To think there is too much pressure to formula feed?

[daffodilsandprimroses]

I’ve been considering making this post for a while but was worried about being flamed - I probably will be.

I am definitely not speaking to or about the women who made a choice to formula feed, either from the start or after trying breastfeeding and deciding it wasn’t for them.

I am talking about the women like me who really wanted to breastfeed and tried.

I found the midwives were very quick to leap to pushing formula once breastfeeding wasn’t working. When ds lost weight after birth rather than helping support me to feed him we were put on a feeding plan involving formula.

Why is there no support for breastfeeding?

I found the complete opposite. I was in hospital for 8 days. I was completely ignored most of the time. The other three breastfeeding mums had someone constantly with them. I would ask for something and have to wait for my own visitors to do it for me. I felt like a leper.

@PaperMonster

I gave birth ten years ago and planned on breastfeeding. We had trouble initially and the midwives kept pushing formula. I had GD and baby ended up with low blood sugars and in NICU, where an older midwife took a lot of time and patience manhandling me and showing me what to do. Which was brilliant. But once back on the ward the formula was pushed again. I ended up mix-feeding and once tongue tie was snipped, we got to a point where we rarely used formula. I felt they were quick to suggest formula, as were various members of my family. Breastfed for nearly three years in the end. And it might surprise those who say four years down the line it won’t matter that about 44 years down the line from me being bottle fed and facing a medical procedure, I was asked how I’d been fed as a baby and that it actually did matter.

You have roused my curiosity! Can you give more details about why they needed to know, or is it private?

Opposite here. Told by midwife in a nonchalant manner that as long as I knew the risks involved, such as, you know, my baby's stomache becoming riddled with tiny holes risking chrones etc if I decided to FF. Luckily by this point this was my second so I was able to file away that "advice" under bs and so what I'd done first time round without concern. First time though when bf didn't work out for me it massively effected my mental health for a few years due to all the pressure put on me by midwives, gps and wider society.

I personally don't understand women who allow their baby to go dangerously under weight over weeks and refuse to move to the bottle. In my opinion fed, however, is better than suffering.

I agree there is pressure to formula feed. I struggled when my twins were cluster feeding at the start. Looking for advice on here it was full of people saying how they only started enjoyed their baby when they started formula feeding or their baby only slept when they switched to formula. I pushed through in the end, and it settled down, and I realised it was a very normal stage that babies go through. But I think people do push formula as the solutions to all problems, when a large number of issues faced are completely normal. Dont get me wrong I think formula is great if that is what you want to do, and if that is what works for you. There are also obviously situations where it it is the only option, but I do think a lot of people are left upset and feel they have failed because they are pushed to formula feed when they don't want to. We no longer recognise what is normal when it comes to breastfeeding.

@onthinice

Opposite here. Told by midwife in a nonchalant manner that as long as I knew the risks involved, such as, you know, my baby's stomache becoming riddled with tiny holes risking chrones etc if I decided to FF. Luckily by this point this was my second so I was able to file away that "advice" under bs and so what I'd done first time round without concern. First time though when bf didn't work out for me it massively effected my mental health for a few years due to all the pressure put on me by midwives, gps and wider society.

I personally don't understand women who allow their baby to go dangerously under weight over weeks and refuse to move to the bottle. In my opinion fed, however, is better than suffering.

First time though when bf didn't work out for me it massively effected my mental health for a few years due to all the pressure put on me by midwives, gps and wider society.

That’s the same issue then. I agree it’s much easier to be more confident with your second and subsequent.

Thing is that women suffer both ways. You say ‘But some women choosing to formula feed doesn’t mean it’s okay not to provide support to women who want to breastfeed’ when other people have the opposite - why does breastfeeding mean women who can’t breastfeed aren’t supported? What about where’s the support for women who can’t breastfeed? Those who have weeks of antenatal classes with several dedicated to feeding and not one mention of how to make up/store formula, how babies might need different teats, how to pace feeds, what to do if your baby has tongue tie and can’t latch on to a bottle teat but nobody cares because the baby isn’t breastfed so they won’t snip it, how not to beat yourself up and get help switching mindset if you aren’t able to breastfeed after having BREAST IS BEST screamed at you for 9 months, being shown the best positions and how to bond with your baby.. if they’re breastfed. 4 years of babies and not one mention of a bottle. Mums everywhere aren’t being supported whichever way they choose to feed, and let down in general, but on the whole I’d say the pressure to breastfeed is greater than your issue - but both issues should be being supported. It isn’t an either/or. On the whole and especially during this pandemic women are as usual let down.

