To think that "97% of women can breastfeed" is a load of crap

[elliejjtiny]

I've been seeing this phrase a lot over the years, about how 97% of women can breastfeed and all the rest of the people who say they can't just need support.

I would guess that 97% of women can probably produce milk (although I wouldn't be surprised if it was lower) but there is so much more to breastfeeding than the mum producing milk which never seem to be mentioned. Mums with disabilities/medical conditions, babies with disabilities/medical conditions, babies who are born prematurely, mums separated from their babies and mums on medication that means they can't breastfeed.

When people gaily spout that 97% of women can breastfeed I find is so annoying and inaccurate. It's usually the same people who want the number of c-sections reduced as well and think that everyone can give birth with no interventions, they just need to stay mobile and ignore the nasty doctors.

It's interesting to me because according to my aunt, my DF who was born in 1917, was very frail and was carried around on a pillow for the first six months of his life. As it was during WWI, I wonder if my GM was producing milk but it was of a very poor quality? She obviously wouldn't have been able to access very good nutrition. Just a thought.

So i had my kids in poland. Here you have to stay in hospital min 2 nights (thats if everything is ok.) I thought orginally a nightmare. But this gives you time to get bf established. You can call a nurse to check your latch or she basically pops the baby on for you. You are there for night two which is known as the worst night and are also with other women who are constantly feeding their babies so you know its normal to have to constantly bw feeding. I cant imgine bf alone at home...its hard.

I tried desperately to breast feed , in the end I developed mastitis and made myself ill until I had post natal depression . My baby began bottle feeding and thrived as did I . Not all women can breast feed however willing to try!

A friend of mine, who is a few years older than me, was born with a cleft palate in 1960. Her mother had to feed her formula with a teaspoon as it was years before bottles with special teats were invented.

I was one of the 3%. I took medication, pumped every 2 hours day and night. Nothing. It was heartbreaking. My youngest is 11 and I still feel the judgement of the health visitor who didn’t believe me.

Don't know how this figure was arrived at. What parameters and research methods were used. Bit it sounds a tadunrealistic.

Absolutely this. I get some women don’t want to, that’s their choice but I do think some women claim they couldn’t when actually, they could if they tried harder.

I was really unwell with sepsis and in HDU postnatally for several weeks. It was incredibly difficult but I made sure my baby was fully breastfed then entire time I was in hospital. It would have been ‘fine’ for me to stop and I doubt I’d have been judged by anyone given the circumstances but it wouldn’t have been true to say I couldn’t breastfeed.

Well of course they say that they couldn’t rather than admit they could have tried harder, because otherwise they are judged harshly - as this thread proves!

It’s great that you chose to persevere through what sound like extreme circumstances, but no one should feel any pressure to do that. It should be valid to just be able to say I don’t want to breastfeed without having to justify that choice.

That is interesting to know, I posted upthread about barely getting any milk for my babies, I also have ADHD 😅

Some women find it hard, but personally I found it very easy. Baby just latched on without me having to do anything. They fed loads. I think a lot of women are unprepared for how frequently breastfed babies feed. And they don't sleep well through the night because they need to wake to feed. That part is harder to deal with.

Heh. Sucky condition, isn’t it? 🙃 Sorry you’ve gone through that too! We definitely need some decent research conducted into the link and potential clinical interventions to mitigate the effects. Or at least manage expectations (My boobs were so bruised by the birth, from trying to eke out some colostrum 😆).

YANBU. I would probably be counted as “able to breastfeed”, but had a terrible time of it (bleeding nipples, terrible pain). Nothing in the past decade has been as damaging to my mental health as the pressure to breastfeed and pushing myself to persevere.

Thank God for formula (and I wish I’d tried it sooner). I don’t know how my baby and I would have got through it in the wild.

(I am also highly skeptical of stats that say breastfeeding helps prevent pnd. I mean, sure, if it comes effortlessly…)

Ds had been admitted to hospital because he kept vomiting but wasn't ill so the consultant wanted to do an mri of his brain to rule out various things. The paediatrician on the ward (not his consultant) came and asked a load of questions about his health from pregnancy onwards. She asked if I had breastfed him and I said I couldn't because of his cleft palate and she said I should have tried harder.

