To feel that breastfeeding is undermined?

[Olive96]

I am currently breastfeeding my son. I can’t help but feel that in an effort to reassure formula feeding families, breastfeeding is totally undermined.

for the record, I think it’s totally fine to feed babies however you want but the truth is that I chose to try extremely hard to breastfeed because of all the benefits. People will say things like ‘formula is so good now there’s basically no difference’ etc. are these statements true or just an attempt to justify (which I don’t think is necessary) FF.

I am proud of persevering with breastfeeding - even saying that I feel like I’ll get flamed, but it’s true - it did take a lot of effort and perseverance, it was hard! and I want to be able to say that and be proud of the achievement without being accused of being up myself or out of order.

I’m starting to feel flat about there being no point to it at all

Your perspective is one I’m very familiar with. People seem to have no issue informing me of their struggles (usually when I’m feeding my baby in public) which makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong.

i would never feel comfortable being as open about my experience feeding as you have been about yours!

This is the case with quite a few things in life, not just how you feed your baby. If you were successful in doing something that some people weren’t able to do, just keep your mouth shut. Otherwise there’s a risk it sounds like gloating and people don’t like that.

But people are literally asking me!!! Currently I feel like I should downplay the benefits it’s having for me and my baby and just shrug it off. Someone said to say ‘we worked really hard to establish breastfeeding so I’m going to continue as long as it works’ I’d LOVE to say this to defend my choices, but I don’t think it would be well received at all!

Agreed. I would never downplay or criticise someone else for being able to BF, and I’ve worked through my own guilt and grief about not being able to, but yes to this. I put in endless, completely fruitless efforts — I was pumping all the time, barely getting enough to cover the bottom of a bottle, I was going out and about with a very new baby with a supplemental nursing system, trying to stimulate supply by taping tubes to my nipples (under the nipple shields I had to use because I have flat nipples) and hanging a bag of formula around my neck. I felt like a malfunctioning cyborg. It was miserable. And yes, I did have total strangers criticising me for FF.

I think you’ll look back at your thread and cringe in a few years OP. It’s easy to get all consumed by the bf v ff thing when you have a baby if you let yourself. In time you’ll realise that there is so much more to raising a child than how you fed them. Often these mums go on to worry overly about screen time or something else because they have to replace their campaign on breastfeeding as they feel empty.

I have a relative who ‘felt proud’ and saw it as an ‘achievement’ that she breastfed years ago. She was quite difficult to be around as no one really wanted to talk about it, we wanted to just get on with life. A few years ago, she acknowledged that she was ‘a bit of a nob’ about it all and we had a laugh.

I say that as a mum who breasted my children until they were 12-18 months. I rarely think about it now, I’ve never been asked in a medical setting how they were fed since they were babies.

@Olive96 you sound very immature to be honest , if this is causing you so much angst maybe you should learn to be more assertive.

Have you read the thread and seen it’s not me that’s bothered?

yep I’m proud, it does feel like a personal achievement but not one I’m fussed about talking about.

what’s making me feel flat is now being met with ‘why are you still bothering’ comments and feeling like I can’t be at all positive about BF’ing in my response

immature? How so?

With respect, you're making this all about you and reading it as an attack when it really isn't. No one is saying you took "the easy way out".

You feeling guilty or whatever shouldn't mean that the OP can't say here on an anonymous forum "I'm really glad I worked hard and managed to bb my child".

That statement is about the op, not you. It doesn't mean you didn't work hard (you could well have worked harder than her!). It doesn't matter because the OP isn't actually comparing herself with you.

If I say "I'm really proud that I ran that marathon" all I'm talking about is myself and my experience. Sure, others might have tried and been unable to run, some might not care about marathons, others might have run ultra marathons, whatever, why can't I be proud of my achievement?

BF versus ff is obviously a much more emotive subject, but if we all tried to dial down the emotion then surely everyone would be happier.

I'm sure there's loads of things you've done for your child that you should feel proud of. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to share that with friends and family without being called smug?

I've never heard anyone say formula is just as good, I have heard breast is best a lot.
Why do you feel there's no point to you breast feeding? Are you doing it because it's best for baby or because you want praise from other people?

@Olive96 immature for worrying about people asking why you are breastfeeding when in reality no one actually cares. You said you would LOVE to give your reasons but won’t.. well maybe learn to be more assertive then if that’s how you feel.

Yeah this. Formula fed first, breastfed second, never experienced any negativity or praise/admiration for either. Can’t really say it was much of a topic of conversation at all tbh.

I’m starting to feel flat about there being no point to it at al

i don’t really understand this though. Surely the point of it is all the benefits that you say you have researched? Do you mean there is no point because there’s no praise for it? Most pregnant women intend to breastfeed based on the statistics and for whatever reasons for a lot of them it doesn’t work out and they end up FF so yes I think these mothers should be reassured by professionals and society that it is ok. That their child will not be harmed by FF. That their child is being fed nutritious safe food which will help them thrive and that is what is important because of course it’s hard for mothers when they don’t feel they are giving their child “the best”. I suspect that breastfeeding mothers don’t have the same level of misplaced guilt therefore don’t need that reassurance.

