AIBU to feel scammed by breastfeeding

[PickledElectricity]

Kind of joking, kind of not.

I breastfed my DS until he was 19 months old (he's now 2) and despite this he's had every bug going at nursery, is allergic to nuts and now seems to have hay fever! I'm gutted as he loves to be outside and is now sneezing, congested, has puffy red eyes and a runny nose.

Where are the miracle benefits I was promised?!

Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad I did it, it was lovely for bonding and saved my life and sanity in the middle of the night, and tbh I am a very lazy person and couldn't face washing and sterilising bottles every single day.

I am all about promoting breastfeeding (currently breastfeeding my 3 year old) but I spent about £500 on a lactation consultant in her first few months. It was very difficult and I was advised to buy a pump so it must have been a while before I would have spent that much on formula.
I did buy some breastfeeding bras and other clothes but agree with others that the breastfeeding tops aren’t necessarily needed.

It’s such a pity that there isn’t more support and that you often need to go private to get advice and help when you need it 😕

Yeah, “You’re making your child clingy by BFing” is really not in the same league as “I couldn’t give my newborn a UPF” as criticism of parenting goes. I see much worse criticism of formula feeders and I’m certainly not biased as I exclusively BF. I feel very lucky it worked out for me as I know the criticism formula feeding mums get would have really got to me personally as I had a rough start after a traumatic birth and a non-sleeper.

Years down the line I can’t remember whether they said it helped to prevent or prevented allergies. I know several of the women I was at the class with came away thinking they wouldn’t get breast cancer if they BF. My understanding was it reduced the risk of cancer but I did get the impression that it was a really enormous risk reduction, rather than the reality. The class was very light on actual data!

Everything breastfeeding was presented in a very positive light. We were prepared for cluster feeding but the midwife described it as a “lovely snuggly excuse to watch a boxset” which doesn’t reflect the reality!

There were other instances of outright lying. I had GD and attended a fortnightly obstetric diabetes clinic. At every one of those appointments I was told it was vital I EBF my baby so s/he wouldn’t develop diabetes. It turned out that the evidence for this is very very dubious and that diabetes is a big risk factor for milk delay/low supply so a mum with diabetes is much less likely to be able to successfully EBF.

The hospitals have targets for EBF rates so are under pressure to increase them. Which has led to some very unethical practices.

Area-dependent. There was shedloads of BFing support where I had my baby and in the area I’ve since moved to. For a £1 donation each time. You could go to a group every weekday if you wanted, often with a lactation consultant there. There was also a lactation consultant at the hospital who taught the antenatal class too but she failed to spot signs of dehydration in my newborn so I am sceptical about how much use these people are.

You’d need to pay for a lactation consultant to go to your house.

The problem is that these support groups are very exclusive, there weren’t any for formula feeders, and the one I went to was very disapproving about formula use. I had to complain about bullying from other mums there as I was combi-feeding due to low supply.

Some of it is self-perpetuating. The groups are also supported by peer supporters who have BF themselves and completed a course. I looked into doing this myself later on to support combi-feeders (I’d have been eligible as BF for several years) but you had to learn a load of hyperbole about the benefits of BFing and the formula content was about increasing supply so you didn’t need to use formula any more. The type of person who does these courses is very committed to BFing, often has little if any experience of using formula, and so a very biased view.

The peer supporter at the group was a pleasant but very privileged woman, who lacked empathy. She couldn’t grasp that suggesting someone without family support just go to bed for days and feed feed feed was going to be a bad idea. My DH was out of the house for 10+ hours every weekday and I had severe PND. I needed daylight, exercise and interactions with other people.

Agree, when you introduce targets or money there is always the temptation to behave unethically. The breastfeeding push I experienced felt very "ends justify the means" and as I always say it's no wonder so many of us are left with a fuck ton of baggage and it pits some of us against each other over how we've fed.

Exactly that. If people have been told that EBFing is vital for their baby’s health and that it’s a choice to use formula, no wonder some of them start looking down on FFers or combi-feeders.

I had someone at the support group tell me she loved her baby so she’d tried really hard to make EBFing work. She had no idea that women could love their babies and give them formula!

We were prepared for cluster feeding but the midwife described it as a “lovely snuggly excuse to watch a boxset” which doesn’t reflect the reality!

It can reflect the reality, if you're lucky and don't have any overwhelming problems with poor supply, mastitis, low mood or anything like that. I did have this experience with DC2 and it was wonderful.

But most importantly, you're most likely to have that experience if you have a supportive partner, mum, friends, wider community and preferably all of them who will look after the housework, cooking and any older children so that you can just get on with snuggling and feeding the baby.

It's just shit how all the responsibility for breastfeeding and everything else is pushed onto the mother, then she is made to feel guilty for not doing it right or not enjoying it enough.

Yes, I had a much easier experience feeding my first as there were no other small children in the house to look after at the time. And I got lucky, he was a good feeder and we didn’t have many problems.
I did get mastitis and thrush later on with the others but was more confident about feeding then and was able to work through them.
But I did watch a few box sets with my first and it was good. That was just luck.

See, this is exactly what I mean about how unbalanced and subjective the advice is. I am glad it did work for some,
but I wish I’d been told the negative stuff as well as the positive!

