To be sick of the breast is best brigade?

[Bex5490]

Currently sat in a maternity waiting room, waiting to be told that I have a condition which I’ll need to take another round of antibiotics for. Which as I’m breastfeeding will probably give my 1 month old baby ANOTHER round of visibly uncomfortable oral thrush.

There is a video on the TV screen about how everyone should breastfeed playing on loop and what a bloody wonderful thing it is…

With my last baby I had such bad mastitis and suffered through until it was unbearable. The only advice my midwife ever offers now or offered then was keep going with the breastfeeding because…breast is best.

One of my friends had a low milk supply and her baby screamed day and night almost giving her a nervous breakdown until she reluctantly gave in and guiltily offered the baby a bottle.

I know I don’t want to keep giving my baby thrush through the antibiotics or pump all day for a smidgen of milk…so I’m going to switch to formula but something inside still feels guilty and like I’m not doing right by my baby because of the 9 months of people chiming on about how…breast is best.

For the sake of a mother’s mental health surely the message should be a bit more nuanced…

OK - Probably hormonal and living on chunks of 2 hr naps. Rant over!

It’s interesting that pp cite time being a factor in choice. Yes ff can be done by anyone but early on when you need rest no one can take over your bonding time by feeding your baby while you run around making cups of tea or getting on with other jobs. And as for 6mnth old babies feeding continuously through the night, it does happen when they are having a growth spurt but you find ways around it.
I bf until DS was 22mnths, I did get some raised eyebrows but after weaning they rarely take more than two or three feeds a day. Your body adjusts.
One thing that does linger is that bf babies like to hold your boob as comfort well after you stop bf. You can spot a bf child when the slip their hand into their mums bra when cuddling up.
DS was prem so for me bf was essential. I also had a lot of support when he was in NICU. There was great celebration when he successfully latched after 2days of being tube fed.
We were in a transitional care unit for over a week before being discharged where I had one to one care from a midwife. I came home confident with bf well established and DS gaining weight.

All this was 20yrs ago though, different times, when the NHS was very slightly better, although even during my complicated pregnancy changes were happening.

I think the problem does lie with lack of support, both from the NHS and from the old fashioned female support system. So few women from post war generations bf and as such have little to offer a mum in the family.
I was lucky, my MIL had bf all her DC and for extended time. My DSis had successfully bf both her DC until 18mnths so I had a lot of close support.
My niece is currently bf her second having bf her first until 18mnths. I suppose we have normalised it within the family and have given each other support and advices (when asked) along the way.

Ultimately you chose what’s best for you.

@Angrymum22 some of us want to sleep. My DH feeding our baby during the night did not mean I did not bond with our baby. It meant I could sleep and enjoy being with our baby.

Wholly agree with everything you said! And FWIW breastfeeding through the night whilst cosleeping was the thing that absolutely saved my sanity. So much more sleep that way than having to do bottles in the night. Both my babies just gradually night-weaned themselves by the 6 or 7 month mark as well. No problems.

With regards to breast feeding - the best and most coherent breastfeeding and combi feeding advice I got was from my dad, who's wisdom came in the form of anecdotes from his work as a shepherd. It really does say something terrible about the breastfeeding knowledge and advice from healthcare professionals when random farmers can best them.

I don’t have an issue with breast is best - maybe a part of me agrees that it is - I am a mum who could only BF for a few weeks, got mastitis and went onto formula - and my baby had very bad constipation formula which didn’t resolve until she started solids. So I don’t have a personal good experience with either options.

I didn’t care that I had to FF, I was actually encouraged to by nurses as my baby wasn’t getting enough. My family supported my choice and so this breast vs formula debate didn’t affect me.

However if the NHS and hospitals want to bang on about breast bring best then they should provide every single mother with 121 support as part of the postpartum care - midwives and health visitors should be trained and know more. I found BF painful, confusing when it went wrong and had zero support with the first latched which is where things went wrong for me.

Brilliant if you could breastfeed through the night and still sleep. I agree that is better than formula feeding during the night.
Luckily I had support so DH did most of the night feeds.

Breast is good and formula is fine. I completely agree there is so much pressure out there on women and zero about the pain lots of people experience! It also makes it so much harder to share the load with a partner or others and ever let the mum have a break. Echo what other posters have said - the breast is best brigade converts into the - "why are you still bf your child brigade" it's impossible to do anything right!

I don't understand people who say along the lines of 'well I FF and my child is never ill'. That is a single study of one. That data is not very reliable! That's similar to people who say well my great aunty gert smoked 50 a day and she lived to 105 🤦

No because how many people live to 105 versus how many bottle fed babies are healthy kids?

