That breastfeeding is detrimental to maternal mental health?

[Chiikichik]

Before I start - I EBF both my children for the first 6 months of my life. Both took to it really well, but second time around the sheer relentless of it made me feel suicidal. Moving them on to the bottle was the best thing for us at the time.

There is always slot of discussion around how women are effected when they can’t establish BF through lack of support etc but not really for those of us who do establish but just don’t really enjoy it? Or just can’t cope with the absolutely bloody relentlessness of it?

Breastfeeding is a positive psychological experience for many women so your AIBU is demonstrably not true.

It is also statistically protective against breast cancer for mothers - it's not just for the benefit of babies.

If you can't do it for any reason including your mental health then obviously don't, but that doesn't mean it's not the best option if you can.

For me, I agree. I desperately wanted to feed DD myself because of all of the information we're told that breast is best, which I'm not disputing. I ended up with mastitis which was so severe, I was admitted to hospital on the sepsis pathway and spent four days on an IV drip with a newborn still attached to my breast, with me screaming and howling in pain whenever she latched. The pain was unbearable and I began to enter a really bad place mentally. I was constantly crying, dreading DD needing a feed, in constant pain. My DP was visiting at hospital and saw me howl in pain and begin sobbing due to the pain and he went straight out and bought formula so I had the option. I continued on until 6am the following morning after she'd been on me continuously since midnight and she was screaming with hunger. I mustn't have produced enough. I gave her a bottle of formula and she slept three hours straight.

Even now, four weeks later, I feel such guilt at not feeding her. It's really battered my mental health.

Not liking breastfeeding is a big part of why I stopped at one baby. But in general, having a baby is hard. I can't say that I much fancied having to make up loads of bottles, either.

Isn't the hormone oxytocin released when you breastfeed, the feel good hormone?

The hormones it releases into both mum and baby's brain are helpful for mental health. I found it very much calmed me and relaxed me, once we had established feeding. More support would have helped with that first part.

Never seen that. I've seen lots of women giving another woman who is clearly struggling with breastfeeding permission to give up - because that is clearly what they are looking for. We need to take the pressure off women breastfeeding - not pile it on!

I wish there wasn't so much pressure on women to breastfeed. My good friend needed breast reduction surgery, her nipples had been removed and stuck back on for aesthetics, so the chance of being able to breastfeed was impossible. She said her maternity ward did not support bottle feeding, and persuaded her to at least try to feed her baby herself. She said she sat there sobbing whilst the midwife pointlessly tried to get her baby to latch on to what was no more use than a dummy. I'm sure this contributed to her pnd.

Yes I think it does leave new mothers vulnerable to higher levels of exhaustion and pain. In families where there's a supportive dad, bf can leave him with little to do but housework and he doesn't smell of milk - excluding for him and exhausting for the mum. He ends up doing no night wakenings because he doesn't have the goods. That can build resentment and set a tone for mum as the default parent on a longer term basis. The two parents are in different places emotionally.

The above can happen. Or maybe none of it will and Mum finds it easy, Dad stays in the loop. When it works, it's great.

I think BF can be detrimental for some, neutral for others, positive for yet others. At a population level it's shown to be positive, but that is meaningless if you're the individual for whom it isn't. We need to support women no matter how they want to feed, end of story.

I fed both of mine for 13 months, loved it, found it easy, had buckets of milk to the point where I donated to my nearest milk bank. But several of my friends had a very different experience, switched to bottles and that was what worked for them.

It's not misogynistic to breastfeed ffs.
It's misogynistic lazy men who think it means they're off the hook.

@Dinkleberg

realistically though what would more support look like?

Besides having someone come in and do a couple of feeds for you to give you a break (which is obviously impossible)

Dh would get up with me in the early days of breastfeeding, so he would change and settle down DS, and keep me company. Once settled in more of a routine and DS didn't feed for so long at night, DH didn't get up but he was very much hands on with everything else baby related and house related

I gave up after 6 weeks with DS1 and made it to about 10 with DS2

I agree it wasn't doing me any good at all, but I felt a lot of pressure to carry on. DS1 would feed endlessly, I couldn't pick him up without him wanting to feed. In the end DH gently said "why don't you stop?". Ridiculous that I needed his permission/approval, but it made a huge difference and I started to enjoy my baby for the first time once I stopped.

