To have a love/ hate relationship with breastfeeding

[professionalnomad]

My BF journey was a challenge and it took 8 weeks for me to be able to exclusively BF. I'm glad I stuck at it but there were many times I came very close to giving up.

I have a beautiful healthy baby of 5 months but I'm still oscillating between loving it and hating it.

I love being the one to nourish her, the way I can calm and soothe her and when she falls asleep on me full and content there is no better feeling. I do love our special time together and she really is a big healthy baby which I'm proud to be responsible for.

I hate having ginormous, hot, sweaty boobs.i was well endowed before getting pregnant but I look cartoonish now. I can't find good bras to support me (I live abroad) so I'm always aching around my back and shoulders. None of my clothes fit me any more because of my chest. I hate having to pump at work. My nipples are still sore after a day of feeding. Side sleeping is a pain as my boobs flop everywhere. I generally feel like a dairy cow and uncomfortable.

AIBU: stop whining. You chose to do this

YANBU: it's a challenging thing to do and big swollen milk boobs are the worst

You're doing an amazing job!

I think every bfing mother has the same feelings. Its very much a mixed feeling thing. Some days it's beautiful and amazing and you're loving it. Others you're getting kicked in the face, bitten and punched and you're not sure how much longer you can take it.

The best advice I was ever given though was don't give up on a bad day. Choose to stop on a good day when you're level headed. That's stuck with me and keeps me going. As usually for every bad feed, or day it's soon made up for with a lovely feed or few days.

Yes, you know you're doing a great thing for your baby, and it's convenient in many ways. But being the only one who can feed and often settle is tough!! Roll on weaning and real food!

YANBU! DS is also 5 months old and EBF. He likes to stick his hand in his mouth as well as my nipple, loses his latch and cries. It's a beautiful time, but all my clothes are covered in milk.

Also, it's making me feel weird about dairy products. They're cow breastmilk for baby cows.

And he only wants me! On one hand, I love that we have such a close bond, but I want him to want daddy too.

From my experience, 5 months is the breastfeeding 'wall'. The sheer physicality of it starts to take its toll.

The good news is that it does get better. In a few weeks you can introduce solids and the amount of feeding will gradually decrease abs things get easier again.

YANBU! I fed both my DC until they were 2.5. I don’t miss it - but I did see a woman bf her baby recently and got all nostalgic for those nice times. Not so much the mastitis, the biting, the leaking. So glad I was able to do it though - sounds like you’re doing a fab job

@Belli668 you're a hero!

I'd love to keep going for ages, but will stop in preparation for more IVF at around 12 months.

I totally found this. For me it was more the emotional side I struggled with. It was nice to be able to do it for the baby (and we had tongue tie struggles etc) and I felt proud of myself for persevering etc but my babies became bottle refusers and it meant the responsibility of being the only one to feed them felt huge. I felt a bit resentful of not being able to be away from them for more than an hour or so in case they needed a feed, it felt like a lot of pressure. The night feeds almost killed me with my second who woke up every 90 min to feed. I found little advice about stopping when they were older.
I found it hard to find people to talk to about it as well. People that couldn't breastfeed are very sensitive about it and think you're judging them or 'shaming' them. And lots of people who breastfeed are a bit evangelical about it (eg one lady told me that it was a 'fact' breastfed babies bond better with their mothers, when I asked an expert how to cut out or reduce night feeds at 7 months she said I shouldn't and I should co sleep and feed on demand until the baby stopped when they were an older toddler as it was all natural etc)...there doesnt seem much middle ground

A good point is how many calories it takes so you are losing weight without even trying

hated BFing, persevered for two years though!

I think it's perfectly normal to feel as you do. I fed each of mine for 2 years but some days just wished I could give them a bottle only to feel guilty at feeling like that.
They all became bottle refusers after a certain point and I swore to myself I'd do it differently the next time only to find that even though I tried to introduce the bottle earlier they just never took to it.

