breast is best

[Haitch27]

Is anyone else who is pregnant sick to the back bloody teeth of the 'breast is best' campaign being shoved down your throat everywhere you turn and being badgered by health carers to attend breastfeeding 'workshops'?? Maybe its just where I live but it seems to be everywhere yet the one thing no one says is "are you planning to breastfeed"? Assumption that all Mums will!!
Curious to know as I said if it is just my area or is it everywhere?

Ah Zippy my cups are way up high and highly reinforced so no pullage unfortunately!

I wear a bra in bed otherwise I end up in a puddle! I absolutely hate it, TBH, for me it's the worst things about BF. I usually like to sleep naked, and to have to wear a bra all the time for months and months is just dire. It is a fairly frivolous complaint though so no doubt someone will be along to tell me i shouldnt' have had my children in a minute

I was wondering as when i threw out the idea that some people are put off BF by things like uncomfortable unsupportive nursing bras and having to wear a bra in bed the response was that people don't have to wear bras 24/7 and can wear normal bras. last night as I lay in bed in my uncomfortable nursing bra I was wondering if I had missed a trick somewhere!

I don't know if it has ever been the 'norm' for All women to breastfeed. I wanted to but couldn't manage it, not through want of trying.

Perhaps we forget that in years gone by women would wet-nurse other women's children and cow's milk was often used as a subsititute (historically) so it's a myth that all women used to do it before powder.

My DD is very healthy and thriving, intelligent, tall, physically strong and not often ill. So it's not all doom and gloom if you don't breastfeed.

And unless your diet is perfect what are you actually feeding your child? Some women are malnourished, don't eat the right vitamins etc. drink or smoke so their breast milk ain't gonna be great so perhaps it's not a bad thing if their kids get a decent meal from the powder.

You should try to do it but if you can't don't sweat.

HanBanan - Strange as it sounds a smoking mother is still encouraged to breastfeed. The baby receives protection from the milk that it wouldn't otherwise be getting whilst still being exposed to a smoker.

And as someone already explained, the quality of your milk is not affected by your diet.

Hanbanana, I would imagine that historically breast milk substitutes were most often used when the mother died in childbirth or shortly after. Obviously there were also some people who needed to produce a great many children to ensure an heir used wet nurses. I would imagine that among poorer mothers unable to "employ" a wet nurse, mutual help in the case of bfing failure was fairly common, or sending a child to live with a breastfeeding aunt or whatnot. Which I would imagine is what happens now in developing countries. Pure conjecture on my part, merely to illustrate the fact that safe alternatives to breastmilk are a recent phenomenon. I do remember reading that Victorian baby minders who were feeding their charges random bm substitutes while the mothers went out to work out of necessity also had a fairly high rate of death among their charges. Although as these situations were mostly in grim industrial towns it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation.

ImSoNotTelling, Have you heard about Lilypadz ?

I only leak for the first few weeks, I use cloth breast pads during the day and when I am sleeping, swimming or cuddling with DH and don't want to be messing with bras I use Lilypadz instead.

They are a kinda large silicon contact lenses type pad. You flip them inside out, press onto the nipples and smooth right out over part of your breast. Once you know what you are doing it takes seconds to put them on and they stay on with no help. They can be gently washed with soap and water in the sink and left to dry to re-sticky them.

Highly recommended, no chasing breast pads around the bed at night

Sorry, on re-reading, my comment sounds totally random. What I actually mean is that my beliefs on the subject are all issued from fairly extensive reading, but as I can never remember references and don't have time to look for them now, I'll have to present it as mere conjecture.

OK I don't have to wear a bra in bed.

I choose to wear a bra in bed as I hate the feeling of damp drips running down my arms and chest, and I don't like to have to lie on a wet towel with a damp duvet over me.

I also choose to wear a nursing bra as if I wore a normal one, as I have larger breasts, to get my nipple out I would have to take my top off, and that is not something I feel comfortable doing in public.

My question upthread was why women's concerns about things like uncomfortable underwear, wearing a bra in bed, unsupportive underwear which makes you look like a sack of spuds etc were not addressed. That I thought that if women have concerns like these then giving practical advice would help to encourage them to BF. That practical advice would include "this is not the norm, many women don't have this problem at all". The responses on thread were "well I wear a normal bra" and "well I don't wear a bra in bed" which don't actually address the concerns, they dismiss them. Which is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.

Until people (talking RL now) accept that some women do (unsurprisingly) have concerns about BF relating to their comfort, body image, sex life and so on, and try to address them, then opportunities will be missed. I think more asking women and trying to understand it's a complex issue and deal with that, would be a good idea.

