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?

I ebf to 6 months and carried on to 14 months. X2. So did loads of my friends. This was never recorded anywhere. No HCP ever asked me how I was feeding my babies after day 10. So no idea where they get these stats from.

I’m in SE London and breastfeeding is definitely the norm here. All 10 of my antenatal course did it until around the 1 year mark and at baby classes everyone seemed to breastfeeding. I struggled with it hugely due to latch issues, nipple pain and tongue tie so did a mix of formula, pumping and breastfeeding until 11 months. Almost killed me but I felt huge pressure to give my baby breastmilk.

True. And inexact use of the term works the other way too. I see it frequently misused on here - "I exclusively breastfed for 18 months" etc. No, I'm pretty sure you didn't!
It's often used as shorthand for "I didn’t use formula" which is not what it means at all. So in terms of the national data "exclusively breastfed" has a very specific and narrow meaning, whereas on MN, and indeed the real world, it is used in a much broader context, adding to the mismatch between the statistics and people's own experiences.

You really have no idea?

education teaches you how to learn. If a woman wants to breastfeed, if you are educated and know how and where to find the information, and more importantly filter out the crap and misinformation from the facts, then you are way ahead of someone who has never learned those skills. You learn about cluster feeding, and growth spurts, and normal bf feeding patterns. So you’re less likely to think oh baby has been feeding all night, something must be wrong.

if you don’t regularly use computers and other research tools to learn new topics then you’re more likely to take advice from people who’ve been there and done that- mums, aunties, friends. Bottle feeding was heavily pushed as better than bf in the 70’s, so many of that generation lost the bf knowledge to pass on.

the reason mumsnet is skewed to the middle classes is because that demographic is more likely to be educated, and be able to seek out forums and use them.

Mine were both still EBF at 8 weeks, and this was decades ago.
Might add that I had no problem unobtrusively feeding one of them at wedding, ditto dd one of hers, at a funeral.

@Ohnonotmeagain , IMO there was often a feeling in the past that anything ‘scientifically’ produced, that you had to pay for, had to be better than anything provided by Nature, for free.

Times have certainly changed in that respect, though. ‘

It's social class skewed. Mumsnet has a relatively highly educated and wealthy repeat traffic audience. Posters here are more likely to have the support, financial freedom and also peer pressure to bf for at least a year

I wonder if this is area/demographic-dependent as well. I have never had any comments/weird looks etc and regularly BF (discreetly) in public when I need to. Nobody cares - why would they?

I agree it's sad reading on here posts from women being pressured by their own families to give up BF when they don't want to (usually with comments that the mother is being selfish for hogging the baby and not letting MIL/DM have a go at feeding the baby).

But on the flipside, it's also sad that women who have chosen to FF often feel the need to fabricate a reason to justify that, when they don't need to - it's their choice how to feed their baby. Feeling the need to say that (for example) "I tried but it was too hard/painful" does a disservice both to mothers who choose to FF because they want to (no justification is needed!) and those who are considering BF (by artificially amplifying the narrative around it being painful/difficult and which might put off pregnant women considering BF).

(Pain etc is very much is the experience of many women and I am not dismissing the very real challenges they have faced, BTW, but I have seen replies on here to queries from pregnant women that imply it pretty much universally feels like razor blades, for example).

Yes this is a very good point.

Where do you live?

Came here to say exactly the same thing - in the SW and the vast majority of mums I know locally breast fed for a while. In my NCT group all of us attempted to breast feed - one didn't manage to establish it because of latch issues, one stopped at 4 months because of repeated mastitis, and the rest of us weaned at 12 - 18 months.

I honestly don't know anyone that bottle fed.... boobs everywhere for years!

I'm a minority here in the SE still a prisoner to breastfeeding 13 months in. I'd like to give it up but baby will not. point blank refuses a bottle no matter what I try. Milk in sippy cup no proper cup no. Don't know what to do.

I didn't notice my typo, but I stand by it!

For me a large motivation was that i just couldn't be arsed with sterilising bottles and faffing about mixing formula. My tits are just there and good to go! But I did have some struggles. I wasn't planning to buy a pump but when the milk came in I had boobs like rocks and I remember yelling at my DH to go and buy a pump NOW! Long term though, it will always be cheaper.

I got to one year, stopped and got them on the cows milk.

