To make a constructive complaint about the breastfeeding midwife 4 months on?

[PinkFing]

I feel unreasonable even typing this as she was so nice and really tried to help, but….

when my dad was born it was noted he had a tongue tie. She came to the postnatal ward to help and also cut the tongue tie in a week in the clinic. Things still didn’t improve and I had sore bleeding nipples and cried every time he latched on.

after a few weeks I was still going to her clinics and she sat me down and took my hand saying “it’s ok to stop. You’re not enjoying this time with him and ultimately it’s not where the milk comes from but how you bond with your baby when feeding him etc”. She said that it was fine to use some formula and if I stopped breastfeeding entirely then it was okay. Obviously all the words a stress out mum wants to hear! But looking back I wish she’d encouraged me more and told me not to give up. That’s her job right?! I’m now combo feeding but wish someone had pushed me not to give bottles and I can’t help blaming her for not putting the pressure on. AIBU?

YABU it's sounds like she said the right think at the right time. she could of encouraged you to continue and you could of ended up with PND in which case you'd be saying she should have told you it's ok to stop.

I had he opposite!

I had said in my birth plan that I didnt want to be medicated for pain or have an epidural. Then labour happened and I changed my mind. I asked for the epidural and be midwife talked me out of it.

There doesn't seem to be any consistency!

She sounds kind and supportive, which is part of her job. YABU

Speaking as a midwife you just hit the nail on the head.
We are there to support you in your decisions not judge. This midwife said exactly what I would have said.

I spent literally hours on nights with a struggling breastfeeding Mum and it ended up baby attaching well no pain Mum and baby both content. The woman went home after 3 nights bottlefeeding her baby. She made a decision that was good for her at that time and I said nothing. It is what suits the woman not me.
Yabvu to even think of complaining about what sounds like a kind and realistic midwife.

Same.
If she had been making you feel like you had to continue, would that have been better?
Agree with those saying you can reduce the formula and up the breast milk if you would like to but please don’t make a complaint about this person.

Ffs

You say yourself that she was prioritizing you being able to bond with your baby.

but then you know you are being unreasonable, you say it yourself in your first sentence.
Things didn’t work out the way you imagined them to when you were pregnant. That is no-ones fault. Stop trying to find someone to blame.

She was saying the right things so you could make the decision without being guilted into continuing.

She did the right thing, the choice to stop was yours. I also think good on her, because I know many people who's health visitors put a lot of pressure onto breast feeding to the point they hated feeding and felt incredible guilt when they eventually stopped.

I had a very similar situation with my first, years ago. I was crying with the pain of it, and a lovely, kind midwife told me I didn't have to breastfeed, and it was OK to bottle feed. That wasn't the right path for me personally, and so I continued to breastfeed, but I will always remember her kind and supportive attitude, eight years on. We do have to take some responsibility for our own decisions. I do agree that outside 'forces' will influence our decisions, but ultimately we are the only ones who can decide for ourselves. If you had voiced your determination to continue, I expect the midwife would then have continued to offer you support.

No judgement from me though for looking back and wondering how different things might have been in other circumstances. I totally understand how difficult it all is. I think it's human nature to subconsciously seek something to blame, if things worked out differently to how we hoped.

I wish I had had a midwife tell me that!!

She sounds great and it's true what she said.

Bond is so much more important than its delivery method!

I voted YANBU. I wouldn't go as far as to put in a complaint but feel she should have referred you to a lactation consultant and not just suggested you give up at this stage before exploring other avenues. Perhaps the procedure to release tongue tie didn't work? Or you needed to adapt positioning?

I had very similar struggles where midwives and hospital LC couldn't help. My nipples were in pieces and I did dread every feed. After 8 weeks of pain but adamant I would not give up I paid privately for a LC and asked them if I could get his tongue clipped even though everyone said there was no tongue tie. Immediate improvement and I fed until 3.5 years - until the morning my second baby was born.

I had to top up with formula at the beginning but ultimately ended up ebf and this time I have ebf with no issues. There's no reason you couldn't get advice now and return to ebf as previous posters have said. I found bf so rewarding.

Good luck, I don't think you will regret it if you seek further help now.

YABVU 🙄 I wonder what you would be on here complaining about now if when in tears and pain your midwife had said breast was best and if you dared stop you’d be damaging the baby and you had to keep going. Probably would’ve given you PND. I cannot understand the outrageous pressure mothers put on themselves to breastfeed. You haven’t done anything wrong by combination feeding. If you feel you have you should probably speak to someone about why that is and why you’re misplacing your anger on the midwife.

@Frazzledmum123 but I felt the epidural led to it due to me not being active enough in labour

was there any medical basis for this or to just decided yourself the epidural led to c-section? Seems very odd to base a subsequent medical decision on something you essentially made up in your head and then being devastated by it.

It is your choice. I don't think the midwife making you aware it is ok to stop incase you were pressuring yourself too much is wrong at all. Sounds like the right choice to me. And good advice from midwife.

