a bf support group. A health visitor told me to give myself a break and top up with formula to make sure he was getting the food he needed. I felt like the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders and burst into tears all over her. I combination fed until 10 weeks and my baby started to put weight on and had a mummy who wasn’t at the end of her tether all the time. I like that there are options out there. If I have another baby I will try again and hope it works, but if it is a repeat of the above, I will combo feed again.

The only thing that can materially contribute to reduced breastfeeding, is the existence of an alternative substance to feed babies with.

Absolutely.

Bf rates are higher with professional women because they have better maternity leave. If you have 6-12 months off on full pay (as you do in many professional jobs), or an income high enough to enable you to save, then you can have a decently long maternity leave.

Do you have evidence that it's date of return to work that drives feeding choices? Anecdotally, the professional women I know are far more likely to be returning to full time work than the women in low paid jobs (who mostly can't afford the childcare to work). I don't ever meet anyone else in local groups who is going back to work as early as me (six months) and lots of them ff. My cousin doesn't work and didn't work before she had her children and ff from birth, as did lots of her peers. I'd be interested in seeing data proving me wrong but I suspect that the link between whether you're going back to work and whether you EBF a six week old is close to non existent.

Anyway , the point of this thread was “is EBF always worth it”. And I think the final say has to be with each mother. And many have said no. Great for those who succeeded at BF and felt it was worth it. Others feel differently and that’s their prerogative. I probably won’t BF for long second time around for multiple reasons- it just wouldn’t be worth it.

Now I have to get back to my baby!l and then go to work.

Good luck to the pp who are struggljng with BF and want to continue - I hope it all works out for you.

Women in familes where no one works have the lowest breastfeeding rates of all.

But also wonder why women from some cultures seem to struggle SO much more with it, to the extent they're suicidal.

For me (and I was suicidal) it was physiological and psychological. But, I did 'just get on with it'. No one other than DH knew how I felt and I think that made it worse in many ways. Everyone said I was lucky as I found it so easy, I didn't feel lucky. In fact I wished I'd found it hard, I would have had a reason to give up!

I breast fed. It was very hard at first (feeding twins) I persevered as I have strong will power but it was hard - I used to peel the scabs off my nipples to feed, I had to clench my teeth as it was agony, one twin wouldn't latch on and that twins weight gain was very poor, I got thrush.
Once I got through the first 8 weeks the problems went and from that point on it was fab - no getting up and going downstairs to make up bottles, no sterilising, no carrying round loads of equipment, free, at night I could just sit up in bed and hoik up my nightie with my eyes not really open.
It saved me loads of time and money but those first 8 weeks were really really really hard. I think no one tells you this, so people give up as they think it should all be going swimmingly from the start but the truth is, it doesn't. It's really hard at the beginning and it hurts. A lot! It does however sort itself out if you stick at it and then it becomes so much easier than bottle feeding.
I exclusively breast fed my twins fir the first 6 months and continued to feed them when I became pregnant again. I stopped feeding them about a month before my next baby was due and then started again with him (much easier with one baby  though!) I got the same problems again but knowing it was normal and would all sort itself out really helped. I wish people were more honest about breast feeding difficulties.

I know this is a very rare thing, but I have an issue with hormones in every which way which means I don't respond in the normal way for pretty much anything.

Breastfeeding was a case in point. With DS, I managed for about 8 weeks, but during that time I bled constantly. The weirder reaction was something with a 3 letter acronym that I've forgotten. The symptom of this is that on let-down, it causes urges of violence towards your baby. I had no clue what it was about, but was obviously distressed at the images of swinging my baby by his legs against the radiator or biting a chunk out of his cheek.

Towards the end, I exclusively expressed which helped, because I could do it when he was asleep or was safely in his chair, and the actual process of feeding started to feel quite a lot nicer. However, having to sterilise and reheat gave me the hassle of bottle-feeding and the exhaustion of breastfeeding.

With DD, I developed the same symptoms quickly, but I was aware of what was coming so switched to expressing while the baby was not on me straight away. I managed about 6 weeks.

I have no idea if the children would have been healthier or happier or better sleepers on breast. Either way, it was the safest option for all concerned.

