to ask you to STOP using these unhelpful phrases?

[StopCallingMeTeresa]

i apologise if this turns into an essay, but...

"Supply equals demand"
or
(worse) "low milk supply is actually quite rare so probably not your problem"

I've just read yet another MN thread where someone said the 2nd one (basically suggesting that a poster with suspected low milk supply probably wasn't in the "tiny tiny" %age of women who don't produce enough milk). It fucks me right off to keep reading this nonsense on here and other breastfeeding support groups/forums because it makes women feel like their actions or perception of low milk supply are the cause... rather than a genuine medical issue which might never be fixed. If a man had erectile dysfunction caused by a non-mental health issue, would we tell him that the problem wasn't a real problem if only he'd try the right thing, mentally?

Personally, this is (obviously) an upsetting issue. I'm 2 months PP and have low milk supply; as in, I produce about 5ml per 1hr pumping session, and I can get about 30ml on an entire day's worth of hours and hours of being hooked up to a pump inbetween breastfeeds.

My baby was delivered and within 48hrs lost so much weight he was admitted into NICU for monitoring. He was shrieking with hunger when he wasn't latched on, whcih was hours and hours of every day - i got about 3hrs of sleep in the first three days of his life, after which i was pretty much told he was in such a risky position we HAD to start supplementing with formula. My baby was literally starving.

• I'm on domperidone to increase milk supply (dr is talking about stopping it now as it has had no affect).
• I've spent every day of his life on a double hospital grade pump.
• Oatmeal breakfasts, flapjacks to inrease milk. I feel sick thinking about oats these days i'm so sick of them.
• I've taken fistfuls and handfuls of supplements every day: goat's rue to develop milk ducts, fenugreek, brewer's yeast, you name it, for 2 solid months.
• I've tackled slow let down by doing extreme skin to skin kangaroo style care the last few weeks; I listen to relaxing music whilst feeding and pumping, smelling my baby and looking at him/pictures of him.

His latch has been checked. No tongue tie.

• I've done about 4 feeding "resets" where I sat in bed and did nothing but skin to skin and feed for 3 days straight while my boyfriend and mum ran around doing everything else.
• i've had other stuff like bottle feed technique checked at my local LLL group, as well as the health visitor.
• GP has checked my thyroid and prolactin levels twice now - all normal.
• We've done a weighted feed at the local support group but i'm simply not producing anywhere near normal levels of breastmilk.

There's NOTHING i can do now to ever exclusively breastfeed as intended. i simply don't produce enough milk for some reason.

... and yet i keep reading on here especially that "low milk supply is rare" (no scientific source or attributation, of course!) and "supply=demand", just like all the other lies i was told at the antenatal group about breastfeeing.

can i ask you to consider the impact on women like me the next time you are writing something like that?

by washing over what is a genuinely distressing problem as if it weren't a real problem, it doesn't contribute towards good maternal mental health and suggests it can be fixed.

sometimes, it can't.

and now i'm trying to accept that it's ok. but then i read BF support threads on here with misleading / ambiguous phrases like that and i struggle.

I was extremely lucky to be able to BF without issue {mainly because of a lovely midwife} but at that time, there wasn't the smugness involved like there seems to be now.
OP, you tried valiantly, heroically, went beyond the call of duty to try to establish BF, and because of a valid, physical reason were not able to.
I can understand your irritation.
I was entirely formula fed as mum was very ill with TB, as were loads of other babies at that time, the BF movement can be insufferably smug, and it can be almost like a ''showy off'' thing to begin ostentatiously feeding in public, especially in 'knit your own yoghurt'' parts of town.

A mother called her child over and asked ''would you like juice or breast milk?''.. I mean, who needs to be that obvious?

OP

I haven't RTFT, but skimming through quite a lot of mention of PCOS - I don't know if that's a factor for you, but it does occur to me that thanks to the various treatments available (I had Clomid) far more of the ~10% of women who have pcos will be having babies nowadays. So logically there are likely to be more new mothers with low milk supply than there used to be.

OP, from my own experience trying to increase supply by pumping, it really didn't help, just made me more exhausted and stressed. Things started to get better when I relaxed a bit, fed DD as much as she would take and then supplemented a bit (It actually wasn't that much) - and at some point supplementation became unnecessary.

You are amazing! If only people knew the struggle. So in case the people in your life don't say it enough, I'll say it again.....you are amazing! An incredible mum.