Like most things in life, breastfeeding is not easy or perfect all of the time! Just because it's often lovely and rewarding, doesn't mean it can't also be challenging and frustrating. I think it's like a lot of stuff related to motherhood where you feel like you're meant to find it wonderful all of the time but reality is less black and white. Well done for pushing through the tough parts.

YANBU!

I love certain aspects - it’s free, it’s convenient, it’s good for him, it comforts and soothes him, it makes me proud to have nourished him with my body, I love our bond, it helped him sleep for months.

But it is exhausting! And I feel so tied to him, which can be claustrophobic now and then. And now he’s a huge 8 month old he’s so wriggly and chaotic that it’s hard work and nerve wracking.

I swing wildly between longing for and dreading it being over!

I think it would be more unusual to love every second of it and never feel this way to be honest! Breastfeeding is amazing but it is also a sacrifice and a challenge.

I EBF DD for 14 months, we were so close she was like an extension of me. It was so special and it’s a bond like nothing else. I have twins now and for various reasons have to do formula. Although I am trying to get them back on the breast more. The lovely thing is though they still want me a lot of the time, so it might just be a Mummy thing and not a breastfeeding thing to some extent.

That must be so hard having to pump at work. I was lucky to be able to take a year off. Even now I hate pumping. I was triple feeding the twins but gave up because I despise it so much, now I just put them on when I can but obviously if working you have no choice!

Could you mix feed? Honestly it’s amazing I don’t know why it’s so discouraged. Any amount of breastmilk is a bonus and you’ve done so well to get this far. Mixing formula doesn’t mean BF will end. I actually think if health visitor/ midwifes educated on combination feeding then less women would give up completely (or actually try in the first place).

I have a 5 month old too and I get the love/hate thing. Sometimes it's seems like such a beautiful act of nurture, and other times it's like torture. And I am still on maternity leave, my boobs are not overly big, never leak (unusual, I know) and it's not hot here either, so you have my sympathies OP. When I'm having a bad day I try to remember what bottle feeding my twins was like, all the sterilising, making sure I had everything before we went out etc. I still panic every time I leave the house because it seems too simple - I love that she just needs me!

I hated it. All of it. So I stopped. It wasn’t so much it was hard (I mean it was but that’s not the reason I did really). I just needed my body back feeling like normal again. For me, it massively stemmed from having two awful HG pregnancies. I was sick 30-40 times a day, in & out of hospital, I lost weight, I hated all food & frankly life for 9 long months.. honestly, I was a shell of myself in both pregnancies. When my babies arrived, I wept with relief it was over. That I didn’t feel ill anymore. And a part of getting over the mental trauma was feeling like me pre-pregnancy. And so I had a huge block on breastfeeding. I tried with my first & combi fed my second from day one. I transitioned to fill formula at 3 weeks. By 6 weeks, I felt great. Myself. Happy. Throughly enjoyed DD2 as a baby, 100x more than DD1. Which makes me sad looking back really. But everything in life is a lesson!

I think breast feeders are amazing. Props to you all!

Mix feeding is discouraged because a lot of babies won’t take to the breast once you introduce a bottle.

This doesn’t apply at the stage the OP is at, but of course the flip side is that many breastfeed babies won’t take a bottle!

I went back to work 2 weeks ago and baby is on hunger strike until I get back. then she cluster feeds like a newborn all evening and weekend until I go back on Monday. I'm just so fed up of the massiveness and the swollen heat of them. I'm gifting myself a breast reduction next year. 38J is not a great look or feel

I went from a nice 32DD to 34H and that really depressed me. I bf DD for 2 years and omg I hated it at times. It was also always painful - best between about 3-7m but even then I had a painful letdown. At other periods it was agony! DD had a tendency to bite and a ferocious suck, and I have very sensitive nipples. Latch was fine, had it checked loads - it just hurt! Towards the end I had horrific nursing aversion and the feelings I experienced were horrible. I’m glad I did it and I did keep at it - but I was SO glad to stop and am in no way anxious to repeat the experience.

The week DD turned two she fell asleep with no feed one night, and I was “I’m not going back!” and refused to feed her ever again!