Breastfeeding and MN. Why so different to IRL?

[Gogogo12345]

I had read many many threads on here about the " restrictions" of breastfeeding. This morning is a child free wedding that the OP will apparently be EBF an 8 week old. This is a common theme. All these EBF babies.

Yet in real life there are only about half of babies that are still BF ( even partly)at all by 6-8 weeks
And only 1% EBF at six months

So why does it seem about99% of mumsnet babies are exclusively breastfed for months on end?

What are you on about now except to evoke reaction by your self serving passive aggressive comment. Which is ridiculous btw way as I never implied nor did that and again your feeling offended has override any point in having a sensible conversation. There is no point in having a conversation with you as you only want to see your own personal experience as the general consensus. I commented and explained why before.

I”m done which is why I said you do you.

All of my friends (bar one) EBF 🤷‍♀️

Both mine were breastfed until 2.5 and 3 respectively! I promise you we're real!

i don’t know where you get your figures from but all of my family and most of my friends have breast fed their babies until at least one year.

That is awful! It almost feels like they were pushing their own ideas on you rather than supporting you.

My midwife asked me if I wanted to breastfeed at one of my appointments and said there was no need to buy bottles or formula etc if I wanted to as there would only be a small chance I couldn't. In the hospital, they checked baby could latch before I was allowed to leave and showed me other positions to make it comfortable. And the appointments with health visitors afterwards they offered support and left information to a breastfeeding support group and numbers if I was struggling.

I agree that midwives in postnatal don't always make it easy. My first daughter has Down's syndrome and she also had tongue tie at birth. But other than being briefly shown how to hand-express (which I found impossible to do myself) rather than giving me any more strategies that might have helped me get my daughter to latch on, I just had bottles of Cow & Gate thrust at me. It wasn't until I managed to get to a breastfeeding support session (ironically just down the corridor from the postnatal ward) after we were discharged that I was introduced to nipple shields- which she used for the first 4 months - and we could start our breastfeeding journey properly. I had to combi feed until she was 7 months as even with the shields and after her tongue tie had been snipped she wasn't an efficient feeder, but she then continued to breastfeed until she was 2.5. Having done both breast and bottle (and DD2 was exclusively breastfed) I can say that breastfeeding is far and away the easiest option, especially at night!

In my NCT group of 6 in leafy Buckinghamshire, only one formula fed from the beginning, another stopped bf at 6 months or so as she was returning to work soon, one was forced to stop early on because of her son's colic, but I think 3 of us made the year mark. I was the last to stop.

In my experience there is a unified promotion of breastfeeding in theory but in practice it varies widely even in different parts of the same hospital.

There is so much shaming about formula use, in person and online, that I do believe many parents that formula feed don't disclose it for fear of judgment. The only people you hear about on here are the ones that go out of their way to talk about how they feed their baby, usually breastfeeding as they're keen to share for head pats or have found how they feed their baby becomes a big part of their identity.

I find it sad that many of us experienced intense pressure to breastfeed, even if it was clear it wasn't working or the mother preferred not to, while others experienced pressure to formula feed even though they hoped to breastfeed and the baby was coping fine with ebf. Just goes to show when it comes to infant feeding you can't do anything right, and the pressure from other sources is utterly overwhelming from all directions.

We really in this country urgently need to move to a neutral, non-judgmental stance on infant feeding, for expecting parents to be asked 'how do you plan to feed your baby' and be supported to achieve that plan if safe to do so. So much damage is done to maternal mental health and to infant health.

ive always very happy with my choice to use formula from day one. Didn’t feel any guilt as some suggest - why would I. My DC’s didn’t get sick or any of the other negatives formula is meant to cause them. Healthy babies = happy parents.

It was so easy - friends and family loved giving bottles - DH and I shared the nights so I didn’t struggle with lack of sleep and i could leave them whilst I went to the gym or out for the evening with DH.
Everyone makes their own decisions on how to feed their babies and this should be supported. Formula isn’t a second rate option and using it doesn’t mean you love your DC’s any less. I’m highly educated (married to a doctor and living in a high income family/geographic area ) so was quite capable of researching the options. The rest of the family had breast fed so I would have had the support if I’d decided to follow them but for me formula was by far the better option.

Oral medicine doesn’t get taken into account when considering EBF… nor does feeding expressed breast milk from a bottle.

It’s about where the milk came from, not the form of delivery

You do know being married to a doctor doesn’t make you highly educated? 😂. Interesting that you mention your husbands education/qualifications and not your own.

aside from that I do much prefer it when people are honest and say “I didn’t want to”. I used to hate it when FF mums would lecture me on how they tried but it didn’t work because insert normal bf behaviour. Saying you didn’t want to reassures mums that they can stop if they want to, with no reason, and they don’t have to keep trying to make it work.

Telling other mums that they couldn’t because baby wouldn’t sleep through the night at 6 weeks, or “everyone knows you can’t feed a 9lb baby” just perpetuates all the myths about low supply when it’s entirely normal. I’d nod along thinking you’re wrong, but of course I’m not going to say anything, but if you’re lecturing other mums trying to breastfeed like this it’s going to break any confidence they have.

I think it’s a class thing isn’t it? MN being predominantly MC and most people who EBF are MC?

Mine were both EBF for 14 months and never had a single bottle. All my friends aside from one (who couldn’t BF due to breast surgery) breastfed.

I mentioned DH being a doctor (a GP) to demonstrate that it was very easy for me to get information and the qualifications mentioned are mine to demonstrate that highly educated also decide to use formula.

I think there's a difference between those who formula feed from the start and those who try breastfeeding but move on to formula for whatever reason. The latter are likely going to find breastfeeding to be emotive and try and justify why they stopped breastfeeding because they very much wanted it to work out.

It isn't emotive for those who formula fed from the start because they didn't want to breastfeed anyway. They don't feel guilty or anything like that because it was a choice they made.

You really don't have to justify yourself to this extent. It was your choice, and some of the comments upthread about how much particular categories of mum 'love' their babies are frankly not that offensive because they are too silly to be taken remotely seriously.

It's exactly the same as the WOHM vs. SAHM threads. Some people really do seem to view the fact of someone making a different parenting or lifestyle choice to their own as some kind of gratuitous insult. Those threads are like a treadmill to nowhere, and rarely have anything new, insightful or illuminating to offer.

I did BF but I'm unsure why some women have such a vested interest in how others feed their kids. If the issue is low BF rates - which a cursory internet search seems to suggest are improving - then why not investigate the reasons which might be underpinning that instead? I'm assuming this was the OP's reason for posting this thread and was my reason for responding to it.

Also married to a doctor, and have been pleasantly surprised at how common formula feeding is in doctor circles. My husband is great at correcting myths shared by well-meaning but ignorant midwives/health visitors (you'd be horrified by how many bits of nonsense are peddled, and women believe them because they presume they understand evidence based guidance). There are a few very minor short term benefits to breastfeeding, and there are several benefits to formula feeding too. By the time they're walking the difference either way evaporates so it's really irrelevant which way you choose, as long as baby is receiving enough calories of breast or formula. It's a wash in a country with access to safe, clean drinking water, so feed your baby whichever way works for you and keeps them safe and healthy.