To think less women breastfed

[bbyno2]

Stats are out that at 8 weeks of age almost 50% (49.3%) of babies are being breastfed. The way threads go and people talk around breastfeeding on mumsnet and my peer groups aibu to think it would be a lot less.I thought like 30% max as those who breastfeed seem to act like they are a minority (I guess they are by 0.7%?)

Data: www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/breastfeeding#breastfeeding-of-infants

It differs so much by demographic your experience is unlikely to reflect the national norms.

Only about 1 in 3 in the UK are still breastfeeding at all at 6 months. I’ve never looked up the statistics for 2 years but I breasted until 2.5 years, the other 3 female GPs at my practice all fed at least some of their children for that long, plus our pharmacist is feeding her 2 year old! The Mums I did GP training with are similar.
Several of them had never given their child a bottle - myself included. Exclusive breastfeeding and It feels really normal to me but I’m pretty sure it’s actually very rare in the UK and GPs (or just my bunch!) are outliers.

It's an interesting one.

In some countries it's a mark of wealth and status to formula feed. It's showing that you have the clean water to make it and the money to buy it.

Breastfeeding support is so dependant on charities and grants that you need the demand to make the applications to get the grants.

Sadly if an area has low rates, there isn't the drive from those with the money to improve support there as 'there isn't the demand'.

Yet, breastfeeding is 'free' (please let's not get into the 'its only free if ... or 'I spent £x on it') so it would make sense to help women on lower incomes to breastfeed as it will reduce impact on their budget.

Depends on the country. I had my my DS in New Zealand and DD in the UK, I breastfed them both up to 14 months, but very different experiences.

In NZ the breastfeeding culture is so strong that formula is almost not an option. I remember asking my MW if I needed to prepare formular when giving birth just in case and she told me no, you WILL breastfeed. After giving birth, there were nurses who came to wake me up a few times at night to encourage ( almost force me to breastfeed). Everywhere I went, ie shopping malls, museums etc there were breastfeeding facilities with multiple curtained spaces so you could easily feed in privacy. Breastfeeding in public is very common, no one looks at you. On the other hand, I have friends who couldnt breastfees and almost got bullied and discriminated by other health workers and mums.

In the Uk, no one encouraged me to breastfeed. There is definitely no pressure at all. There were very few breastfeeding friendly facilities where I lived. Some baby changing rooms didnt even have a chair to sit down. I have barely seen anyone breastfeeding in public. For the few time I did breastfed in public I got some strange stares which made me very uncomfortable.

I don't think the exclusive BF rate is a good metric at all.

My daughter was pretty much exclusively breastfed, and I fed her for 2.5y. She had some formula in the first few weeks. 99.9% of her nutritional intake was breast milk.

I know others who bf for 3+ years who gave a single tip up in the first week, it for a time supplemented. They were effectively exclusively breastfed babies but again excluded from the figures. Or those that began weaning before 6m, even by a day.

Extended bf is quite common in my area, but I only know of 1 woman who would have ticked the 'exclusive to 6m' box. I know about a dozen who were in the 99.9% category though.

I imagine there's lots of reasons. Single mums are less likely to be well off, and won't have the support needed to get them through the very labour and time intensive early weeks of breastfeeding. Two parent families with low income, again, won't be able to take maternity/paternity leave for as long, and won't be able to buy in outside help - childcare for older children, easy to cook food, cleaners, lactation consultants. In general, there's an inverse relationship between income and number of children- better off families on average have fewer children, more spaced out, so more time to devote to establishing breastfeeding. Well off women in general have their first children at a later age, when they are more likely to be confident with feeding in public. There's probably peer pressure amongst wealthy mums groups to be 'perfect', which in those circles means breastfed, organic, BLW, Montessori type approaches.

In short - breastfeeding is initially time consuming and money buys time.

This is lovely to read as I've had to challenge a GP and a physio that said there was no benefits to breastfeeding past 6 months. This was partly in reference to someone asking me about breastfeeding feeding my then 2 year old. Another doctor friend had a similar attitude but I can't be bothered.

Agreed. Mine were bf until 2y5m and 2y10m, but DC1 had a bottle of formula when I was taken to a&e by ambulance (suspected anaphylaxis) when she was about 3 months, and DC2 started pulling food off our plates about 2 weeks before turning 6 months, so neither of them were exclusively breastfed. Even though in practice they clearly were.

This is a really interesting take given I simply thought formula = money / BF = free but they’re all good points

Yet, breastfeeding is 'free' (please let's not get into the 'its only free if ... or 'I spent £x on it') so it would make sense to help women on lower incomes to breastfeed as it will reduce impact on their budget.

And yet you've raised the subject of cost. So what your mean is, please don't say anything to contradict my opinion on this 🙄

Your assumption is based on mother's in poorer families having a decent length maternity leave for a start. What about the mum who has to return to an evening cleaning/pub/retail job at 3m to keep afloat? Those who for financial reasons can only have 6w off but has family who can care for the child? Or those families where the dad doesn't work but the mum does, so she takes the minimum? For some women, and especially those on lower incomes, they don't have the luxury of long maternity leaves, and breastfeeding (without considerable pumping) isn't viable.

I bottle fed my three. I never attempted to BF and their lips never even made it onto my nipple. For me, no amount of guidance, education or support would have swayed me into breastfeeding. Having said that, formula is bloody expensive now so I may have thought twice in this current economical climate.

This. I work with women from poorer backgrounds and sadly a high number of them chose the bottle. It's sad when most of them have a free supply on tap. Lots of reasons but sometimes the 'bf/bloke' doesn't like it, worries about drooping, think bottle looks better.