If it helps at all, as some other posters have said, a year from now it will be a memory. I was bottle-fed, my nephews and nieces all were bottle fed and they are all great. N ok greater incidence of poor health or not as smart, etc.etc. I bf my daughters, and even when things go as planned it was a challenge, esp. In the beginning. I was never able to pump, even with the $500 industrial grade pumps, just never produced anything. Your dedication is evidence of how far you're willing to go so your child has the best in life.....that is going to matter so much more than how much breast mklk they get.

I had similar feelings when I was trying to breastfeed my first. I kept hearing/reading that the reason most women give up breastfeeding early on is because of lack of support, not because they aren't able to breastfeed. However that wasn't my experience at all - I sought out loads of support but none of it was effective. DS's issue was failure to latch initially, followed by feeding aversion a few weeks in. I went to bf support groups, saw a lactation consultant several times, had DS's tongue tie cut and did tongue strengthening exercises etc etc. None of it made any difference and in the end I gave up trying at 12 weeks and put him on formula.

It always annoys me that no one will acknowledge that sometimes some people just can't breastfeed.

For the record, I am still breastfeeding my second at 22 months, and I didn't do anything special this time around. DD was just able to do it and happy to, whereas DS wasn't.

Op, sounds like you've really been through the mill with this. Of course breastfeeding is hard to establish, and mothers have to persevere, but after a while it should be fairly easy. It's not easy for you, and you've tried really hard at it.

Feed your baby with formula. Your child will be fine, better than fine. There are so many important parts to being a mother, and feeding is such a tiny part in the big scheme of things. I've got many friends who are mothers and I'm a teacher. Can I tell which children were breast fed and which were formula fed? Of course I can't.

Good luck op, put the guilt behind you and enjoy your baby. As a pp said in a couple of years no one will even ask about this, it just seems so important when they are tiny.

StopCallingMeTeresa,

Hi there you should call yourself mother Teresa after what you’ve been through and are doing, I take my hat off to you.

My first was breast fed and it is hard very hard because my son never seemed happy unless he was sucking on my tit.
My second a daughter I formula fed, both of mine are absolutely fine one in his 20’s and the other almost 18.

However I used to like you feel extremely guilty and mums are so very critical of other mums. Tbh it’s none of anyone else’s business.

Here’s some breaking news for those critical mums and I’m sorry but in my experience they where mostly NCT mums.

If your baby is either breastfed or formula fed they are still being fed. If you give your baby water which comes from the mountains in some far away place that has been filtered for a million years or you open the tap in your kitchen they are still drinking water. If you feed them organic food from the jungles of pixie land or you buy fruit from your local which is affordable it doesn’t matter. So if your pram is from John Lewis or from Argos they are in a pram.
Truthfully your doing a damn fine job of it much better than me at eating all that stuff, I ate Lyons ginger cakes when I breastfed my son.

Give yourself a pat on the back if you need to give your baby a bottle to settle them so you can sleep that’s ok, it will pass but right now your tired, hormonal and pissed off.

Take care of yourself

YANBU. I am a lactation consultant with breast hypoplasia and low supply and no one believes me.
We know now that low supply does not only impact 1% of women and infact the number of women impacted is rising. If you look at the risk factors for low supply you can see why.
Obesity, PCOS, breast surgery, diabetes all on the rise and that’s before we get to the preventable/treatable things that have a long term impact on supply for some women like delayed first feed or tongue tie.

Good breastfeeding support helps prevent low supply where possible and supports women with low supply to reach their breastfeeding goals. I breastfed my son for 14 months with an SNS so this time I have more milk for my daughter because breastfeeding builds breast tissue. She needed formula at the beginning and now she’s on solids she’s cut down to 100mls a day.

Have you been to a La Leche league meeting? I’ve always found them more supportive with low supply than most

I didn’t produce much milk and had a very very hungry baby that was the issue for me he latched on fine

Neither could I give birth naturally

Sometimes our bodies do not work as they are designed to in this day and age it doesn’t usually matter so much what does matter is that you have a fed and healthy baby and that you not putting yourself under unnecessary pressure that causes you stress

Women used to share breastfeeding (I am not talking about breast feeding) and other drinks/foods were given from a very young age

Although I had access to lots of breast feeding support groups/people and they all tried to help me - none of them had medical knowledge or asked me about my medical history.

