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've also never given birth, but I'm not sure about your evolutionary explanation because I presume that in the old days babies whose mothers couldn't breast feed would have been breast fed by another woman rather than just dying.

True but they rarely starved to death. One of mine would likely have died in the days before antibiotics, as he constantly got lung infections and bronchitis. Best case scenarion he'd have been a sickly child unable to go to school for long periods of time. He's now a strapping, sporty adult.
Illnesses are why babies and children died, not starvation, except in a starving population. Women's bodies prioritise producing milk over all but the most essential processes in our own bodies, eg they used to say that each baby cost the mother a tooth, because the calcium needed was diverted to her milk.

Also I think in the past breastfeeding used to be a shared thing among women - so women without sufficient milk used to get their babies fed from others

You think a 1/3 of the female population died in childbirth. Are you serious?

They didn't all die from vaginal birth though, did they?

Some died from haemorrhaging or eclampsia or infection or a whole lot of other reasons. We can now treat those things.

I had a C-section and will never know if I COULD have given birth vaginally- baby had flipped in utero during labour and was at an awkward angle so it seemed like the best option. If I'd have REALLY wanted to give birth vaginally, maybe I could have. I can't say that I couldn't because I didn't actually give it a chance. I know there's some associated health risks- my daughter is asthmatic which could be caused by that but I decided the risk of not having a C-section was greater.

Lots is known. This is a picture of two Victorian working class families. The top pic shows the children spaced out leaving gaps for children who had died. The second pic shows the large, intact family. The mother in the top pic formula fed. The bottom one breastfed.

If a malnourished mother breastfeeds, the baby gets the nourishment. Nature is brutal like that.

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Maybe, but historically many babies did die.

There are studies ongoing into whether low levels of breastfeeding in a population account for high levels of autism in those populations. Would explain why the UK and US has seen an explosion of autism since formula arrived on the scene

It probably was about that (during or shortly after) given the number of children women used to give birth to. Not obviously all during the first.

Many years ago when I was expecting my first baby my GP asked if I planned to breastfeed. I said I hoped to if I could. He smiled and said it was odd that women in England often said that but in the poor part of India where he came from the assumption was you would be able to and it was overwhelmingly true. I don't know if our belief plays a part in it or maybe that seeing most of our female relatives doing it influences us.

I did and the local maternity hospital collected my surplus milk for months. The same GP told me if I was a cow I'd be a prize winner. I think it was a compliment.

Isn't it also the case that since caesarean has been more common, fewer obstetricians are experienced in delivering breech babies? So it's difficult to really compare.

It took me 14 days. I thought it would happen immediately and baby would latch, I'd be able to feed him, life would be fine.
The first night home was the worst of my life. He screamed and screamed and I tried to feed him, tried to express, tried and cried for hours until the shop opened and he could get some formula. It broke my heart and I felt like a failure, as it was something I really wanted to do. I'm sure many would give up after a few days but there was just a strong pull for me to do it. I was so happy when it finally worked out for us. Second baby, no bother at all!

I know alot of women who admit they didn't breastfeed because they didn't want their boobs to droop. I have teenagers now and I have no droop, probably too small tbf 😂 nipples still face forward though! I also know of one mum who wouldn't breastfeed her son as it was 'incest.' yeah, I'm sure my reaction was the same as yours will be reading it. Absolutely weird mentality but that just about summed her up with everything.

They did but I don't think that many died of getting insufficient milk.

Vaccines, antibiotics, and medical advances account for more babies living.

A lot of babies who died from "failure to thrive" were separated from their mothers- e.g. in workhouses, or because there was no maternity leave.

Am extremely quick Google tells me maternal mortality rate prior to Industrial period was c1.2%

Bloody 33% - use your brain!!

I had a long difficult labour and then a dd born with a very obvious physical disability (total shock to everyone missed on scans) I was determined to breastfeed tried everything - lots of support, threw money at it with a fancy pump etc but no success. I personally suspect that it was nature’s way - mum shocked at baby with significant abnormality, doesn’t produce milk and baby would have naturally died in past and probably seen as a blessing plus also nature’s way of ensuring potentially dodgy genes don’t continue from an evolutionary point of view.
Obviously dd was formula fed and thrived. It’s not something particularly palatable to voice but I think my body reacted to disabled baby and affected my ability to feed.

No I think this is a myth perpetuated by our mothers and passed down.

