AIBU to ask what stopped you breastfeeding (if you wanted to)

[IonaLeg]

Hi all. I have been asked to help set up a breastfeeding peer support group in my area. I’m thinking about the kinds of advice and support it would be useful to offer. I was wondering if I could garner some opinions.

This isn’t for people who chose not to breastfeed and were happy with that choice - I think that’s a completely valid decision, and every woman’s right to decide what’s best for her and her baby. I have absolutely nothing against formula, which is a great alternative to breastfeeding which gives babies all the nutrition they need. I don’t think women who are happy with the choice to formula feed need advice or support - happy mums and babies don’t need anyone else getting involved.

The question is more for women who wanted to breastfeed, but it didn’t work out. Statistics suggest there is a large gulf between the percentage of women who want to try breastfeeding before their babies are born, and those who actually breastfeed for any length of time. This suggests there are lots of women who want to breastfeed, but it doesn’t work out for them.

If this was your experience, would you mind sharing what the challenges you faced were? For example, was it pain, undiagnosed tongue tie, lack of support at home, poor advice or instruction, inadequate supply, public shaming (or fear of this) etc. And, is there anything you can think of which would have helped you with these challenges?

I’ll share my story too, in the interests of fairness - I was able to breastfeed, but only because I have a midwife in my family and she gave me daily advice and support on getting a good latch (and millions of other questions). I’ve since been able to offer help to other members of my family who had their babies after me.

That’s why I’m really keen on this support group - to see if we can help other women benefit from peer support and advice. We have a midwife involved, but she thinks peer support is really crucial.

Thanks so much in advance if you’re able to respond.

DS1 defied every midwife in Liverpool women’s hospital who tried to get him going. He screamed and screamed and kept pulling away. Not once did he root. Senior mw said he had a good latch but was a very greedy baby who wanted it quickly. Very experienced community midwife said the same - said she had bf her first and third but her second had done what my DC was doing and to give him the bottle, he absolutely loved the bottle. I expressed what I could so he had some breast milk in the first few weeks. DC 2 was very different- he rooted and seemed happy to feed but I’d had a section and there wasn’t enough midwife support- they were run off their feet. I wasn’t prepared to have him crying on a ward with other mums trying to sleep while waiting for a midwife to help me so I cracked on with bottle feeding.

I desperately wanted to, but my body didn’t play ball and produce much in the way of milk. Apparently my DTs latched ‘well’ (although one would only feed upside down!) but it felt like having razors sucked out through my nipples every feed.

I found pumping fine though, but I just didn’t make the milk. I really tried though, but 24 hours of pumping would produce a feed for each of them in the first few weeks but I gave up by 6 weeks as I couldn’t produce enough for a feed by that point and it was destroying my MH.

I asked the gp for meds to help and got told no. I tried to BF and then pump even doing it every half hour or hour one weekend but it just didn’t work.

Ultimately at around 4am when they were around 6 weeks with tears streaming down my face I thought to myself “why the fuck am I doing this?!” Binned then pump the next day, and that was that excluding the next 6 months of shame and guilt at yet another failure of myself as both a woman and mother.

Various reasons.

Top of the list is D-MER. That I had with all three DC. It's awful.
I tried my hardest with my first and wound up exclusively pumping.
My second was due to a SCBU stay. It was impossible to breastfeed hours after a C-section sitting on a hard plastic chair so I pumped for him too.
My third had terrible reflux so even though I was producing far more than she could use, she was sick until we switched her to formula. Again, pumping because we have 2 other DC at this point and I didn't have the time to relax and get the latch perfect.

With ds1 I had a post partum haemorrhage and produced zero colostrum as a result. I tried for 12 hours and after it becoming clear I was producing nothing I used formula. From that point on the midwives basically washed their hands of me and gave me no support with maintaining any breastfeeding (in the hopes some would eventually come in) as I was formula feeding.

At home I had no support, couldn’t get him to latch, I was in a lot of pain from the birth and couldn’t sit comfortably. He would scream and scream if I tried to latch him. It was all too much with no one to help me. I started producing a very small amount of breastmilk so I decided to pump so he would at least have a little.