I found the opposite too - whilst there wasn't overt pressure to breastfeed you were definitely made to feel "special" if you chose to. I exclusively breastfed twins - they spent nearly 3 weeks in NICU/SCBU and I had my own breastfeeding advisor, loaned electric pumps, free vitamins, the works - the doctors all congratulated me, made me feel amazing for doing it. I'm not sure I would have had the same response had I been formula feeding?

I was the only breastfeeding mum out of about 12 mums. Most mums in my unit were formula feeding maybe because they couldn't spend all day in SCBU like I could to establish breastfeeding so the nurses would feed the babies - the faster you could get babies off tube feeds and on to the bottle (or breast in my case) the sooner the babies were discharged and it was quicker to get bottle feeding established than breastfeeding

I found it the opposite. I found breastfeeding relatively straight forward once I understood how to get them to latch on and fed all my 3 babies for over a year but I’ve been on wards with hysterical babies who are clearly so hungry and not latching (maybe undiagnosed tongue tie or mum milk not come in) and they had to beg midwives for formula. Maybe depends on hospital. Important to note I had an abundance of milk and babies who had no issues with latching. If it had been difficult or painful I would have gone to formula. I think if babies are losing weight there is clearly something wrong and moving to formula is the right thing to do. Fed is best.

I agree with @Amanduh that the support is often crap both ways. I had planned to breastfeed so when we did formula top ups for a few weeks I had no clue how to make up and give a bottle. Not the faintest idea. And the midwives weren't "allowed" to help in case they were seen to be encouraging formula feeding.

Women are simply not given accurate information that will allow them to make a well-informed decision about whether to BF or FF at any given point. There have been numerous posts on this thread where people have been flat out lied to about both kinds of feeding because a HCP had an agenda. Whether that was to push formula and discharge a baby or whether it was to push breastfeeding and get their stats up, women are not given the information they need to choose for themselves. So we end up with so many sad situations like the OPs and many people on this thread where if only they'd known the facts and been supported in their choice they would have done it differently. But you're tired and vulnerable when you've just had a baby and it's so easy to be pushed into doing something someone else thinks is the right or normal thing. So easy to think "Oh, well I guess if that's true, then..." when it's a Big Fat Lie. And HCPs also present themselves as authorities on stuff they don't know anything about, like tongue ties. No idea why they can't just admit it's not their area of expertise, but instead the offer a definitive pronouncement based on exactly nothing. And new parents of course believe them because why wouldn't they?

What they really need to do is sort out tongue ties so that babies can actually do it! 10% of babies are born with some form of tongue tie.

And don't get me started on the bloody WHO stats and recommendations. The formula vs BF choice is completely different in leafy west London and in a rural Indian village where there is no running water or refrigeration. Yet WHO research on things like formula contamination illnesses are presented as though it's an absolute risk to any formula fed baby.

There shouldn't be any pressure at all - parents should just be provided the facts & what support is available so they can make their own, informed, decision.

There are benefits/disadvantages to both. It's a personal choice that doesn't really have anything to do with anybody else.

I think there's too much pressure to breastfeed combined with woefully inadequate breastfeeding support.

In my opinion it's all "make sure you breastfeed, breastfeeding is best, are you breastfeeding" until a woman is having difficulties and then, especially by 6 weeks, it quickly becomes "oh well have some top ups, just use a bit of formula, it doesn't hurt, just give them a bottle".
It's made worse by all these parenting commentators who seem to think the world will end unless mums can log exactly how much baby eats and thinks everything should be done according to an app or schedule, instead of what baby needs.

Combine that with falling rates of breastfeeding, there isn't the same collective experience for mums who want to breastfeed to get advice on tongue tie, positions, latching etc and the fact that some women get very defensive (eg will argue till their blue in the face that breast isn't best, fed is best etc, when really fed is a fairly basic expectation, breastmilk is best, but formula is also nutritious), and it's easy to see how the dominant culture is to bottle feed.

A lactation consultant summed it up when they said all women should have the appropriate support for them. If that means bottle feeding then fine, but there's so many women out there who say they couldn't breastfeed and wished they could, and they probably could have if they had the right support for them

Because your child being fed is the most important thing. I couldnt feed my baby. I didn't have the milk she needed at all, I tried for weeks and weeks, had the midwifes try to help me, the breast feeding specialist came to my house. I didn't chose to breast feed but my health visitor was clearly worried about mental health and kept suggesting I exclusively formula feed. Eventually I did and it was such a weight lifed of my shoulders. I felt so guilty and honestly it's posts like this on here thatade me feel that guilt, no one in real life at all.

I think there's far more pressure to breast feed to the extent that when I attended NCT classes they wouldn't even discuss it.
I was also the only one of all of my friends who didn't breastfeed so I was very much seen as the odd one out.

My God, no! It was the opposite in my experience.