No I don't think that many can. It doesn't matter anyway. Formula is a perfectly nutritious choice. Feed your baby how you want.

that is utter nonsense.

Problem is a lot of women think you can breastfeed in regular 4 hourly slots just like with formula, which is completely untrue. Leaving huge time gaps and not persevering through a constant latch will not allow the milk to come in. I remember block feeding for 5 hours straight when my sons milk needs increased - non stop latch for 5 hours! No one told me about block feeding and I thought many a time I wasn't producing enough milk but in reality my baby was constantly suckling to increase the volume and would go back to hourly or two hourly feeds the next day. Yes thats right, hourly, for 6 months. Chances are a lot of women were doing it right but no one around them knew how hard the natural way to feed a child actually is.

@Jasminealive can you linknto the evidence based, peer reviewed and published research in relation to yiur claims please?

FWIW: DS was breastfed only for 7/8 weeks; DD for 9 months.

Both DC developed eczema, asthma and had intracrible ear infecrions leading to grommets before both were two.

Both went to Cambridge.

Paradoxically my fully breastfed child has ADHD and autistic traits but not enough to warrant a diagnosisi.

One of my least favourite things is to read posts here on MN explaining why breastfeeding is normal/natural/should be universal, with the implication that mother's who don't manage to do it are at fault. I think a little sensitivity from a few posters would be nice.

In my case my DS was born at 28 weeks weighing under 2lbs, I was advised to try to use the breast pump in a room next to ICU 'to be close to him'. So while DS was fighting for his life next door I was trying to use the pump, sterilise and fill the syringes (drops of milk here & there collected in little sealed syringes was all I could manage) and label them with his name. One of my memories of this time was having to rewrite the labels with his (rather long) name in order to write small enough to fit on the syringes.

All to collect milk for my Dbaby who might not live to need it.

Another low memory point was taking the syringes to the milk bank/fridge and being faced with rows of full bottles with other babies' names out them - my pathetic little clutch of syringes was quite outclassed.

After this - and a further crisis with DS - I gave up on trying to produce milk and couldn't face it again. I have given myself enough of a guilt trip on this, I don't think I need another from anyone else.

I gave breastfeeding very little thought during my pregnancy. Sort of just figured I’d give it a whirl. I tried it, it sort of worked but a bit painful, cracked on, zero pressure on myself or indeed from anyone close in my life! Stopped just before 1st birthday. Same with my second.

There is SO much navel gazing about this. Insane.

Of all times women have outsourced the breastfeeding when they struggle.

I think wet nursing was commonplace, perhaps not just among the upper classes?
Also, I've sometimes seen references to breast milk substitutes given in the past, eg sugared water, I think, and it was given with a spoon.

The support for breastfeeding in UK is terrible. I know one girl that has extended breastfeeding support but they are in zone 1 of London. In zone 5 I have to pay for extended breastfeeding support.

I had same problem tried with all 3 as I was so determined to breast feed. The 1st 2 i had more support and bothered up on formula as well as breast but saved my ripples. The 3rd however I had in a different county. The whole maternity, birth and post natal care was crap and I should have known better re the feeding and got him on bottles from start but midwife i had for month insisted I was doing fine (he wasnt and I wasnt) and only when I got health visitor she said he was practically starving I still kick myself about it and hes 28 now. strangely I had low iron for 2nd one and had transfusion he ended up in bottles a lot sooner. I tried expressing with the 1st and took ages to get even 4oz that should have been enough to tell me. So much emphasis on breast feeding and I felt failure each time

To the PP who said that non breastfed babies are more likely to develop autism, I breastfed all my DC, 3 are autistic. It's hereditary.

It’s not nonsense. It’s been proved in every single study.

“For infants, not being breastfed is associated with an increased incidence of infectious morbidity, as well as elevated risks of childhood obesity, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, leukemia, and sudden infant death syndrome. For mothers, failure to breastfeed is associated with an increased incidence of premenopausal breast cancer, ovarian cancer, retained gestational weight gain, type 2 diabetes, myocardial infarction, and the metabolic syndrome.”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2812877/