Health visitor came and basically ridiculed me. Said combi feeding never worked and it was pointless. Said now I’d fed him formula the damage was done, that I should have tried harder to breastfeed and that I’d let him down.

That comment (along with the birth trauma) send my down a spiral into pnd and I’m lucky to have survived it. I went to a very dark place and gave up pumping and onto formula, whilst feeling very shit about it.

I think it is so terrible in the UK that the breast is best message is pushed so hard but then no one actually helps you breastfeed if you can’t. And then you’re made to feel bad for bottlefeeding.

With ds2 I formula fed from day 1. No guilt, no stress, happy mum and happy baby.

I had no problem breastfeeding (thankfully) but I had a huge wobble when the pain kicked in. It was only a couple of weeks but with everything else going on postpartum I wish I’d been more prepared. It’s all very downplayed.

Like PPs say - I was really pushed away from introducing a bottle at early stages and put off mixed feeding so when I finally decided to bite the bullet a few months in (both expressing - another really tricky thing nobody warns you about) and formula - DS wouldn’t take it. He was a complete bottle refuser and having to get up several times a night for months on end forced my hand into cosleeping (which did end up to be a huge relief).

I will add to the above though as a huge problem - lack of sleep is a killer and it could be up to 4-6 months before you get to sleep longer than 4 hours at a time. Formula or bottle fed you can take it in turns with a partner but breast only puts all the ownership on the mum and it’s fucking exhausting.

Negative comments - not one from external people but MIL used to make ‘bitty’ jokes which just forced me out of my own living room and into the bedroom to feed. Another barrier.

I managed for two years but the end was the ‘ick’. I think some people may even find that earlier - I just didn’t want to and it suddenly felt too invasive. It was this massive need for nobody to touch me so intimately anymore, including my son, and I couldn’t bear it. Almost repulsion and it came completely out of the blue.

Not sure if that’s helpful to what you are looking for - but I think with every one of those things I would have loved to be a more validated and told real experiences because the whole thing felt quite isolating.

Undiagnosed severe tongue tie. I had midwives, health visitors and a lactation consultant visit me and not one of them looked in his mouth. They all assumed as I was a new mum that I was latching incorrectly and kept telling me to try different holds. I'd read every book, watched every video etc and knew I'd got the basics right, so I was left feeling a complete failure. In my fog as a first time mum I didn't even know about tongue tie, but once I did the symptoms were identical, so I don't understand how medical professionals didn't pick it up. Eventually my GP diagnosed it after he fed poorly on a bottle as well.

I'd also say there isn't enough reality presented to new mums. I honestly believed from what I'd read that it was the most natural thing and baby would latch on and I'd sit there overwhelmed with love and joy. Instead it was tears and pain for every feed. It needs to be made clear that the first few weeks can be really tough with cluster feeding and establishing supply. It can be relentless and painful and tiring. However this is normal and to be expected. I think I'd have stuck with it longer if tongue tie had been identified and I'd prepared myself for a possible tough time. Instead I thought I was doing it all wrong and I can't remember the first few weeks with DC1 because I was in breastfeeding hell.

I agree with what tiger said as well over nipple pain. Shields did nothing for me and it felt like pins in the tip of my nipples when i first started and all the midwives said latch was fine and that it shouldn't hurt. That made me extremely embarrassed and upset and like i was making it up.
The pain did go eventually and i battled through but some understanding and knowledge/advice stating 'yes it is normal to hurt at first but it should go.in.x amount of days' would have helped massively. Also the position dc1 liked to feed in was lying down on a pillow (it didn't matter what i did he would cry unless like this) i was made to feel like he should be in a sitting up position and that it was something i was doing wrong. It was def my child and his personality and nothing i did as i realised later!

@MuchTooTired your post made me well up. We are so fucking hard on ourselves. I hope you are feeling better about yourself these days, because you are clearly an amazing woman

Sitting up/rugby hold etc*

@girlmom21

I did a mix of breast and formula too. Breastfeeding was bloody painful and the 'ah if you're doing it properly it doesn't hurt' rhetoric was bullshit because our nipples aren't used to being sucked on 16 hours a day!