You know, the only negative I was told at the class was the problem of having too much milk. And the suggested solution was to donate it to the hospital’s milk bank!

I also think they’d improve things generally for new mums if there was more generalised support available to recover from birth - I was in hospital for ten days and came out exhausted having barely slept in that time. Whereas if my baby could have gone to a night nursery I’d have got sleep (and so would the rest of the postnatal ward) and I’d have come out in far better shape. It’s not as if having my baby with me 24/7 made any difference to BFing as my milk didn’t come in during that timeframe.
The same for those of us with no extended family support. My DH did an amazing job on two weeks’ paternity leave (I was mostly in hospital!) and did all the cooking, cleaning and laundry but it’s staggeringly lonely not seeing anyone at all for ten hours a day, even if they leave you lunch made and bring a cup of tea in an insulated mug before they go to work! Toddler groups were a lifesaver. I used to go with my tiny newborn and other mums would hold her whilst I drank tea and enjoyed a break.

This is your benefit, which is plentiful imo.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad I did it, it was lovely for bonding and saved my life and sanity in the middle of the night, and tbh I am a very lazy person and couldn't face washing and sterilising bottles every single day.

@Clementorangeadeif you’re not in the U.K. you might not realise this but if you go for treatment or an operation on the NHS you get talked through any potential problems and have to give informed consent to indicate you’re aware of this. For a planned operation it’s normally done on an advance visit and then double checked on the day of surgery. It’s very detailed and I can remember having to be made aware of the risk of death for a minor operation I had in my 20s. It was something like one in a million!

That’s why I didn’t think to question what I was being told antenatally about breastfeeding that was so totally unbalanced and lacking in data. I was so taken in by it all that I initially thought I must be the only person to have “failed” at it when my baby was readmitted. Then I noticed that other women and babies were also being readmitted to the same ward because of breastfeeding!

It’s this that we need to get away from, because it leads to sick babies, parents with mental health problems and is a huge waste of NHS resources.

I don’t get this benefit at all. I never made up a bottle in the middle of the night. I used ready to feed formula alongside BFing and she slept through by six weeks so no need for night feeds.

Washing up bottles takes minutes once a day, done in the hottest water before the rest of the washing up. My DH did all of it for first weeks, then we did alternate days. So it took 5 mins 3-4 x per week for me. Sterilising doesn’t take much effort. Just put in microwave steriliser straight after washing, microwave for 6 mins whilst doing rest of washing up, assemble bottles with lids on. Maybe 2 mins 3-4 x per week?

@ConfusedAnxiousMum that's still quite a bit of effort. By 4 months, breastfeeding, whenever baby was hungry, I could just lie down on the playmat and feed him then and there. Didn't even pick him up anymore. And as baby got more efficient, feeds were taking 5-10 minutes. No need to do anything else or think about anything else, at all. Same with leaving the house for the day.

And my DH wasn't home much in the week so most of the making bottles would have been on me.

The only people I know who advocate for formula feeding in real life have a great support network- a DH who is home a lot and in laws round the corner.

That's why I think it's a more individual decision in real life. I was doing most feeds myself anyway so having to do all the feeds myself wasn't much of a con. Very different for someone who would have loads of people offering to feed the baby for you. It's why I think it makes more sense to focus BF support for those that want it rather than pushing it on everyone.

I breastfed for 2 years and my kids don’t get ill often. I’m not convinced breastfeeding has a direct and significant link to illnesses - I think it’s more hereditary and lifestyle based as to whether kids are “sickly” kids.

It also presupposes the mum’s time is FREE which is another load of BS - the world is propped up women doing work that doesn’t count as “work”…..

Do you acknowledge we are primates? Or are you so evolved doing important paid work trumps nursing your child.

She was talking about running a household, looking after multiple children, all the life admin and mental load that comes with being a woman with a family and possibly not much support around.

But yeah, god forbid a mother need to earn money as well as all that…
Put the whole family on the breast milk diet, then you wont NEED any money

You clearly aren't evolved enough to realise that some primates have to work for a living.

I breastfed both my son's until they were three. Eldest is quite healthy but a picky eater. He's smart, but not a genius (just a smart arse!). Youngest has ASD, ADHD and severe GDD and will never be independent, so no wonderful brain benefits there sadly. He will eat anything though (which includes dirt, insects and other non edibles) but that is down to his complex needs rather than bfing.

It was cheap, but did rob me of a lot of time given how long I did it. Had to do all night feeds, kids never slept well either, so I was knacked and hormonal. Had people walk in on me pumping at work. I held onto weight whilst bfing too.

If I had my time again I would probably formula feed. For me and the kids benefits were not there.

Are you saying you think your children would have benefited more from being formula fed? Or just that for you personally there were no benefits from it?

Who pays for your food then? Another primate?

For all you know, your kids could be worse health wise without BF. Lots of kids don’t sleep well even with FF. Immunity wise, I’ve seen bugs going round other kids that my DD doesn’t even catch (while BF) so you never know if you protected your kids from developing an illness/ending up in hospital with RSV etc. My friend is a doctor and she says it’s very rare to see a breastfed baby in hospital with dehydration or RSV etc in comparison to the number of FF babies. Reducing that risk alone would be worth it for me.

I said what I said.