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!

We used a strict feeding schedule - kept a log of DT’s feeds, poos, sleep. Worked well for our family. Didn’t mean there wasn’t 100% closeness.

Yabu. Breast is best for both mother and baby.

You are free to choose what's best for you.

Well that's bullshit.

I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so sanctimonious 🤢

@StormingNorman don't read much huh.

Sorry you are feeling bad.

But the UK has the worst bf rates in the whole entire world that that is a serious public health concern which is why there are posters up and videos being played.

It's not a personal attack on you.

Good one

Yes because you can tell the health of someone by just looking at them(!)

Im sorry, I hate FF and BF moms being pitted against each other but your post is just nonsense.

Don't let the Earth-Mother-Breast-Is-Best types wear you down with their sanctimonious finger-wagging, upholding themselves as paragons of all things maternal.

Floating around on their self-righteous egos, pre-Raphaelite curly halos, flowing Laura Ashley frocks (concealing grimy feet in grimy sandals), woofing down bowls of home-made keffir and crushed hemp seeds, etc,etc,etc. You get the picture.

God, I'd like to see these Marvellous Uber Maters when they're "off duty" behind closed doors...........filling the baby up on Formula and air-frying bloody fish fingers and chips!

Neither she (nor I, for that matter) has said that. She just expressed a preference is all. Don’t take it personally!

Yes but perhaps not containing the carcinogens that adult food does?

You wouldn’t have missed out on anything. Mine hated my breasts and would have rather starved to death. There were just as many cuddles.

Thing is @Bex5490 if you walked into a room full of people you couldn’t possibly tell which had been breast fed and which had been formula fed. At the end of the day it makes no difference.

Like PPs have said, I’m not saying that liquid vs liquid breast isn’t best.

Im saying that the messaging to vulnerable new mums doesn’t mention the nuances as in is breast best when: Mum has PND and would benefit from a break, when the baby refuses, when like me, you have to take antibiotics?

I just think it would be better if that was the wording through pregnancy so that if for some reason you don’t end up breastfeeding it doesn’t make women feel like failures.

So is breast milk unless the mother eats a diet free from UPFs

It’s literally just a message in a waiting room, who cares? I had two elective cesareans and had the ‘natural birth brigade’ (midwives, MIL, random cashier woman in Asda among others) told me all kinds of shite about how bad they would be (see also almost every c-section thread on Mumsnet) but my mind was made up so I didn’t care. I honestly don’t get all the guilty crap about BF/FF.

Give it a few years and you won’t even think about this stuff anymore, there will be totally different parenting guilt for you to beat yourself up about and you will wonder why you ever got so wound up about it in the first place.

Yes that’s what I said. Everything you consume passes into breastmilk in varying quantities - unless mum is eating only freshly foraged food from an organic wood, there will be some UPFs/alcohol/medicines or whatever in it.

Thing is, being a mom is hard. It always will be. But we won’t get wrapped in cotton wool by everyone around us so never have to hear anything offensive. That’s life, I am afraid. Better to try and develop some resilience and shrug it off because how your choose to feed your baby won’t be the only parenting decision everyone will have an opinion on.

Sorry wrong quote. I agree with you and meant to quote the poster guilt-tripping parents who FF about it being a UPF.

No. But if I was brand new to the world of vegetables and told for 9 months that carrots were the only ones out there, only to learn that I was allergic but could tolerate sweet potatoes which aren’t as good but still kept me alive…

I’d be arsey that no1 had ever explained about the possibility of allergies or the existence of sweet potatoes!

Yes - where is long term study of a large group of infants all through life to actually be able to say definitively that formula feeding is no different to breastfeeding in terms of long term health ?

honestly I’ve never really heard this, no one cared whether I breast fed or not

I totally agree that it's the mother's choice how she feeds her baby and that should just be accepted. However, in the UK we have one of the lowest rates of breastfeeding in the world and I do think that's something that could be improved on. In part that takes advertising, just as follow on milk is advertised, but it also takes resources for mothers in the community to help them when they encounter problems breastfeeding, because its bloody tough even when it's going well.

I think there's a balance between remembering that formula exists for a very good reason and some babies wouldn't thrive without it, and that there are certain benefits to breastfeeding that formula can't quite replicate even if it's perfectly sufficient for a child to grow up healthy on.

I think it's very difficult to promote breastfeeding and try to increase the numbers of women who feel able to try breastfeeding (and who get useful support to sustain it) and to be considerate of mothers where it hasn't worked or where they know it wouldn't work and for that to feel OK too because ultimately mothers just want what's best for their child. In individual cases that will be formula but on a wider population level that will be breastmilk. I wish we were better able to accept that both things can be true at once without it feeling like a judgement or a failure. A mother deciding that breastfeeding isn't working and she's moving to formula is her doing what is in the best interests for her child and advocating for herself and her child and that's just as powerful. I guess I just want it to be in a situation where she's genuinely had all the support she could have had and sometimes that's not the case. Women come away feeling like a failure when actually they were failed by services being inadequate.

It was in direct response to someone saying they chose to FF to save time 🤷‍♀️

The breast is best brigade are not exactly on the front foot are they? I guess their advertising budget is a lot lower than Nestlé's. UK has the highest artificial feeding rates in the world, and there's a depressing culture of hostility towards breastfeeding. You are angry with the wrong people.

Actually I beg to differ.

My daughter has never had a sick day off from school, albeit she is in her first year. There are the same few children that are continually absent from her class, and are generally very sickly. I am willing to bet those same few children were never breastfed. I breastfed my dd until she was 16months. It is well documented that breastfeeding continues to protect babies well into childhood. I think looking at school attendance records would be a good place to start for any research into the topic.