It’s only when I saw the GP when DD was 6 weeks and I had given up trying that she told me ‘oh no, you shouldn’t have been breastfeeding exclusively, it wasn’t going to work because of blah, blah...’ I didn’t know, I wish I had gone to see her earlier but I was seeing so many other people who were trying to help.

There are reasons there used to be wet nurses!

^^ this

Op stop it.
It happens
And it is shit
But it happens

You are waisting soooo much energy focussing on the wrong things right now. Focus on having a healthy baby that is fed.

Stop reading so much shit online that makes you feel unworthy! Read some better stuff. About how lucky you are. What a miracle it is to have a baby. And how wonderful it is that formula exists because without it your baby would not be here anymore.

Drinking Guinness or any stout is supposed to help with milk supply.

Women used to share breastfeeding (I am not talking about breast feeding) and other drinks/foods were given from a very young age

I meant to say I am not talking about wet nurses. It used to be very common for sister/cousins to share feeding as some women simply don’t produce any or enough milk

Please don’t give yourself a hard time. This time will fly by do what make you and your baby most content not struggle and get more stressed

1-5% (depending where you look) is not rare, and in the group struggling to feed that proportion will be much higher. To not consider it a possibility when offering advice to struggling mums does them a disservice and is a danger to babies.

My last child couldn’t breastfeed and I have seen posts saying ‘all babies can breast feed’: no they can’t. He struggled to bottlefeed too and in retrospect he should have been picked up by the health service then. These ‘all babies/women can breastfeed’ platitudes are positively dangerous.

Hmm the issues with breastfeeding and PCOS are new to me. In the part of India where I’m from PCOS with insulin resistance is very common (estimates have it as 10-20% of the female population; while obesity and diabetes before pregnancy is even more common in mums over 30), yet most women tend to breastfeed for at least 2 weeks. I’m guessing that rather than the condition itself the reason why it’s not as much of a problem there is because Indian doctors don’t shy away from treating the condition.

Interesting about the pcos.
Yes are people on metformin when bf?
Up to 10% here have it. But as you say obesity may have an effect or pregnqncy weight gain.
Im sure many with pcos are undiagnosed and do get pg naturally.

I did bf (not on metformin 2 dc but i did have metformin in early pg so that may have change breast development?
However bf was very hard both babies never ever slept, wouldnt lie down. The first night in hospital with dc1 was awful, literally no putting down.

However there is also the Q of what affect does all this trying and failing have on babies? When they are losing weight or just never settled? If they are not sleeping. Are their blood sugars going low?

Looking at bf sites now it does say about being on metformin while bf, which i dont think it did 4 years ago although i think it did say pcos could be an issue.

Re low supply i agree with a pp that it is often a consequence rather than cause
tT baby
Sleepy baby
Mum lost blood
Not feeding enough.
Issues can be mum or baby which is why it's important not to just say low supply because that could affect trying with another baby.

Probably a population having first dc later has an effect. More birth intervention, harder to bf. More gestational diabetes, more on other meds or high blood pressure etc.

Food allergy etc will have a big impact too as a baby with reflux feeds more.

If other countries have fewer women who struggle to bf maybe they have fewer older mums/identify tongue ties/get more help from nurses after birth with the baby/lower obesity or even just smaller babies

Whether low supply is rare of not it would be affecting some.

If people want to give up that's fine too.

Yes are people on metformin when bf?

I've never been on metformin. My pcos symptoms were acne, subfertility - and as it turned out, low milk supply at first.

Metformin helps with progesterone / milk supply by reducing insulin resistance. In the UK you are only provided it for infertility while in other countries such as the US and India and in Asia it’s very common to be given it as a form of treatment. Might explain why despite PCOS being more common in India / Asia these women don’t suffer from the same milk supply issues.

YANBU I’d like the people who claim only 5% of women physically can’t breastfeed to produce the study that proves this. False claims like these have really hurt women I know who desperately tried and wanted to BF but can’t. I’m a long-time breastfeeder. I did work hard at it but I also put a lot of it down to luck.

I've never been on metformin either as I manage my weight with a very low calorie diet.

You're absolutely not being unreasonable!

I'm so sorry you're experiencing this. I see several posters have pointed out issue with PCOS. Do you have this?

I have PCOS and it has caused me a lifetime (so far) of heartbreak.