But she isn't, and shouldn't be, a voice of authority.

I have to admit, as a HCP this is one of the things that makes me anxious about doing my job. No matter how hard I try to help, no matter how compassionate I am and how far above and beyond I go, there will always be certain patients who it is almost impossible to get through a consultation with without them finding something to submit a complaint about.
Ultimately it's up to you if you think her conduct was so completely unacceptable that you feel you need to submit a complaint.

You cannot be serious OP?!

I suspect you feel guilt at not EBF, and you have dealt with that by blaming the midwife for it. But it’s not her fault at all. Sounds like she was a great support to you, and her job is what’s best for the two of you together.

Sometimes mums will destroy themselves by their determination to EBF, and it’s simply not possible, for reasons out of their control. She supported you on your journey, and when she saw how much you were struggling, she told you it’s ok to give formula. She didn’t order you to do it, that was your decision and your choice, but a decision that, by the sounds of it, was the right one for you and your child.

Good and supportive midwives are hard to find. Please don’t tarnish this woman’s career because of your own feelings of guilt. That would be a selfish thing to do. You are massively projecting your feelings on to the wrong person.

Gosh I wish someone in "authority" (like a midwife) would say to me it's okay to stop trying to breastfeed - although a (male) GP did tell me it's very likely the benefits of breast feeding are exaggerated now we have better formula and sterilisation processes than in the past .

DS is 8 weeks now and has only just learnt to suckle without a nipple shield over the past week or two and now my nipples are so sore. He's still combi fed even now - I think he had initial nipple confusion and possibly even now doesn't want to latch properly as they insisted he had bottles of formula from day 1 in hospital (due to health concerns for him) but expected me to try the nipple, pump milk, as well as bottle every 2-3 hours too - it was exhausting.

"Luckily" I eventually stopped getting anything off the pump so I insisted on stopping trying to as I was only getting half an hour or so rest between feeding sessions.

Now keep trying to decide whether to stop the bottles and risk trying to solely breastfeed as that "breast is best" mantra is so ingrained (so I understand your guilt OP) - but I'm also not sure I'm producing enough milk naturally (tried fenugreek but although it seemed to help my milk it made DS even more gassy/refluxy). Everyone on Mumsnet always says ask a lactation consultant for help but they are £200 a session here - it's a battle to get "hands on" help on the NHS as they just refer you to websites.

I’m not surprised, if Mn is anything to go by, healthcare professionals are both lazy and disinterested while simultaneously being over invested and interfering, with a secret agenda to coerce women into treatment they neither want nor need. you can’t please anyone on here.

It is really difficult to find the right line between supporting mothers to breastfeed when that is what they want to do and supporting them to feed their babies in the way that works best for both mother and baby at that moment in time.

It takes huge skill to interpret what the mother needs to hear in that moment and humans get things wrong. You may also be looking back on it from a position where mixed feeding has allowed you the space you needed to enjoy this time with your baby that had you not done it, your current viewpoint might be very different, you might be looking back saying I wish the midwife had not insisted that I carry on exclusively breastfeeding as its been a really difficult road for me. If I had not been made to feel that I would be failing of I introduced a bottle, I think I would have enjoyed this time with my baby more.

You could ask for a debrief with her to talk through your feelings now if you thought that was helpful.

Good grief. Who on earth would choose to work with the general public nowadays. People don't seem to understand that we're human. We make the decision we believe to be the best one in the moment. You were treated with empathy and kindness and want to complain? Next time don't ask for help or advice, help yourself, then you can't blame anyone else.

OP I think you have acknowledged that the midwife said what you needed to hear in that moment because you were in so much distress. Had she lectured you about persevering you could have felt bullied, or ended up with PND. But I suspect you are struggling with some level of guilt because the result is that you are not giving your DS the 'perfect' feeding you dreamed of. As mothers (especially as new mothers) we put so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect, without ever stopping to reflect that nobody is perfect and it's OK not to have everything 100% perfect as long as we are doing our best and loving our kids.
I tried to be that 'perfect' mother. I persevered through cracked nipples, extreme pain, bleeding etc. I refused to consider controlled crying because I thought it might damage my baby. Neither of my kids slept for more than a couple of hours at a time until they started school. Now, at 17 and 15, they are neither better adjusted nor healthier (and nor are they less so, to be fair) than any of their peers who were fed formula and Gina Forded from birth. I may have been able to tell myself I was doing everything right when they were babies, but that doesn't mean I haven't got lots of other things wrong. Everything is so magnified when you have a new baby and every decision you make feels so crucial, but as they get older you realise that love and boundaries matter more than any of the stuff that we obsess about when they are tiny. I think you need to forgive yourself for not being perfect, be a little kinder to yourself, and move on.

It would be absolutely awful of you to complain.
Even thinking your choice to stop breastfeeding is her fault, is insane.
You were in pain, she told you it was ok to do whatever you wanted. You made the choice, not her.
Sorry op, but this is shocking.

She sounds really lovely. We need more midwives like her.