The best thing that anyone said to me was a friend who was a breast-feeding consultant. 'I know what that is, it's not your fault, and if you need to switch to formula, don't spend the rest of your life tearing yourself apart because you've done so.'

If I had baby 3, I would have done the same again, though started with the expressing much earlier - within days. It didn't happen though.

It's really hard at the beginning and it hurts.

But that is not always the case.

I am not minimising the difficulties you had but telling all women that breastfeeding always hurts is not helpful, and may stop women from seeking help.

I do think that, to a degree, what people think is hard is cultural. For instance, people talk a lot about the 'stress of not knowing how much milk they're taking' even with babies who are gaining weight and producing wet nappies etc. - but that's an expectation that comes entirely from formula (not that you actually know what your formula fed baby gets if they're a sicky one). In cultures where everyone breastfeeds wanting to measure a baby's milk intake sounds as mad as an adult weighing all their food and insisting that otherwise they won't know when they're full.

I have found it totally depends on the baby above all else. I was adamant I would EBF all of mine but DC1&2 had so many issues with latch and colic, I really struggled with the exhaustion and also agony of mastitis and bleeding nipples so I ended up mixed feeding till 6 months. DC3, for whatever reason, just got the latch thing down from the off and I had absolutely no issues. I’m hoping that experience is repeated this time with DC4 but not going to pressure myself. I agree it’s not worthwhile at the expense of maternal mental health.

LisaSimpsonsbff, I haven't the time to look if I'm honest. Though we are all using our own experiences, friends and families experiences. No one has given evidence here over anything. It's been said that bf is easier, ff is easier, ff has been blamed for decrease in bf, that there isn't sufficient support etc.

For what its worth, I went back at 3 months. For me, it was one (but not the only) reason why I wanted to formula feed. Ff was one of the best decisions I've made for my family.

Though we are all using our own experiences, friends and families experiences.

Not all of us.

Some of us have a much wider experience.

Yes but I said mine was anecdotal, you made yours sound like fact!

My experience was that midwives and breastfeeding supporters that go into hospitals are only interested in helping those that look like they won't need much help. I presume this is because it is the best use of time in increasing the overall numbers breastfeeding but it doesn't help those who need a lot of support.

I know what you mean OP. I managed to ebf my second baby but it was an absolute nightmare and lots of people suggested I mix feed to give myself a break.

Why was it a nightmare though? With the benefit of hindsight I think DS had a missed slight tongue tie, I was extremely anxious, which undoubtedly made it harder, had very little moral or practical support and live in a society where most people, even mums, simply don't have sufficient bf knowledge and skills.

I don't know if it was worth it or not, in those circumstances. As you say, it came at a huge cost. However, if we lived somewhere with higher rates of ebf I'm sure it would have been a lot easier. Somewhere with highly trained bf experts who can offer real help and where mums don't start bf with the 'advice', whether well intentioned or not that it's likely to be difficult, sowing the seed of doubt in the mum's mind.

And dads who can take extended paternity leave and use it to support the mother.

The lack of support for mums of babies in our rich country is an absolute scandal imo. It's no wonder so few mums manage to ebf when their partners are out for most of the day leaving them lonely, exhausted and demoralised.

I breast fed all my 4 DC for 9,17,24 and 30 months respectively.

I get so mad at FF bashing.With my first one I just couldn't et him to latch on.We tried absolutely everything but he continued losing weight well in excess of the expected range.I really wanted to continue but felt so worried about babe and wanted him to . One night I made the decision that we had run out of options and sent DH to get some formula . Whilst he was gone, DS latched on and had a really good feed and we never looked back.

So I can well understand that in many cases love and concern and wantin the best for the baby might be the reason for turning to formula not the opposite!

Honestly found it easier. No bottles to sterilise, milk always ready so baby not crying whilst waiting to be fed, could feed while asleep. The thought of doing it now and having milky achy breasts fills me with horror but at the time I loved it and was so sad when we had to stop.

I loved it too.

Easy peasy. Not a single day of pain.

@Gnomesofthegalaxy yeah not being able to see makes it tricky. Do you have any support IRL?