I meant it's a reflection of how ONE person has done (or maybe multiple if you've FF more than one child). My child is BF and is rarely ill but I don't say well that's it, that's 100% proof that BF will protect all children from illnesses because MY ONE child is rarely ill.

I know, doesn’t seem to matter how many times it is said… people still can’t seem to help themselves attack breastfeeding. I didn’t spend money on any of that shite either!

Because lots of breastfeeders like to say that their kids are never ill, so FFers point out that that there's are healthy too.

There's even a poster above who has decided that the healthy children in her DC's class were breastfed and the ones who catch everything had formula. Even though she doesn't actually know.

In reality, when you look across a population it seems that there is an advantage to breastfeeding but it's small and probably not noticeable in an individual child.

Who is this ‘brigade’? I got pro bf messages from a variety of sources. Certainly weren’t a brigade.

I don't have my own kids but have come into contact with midwives because of my job over the years and when friends and family have had babies. While most of them have been lovely I've also encountered a small hard core that I privately christened the breastfeeding Gestapo. They were usually advocates of natural childbirth as well.

Funnily enough they were worst at either end of the age scale - 25 year olds fresh out of training with no kids and battle hardened Valkyries just waiting to claim their pensions.

The sooner medical and nursing courses start actually teaching that we are all individuals and not just blindly following the algorithm the better.

And yes I know midwives are an entirely separate profession.

@Leonarda89 the study you linked to is not a study, it's a literature review - it looks at many of the studies Emily Osters discounted due to poor research methods (because breastfeeding is just so hard to study and yes, much of it is funded by formula companies). I am actually saying that yes, she finds breastfeeding is preferable and likely leads to healthier babies in the first few months (fewer ear infections in particular) - but the effects are short term and minimal, so you're not setting your kid up for failure if you can't/don't bf, and like a pp said, many other decisions are likely to have a bigger impact (diet, screen time, income levels, how you interact with baby). So yes, I am saying on balance there is evidence bf is 'best', but only marginally - ie not enough that if you don't want to or can't do it you should feel guilty.

I could imagine there is a bigger difference in developing countries where lack of access to safe water and reliable formula is an issue and formula is expensive (& indeed when I buy formula I avoid nestle as they are renowned for advocating formula use in these countries where it does have worse impacts than bf likely would).

I agree with you but to be fair most people who have posted that on this thread said it in response to the ridiculous person who said she was willing to bet the sickly kids in her children's school were FF!

Formula isnt the best choice for the child though, that’s why it’s difficult to understand why some mums don’t even try

colostrum is called liquid gold for a reason

If you're judging by results then I'd argue with it's low success rates and metric fuck ton of angst the breast is best approach really isn't working.

I made no mention of best choice. People make choices everyday that others may say aren't the best choice for kids.

To say you can't fathom why a woman would make a decision on what to do with her own body is silly.

Exactly, I cannot fathom doing something that isn’t in my baby’s best interest that early on

I didn't breastfeed..
When I saw my doctor after having my son (think DS was around 8 weeks) he very sneeringly said "you haven't breastfed? Was that because you couldn't be bothered?". It actually wasn't at all, but as he had spoken to me like that, I just said "yes, that's exactly it" and he didn't know where to go from there. Thankfully I wasn't feeling anxious or depressed or that could have been a real kick in the teeth.
I did actually try to breastfeed DD (first baby) and it was awful. I had a low supply and the midwives were so rough -I had visible purple/black bruising on my left breast in finger shapes from where my boob was grabbed and squeezed. It was agony and the support was absolutely terrible. That's actually why. I wish I could post the photo as it's shocking.

We have a choice - we chose formula from day one. Best choice for our family and we have the results - happy and healthy DT’s.

I wish people would stop ramming their opinion down mother's throats and let them decide for themselves.
New mums have enough to contend with, without being made to feel guilty about how they feed their babies.

There are so many other factors involved though.

Many women want their bodies back after 9 months, some women need to work, some women want to share the burden with the father as they're exhausted, some women have a history of SA and breastfeeding is triggering for them.

Some women just don't want to and as its their body then it is their choice and I can't fathom somebody being self righteous enough to post online to judge them on it.

There are loads of things that are better for the children that lots of parents just don't do. Yet for some reason how we feed the kids at the very beginning sparks this big debate.

It is just crazy, why don't we all just feed our kids how we see fit and leave everybody else to it.

FWIW I actually disagree with OP to an extent as I think if you don't want to breastfeed its easy enough to do that and just get on with it without getting into these debates.

Off topic but what does DT stand for?