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.

I successfully breastfed 2 of my kids. Youngest was born extremely premature, I was given a breast pump within minutes of arriving to recovery. I hadn’t even seen my baby or even know if they were ok. I expressed for 8 weeks and then my supply dropped off despite support, medication and every trick to try and up it. Baby being able to try latch and suckle made no difference. We eventually had to move to bottles and specialised formula.

So I definitely agree, not everyone can breastfeed, they can try but it doesn’t always work.

Exactly

My apologies and thankyou for replying, they sound bloody awful! They had no right to say that to you 🙄

No you wouldn’t. I manage it on a tight budget cooking from scratch with a veg box and a supermarket order, both delivered. We don’t buy expensive processed food and buy only a small amount of meat, no takeaways full of god knows what or fast food costing ££££.

You’re choosing not to do it.

I’m not the one pushing my choices on others. Formula is only used for a year, mothers feed their children for 18 years. For some reason 17 years of UPFs and pesticides are ok but one year of formula isn’t!😂

In the days where women were having a child every year or so there was probably often another woman in the village who could breast feed. I.e. a wet nurse

Are you feeding small children and teens with a ‘tight budget veg box’? If so, hats off to you, if they’re not anorexic.

Yep!
Always have done. Loads of veggie food with protein and smaller amounts of meat, home baked treats etc.

I think you’re taking the breastfeeding debate very personally and are now trying to spin things round to reassure yourself and deflect the guilt onto others.

Of course the ‘ideal’ is exclusive breastfeeding followed by the best diet possible. One doesn’t make a lack of the other any better. But this conversation is about breastfeeding. I agree there are many parents I know who breastfeed followed by a shit diet for 17 years, and I think on a balance of probabilities, 17 years of health food matters more than a year of breast milk. But it isn’t either/or.

No I’m really not. I’m simply saying 6 months of breast feeding isn’t worth worrying about,there are far bigger parenting choices to concern ourselves with.

Just because it isn’t the biggest parenting choice that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it.

Organic food makes only a small difference in the scheme of things but you consider that small benefit worth it.

I mean it could be true but the support is so shit and crap in the uk so so many people cant manage to make it work

i paid for a private consultant first time and she spotted a tongue tie and we paid to have that sorted privately too. then I got lots of support from this woman in my house nice and relaxed and managed in the end

we were lucky we could afford this at the time it wasn’t cheap

the mid wife in the hospital I had the baby in said she noticed a slight tongue tie but it wasn’t very bad and they wouldn’t do anything about it…!yet it made feeding her impossible

the support I got in the hospital made me cry because this woman was shoving the baby’s head at my and saying come on mother get her on and then the baby was getting fussy and I start crying and she blamed me saying the baby was picking up on my emotions and to stop crying..like how is this helpful am no wonder you’d chose to give up

Organic food doesn’t make a small difference - it’s hugely beneficial for wildlife, our planet and our bodies. UPFs,well we know the catastrophic impact on health they have but many think it’s ok to feed them to children for years on a daily basis. Your choice, I’m not going to lecture so please don’t lecture others re their very minor choice of choosing formula as opposed to breast feeding.

I suspect its not very consistently recorded in the UK but in my country we get asked at baby clinic appointments which are held regularly at certain ages, one of which is 6 months, so the stats here are more useful.

So is breastfeeding. Think of the energy and materials that go into manufacturing and transporting formula, boiling kettles, sterilising - most of it going straight to landfill afterwards.

There’s evidence that vaginal delivery and breastfeeding are hugely beneficial for gut bacteria and decide the gut biome for a long time thereafter, with all those health implications.

For what it’s worth my children eat very few UPFs and the dirty dozen are usually organic in this house. You seem to think it’s one or the other which is bizarre - they’re 2 totally separate discussions.

Nope I don’t. I think breast feeding is far harder than feeding organic and UPF free and for some reason we’re supposed to focus on only a year of a child’s life, not the other 17 and the huge distress breast feeding can cause to mothers, babies and families. Many women can’t breast feed and it simply is not a big deal in the scheme of 18 years.

Actually for most of human history women naturally had babies every 3-4 years - bf acted as a natural contraceptive in most cases which enabled the child to be semi-independent before the next one came along. Birth gaps decreased as food became more readily available and small gaps didn’t really exist at all until breastmilk substitutes started to be used.

How is it ‘not a big deal’?

I'm confused.

I said that I am surprised when people make no effort to breastfeed and decide to formula feed before birth and was shouted down and called a lactavist.

If someone said that they intended to feed their child a diet of entirely UPFs and would make no effort at all to give them organic veg, even if that organic veg was provided to them for free, and I said that was surprising I think everyone would agree.

No-one would say, "Good for you, it's absolutely your right not to spend your evenings faffing around chopping carrots. No-one will be able to tell which child had a tin of spaghetti hoops for dinner."

So why are you pretending that it's somehow socially acceptable to judge people who don't BF but not people who don't feed their kids a healthy diet?

No. It is hard for most women. Babies wake multiple times a night for years on end. It is very very hard.

THIS! I just found it madness with the midwives here. I had a. C section so my
milk didn’t come in at first so combi fed a bit- maybe1- 2 bottles a day along sides lots of cluster feeding. Well…you’d think I was pure evil. Every. Single. Midwife (and health visitor) told me I couldn’t possibly do both. One ever went so far as to say if my baby had had ONE bottle I might as well just give up and formula feed the whole time as she wasn’t really breastfed. By 3 months I was only breastfeeding as much easier (and cheaper). The health visitor was horrified that I’d both breast and bottle fed. How was the baby getting nutrients now I was only breastfeeding (had to point out ‘baby’ was 1 and on solids too)

Began to think I was the only person in the world who did both …until my Aunt said it was totally normal to do that in the 90s.

Maybe in some cases. My daughter was only waking once or twice for milk from about 6 months and as we coslept she didn't always even wake me up.

*Breastfeeding is incredibly difficult.
What you mean is breastfeeding can be incredibly difficult for some women

No. It is hard for most women. Babies wake multiple times a night for years on end. It is very very hard

Unless you have accurate data you cant say 'most women' , especially as you've added in another layer saying that babies wake up multiple times for years on end. That simple is not true.
I hot into the swing of breast feeding after 3 days. I had sore boob's and once the mid wife came out and showed me some techniques and helped with the amount of heat that was coming from my breasts it was absolutely fine.
Ds1 and got up at around 02.00 hrs and I think 05.00 but dh would get up and give them a breast milk bottle to let me rest.

I had colleagues who were virtually the same.
Babies dont wake up 'for years on end'

My expierence was that I was extremely anxious about breast feeding and it turned out to not be bad at all. I'm not the only one that feels like that,so I stand by my statement, 'breastfeeding can be incredibly difficult for some women'

Bf doesn't work for that long as a contraceptive ime. My periods started again about three months after childbirth. While there may have been quite large age gaps between children that would often be because infant mortality was high rather than large gaps between births.

In most circumstances, it works for at least 6 months. Often up to 18 months. It was one reason why wealthy women used wet nurses, so they could continue to produce more children.