to not beleive that a women not breast feed is selfish and using 'i couldnt' as an excuse?

[aleciawalton]

im a mum of 1 who bf till 15 months, and now pregnant with second and will bf. i also am a breast friend and took training to support mums who are bfeeding. ( learned how milk is produced, history, attachment...)

i just think that too many women use 'i couldnt bf' as an excuse. its only been in the last 50 to 60 years bottles and formula have been around. what happened back then??? did more then 50% of the babys die? no cuase back then 99% women breast fed! why could they do it then and not now???
i just feel it a cop out and the mums are just being selfish.
yes its hard, but so was labour, so raising a kid. however they choise to have the baby. i know it takes time and comittment and not having that all important wine drink. but i personaly think that its for how long??? if i can give my child the best start and yes it can take a year or 2 but is my child not worth it??
if some one said to you while prego you have a choise to either have your baby and make your child as healthy as it can be or just have the baby, what would you want? why do we give the baby vitamine K, if not to help the baby be healthy. would you not get your baby vaccinated?

sorry just makes me mad. when i hear my nipples hurt and thats cant be normal so i stopped. or babys 3 weeks old and wanted feeding all the time so it ment i didnt have enough milk so i stopped. or there's a xmas party i want to go to so im not going to bf. the exuces go one. i really love the one 'bf is not natural, its disusting'. WTF were breast made for then and why does milk come out of them???

Glad it worked out for you Ma Walton. You seem to have a perfect life and relationship with your child I bet you are also gorgeous, have an attractive, attentive, understanding and wealthy husband, a Phd, a fantastic career (although never at the expensive of your child obiously), a fab house, car etc.

When I grow up I want to be you!!! Although I have a slight suspicion you and your bulletproof nips may be winding us ladies up!

on the subject of malnourishment etc, do you all think that hvs can be a bit quick to suggest formula feeding? at the end of the day, i was following advice, but have since heard that breast fed babies' weight can dip more than the growth charts 'allow' for.

MB, its so that she can get a better view of the mums out there who struggle with BF rather than a few of the mums she knows.

noonar - you are right - the charts we get in our red books are weight charts for FF babies who tend not to dip so much in the first weeks of life. Any HV worth their salt should know this...... sadly this is not the case

'f it makes he 'Mad' to here them say that their nipple hurt etc, how does she ever expect to help them?'

but nipples CAn hurt, even when the latch is fine and all is OK- do you feel mad then? My jips bloody hurt even though I fed for ages afterwards

Noonar thats right (aren't the red books being modified though? Did hear that). I took the decision to FF with ds1 myyself as my MW / HV all went AWOL (millenium baby!), but he was a severe case (post eclamptic, IUGR, severe weight drop), but I wish HV's etc would refer to ABM etc first before advising formula.

Saying that, My MW with ds2 / 3 was fab and lent me all her La Leche books so i could work out the problem 9forceful let down reflex)- she was great!

if a mom is not happy breast feeding a dc will be unhappy too.
it may be your opinion but you have to be sensitve not all the people can not bf just like we are sensitive to the fact your spelling is not all that great
and mn will support you in the other things you are dealing with!

Peachy I have a v strong let down reflex- and DD will often refuse to feed from me after a faceful of mik.... what do did you do? She has been known to screm with hunger, when I have a nice full breast just waiting to shower her with milk!

shrinkingsagpuss - you said 'no-one I know of has ever (in modern history) died as a result of being ff'
FYI - unfortunately there was a case in Belgium this year of a baby dying as a result of drinking formula milk. An exceptional case. Interestingly, no one was found guilty of the death, not even Nestle.

here

I FF DD and BF DS. Guess which one is always snotty and has a runny bum?

shrinking I used to express first gushing bit for another day..

That was sort of my point peachy. How can you be effective at helping someone who is having problems if the simple mentioning of a fairly common problem makes her 'mad'?