As others have said all these things depend very much on the definition of breastfeeding used in the study. "Any breast milk at 8 weeks" will likely produce quite different figures to "exclusive breastfeeding at 8 weeks".
And national figures are an incredbly blunt tool anyway. When you look at previous studies that have split data by things like geography and socioeconomic status the differences in both initiation and continuation are absolutely vast. There will be some areas where more or less every new mother at least starts breastfeeding and most continue, and others where it is almost zero. Probably very few of us live lives where the national average is our personal experience.
In my personal life, almost all the mothers i knew when my children were young breastfed for at least 6 months, many for several years but I know that wasn't representative.

May I ask what put you off in the first place since you never attempted it? Just wondering if like the women I work with it was pressure from b/f, worry of drooping, other worries etc.

There were very few breastfeeding friendly facilities where I lived. Some baby changing rooms didnt even have a chair to sit down. I have barely seen anyone breastfeeding in public. For the few time I did breastfed in public I got some strange stares which made me very uncomfortable.
Not my experience at all. But then I consider every cafe, park bench and anywhere else to be a breastfeeding friendly space because I chose to make them so. Never had a weird look or comment in 2 x 14 months.

100% of women should do what’s best for them. That’s the only statistic that matters. Your breasts your choice.

To breastfeed or not to breastfeed is often heavily influenced by people around the new mother - whether her sisters, cousins, friends, colleagues breastfeed.

In my experience with the NHS, it was neither encouraged nor discouraged. I had to be proactive in seeking help on the early weeks.

It was (for me) not exactly free of charge as I bought a large number of BF bras for day and night (they drenched easily), plus loads of washable breast pads, disposable breast pads, pump & sterilizer & freezer bags so that DH could try to bottle feed (that didn't work!).

Overall I was really happy with my choices.

@Logicoutofthewindow

None of those things. I just simply never wanted to breastfeed. I think if I truly reflected on that, for me, I found starting off with formula just less of a faff.

For me it was quite simple, I made up 24 hours worth of feeds and I stored them in the fridge. It was then just a quick 15 seconds in the microwave, a shake and bottle in. I also never wanted to be the sole person responsible for feeding my baby and I didn’t want to express. I quite liked it when my milk dried up, the pounds fell off me and I began to feel like “me” again.

My first baby would take big feeds via the bottle and consequently would sleep through for long periods. This then influenced my choice for babies 2 and 3. All my babies went a good 4-6 hours between feeds and were very quickly sleeping through the night.

Now this may have just been luck? Or it could have been I was able to get more formula down them, hence filling their bellies up more.

So to conclude that’s why. I had successfully done it for baby number one and then after that I just stuck to what I knew. Do I think formula is comparable to breast milk? No I don’t. I think breast milk is the most superior nutritional option, but for me, on balance of all the things I mentioned it wasn’t worth it. I was very happy to just bottle feed.

I breastfeed but only know one other mum who does also. The rest formula feed and didn't even try too 🤷🏻‍♀️

Of course. That's marketing for you.

No one is taught the real reasons to breastfeed in school.

When I found out they provide the immune system and gut I was shocked. I was 35!

We should be taught but we won't because long-term health problems and formula provide massive revenue.

If you look at the disparity in bf rates compared with other countries, and the number of threads with women who either want to continue bf'ing, or want to stop, but don't know how and haven't got any support, it's pretty obvious that this isn't the case. It's important to understand why people make the choices they do to tailor support.

My DC were both EBF until six months. Neither ever had a bottle (of anything). We carried on until they both completely weaned themselves at a little over 12 months, by which time I was back at work.

My SD is still BF on demand day and night. DGS is a month off his third birthday, so I guess she is very much an outlier. However, he does not count as EBF, however much she might want him to, because he spent three weeks in hospital as a newborn and was fed formula by naso-gastric tube.

I fed some expressed milk until 6 weeks. Ds never latched on and by then the bulk was formula and I was sick of never leaving the house ( because of all the expressing) so I abandoned it. All the other women in my family breast fed until at least a year.

Can I answer this too please?
I chose to ff my first, and decided to mix feed my second (but she refused bottles from birth so it was just boob for 2.5yrs).

With my first:

Pressure from bf: no husband for supportive either way
Worrying about dropping: couldn't care less.

For background, I'm a married professional woman.

I just didn't want to. I didn't want to have the sole responsibility for feeding my baby. I wanted to be able to share the nights (I did) and the leave (we did SPL). I wanted us both to be parents on equal footing, with no default parent. I saw how easily the role of default parent emerged, and how that seemed more obvious in friends who breastfed. I'd given my body up for 9m, it went through a battering in pregnancy, and then surgery, and I wanted it back again. I'd done the but that HAD to be just me, now it was time to share.

I then looked up various studies on the benefits of breastfeeding, especially sibling studies and that that tried to eliminate the socio-economic factors, and my view was that the benefits of breastfeeding, in a country like the UK, were overstated. A small increase in tummy bugs and ear infections and that was about it.

I was content with my decision.

I didn't change my mind for my second, I was content with the idea of formula, but I liked the idea of being able to breastfeed in a sling, and I figured if we did mix, I'd do boobs, my husband would do bottles and we'd have a lot of flexibility and still be able to share. Baby had first fees from boob, second from bottle and then roughly alternated, until a couple of days in, she started showing a preference for boobs, and by day 5 refused totally.

I literally have never met someone IRL who is still breastfeeding as long as me, my DD was 2 in February

Most mums I meet maybe start off bf but eventually formula feed and I basically feel like a weirdo!

I think there are a lot of factors which effect the numbers but namely it's the lack of support for those who want to.

I fed til 5. Friend til 6.
It's not very common where I live. It was my friends who opened my eyes.