Thanks babieseverywhere, I did investigate lilypadz at some length on here The threads I found seemed to indicate that they were great for light "leakers" but for heavy leakers they didn't work (I can't remember why now) so I ruled them out.

Thanks though!

I breastfed my ds for a year. He is very healthy and we have a wonderful close bond.

I wasn't breastfed, (my mum having 3 kids in space of 6 years!) and I'm also healthy and close to my mum. Hmmmm How many of you were breastfed? Does it matter that much?

Yes OW it does matter that much, otherwise nobody would bother, what an odd thing to say

ImSoNotTelling, They are good even for heavy leakage. I have over supply at the best of times and was tandem nursing after my second pregnancy, so you can guess how much milk I was making.

The trick is putting them on correctly. As I described flipping inside out and putting pressure on the nipple and then smoothing from the nipple outwards. Done properly they actually stop the leaking from happening, rather than pads which soak up the leaked milk.

Oprah- I had 3 children in 4 years and breastfed them all for at least a year (the third one for 2 years). I do think women's lives were probably much harder generally back in the 50s, 60s and 70s due to anti feminist attitudes. My mother breast fed me for 5 months in 1968, and was the only woman breastfeeding in the whole of the maternity hospital. They brought all the trainee doctors nurses and midwives in the hospital to observe her, so rare was it, and she donated milk to the neonatal unit as well. She was in for two weeks due to having nearly carked it at my birth, so became the star of the maternity hospital (major hospital in Newcastle).

Nobody breast fed in the 70's did they and yes we all survived but how many overweight women do we all know in their 30's I could name 15 off the top of my head.

LadyintheRadiator, Surely you understand it is not normal for everyone to respond to every single post on the thread. It would make pretty boring reading.

I don't think it makes that much difference really. I am pro-breastfeeding but if some mothers can't, or even don't want to (ahhh!) they shouldn't be made to feel guilty.

Sorry LadyinRadiator. Will disappear again ...I need some coffee

LITR I answered your question about why I wear a bra in bed.

Other people had said that they wear normal bras to BF, rather than nursing bras, so I was wondering about that as well.

Thank you for your recommendation though.

babieseverywhere that is interesting

Do you have to rinse them off after each feed IYSWIM? And if you go for a while without a feed when you take it off and the baby is crying does it immediately start running out IYWSIM (DD is very up and down with her feeds, rather unpredictable, so my breasts are confused and often rather full )

ISNT- My daughter is the same, and I just express some and bung it in the freezer for her or the neonatal unit when I get uncomfortable. Pesky baby. I'd rather have an oversupply than not enough though iyswim, and have to spend hours feeding to get my supply back up again whilst trying to work at the same time...

I'm not overweight, and neither are my 2 gorgeous sisters. Very fit and healthy and quite successful too and we are in our 30s. I mean I'm not bashing the breast is best campaign, but lifestyles have changed. Women work outside the home as much as a man*, and I don't think you'd see a man coming home to pump his breast after work and before work. I should be more pro- bf considering i did it and i enjoyed it, but i have so many friends who are going through the dilemas and returning back to work, or it's too much of a change in lifestyle, or it hurts, and if it makes motherhood that much of an ordeal then don't. It's upto the mother really.

(*Maybe there are some wonderful men who would, but not the men I know.)

My MIL had 8 children and bf them all! I really enjoyed the experience, looking back I miss that time the most when little one and me are having a quiet bf moment in my cosy sofa

I guess i'm just trying to stick up for mums choices.

I think good parenting in general should be promoted. Setting boundaries, respect, social skills, manners (!!!!) etc... They seem very lacking these days.

As they get no milk on them, you only have to rinse and dry them when the sticky runs out. I used them most nights and rinsed them maybe weekly or fortnightly...not often at all.

No idea what would happen once you removed one for a feed, it depends on your breasts. It is a case of try them and see, but I am guessing you wouldn't get as much leakage as you currently get with pads, so what do you have to lose ?

Yes oversupply is irritating but obviousy fundamentally not a bad thing.

My breast pump is broken this time around - and as I'm not giving DD any bottles (DD1 never took them so it all feels like a waste of effort) I'm not replacing it. I did have a go at hand expressing though which was quite a thing. POssibly one of my less glamorous moments, sitting on the sofa with one breast out, squirting it into a large mixing bowl

ImSoNotTelling ...hand expressing! brings back memories

You have sold me babieseverywhere, will hit boots the next time I'm out