To think she shouldn’t have done this?

[Wwydtomorrow]

I had my baby nearly six months ago and couldn’t breastfeed her. I contacted a lactation specialist with the aim of helping me, but she wasn’t very helpful and spent most of the session pushing other services (in particular cranial osteopathy) at us. It got a bit embarrassing in the end as her follow up messages were just ‘have you done this’ and I ended up having to say I just couldn’t afford to keep spending money, which was true.

I was obviously quite vulnerable at the time as the baby was only six days old but when I look back AIBU to feel a bit annoyed?

Please don't think it's a failure. You sound like an amazing mum who's doing the best she can for her baby. Breastfeeding is not the be-all and end-all. (I breastfed but tbh it's a tiny part of parenting).

Try and be kind to yourself. That's just as important to your baby longterm!

DS was born by CS the week before the Easter long weekend and my milk never came in. I had BF advice from La Leche League, my midwife, HV, NCT peer supporter and HP, but nothing worked, so I found the one lactation consultant in London who was prepared to come to the flat over the Easter weekend, panicked by having a baby I couldn’t feed. I think it was also something like £175, and this was 2012. She said exactly the same thing everyone else did, and then, as a parting shot, pointed to a patch of dry skin on one breast and said it looked potentially cancerous and I ‘should get it checked out, because a tumour could be impacting on my milk’.

My GP pointed out a matching patch on the other breast and suggested, rightly, that trim on my new nursing bra was irritating me.

I still remember that lactation consultant with fury. She was a quack.

Oh, and despite doing literally everything to try to get my milk supply to come in, DS was FF. I was sad about it for years.

So your baby is 6 months and you’ve been expressing the whole time?!

She suggested CO and you decided not to pursue it. You are misdirecting your anger - you said you engaged a number of professionals yet none of their advice worked.

This was nobodies fault. You paid for her knowledge and ideas and she gave you them. Not sure she should state in her bio that she might recommend other paid interventions.

Some very harsh and strange responses around here.

Yes, Op, you were vulnerable and she shouldn't have done it.

I had help with breastfeeding from midwives and they were great. They also recommended breastfeeding support groups which sounded good although I never managed to attend for various reasons. They were free.

Did you pay this woman? Is she still in business? I would drop her an email and lay out how she made you feel. Will get it off your chest and may make her think twice when dealing with vulnerable post partum women.

I would have thought she could have supported you better. I had great problems bf my first child due to tongue tie, weak suck, dairy allergy etc. The lactation consultant was an amazing support, sat with me at home for at least half a day and afterwards was at the other end of the phone when needed. Genuinely it would have been impossible for me to bf without her invaluable expertise. So yes I think you were unlucky not to have a good experience.

But prior to the lactation consultant, I tried the birth doula I had paid a fortune for who also offered bf support and she didn’t seem to know any more than me as a first time mum. One of those things where word of mouth referrals are everything as it’s hard to distinguish a true expert from a mum with a side hustle until they’re on the job.

The only caveat to that though is that perhaps you struggled with bf because baby had a stiff neck or jaw and really did need separate support on that. Even so I would have thought a good LC may have been able to support you with those problems.

Maybe not what you want to hear but we had massive breastfeeding issues and it wasn't just one thing that helped.

The breastfeeding support service near me is actually quite decent (or used to be, probably not so much now, but they used to send people to your house) and they helped me with positioning and technique. They said the baby had a tongue tie which they couldn't fix. So we went to a tt practitioner, who agreed it was severe and cut it, but by that time the baby was a couple months old and although they fed a lot better on one side, they still had massive issues on the other side. The tt practitioner strongly advised cranial osteopathy and I was very sceptical but decided to give it a go...I don't know why it was called cranial because it was whole body. For some reason, my baby could bend one way and not the other way. It was really obvious when they pointed it out (the osteopath likened her to a banana) and I felt so awful I hadn't noticed. Even looking at baby pictures the baby is always bending one way. So they did some exercises to stretch the muscles, gave me some more to do at home, and after a few weeks the baby was fine, I think I had 4 appointments.

My point is, yes it's shit, and there should be more support available, and it shouldn't be so expensive, but sometimes different experts are needed. All of those specialisms require years of training and you aren't going to get anyone trained in everything. So she might have just been pushing you to spend money needlessly. Or she might have been trying to help signpost you appropriately.