My 2 DC were very hard to conceive as I was barely ovulating.
Then when my DC finally arrived I didn't produce much milk at all. Both babies lost so much weight that I had no choice but to use formula, which I wasn't prepared for at all and had no intentions of using.

I didn't learn until I was feeding DC2 4 years later (and going through the same struggles as DC1) that PCOS can cause hypoplastic breasts - underdeveloped breast tissue in adolescence. This means that milk barely gets going. I was devastated and 14 years later I still struggle with the feelings it left me with. Nobody warned me this might happen. All you hear when you are pregnant is that everyone can breastfeed and it is the most natural thing in the world.
So when you find out you physically can't, you feel like a freak of nature and you feel like you've let your baby down.

I went to the GP pleading for her to prescribe me domperidone but she refused and told me to go away and "feed more" - bear in mind I was feeding non-stop for 22 hours a day, perfect latch, no tongue tie, and they were still losing weight (how was I to feed more? I needed some time in the day to sleep!). I left the surgery that day in floods of tears. I felt helpless and almost like I was grieving for the newborn experience I had expected both times.

I now have a new partner (fiance) and in the last 3.5 years, PCOS has taken three babies away from us so it continues to batter me down and keep on kicking me hard.
When I finally get to hold our rainbow baby, I will do all I can to breast feed but at least now I know not to expect miracles. It upsets me hugely that I can't give what so many mothers can, but right now I just want to get past the pregnancy stage without miscarriage hanging over me.

I totally understand how devastating this is and you are doing all you possibly can and that in itself is truly admirable. You're not alone xx

PS, here is some info about breast hypoplasia in case you suspect you have it. I'm convinced it is far more common than we think. PCOS is hugely common so this must be too:
kellymom.com/bf/got-milk/supply-worries/insufficient-glandular-tissue/

I wish you all the best

I hear you. I struggled for a week with a screaming baby and, although I had support at hand, everyone assumed it was positioning and latch. Not one person considered that my supply might be the problem because it's so rare for that to be the case

We did have a minor latch problem but I got around this with shields and I felt happy and successful... until my baby continued to scream, despite feeding around 20 hours in a 24 hour period.

A week after she was born I gave up and I broke my heart. I knew she wasn't getting enough because on two occasions I'd given her a two ounce bottle of formula and she immediately passed out, completely satisfied.

The midwife and the health visitor were incredibly pushy and voiced their disapproval of my decision and not once was I supported. I felt like a failure.

Of course, the wanted me to pump (but I was worn out by then. Two months of no sleep before the baby due to sciatica then a five day induction with no working pain relief then a week of a screaming new born) so I wasn't convinced. I pumped a few times but never got more than 30ml, despite being hooked up to the super duper double pumps for hours. I'm my mind it was just another thing to torture me and keep me from bonding with my baby. My hormones were all over the place and I was done.

6 months on and I now know that my emergency c-section was a big hindrance to breastfeeding, as well as the extreme pain i had been in (failed epidural plus induction drip meant my oxytocin production was through the floor). Coupled with my PCOS I had no fucking chance.

If someone had sat me down and offered me the help I needed and considered that I wasn't just giving up for selfish reasons then I'd probably still be feeding now. I didn't even know there was medication I could have taken until I read this post!

But of course, if I mention my struggle to anyone I'm made to feel unreasonable because I'm obviously making it up to feel better and no way am I actually in that tiny group of women who actually can't breastfeed.

In retrospect, although it was hard at the time, I was lucky. This was 20 years ago, the midwives recommended using a bottle to supplement. It didn't cause any 'confusion'. DH was massively supportive - he dealt with the bottles and had the nous to point out that DD only needed an ounce or so to settle her after she was sucking in empty. I realised the futility of pumping, and so got a bit of rest. And after 5 weeks we were able to ditch the formula.

Metformin decreases miscarriage risk with pcos.

Do those with pcos have dc with asd/traits?
Apparently an increased risk.
Both mine have traits but i was on metformin before pg with both and probably till 7w with each.

I noticed that when this thread led me to some googling. DD has no such traits at all.

@Helix1244 I've been on metformin for several years now and in that time have lost all three babies I was pregnant with

I am also incredible fortunate to have 2 older DC (as per my post above) and neither appear to have asd traits. DC2 is showing strong signs of slow processing skills though, I'm not sure if that's related