AIBU to not want to breastfeed?

[VixeyV]

Hi this is my first post but I have been a lurker since the start of my pregnancy.

Anyway, my question is I'm 20 weeks pregnant and the midwife keeps pushing me into breastfeeding. I just don't want to and don't get why she won't stop asking me how I'll feed.

To be honest, the thought of it freaks me out. I didn't breastfeed my daughter and she's fine on formula, she has aptimal because that's the best.

So what do you think? Should my midwife stop nagging me?

Really hope it goes better for you this time round

And congratulations, btw

Teehee.

Love that those endorsing breastfeeding were put out by the suggestion that bottlefeeding allows Dads to bond with baby or that Mums going back to work early might disadvantage their sprogaroonies.
Teehee.

hee hee!!! i see both sides.....pos and negative to both!!!!

Josie, I don't think anyone was 'put out' by those suggestions! I'm very pleased for those whose oh's have been able to improve their bonding by bottle feeding. I'm also very pleased that my oh has bonded fantastically with our two despite my bfing them.

As for volvos and vegans...well, I can't afford a Volvo and there's nowt I can do about that. I admire and envy vegans but I like meat and dairy too much to join them. That possibly makes me a bit daft and selfish but I can live with it. I think it's a bit of a crap analogy with bring/ffing since so many women seem to want to bf but can't. I think I should be a vegan and could be one but I don't want to, despite understanding that it would be much better for me.

"TITTY.....how on earth did you manage to leave your baby at 5 weeks and still bf..... i would have been leaking and squirting at that stage."

Yes I was. And still walking like John Wayne from my forceps birth.

It was excruciating leaving my daughter, but at least she was with my mum, who I trusted completely. I would be out the house from 7am to about 2.30. I'd get home and my breasts would be bursting. I'd then feed her all through the afternoon and evening.

"CLEARLY MONEY IS MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU!!!!.....or why else go back to work sooooo early!)"

We'd just bought our first home (my pregnancy was unplanned) and my DH couldn't have continued to pay the mortgage on his own. 10 years ago maternity allowance ran out after 14 weeks and I had been forced to take a lot of leave during the summer holidays as I was an hourly paid teacher at a college - I had no paid holiday and wasn't entitled to maternity pay. I also had no right to get my job back if I hadn't returned at the start of the September term. If I hadn't gone back in the second week of September they simply would have handed my work over to someone else.

It was shit, really shit and I still feel sad when I look back on that time. Being able to carry on breastfeeding was so helpful to me in reconnecting with my dd after I'd been away from her. And I do feel lucky that my mum was able to care for her. I named my dd after my mum and they are very, very close.

"i don't think getting food into your baby is anything more than getting food into your baby-to imply that there is something more going on is frankly nonsense"

But you don't know these things because you've never experienced normal breastfeeding that hasn't been accompanied by anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. I've done 5 years of breastfeeding between my three children and I can assure you that it is about far more than 'just getting milk into a baby'. I don't know any mother who has done normal term breastfeeding who wouldn't say the same. They would say it is a tool for parenting. You use it to reconnect with your baby when you have been separated, so comfort them when they are unhappy, to get them off to sleep when they're tired.

Doesn't mean you have or ought to do it - only you can decide these things. But it is what it is - part of a very intimate, subtle and complex interaction between a mother and her baby.

(BTW - my fully breastfed middle child went from the 99.9th centile down to the 25th in the year after birth, something I only discovered after the fact because I so rarely took him to be weighed. Dropping down through the centiles isn't always a signal that something is wrong with the way a baby is feeding. I'd also say that if you breastfeed again, it's worth understanding that there are a huge range of skills and specialist knowledge out there but that they're no always easy to access. We have had friends who have seen several breastfeeding counsellors and continued to struggle, but then seen someone else who has found a way of helping them overcome their problems. Just like any other healthy specialists - breastfeeding advisers are not all equal.

But I do wonder if your feelings of antipathy towards breastfeeding will always make it difficult for you. Breastfeeding is like childbirth in so many ways - fear, anger and lack of confidence affect the hormonal physiology of these events. And if you see bottlefeeding and breastfeeding as both roughly the same activity - just getting milk into the baby, I think you're setting yourself up for difficulties if you decide to do it again.

cycling christ such psychobabble and faux-psychiatry on this thread

canapé, anyone

I'll partake of a mushroom vol au vent SM.

yes canapes are lush.powerpoint presentation in 5mins and some research from shitsville university indicating that formula feeding causes

boils
bunions
tennis elbow
halitosis
cognitive impairment
poor attachment

monster munch,yum that really makes a good spread.some pickled onion too perchance

no quavers though shitsville uni research suggest they cause
pyrosis
diarrhoea
jaundice
dyspepsia
in feeding mums and hallucinations in babies

I wasn't going to post on this thread, scottishmummy, as I have posted on a few similar this year and they only end up making my eyes bleed. I am glad you're here, though, and I will stop for one of your delicious canapes and then go. I am pregnant with DC2 and fancy that I won't raise my blood pressure for once.

tuck into canapes and do mingle.chin and grin

This debate rages on and on doesn't it. And so it should. With so many different experiences, it becomes easy to see that it is such a minefield for so many people.

