Breastfeeding needs a gritty reboot

[RightOrAMeringue]

Currently bf’ing DC2 who’s 11w old. It’s going fine, but it was still nippy/exhausting/difficult/annoying while I was getting into it again. I don’t think it was physically any easier than DC1, just I knew what to expect and didn’t over-analyse things this time. But, inevitably, the old algorithms have thrown up a lot of bf’ing kool aid, telling me (I didn’t ask) about how wonderful it is and how it absolutely is not to blame for sleep problems/PPD/anxiety/exhaustion etc etc. There’s always a footnote just to remind you that IF it is painful/not working/you hate it, it’s defo a you-problem and to “reach out”. To who is always vague, and usually will involve money.

AIBU to suggest we sack all the woo/ crunchy mama content and call it what it is: metal af? None of this “it’s best for your baby”; like, b*tch, we know. Someone not bf’ing their kid is not usually based on total ignorance, and to suggest as much is just internalised misogyny. Bf’ing is hard, it’s messy, it’s visceral, it’s a new skill your body is learning to do when it’s just been put through the wringer….can we just tell people that? So that when they inevitably get to that point where they’re hunched over a tiny crying baby at 3am, drenched in sweat, trying to put a nipple into their mouth even though it feels like 1000 papercuts when they do because they love their baby more than life itself…they can go “oh yeah, I was told about this”. Not “that smug influencer never mentioned this” or “I’m doing it wrong”.

The nhs needs to hire someone who can make some content depicting the reality of breastfeeding (with a good soundtrack, maybe Slipknot/ similar), and trust that women won’t be put off like they’re flaky children. They won’t be. People do hard things all the time - run marathons, physio, academic stuff, growing an actual human being and birthing it, be it squeezing it out your vagina or undergoing major abdominal surgery. They do it KNOWING it’s hard…BECAUSE it’s hard, even?? 🤷🏻‍♀️ Maybe we need to start being more honest about breastfeeding and people will actually engage with the messaging.

Just to add, having found BF insurmountable, I didn't find FF a faff at all. Quite the opposite. 6 bottles a day every three hours, 15 mins to feed job done.

I feel the same way, particularly about breastfeeding in public! Im absolutely not against women breastfeeding in public but just wouldn't feel comfortable doing it myself due to the logistics of trying to stay covered, hold the baby upright etc.

Bottle feeding is no more difficult than making a cup of tea. There are instructions on the packet. You do have to be careful with boiling water when you're underslept of course (that goes for the tea too!)

This - I had a totally different experience to OP, not everyone struggles so much

But for some women it IS easy, happy and convenient! Why push the narrative that it’s terrible for everyone?

She’s not suggesting that at all!

Just that there needs to be a balance- that it needs to be made clear that for some (I’d say most) people getting it established is difficult with all the problems set out above- and yes even when you are doing it right. But if you’re well supported and can push through chances are you’ll do it and enjoy it.

I think the truth is it can be BOTH the hardest and the best thing ever. The smug messaging that is purely about it being best for the baby, and not taking into account that it can be very challenging and painful at first (because for some women, myself included, it is) is actually counter-productive. With that message prevailing, women who struggle feel profoundly guilty, and then they give up because they think they are failing. If the message was more realistic eg that sometimes it's bloody difficult, but you're not defective and it will get easier and end up being brilliant, might be more helpful than the idea that good mothers sit about beatifically and effortlessly breastfeeding their progeny, without any acknowledgement of the fact that it can be really difficult at first.

I also think the practical as well as the health benefits ought to be better promoted. Not having to get up in the night to warm bottles, not having to faff about with sterilising, being able to feed your baby anywhere and any time without having to bring a load of stuff with you is surely a more powerful persuader? My first 2 weeks with DS1 were hellish. I remember dreading every feed, dripping tears all over him and sobbing that it hurt more than childbirth. We called him the Barracuda. We weren't doing anything wrong - my nipples just needed to get less sensitive. Eventually we cracked it, but really only because I am bloody-minded and naturally lazy and didn't want to be sterilising bottles! It ended up being such a joy with both my DC and I do believe it promotes an emotional closeness, but it's naive and unrealistic to suggest you can always get to that point without any struggles at first.