So our peer group had mothers who gave birth 80s/90s. In those times mothers went in for 7 days to hospital with their first born. To give time to recover, establish feeding and learn basic care.

During this period the babies were taken into a nursery during the night to allow mothers to rest/ recover. Babies were fed by nurses using formula.

This cohort then had a lot of milk volume problems. Because next day milk is mainly calculated by night feeding volume.

In the early days this doesn’t really show up due to the amount babes are eating. But further down the line in the preceding weeks when babies are not meeting their growth goals.

Hence the early introduction of mixed feeding was common. And imo once you introduce mixed feeding it’s all down hill from there if you aren’t nearing the weaning stage.

So our mothers all ‘dried up’. And very few of them realise it’s because of this lack of night feeding. They think that it’s normal that most women can’t breastfeed past 6- 12 weeks. And this was a convenient thing because many went back to work early. So the whole narrative, their reality and the logistics just compounded one another.

But the issue is that we now ask our mothers, or inadvertently are given advice. And it’s completely incorrect. Hence so much false ideas about breastfeeding being the norm.

Yes, that's true.

It's a case of comparing risks.

Risks of C-sections vs risks of vaginal birth
Risks of formula feeding vs risks of an exhausted and unhappy Mum

We can all agree that in some cases the risks of breastfeeding are greater than the risks of not doing without pretending there are no risks to formula and it's equivalent.

Is that 1.2% per birth? So what does that equate to if you have 8/10/12 children? Maybe you should use your maths?
And which period pre-industrial period are we talking about?

This fits with my point that women (and babies) have to learn to breast feed. If the woman is surrounded by women who have done it themselves, she'll pick it up quickly. If instead it's turned into a test of her qualities as a mother, with the experts around her "worrying" that the baby isn't getting enough etc, it becomes an obstacle course, and she's more likely to fail.

(Of course the other side to that is that those village women did feed their babies but at what physical cost to themselves? And many of the babies may have been quite skinny, underfed little things. They didn't die, but they many not have thrived. That wouldn't be an issue in the west where we all have more than enough food though.)

And I don’t agree with the c section breastfeeding thing. Every one I knew who had C’s had incredible flow (potentially due to the morphine), and very little issues with early pain (again potentially due to pain killers).

The establishment problems were more with the natural birth and of course the premmie mums had the worst time with it.

If you look over the course of a woman's reproductive lifetime, that stat was much much higher (they generally didn't just have one birth each!) some scholars estimate a death rate as high as one in three/ one in five. The fact is no one knows for certain because things were properly recorded in those times, but a scholar's estimate is the best we have to go on. Childbirth was very risky for mum and baby before proper medical care

Pre industrial era was prior to about 1750 if my history class recall serves me correctly. There’s only one.

This article from the University of Cambridge should help you - it picks apart the myth that loads of women died in childbirth

www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/09/19/childbirth-in-the-past/

Source for this please? I can’t find anything out there stating it’s anywhere near that high

I had two emcs and EBF both. I personally believe you have a higher success of BF if

(1) you understand cluster feeding (ie your milk supply is not low, you are just establishing your supply. I genuinely think this is very misunderstood and

(2) you have sufficient support:

-no relatives who are quizzing/questioning and saying just give a bottle.
-family who understands cluster feeding

• A husband who is happy to run round bringing all food and drink to you and care for other older children

-a breastfeeding clinic near you that you are happy to attend. I attending mine twice a week for the first month. Was it glamorous. No. Could I have been out showing off baby in coffee shops? Yes. But I was in the BF clinic. Again this required me having an available DH who could drive me to the bf clinic and was also happy to sit in a tiny waiting area for the 2.5 hours twice a week staring at a wall

it will often be outside the woman’s control whether she has sufficient support.

I do personally find it annoying when problem say they couldn’t bf because of X reasons. I had X Y and Z problems but was able to continue because of My support network. Don’t think I wasn’t up crying heavily on every feed in the first few weeks because of the pain because I was. Mastitis? Yep. Sick baby in hospital post birth? Yep. Cluster feeding for hours? Yep. Colic? Yep.

I had friends that quit because they said ‘they weren’t producing enough milk’. But they were topping up with formula, not feeding on demand or accepting that it’s a demand=supply situation. I’m so grateful I had knowledgeable people advising me. You need to let babies feed as much as they want to in order to produce enough milk. Feeding on demand is what establishes supply.