Some of these stories are terrible, and the fact of them matter is, if you are suffering with a baby that won't/can't latch, latches badly, or you get infections that are horrible to live with day after day, breastfeeding is not going to be the sunny, sometimes profound experience that some women are lucky enough to have. Some of these situations sound really difficult, and in some cases, tbh it is unsurprising things didn't work out.

The fact remains though that breastfeeding rates in this country are staggeringly low, which means there are lots of women who want to breastfeed for more than the unfortunately common couple of weeks. There are posters here who seem bitterly against the speading of information that people have the right to know about, and that includes links to studies and discussion about studies that are uncomfortable for some because they reveal formula to be a 'sub -optimal food source'. That sounds absolutely terrible, but its true. It is entirely possible for babies to thrive on formula, in every way, but there will be babies that don't. There will be babies who do suffer illnesses that they would either have had protection from, or had less chance of getting, were they breasfed. The fact that some people on here seem intent on denying this seems so weird to me, when there is a mountain of literature on it. Only recently, the US have claimed that an estimated £13 billion would be saved if babies were breastfed. £13billion .

thesecondcoming i thought one of the main REAsons why people get pissed off on here is beCAUSE they wanted more support? They didn't get it and feel let down. But now you are accusing TittyBangBang of being passive aggressive.

LOTS of mean-spirited words fly at the people in these debates that are trying to lend support to breastfeeding in general, either by arguing the position that it is normal, better, best, superior, whatever, or sharing how it can be experienced at its best - because that is what women should know! It is normal etc and it can be amazing! In a world that is so driven by consumerism and materialistism, to succeed at something as primal and natural seems to be nothing short of incredible. Apart from in cases that are clearly not going to work for medical reasons in either mother or baby most women should be able to breastfeed, and should really enjoy it if given the chance!

So why all the anger aimed at those posting about breastfeeding's WELL DOCUMENTED advantages, and why the accusations about wanting people to feel guilty and terrible? If you didn't feel bad already, nothing someone else could say would make a difference. So if you do feel bad already, why direct that at someone else who is just posting about the other side of the coin. It is fine to be thoroughly pissed off at your experience, but to direct that at someone outlining various other views is, well, churlish to say the least, not to mention completely misdirected! And why wouldn't you want to give someone else the information that they have a right to know?

Anyone for a vol au vent ?

never mind canapes just give me chocolate and a glass of vino.

can i ask titty...... what do you class as normal term bf?????

I was thinking about this today... and at a party last night was looking around, thinking, I have no idea who here was bf and who was ff... but they are all highly intelligent people with good jobs and morals (mostly ), healthy, not obese, active... so in the long run... as long as the baby is nourished and nurtured, that's all that matters. If you choose to bf, great If you choose to ff, great

you cannot deny that in nature oxytocin is the bonding hormone, so it only seems obvious that it would help with bonding. Tbh, I don't know the answer to this one, and tbh wouldn't presume to say either way, but would a FF mother admit it anyway, would they know? If they have never breastfed longer than a few weeks, or a month. It would be so difficult to admit it even if it was true. Do mothers feel different if they FF and BF different children?

bonding is complex biopsychosocial process,cant be reduced solely to hormonal process.and bonding as is so complex because we are human and we draw upon our values,experiences,conscious and unconscious experiences.

competent,empathic adoptive mothers and non breastfeeding relatives bond successfully and forge relationships and raise childrebn too

now i do need a canapé

Ruby love we all know the "WELLDOCUMENTED" advantages of breast feeding,I shouldn't think there is a single poster on MN who doesn't. That is exactly the point.Banging on and on about it isn't needed, in the same way as banging on and on about the disadvantages of leaving 5 week old babies isn't needed. Mums know what we "should" do but often we can't for whatever reason.To be continually bombarded by the same info one already knows doesn't actually achieve anything.

An "amazing" experience of bf is not exactly the norm so less of the women "should really enjoy" it thanks. Who says we should? Most of my non twin mum friends successfully bf very,very few of them found it an amazingly enjoyable experience. Some did but the vast majority didn't. Why exactly should one? One interacts in so many different ways with a baby having your boobs shredded isn't the only way,it's one of many.