I’d say the opposite and in fact so much so that I requested that our NCT group talk about formula feeding. I did not know it came in powder form and needed to be measured and cooked with hot water. I did not even think about testing it on my hand to check it’s temperature. I spent weeks worrying that if I couldn’t breast feed none would know how to tell me to formula feed or where to buy it from even.

I agree in that I really wanted to BF second time (gave up quickly first time as was much harder than expected) but my son was getting lethargic and ultimately he needed food so formula was needed.

On the other hand, I do however think once they've given you the tips there isn't much else they can do. It either works out or doesn't.

I agree OP. BF was talked about a lot during pregnancy. I was on the fence at the start and was swayed towards it when I learned the benefits. I was told the support to BF had come a long way and out of my choices for hosp to give birth in, I chose one which apparently ranked best for BF support. I didn't feel pressured but one poor lady who just feel comfortable with BFing ended up in tears during one of the 2 antenatal classes we had, because there was a full section on why BFing is best etc. It was factual but it was delivered quite abruptly.

As soon as I gave birth, baby was handed to me and put on breast. All went well and we were told we were naturals. That's where the support ended. At one point during the 1st night, I couldn't get baby to latch in the dark and by this point I was pretty out of it after 4 day labour, epidural etc. Midwife basically said she didn't know how to help, ask dayshift... Except my baby needed fed then! I carried on with a bad latch and ended up with a bleeding nipple. Next day told only to use the non bleeding side. We were discharged and all was good for 2 days. Then baby was weighed and she'd lost some birth weight. Not enough to require intervention, and I'd been told to expect this with BFd babies.

I asked for BF support as I'd been told someone could come to the house.... In walks blunt 'BF specialist' from the class. She started going on in a panic about how baby hadn't eaten enough and would need to go to hosp etc. Midwife was still here and took her to 1 side and said no she's not hitting those markers. Meanwhile I was sitting in my living room full of strangers topless trying my best. I asked for help with a different position as I found it hard to see baby's latch etc because of my big boobs. Was told that as they don't have big boobs they don't really know . Long story short baby ended up being fed a bottle while we both cried our eyes out and they left us to it. I was told I'd need to have baby back off the bottle within 3 days or BFing would be over for us and told to call her back if I wanted to continue and she'd come back out. I called to make a complaint about her but was told as she's a volunteer you can't complain, so she wasn't even a bloody midwife!

I ended up combi feeding until 6m, at which point baby refused breast and I couldn't keep going with the pumping. I'm proud that I made it that long and to be honest I think a lot of it was just to prove that bitch wrong. DH is lovely but says I got a bit too into the whole thing and she wasn't that bad, and in hindsight he might be right, but at the time the way they made me feel was absolutely awful. Like a total failure and like not giving formula was atrocious but at the same time I shouldn't give too much and should carry on BFing

@Laytwir024

What they really need to do is sort out tongue ties so that babies can actually do it! 10% of babies are born with some form of tongue tie.

Yes, I agree. I was on a thread over in Infant Feeding the last two days, where a couple of posters were saying they didn't believe that posterior tongue ties were really 'a thing'. I couldn't go back to the thread due to frustration.

No, was the opposite when my children were young and our daughter faced the same pressure just 8 months ago.
Had hoped things might have changed by now.

@Funfairballoon

I felt the total opposite. I was pressured into breastfeeding by every single medical professional I came accross and they were horrible when he lost weight and essentially blamed me, his jaundice didn't go quickly either and they said it was because I wasn't feeding him enough.

I stopped trying to breastfeed the same day.

There was 0 support after that. When he had reflux I was told well maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you breastfed. Yeah brill thanks that'll take his pain anyway and help him keep milk down.

I had the same. I was made to feel like the worst mum because i couldn't breastfeed

Christ total opp for me and every other formula feeder I know. The judgement from women who were and I got out the bottles was also something to behold.

Oh and with my second we were rushed into hospital when she was 3 weeks old and they didn't know what was wrong and I had no bottles etc and the disgust from the nurses when she was screaming and I had to admit I was FF and not breastfeeding was awful and in the midst of something being awfully wrong with my baby I also felt like the worst mother in the world. In fact I'd repressed that until reading this thread

@Somethingsnappy @Laytwir024

My doctor made a dismissive comment about tongue tie at our 8 week check. Something like 'there was no such thing as tongue tie when I was training'. I didn't just make up the fact he couldn't move his tongue in any direction over his teeth! Imagine not being able to stick your tongue out past your teeth.

Good job he had nothing to do with our care. (Although he dismissed my prolapse too).

Due to give birth again very soon and I'd genuinely rather do full blown labour without any drugs (which I had to for a short while and was absolute hell) then breast feed a baby with tongue tie again.