As the Other People's Breastmilk thread has got too big but not finished...

[TinkerBellesMum]

Thanks TikTok for explaining the bottles and dummies thing better.

I was grateful to hear my daughter cry. My first daughter wasn't able to, my second daughter didn't for a long time and when she did she had enough energy to mew like a kitten.

When she was finally able to cry for real I knew that she cried for a reason and I saw to the reason she cried. I never saw her cry as unnecessary. I also didn't see a reason to use (using the full and correct name here) a "dummy tit" when I had a real one attached to my body! Something else I was grateful for as she wasn't strong enough to go on to the breast for a week and 16 days before she could take two a day.

Did I have an easy baby? Absolutely not. My opinion on dummies is not influenced by having an easy baby that didn't need one. It's influenced by facts and the most important fact that I didn't want to stick a gun against my breast and play Russian Roulette.

and rhesus monkeys

Not to worry I wasn't trying to argue with you or say that you are wrong, I was trying to challenge you to look at things in a different way, not from a nasty POV but just to make you think and if I've made you think then I'm pleased.

Certainly there is a big difference between nursing at 6 months and nursing at school age. For the first year nutrition should be mainly coming from milk, most babies won't be eating enough to replace milk entirely at least for the first year. To be honest I found I set milestones but when it came down to it I enjoyed it so much I didn't want to stop and she doesn't so it would be forcibly stopping her, besides feeding today is no different to feeding yesterday.

I was going to mention in my last post about a poster I saw in the hospital but didn't because I have tried to find it online before and couldn't. Just opened up a group in Facebook and found this, not sure if it's the same, but it's similar at least:

If you breastfeed for a few days, your baby will have received your colostrum or early milk. Packed with optimal nutrition and antibodies, it helps get your baby's digestive system going and give him his first - and easiest - immunization.

If you breastfeed for four to six weeks, you will have eased him through the most critical part of his infancy. Breastfed newborns are much less likely to get sick or be hospitalized and have fewer digestive problems than artificially fed babies.

If you breastfeed for three or four months her digestive system will have matured a great deal and she will be much better able to tolerate the foreign substances in artificial baby milk.

If you breastfeed for six months, she will be much less likely to suffer an allergic reaction to artificial baby milk or other foods. A new study indicates that nursing for more than six months may greatly reduce the risk of childhood cancers as well.

If you breastfeed your baby for nine months, you will have seen him through the fastest and most important development of his life on the most valuable of all foods - your milk.

If you breastfeed your baby for a year you can avoid the expense of artificial baby milk. Many health benefits during this year of nursing will last her whole life. She will have a stronger immune system, less chance of childhood and adolescent obesity and will be much less likely to need orthodontia or speech therapy.

If you breastfeed your baby for eighteen months, you will have continued to provide the highest quality nutrition and superb protection against illness at a time when illness is common in other babies. The US Surgeon General says "It is the lucky baby that nurses to age two".

If you breastfeed your baby until he is ready to wean, you can feel confident you have met your baby's physical an emotional needs in the most natural, healthiest way possible. In cultures where there is no pressure to wean, children tend to nurse for at least two years. Mothers who have nursed for two or more years have a lower risk of developing breast cancer.

Don't worry that your child will nurse forever. All children wean eventually no matter what you do and there are more nursing toddlers around than you might guess.

and bonobo chimps

Harpsicord, your explanation is good, and I totally except and understand what you say. Breastfeeding should of course always be pleasurable and and I accept that it is pleasurable in a physical way too. Indeed I found brestfeeding my own child one of the most wonderful experiences of motherhood.

Its just when people talk about it as a sexual feeling that I feel uncomfortable.

Sillybigsausage said "Sex is really and truly not a sin you know".... Yes I know that but when someone says something like that it sounds like they are talking about having sexual feelings by being physical with their child and that really truly isn't right!"

I think breastfeeding is one of the best and most important thing that a mother can do for her baby but to link having physical contact with their child, or indeed someone else child, to sex is seriously worrying

LOL foxy the bonobo chimps have sex for everything, they don't stop do they? They have sex facing each other, snog (hate that word but it fits I think), no age is off limits, no relation (other than mother-son) is off limits, male-male and female-female... They don't generally fight though.

Ever wished you were a monkey?

memoo - breastfeeding my 3 dc felt like a very physical release to me - particularly 'let down' I can remember saying 'argh..'.
Sex is a physical release for me too - it also involves my breasts - so why is it so astonishing that there's some cross over in the physical feeling - surely that's very different to saying the mental feelings are the same - of couse they're bloody not - I don't fancy my child!!!

Hello all! I had this prog in mind to watch but was in a birth pool at the time pushing out my daughter.

I was so determined to get her bfing the mw had to actually stop me and remind me she was less than a minute old. She'd latched on my 1min 30 secs though.

I don't get sexual feeling when bfing, but I do feel very womanly and can feel very 'intimate' feelings. Since she is just days old, feeding also contracts my womb. Isn't all of this just how nature intended? It wouldn't surprise me at all that it can be similar to sexual feelings, - it is all a part of procreation surely? Aren't we artificially seperating the processes to deny this?

That's very interesting TBM (the poster).
Does anyone know if you mixed fed whether those benefits still apply?
I'd be interested my DS was born at 36+1 at a low birth weight with jaundice. He WOULD NOT latch on so was given formula in hospital. I managed mixed feeding til 8 weeks then it all fell apart really.
I'd like to try again with my next baby (in a couple of years) but if I only managed mixed feeding again, at least I'd know some he/she was getting of the benefits of BM.

macaco, many of the risks of formula are reduced if it is done alongside breastfeeding, and a number of studies show there is a 'dose response' effect....ie the more breastfeeding, the better, but any breastfeeding has a positive effect.

For instance, the big study on hospitalisation in the first year (done on UK babies, all born in 2000) which controlled for socio-economic factors, found a range of risk - solely formula feeding was the greatest risk, partial ff was a lesser risk, and full bf was the smallest risk.

Other studies have found similar results. The ongoing Dundee cohort study published its first paper many years ago revealing that any breastfeeding up to 13 weeks, even alongside formula, had a protective effect on infection risk, right into toddler age.

Hope this helps.

thanks tiktok that makes me feel a bit better about only managing mixed feeding til 8 weeks. He must have got a reasonable amount of BM as I was feeding from breast first and then topping up, sometimes breast only and no need for a top up.
Hopefully things will go better next time.

Thanks TikTok, I hadn't even thought about it TBH and Tink has had a lot of formula (for an "exclusively" breastfed baby). I'm sure though that as we're still going and there probably won't be any gap between her and the next one that the benefits won't have been effected much.

Don't suppose you know anything about tandeming with a premature baby? I've been wondering whether it will help (last time it took two weeks for my milk to come in) and if it's going to make any differences or anything. They've said (reluctantly cause I pushed the issue) they don't expect me to go to term, I'm aiming for 31 weeks where I got before and will then appreciate every day.