Half of babies is still a lot of babies. The EBF rate is only 1% at 6 months, but after the 0-6 week cliff edge (which I'd put down to the utterly dire state of BF support, but also the fact that BF can be really gruelling at the beginning) it stays fairly stable until you get to about 3-4 months and then you start to see, first slow and then faster loss of EBF status due to beginning solids. Barely anybody waits until the actual 6 month mark to begin solids - most people start at least a couple of weeks before, which makes sense because the NHS guidance says "around six months" and culturally you also have an absolute shit ton of pressure from all directions about when you're going to start weaning.

By 12 months, around 30% of babies are still receiving breastmilk, which is still a lot of babies, even though it's technically a minority and there are more than twice as many babies not receiving breastmilk. It's more than enough to be noticeable.

People also use a looser definition of EBF colloquially than is used in the Infant Feeding Survey, where you can lose EBF status by a baby having formula top ups shortly after birth even if this only happens for a couple of days and then they are EBF after that. So I think it makes sense to look at breastfeeding prevalence statistics, rather than the EBF statistics which are fairly meaningless. IRL and on MN, people use EBF to communicate various things ranging from "I am my baby's main source of nutrition so I can't be apart from them for too long" to "I don't like formula and I want you to know I've never used it".

I think what you're seeing is only partially explained by a demographic difference between MN users and the general UK population. That will factor in (MNers tend to be more affluent and more educated than average, and these are both groups with higher BF rates) but even if MN perfectly reflected the UK stats, it's still more than enough to support the posting of multiple threads per week/day relating to exclusively breastfed babies. There will be roughly 150,000 exclusively breastfed babies at any time in the UK as a whole. (Back of envelope calculation based on birth rate per year x 0.5 to exclude babies over 6mo, x 0.5 to rule out non-exclusive BF).

Seems like it's very much an area/social class thing.

I'm in a somewhat middle class area. Majority of my antenatal/mum friends breastfed or attempted to breastfeed. Lots of us past 6 months.

I'm always surprised when people don't want to try as it's so much cheaper and there are lots of benefits for mum & baby, but that is of course their choice.

I bf my youngest for over 2 years but he doesn't count as being EBF because he had some formula milk down his ng tube when he was in nicu. I think if the baby has oral medication then they aren't officially ebf as well which I think is ridiculous.

Oh the breastfeeding nuts are out in force in real life too!
When my DC was a newborn I had Facebook ‘friends’ who hadn’t spoken to me since school, and haven’t since, pop up on my posts to grill me about whether i was breastfeeding and send a load of ‘you can do this mama’ type bullshit. I exclusively pumped for 6 months and found it a totally brilliant ‘best of both worlds’ method for us, but they found it necessary to keep telling me how wonderful EBF is and if I just kept trying i would get it and it would be soooo much better than pumping 🙄 really strange how invested some people are in what other people are doing with their tits

I definitely think the figures are out of date. I EBF all mine until at least 1, slightly longer with my last and I know many people who have done the same (obviously they were weaned aswell)

Support is quite good in my local area - there are BF groups (free) run by the council at children's centres, but BF rates are still quite low.

I EBF until 6 months.

Then BF with weaning (food only - wouldn't accept a bottle) until 1 year.

When I went back to work after 1 year DD miraculously suddenly didn't mind a bottle of cow's milk, so she had a mix of BF and bottles.

Got to 22 months and got pregnant again, and I developed a really strong aversion to it, it was horrible. So we stopped, and she was fine.

I plan to EBF again and BF until at least one year with the next baby.

Found it all much easier than the idea of dealing with formula, the cost of that and the sterilisation etc.

My daughter managed at 20 months by going on a week long work course. Basically took away the choice for the child as Dad couldn't breastfeed. Although it was only morning and night by that fime

I don't think they have. I see this reasoning constantly on reddit.

I also think the 1% EBF at 6 months stat is potentially misleading.

By 6 months a lot of mums will feel ready to start leaving their baby to go out for a day/evening and dads might give a bottle of formula.

That baby could still be mostly breastfed, but mum doesn't want to/isn't able to pump so the bottle is formula.

I breastfed DD until 13 months, but occasionally she has formula (and more once starting nursery) so was no longer strictly EBF.

Figures are last year

Why are people bothered about which set of stats they fall into. The only babies I’m interested in are my own - 100% formula fed and perfect. It really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or does .

It would be better if everyone focused on their own family and don’t comment on anyone else’s choices. There isn’t a right or wrong.

I have a 3 year old and an 8 month old. Out of me and my 4 mum friends, 4 are EBF and one formula fed due to her son being very premature and a traumatic birth.