I almost cracked after two weeks but accepting that it was ok for baby to have formula too saved my journey.

I really want to highlight and say how fucking important is that we do away with this shit. My son was fed fine but it hurt. It hurt so fucking much. And it will do. Your nipples are being pulled and sucked on but that rhetoric is really damaging. Why not just be honest about the fact it does hurt and offer remedies rather than trying to divert that fact onto the mother and telling her SHE is doing something wrong? It’s shitty and irresponsible

Baby refused to latch, and I had no milk supply. Hospital had me hooked up to an industrial sized pump they wheeled in and left me on for an hour that made me feel like a dairy cow and produced the sum total of 2mm of colostrum and left me bleeding and in agony. Staff did all they could, they just don't have the resource to support 1:1 care. We persisted at home after discharge but without success, my milk never came in, and honestly health visitors did make me feel worse like somehow it was my fault and I wasn't even trying.

I’ve had three babies, successfully breast fed the middle one, she had tongue tie but I had amazing support in my HV and bf counsellor.

My first fed really well but I was struggling with repeated infections in my episiotomy and ended up on antibiotics incompatible with breastfeeding. Looking back I feel a lot of guilt, he was doing brilliantly and I think I could have tried harder with the right support but I just wanted the infection pain to stop, I was miserable.

My last baby was born by c section due to restricted growth and was low birth weight (4lbs13oz) and just fell asleep everytime I fed her. She had low blood sugars and had to be tube fed so I expressed for two months. She never did manage to latch despite paying for a lactation consultant. That was middle of lockdown, perhaps if I had better access to support that time I could have got her to latch but felt I gave it everything I could.

I had a traumatic birth and in the first few weeks combination fed with one formula at night or two if the pain was unmanageable. I ended up being in hospital for a week so got lots of support with breastfeeding. I don't think I would have persevered. However some advice was conflicting and felt like I was getting told off if I did anything other than what a midwife was directing me to do. I then , a few weeks later, developed thrush ( due to antibiotics I think) and then nearly onset of mastitis. Felt the universe was trying to tell me to stop! It was tough and I was upset. I felt like such a failure especially after having a emergency c section, I'm now 4 months in and hoping to continue for at least 6/7 more months.

With my first son he was premmie and I worked really hard to leave hospital exclusively breastfeeding. He was small and gained weight slowly but steadily but I gave up because I was paranoid about the amount of milk he was getting. I started to give one bottle a day usually before bed so my husband could do it and I could go to bed early. It was then that I got more paranoid reading the guideline amounts on the boxes of what a baby should consume. So I used expressed milk so I could see what he was getting ( luckily I had a huge frozen supply from him being it hospital!) Then he just preferred bottles and probably I wasn't producing enough as I'd been giving bottles.
I really think if I had been given the reassurance that his weight gain was good I wouldn't have introduced a bottle.
I was much more confident with my second that I breastfed him until he was 3 but he was full time and went from 50th percentile to the 91st with about 3 months!

DS i breastfed for 6 months, I wanted to go to a year. Reasons I stopped were undiagnosed tongue tie, missed by health visitors, midwife etc, this caused pain and mastitis.
Other reasons, honestly i felt embarrassed and self conscious even though on the outside I didn't appear to be, i would think out where i was going and how i would breastfeed if i needed to. I had a lot of encouragement from DH but some people (mostly MIL) just didn't get it and would bring up the negatives, suggest formula or combi feeding. I think if everyone had been onboard and I generally felt more comfortable i would have continued.

DD is 10 months and I'm still breastfeeding, she had her tongue tie cut at 3 weeks and something just clicked the second time around, I'm happy to breastfeed everywhere and anywhere, more relaxed and not self conscious

[quote PumpingPauper]@chunderwunder fucking nuts and so insensitive I guess you've never struggled ODFOD[/quote]
It's not nuts. I'm referencing a study that I know about (personally know one of the professors).