If they don’t care why are they asking haha. I’ll go to feed her in public atm and I’d say 6/10 times (more if I just include baby groups) people will comment or ask why I’m continuing.

I don’t not give my reasons because I’m immature or unassertive, I just don’t enjoy upsetting people and I feel like positivity around breastfeeding does upset people (and is even more likely to upset a person that’s asking)

@Olive96 well you certainly have no issue asserting yourself here to strangers on a forum including ones who have admitted they had terrible struggles with breastfeeding and feel guilty

Yeah I wish I could edit the post to take out my 5am wording haha. I didn’t really mean no point! I’m just finding the questioning hard and don’t really feel like I have the opportunity to defend my choices without upsetting the people asking - it’s a strange dynamic

Are these friends asking or strangers?

Well it’s a debate forum (especially the AIBU sections) so yeah, obviously? 🤨

Honestly, OP, I would just have a set phrase ready to go. "Oh, I've decided that that's what's best for us". The end.

When FF mothers are faced with the below fucking message on every single pot of formula, it's in fucking bright red on my current pot, it's no wonder that we come from a defensive place automatically. We're literally being told as we make up a bottle, every single time, that what we're doing isn't good enough.

From my perspective, 2nd DD is currently 6 months, I've been asked (outside of medical settings) precisely once how I was feeding. And that was a friend who knew how much I struggled with the guilt of FF 1st DD. It's never come up in baby groups.

If you had come to me and talked about it I would ask why you didn't give a bottle, because the struggles you went through sound awful, and for ME I wouldn't put myself through that for the small (as I perceive them to be) benefits of BF. It would be curiosity rather than judgement because you made a different choice than I would have done.

That said. Just let it go. If a FF mum asks why you keep going say the benefits are worth it to you. You have an older child (I think from the thread?) So you know how utterly unimportant it becomes when they get older.

Both! Family too!

Totally agree. When you’re in the trenches it seems like such a huge deal. I wasted so much headspace on it during pregnancy. I went to breastfeeding groups (before I even had a baby!!!), I did online webinars about breastfeeding, I read books and prepared as much as I could. But I still couldn’t do it. And at the time I felt bereft. It’s only as time passes that you realise that it’s such a temporary thing, nourishment is available in other ways and that’s a blessing we are lucky to have in this country.

I also agree that the people who boast about how proud they are fucking tedious. Yes it’s a good thing to do, if you can. But also…nobody else cares about your parenting preferences and choices and it’s boring to ram on about them.

Hey OP, here are some replies that helped me with the ‘6months and still breastfeeding?’ question without getting drawn into a debate about formula feeding.
’It’s working for us so I think we’ll just keep going until he/she stops or I’ve had enough’
´It’s working well at the moment so switching to formula now just sounds like more work’.
´I might introduce a bit of whole milk in a cup at 12 months and just skip the bottles and formula part.’
You get fewer questions later on (I breastfed til 2years) because it happens less often in front of other people and becomes more something you do at home first thing in the morning and last thing at night. 6-12 months is kind of peak annoying questions I found.
If anyone implied that it was weird or unhealthy to breastfeed past 6months I’d quote the WHO two years thing. But basically I found that making my answer about what was working for me and bypassing the health benefits (which absolutely were part of the reason I chose to breastfeed and to continue breastfeeding) helped to avoid the stupid unhelpful dynamic where everyone ends up feeling judged and inadequate, no matter how they chose to feed their baby.

It doesn’t matter what others think of what you’re doing. If you’re happy, that’s enough. Just because they’re asking, doesn’t mean you have to give them your life story. If they seem like they need to go on about it, maybe they have issues, you apparently don’t, so you don’t need to talk about it or justify. By doing so, and creating a thread on here, it sounds like you do have issues with bf or ff or you want to debate it. You don’t seem genuine.

For me, I just bf. No discussion, no explanation needed because I was happy with my decision so why the fuck did I need to discuss it.

It’s like now, I’m vegan, I don’t get involved with any discussion on it. Anyone that loves me and/or is respectful doesn’t want to question me in a negative way. Those that do, I just don’t get involved with any conversation with. I eat how I like. End of discussion. Other people’s opinions don’t make me feel flat because I’m genuinely happy with my choices, I don’t care what anyone else thinks.

As a parent, you need to learn the skill of being genuinely happy with your choice and not caring what others think because there will always be someone judging. Who cares. But I think your thread is more about starting a bf v ff debate in a thinly veiled way.

Thank you!!

OP the reason it’s gauche for you to moan about BF is because you got everything you wanted while others worked as hard or harder and still didn’t get to do it. Living with the fact that you weren’t able to do the very first thing that’s the best thing you can do for your child is shit, and luckily for you, you don’t have to. Count your blessings and get some perspective.