I think that's a really sensible POV @Biscuitsneeded. Too nuanced for public health messaging, but then many things are.

Or you make life easy and use a Perfect Prep machine.

How about 'Whichever way you feed your babies it's going to be hard because keeping an infant alive is bloody difficult, so let's make sure the information being shared about all forms of infant feeding is accurate, realistic, and not shying away from the gritty truth'

Everyone has a different experience.

If it is so painful, something is going wrong, and you can get free breastfeeding support at your local children's centre, or via your midwife.

I breastfed for four years total. It was easy, cheap (formula is expensive), helped me lose weight post-babies, and very convenient (no need to clean, carry around, make bottles etc).

If it is so painful, something is going wrong, and you can get free breastfeeding support at your local children's centre, or via your midwife.

This is exactly the issue. It can be really painful even when everything is basically being done right for some people. I have breastfed 4 kids, each for over a year. With every one of them I had a few days when I first started when my nipples were cracked and in agony which I had to get through with nipple shields and paracetamol before they toughened up.

After that it was completely painless and (aside from the odd bout of mastitis or when the baby got teeth) and problem free. It wasn’t going wrong at all, baby was growing fine and getting enough food and I was broadly fine. My sisters, mother and grandmother and 90% of my friends had exactly the same thing. It is incredibly common for it to be painful in the early days.

Yes you can reach out for support but in the vast majority of cases they just check the latch and leave you to get on with it.

I’m very much an each to their own as long as it’s not hurting anyone kind of person, but light heartedly I hear this. I breastfed for 4 months to do my bit and it was fine. However I will never forget how utterly obsessed many people were with it! The ‘journey’ …. The flipping ‘journey’ everyone was on 🤦‍♀️ people bathing in their breast milk and posting weird pictures of that! The recommendation for every ailment ‘put breast milk on it’. Was a few years ago for me now but this post has unlocked the memories 🤣🤣

I don’t know - I gave birth in a hospital on the edge of one of the largest council estates in Europe. In my ward of seven other women I’d say they were mostly in their early 20s, my neighbour was 20 and just had her second child. Only two of us were breastfeeding. One other tried for a day. Was it the demographic (young, not well educated, probably lower income or on benefits - I heard two talking about how now they had a child/second child they got more point in terms of a bigger council property). They were not breastfeeding as it wasn’t convenient, didn’t feel right, one even said it was ‘kinda gross’. I think the midwives may have encouraged them to try, but frankly were too busy to coach them through. I was determined to and they did help me (not always very kindly - I felt more ‘manhandled’ than I ever had before)!
Thing is the women getting these ‘breast is best’ messages, from NCT classes, SM etc are women already going that route. Preaching to the converted, so to speak. You aren’t the audience they need to reach. But I do agree a bit more of the possible difficulty should be addressed.
By the way, after I finally established it with my son I had no issues - it was a lovely experience if but quite the bubble of mother/child bonding it is often purported to be. My DD was in NICU fur three days and I still managed to BF her when she got out.

I think this is what’s pissing me off so much about the current status quo of breastfeeding education and support. To not improve bf’ing rates IS harmful. Someone mentioned on the thread about the benefits coming from a population-level, and this is exactly it: the potential shot in the arm the NHS could get from better bf’ing rates is astonishing. https://www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/about/preventing-disease-and-saving-resources/#:~:text=Preventing%20Disease%20and%20Saving%20Resources%20looks%20at%20how%20raising%20breastfeeding,Health%20England%20and%20UNICEF%20UK

It is important to encourage people to breastfeed but also listen to what the gross majority of women who have had to give up breastfeeding are screaming at the sky: that it is hard, it is gnarly and someone has to do something to help. This would allow them to move past sheer passion and (toxic) positivity, and actually be effective. What we have now isn’t effective.