Paying women to breastfeed has been shown to have a statistically significant positive impact on rates, more so than any other initiative. Health visitors (who were originally sceptical) really welcomed the pilot scheme - they said it opened up conversations about breastfeeding amongst communities with traditionally low rates.

From a public health perspective it's a no brainer. Cheap and effective.

I'm not sure why you find that insensitive. It doesn't in the least criticise individuals and the choices they make. Perhaps you need to explore why this is so difficult for you rather than attack others.

And as you so politely asked, my baby had a tongue tie. I struggled so much with feeding that I would cry every single time. One of my nipples was so damaged I had to stop on one side for a while because of the bleeding and infection. Like a PP said, nipple problems are far worse than having a section. Unbelievable pain.

Lucky to be able to continue for 9 months, when I needed to go back to work. Had good support / instruction from two of the nurses in the first days, when I was was struggling. Next times around I was better prepared and the kids seemed to know how to latch on better!

My daughter initially seemed to latch and feed ok (according to the midwives) but our first night at home she screamed for 12 hours straight continually latching and pulling off until I was bleeding. We called the maternity unit and they told us to give her some formula...which we did and she promptly fell asleep. From then it was a downhill slope. My milk didn't come in till day 8 or 9, she was starving and just got so frustrated on the breast that she would fuss and not feed...and the more she had formula the worse it got. Plus she was losing an alarming amount of weight. By day 10 I gave up and was so deeply disappointed and guilty I had failed that this sparked PND. All in all it was quite traumatic for me and something I struggled to come to terms with for a while as I was so determined to bf and everyone around me did with no issue x

I wanted to breastfeed but after a very traumatic birth I was hooked up to a lot of machines. My DD was in the special care unit hooked up to machines. The thought of her also starving until I got to her made me say bottle until I could get to see her. By that time my supply didn't really come in.

The pain - it was unbearably painful - not sore nipples but the actual feeding. I just couldn't do it without being in agony. Additionally bottles ended up easier as I don't like bf in public and it meant DH could do the night shift so I was quite happy to switch

First baby had colic and cried a lot of the time, but was unsettled all of the time. The lack of sleep and stress caused my milk to dry up after 4 months Second baby was my easy baby and I breastfed for 3 years

On the nhs even when you get a tongue tie diagnosed it is often so long (eg two weeks) before you can get an appointment to snip it that breastfeeding isn’t possible to sustain. That is what happened to me with ds2. I expressed and bottle fed for a short while and then formula fed.

With my other two children I got their tongue ties snipped privately but not everyone can afford that.

Couldn’t get baby to latch. Lack of support, don’t think milk supply came in, people kept telling me I would know when it did - never did. Had GD so had to get baby to have milk for tests so ended up having to give formula for that. Tried pumping for hours , skin to skin etc but nothing seemed to make an difference.

I did (am) breastfeeding but I had lots of family support. I have nearly given up so many times though! My biggest issues have been:

• been told 'if it's painful you're not doing it right'. I literally know no one who breastfed who didn't find it painful to start. Being told this is both unhelpful and also adds to the feeling you're failing. I think we should be realistic with pain. The reality is that you rarely try a new skill and get the hang of it right away, you have to learn how to do it and practice. That is the case for breastfeeding but it's harder because there are two people learning, mum and baby!

• support beyond the newborn stage. I've struggled at all different stages beyond the newborn stage. Including when I went back to work and was expressing and alternating between breast and bottle. Also when they got teeth and their latch changed and it was painful again. Support needs to be ongoing to encourage long term breastfeeding.

Lastly, I also think there's too much emphasis and scaremongering on what you 'can't do' while breastfeeding. Including avoiding certain foods, alcohol, caffeine and even avoiding exercise as it can impact milk supply! Women have just had 9 months of 'restrictions' during pregnancy and are understandably looking forward to having a few glasses of wine or a caffeinated coffee but there is a lot of misinformation and mum shaming about doing this while breastfeeding. I think this puts people off too.

I agree with those who said nipple damage is more painful than a c section (I’ve had two). I used to have to fold a cloth to bite down on to get me through the pain of feeding I’m the first 3 weeks with all of my babies. I had terrible cuts in both nipples despite apparently having correct latch.