And even if she tried to keep her feeling bottled up (and I would hope that she would) it will all 'read' in the body language.

I work with a few teacher who dont really like kids that much. And the kids can tell.

Unless you generally like the people you are trying to help (and obviously you cannot like 100% of the people 100% of the time, but you have to like them is a general sense ), you are on a bit of a hiding to nothing

I stand corrected

SSP, search archives for "one-sided feeding" and posts by Tiktok.

peachy and shrinking, its a shame i didnt get more accurate advice. but... i do have a photo of a 10 day old dd2 looking quite skeletal and scary. that couldnt be right, could it?

just checked my red book...she was 8lb 13 at birth and dropped to 7lb 15oz aged 13 days. so... she went from 98th centile to 48th centile in 2 weeks

so maybe i did the right thing. was the hv right??

sorry 91st to 48th centile

one of my closest friends said that her attempts to bf were more painful than childbirth. I felt terrible for her. She was devastated although now of course her children are 5 and 3 and it's all entirely immaterial to their lives.

But for either the OP or BreastisBest to even attempt to cast aspersions on women like her for not trying hard enough is ridiculous.

For my part, I desperately wanted to bf and struggled with a jaundiced, premature baby who couldn't. I ended up paying over £300 to a bf counsellor who helped us but we finally got there at around 6 weeks. I was absolutely adamant (to the point of lunacy) that I would bf and I only managed it because a) I had money and b) I wasn't in any pain.

I am pro bf but it is bloody hard for many women and if you don't understand that it's sometimes hard even for women who want to do it then you are entirely unqualified to be a counsellor.

I want to say thanks to everyone on this thread.

I've had a really easy time bfing DS1&2 and must confess to sometimes having been very sceptical of mums who say they "can't" bf. Your posts have been a really useful insight into quite how tough it can be for some mums. I'm really sorry if some of us smug bf-ers make it hard for those of you who have struggled.

lovetosleep, what a humble, thoughtful post youre forgiven.

thanks love2sleep. I thought it would be as easy as you found it, I must admit. Never occured to me that I would have a problem. That's why it's important to talk about the problems, so that women can be forewarned and therefore forearmed and so that the OP can get a better understanding of something she claims to love.

I just want to say I understand where AW is coming from and that if she feels that way she feels that way. Why make her feel bad just becuase she might have made you feel bad? Why not just ignore the post?
I BF all my 3 and had many problems but did it. Youngest DD is 2 months. Not everyone can. I have just moved here from Canada and new to this mumsnet. I am suprized with the reaction towards BF moms here in the UK. If I was not so set on BFing and had not done it 2 times before I could see why so many women here might quit.
I am also sad at what I'm seeingon here... how mean some people are getting. I was a gynecologist back home and I understand what she says that you can not always agree with what your patients say or do, but you make sure you do not let it show. It is possable.
I feel sorry for AW. I probley wasn't easy to read this tread and I think she was probley feeling down before even writing it and now feels even lower. I can only guess why she wrote it to begin with.
Sorry not to have a go at you all but just feel that one person can only take so much negativity. I did see she posted that she is leaving mumsnet. Maybe now the lovley women of Great Britian mumsnet could drop it?

LuckyUnderpants just wanting to know where this 'mad' women said she was 37 weeks, could she have ment 27 and hit the wrong button.

See my recent posts about why I won't ignore this sort of smuggery, MG.

noonar that must have been v scary.... perhaps with better support, you may have been able to get back on track with b/f, but if it is a case of the safety/ health of the baby, then I think that is more important. Again - the centiles on the red book are skewed - so although your lo did lose a lot of weight, a b/f chart would not show it as quite so awful. Babies do use up a lot of fat supplies in the early days, and if your lo was not actually dehydrated then you were probably ok - but its all easy in hindsight isn't it?

a typo by me mommygoose but nice of you to pull me up on my post out of everyone elses

What an astonishing op