None of this is aimed at people who have chosen to ff, btw. I’m just talking about those who wanted to keep bf’ing but couldn’t, for whatever reason. I believe the right to choose how to feed your baby, and being supported in that, is a feminist tenet, like the vote, contraception and equal pay ✊🏻

I think people’s perspectives of the same experience depend on many different things.
With my youngest (15 months still breastfeeding) it could of felt like very story had she been my first, it was painful the first few weeks, she found feeding difficult once the milk came in for many feeds, she only tended to be settled if in her carrier, fed every 1-2 hours through the night for the first few weeks and still feeds every 2-3 hours during the night. I also had older children to care for (over the school holidays) and a husband who works away) she went down a couple of centiles but by 4 months she was finding feeding easier and gaining weight again and at 6 months was proud to have happy healthy baby who had got there entirely through breastfeeding (would never table a bottle and still won’t) I think breastfeeding is a wonderful thing and should be recognised and supported as such but possibly as a 1st time mother I don’t think I would of had the confidence, experience and resilience to continue ( In fact I did give up after 3 months with my first following a difficult experience but did successfully breastfeeding my subsequent children for longer) I don’t think making the general narrative around breastfeeding more negative would of been helpful with my first, just more guidance and support at the time

👌

Under no circumstances was I going to breast feed. Didn't like the thought of it, hate being tied down, and certainly wasn't going to bow to the conventions of 'you are a bad mother if you don't'. My baby was bottle fed from day one, was the healthiest child on the estate, in her class, and grew into a strapping adult with no problems. And little old me, I was able to hand her to daddy, nana, grandad, who all helped while I got a bit of piece and did not play the mama heroine. My grandmother fed her twins back in the 1920s on bottled baby milk and brought up two healthy strapping sons.

I remember googling "is it normal to get dizzy and sick feeling during letdown" at one point. (For some people, yes, it's a hormone thing)

None of that sort of thing gets mentioned up front!

Very much this! EBFing was so over-promoted antenatally. NHS classes, midwives going on about it, posters in the GP surgery. Nothing about the realities of it, or these were presented in a positive light (no, cluster feeding is hell, let’s be realistic). Nothing about the disadvantages or possible problems - EBFing made both me and my baby seriously ill.

I just wanted accurate information so I could make an informed choice. I didn’t get that. Just a load of hyperbole based on misinterpreted or poor quality research.

Plus dreadful books like “The womanly art of breastfeeding” so much misogynistic rubbish. And the BFing support groups seemed to exist to egg women on to keep going. There was no infant feeding support and no support for using formula or combi-feeding, everything was focussed on keeping women EBF.

There also seemed to be a lot of people going on about their “journey”, or awards for long term BFing or wanting to get breastmilk jewellery or yet more products relating to it (eg accessible tops) or trying to find breastmilk donors online because they were struggling but didn’t want to give their babies formula.

It was like utter madness. Why would you feed your baby unscreened milk from a random person on the internet when there is a safe alternative available.

The pressure to use Domperidone too. It carries a risk of serious cardiac side effects, yet is endlessly promoted as a great idea to increase supply. Which seems very bizarre priorities to me.

Could not agree more with this! Add extra challenges often faced by women who have had medicalised births and the pressure to ‘involve daddy’ (and siblings/ other relatives) which ends up creating problems in itself.

When breastfeeding isn’t seen as something really precious (and worthwhile time wise) by everyone else
around them, even seen as mum just taking a chance to sit down and be lazy, when everyone conveniently forgets mum has been up every hour or 2 during the night etc, it’s certainly a huge part of what makes breastfeeding more of a challenge to sustain

Agree totally, I breastfed one of mine for 3 years and find all of the above very strange, definitely the use of domperidone just to increase milk supply to get babies to pile on the weight quicker. To much fuss is made if target weights these days, I’m grateful to have had a health visitor who was willing to be patient for feeding to improve and weight to be gained. The only exception is mothers of premature babies who are struggling to produce enough milk, for whom that milk can be life or death

Yes the donor milk from random strangers very weird, even more so the ones who have had surrogate babies, well all I can say is if it were a dog you would of given the puppy more humanity and not torn it away from its mother so early,

For 1% of women to be EBF at 6 months (I don't actually think it is that low, I think that's a misleading statistic, but it's still low) something must have gone very wrong in society. We can't be that badly evolved and breastfeeding can't be that hard for 99% of women.

I think the figure is very low as a large number of us don’t want to breast feed at all.