8 months in and I think on the whole, breastfeeding has been a wonderful experience. I think a lot of it is how supportive the people around you are. My family have been wonderful, never once questioning how often I've had to feed or pushed me to feed with bottles so they can have a go.

Statistically speaking if you breastfeed you're at lower risk of MH issues. My DD was born with a tongue tie and I pig-headedly carried on breastfeeding through the pain (literally sobbing at 2am feeds because of it) until she finally got her tongue tie cut aged 3 weeks old - it was offered at birth but nobody explained why it would be better to have it done and so I declined as I had no idea of the consequences to my poor, sore nips (I was just told it didn't matter either way for DD). It took 12 weeks for my nipples to finally be pain free. I had access to a breastfeeding support group which massively helped too.

Did it damage my mental health short-term, quite possibly, but I think I would have felt like I'd failed my DD if I hadn't come out the other side and the consequences of that on my mental health would have been much, much worse. We are still BF at 16 months old and, other than a recent bout of nipple nipping at bedtime, we both enjoy it.

But I am me, and you are you, and you know what's best for your own mental health.

You're a super hero for continuing past the admission to hospital. I would not have.

This! I have two and whilst I adore both my kids, I feel that my mental health and physical health would probably be better had I not had them. I have also breastefed both and whilst challenging at times do not feel this is what has affected my mental health.

@Bornin1989
why do u feel u would have failed your daughter
?

I think absolutist statements are detrimental to maternal mental health.

Agreed. It's different for everyone, and different between babies for the same woman. I loved breastfeeding DD1, and love breastfeeding DD2. However I did have severe PND with DD2. This wasn't due to breastfeeding, but the sleep deprivation didn't help. So adding in a bottle of formula at night so I could sleep more helped my mental health but that's not because breastfeeding specifically was bad. Formula would have been no better if I didn't have a supportive partner who did the vast majority of night wakes so I could get some sleep.

It's different for every woman

Personally breastfeeding my children was one of the best things I've ever done, and my mental health massively benefited

At no other stage of life and parenting have I ever had the opportunity to lie back and take ten minutes normally half an hour of doing nothing/reading/television without feeling guilty

Support in the form of people to ask questions to if things aren't going right. I had no idea that a tongue tie had implications for my nipples for example. I was also shown different BF positions, how to get DD to latch properly.

There was a local BF support group for me, which helped, I got very little support at DD's birth (e.g. tongue tie cut was offered but not explained - as far as they were concerned my DD was getting milk in her mouth so that was fine and dandy).

I had twins who came very early. One did better than the other but both were kept in the NCU for 13 weeks. Pumping for them was bloody hard (all that time, 24 hours) but it kept me going. I was determined not to give up, and am convinced it was best for them. I eventually bf until they were nearly a year old, although the stronger one needed a bottle sometimes. I loved it, although it was hard at first. The difference with me is that I got a lot of support in the hospital, so by the time they came home I had it sussed. But it might've been different if they'd been term and I'd just been sent home.

I personally disagree that breastfeeding is bad for mental health, it’s current societal expectations that make it difficult to breastfeed in a way that is supportive of child and maternal wellbeing: we are evolved to breastfeed and throughout most of human history humans have coslept, and either carried our babies with us all day or had a close network of women around to help us between feeds or to wet nurse each other’s babies. Modern society with its emphasis upon smaller families, sleeping separately (which only really began in Victorian times, wealthier Western families only) , and parents returning to work outside the home as soon as possible makes it much more stressful for women. So I personally believe it’s not breastfeeding to blame, it’s the context around it.

Well said.

Because I do believe the "breast is best" mantra, and I wanted to give that to my DD - I didn't want to let myself get in the way of that for her. I don't mind what other people feed their kids, but I wanted to BF and the pig-headedness is what got me through the first 3 months of pain.