Fed up with BF'ing! Feel almost like i've been lied to tbh!

[SleepDeprivedGrumpyBum]

Title says it all really!

I'm thoroughly fed up with exclusively BF'ing my DS. He point blank refuses to feed from anything other than me and its driving me crazy!

I think i'm beginning to resent BF'ing a bit and feel like a was purposely misled by all the HCP's who were advocating BF'ing whilst i was pregnant. Why is nothing ever said to prepare you for how hard it is? when DS was between 2 - 4 weeks and he was feeding almost constantly i felt like a freak and that it shouldn't be so demanding and challenging. It's only through coming on here i found out it was perfectly normal!

Also all the gumpf you get about not giving bottles until 6 weeks as it will affect yout supply! Why does no one mention that its highly likely that your DC wont take a friggin bottle at that age? I would have liked to have known that so i could have made an informed decision. (especially when it seems such a common problem judging by the number of threads on the topic)

It just feels like i'm the only person who can care properly for DS. Bedtimes, night time, early morning i have to do them all! DP would happily do night shift if he could but its just not possible.

I know its a bit selfish but i just wish i could have some time to myself. Or to at least feel like it was an option. Feels like i've lost all choice as to how i feed my DS, and i'm backed into a corner having to continue to BF :(

Sorry rant/moan/winge over

toddlerwrangler thats exactly how i feel about BF'ing and harsh realities. I dont mean to be over dramatic but at my lowest points i've felt like its all a big conspiracy and that its been a deliberate decision by the powers that be to not give new mums more info about the realities of BF'ing.

paigeturner sorry to hear you're struggling on your own. Do you have any friends or family nearby that could help you?have you been fitted professionally for your bras?

Its good to know it does get easier, i was up 5 times feeding DS last night (12 week growth spurt anyone?0 I do so wish dp could do just one night a week

There is no conspiracy!

Breastfeeding can be very, very difficult, but it is not inherently so.

Often, the very early hours and days are totally messed up and made miserable. Most mothers are babies are best off being snuggled up together and just enabled to breastfeed, with no rush, no one grabbing baby and breast to shove 'em together. Calm, relaxed, patient....minimal interruptions from hospital staff and visitors...let mother and baby be alone together...continue that at home...ensure positioning is comfortable and effective for both of them...don't separate them and don't have expectations of doing anything other than cuddling/feeding.

Unhappy experiences breastfeeding almost always start in those early days, and start with the above not happening :( :(

If women have had a rotten experience with poor help they need to complain, loudly.

tiktok you always have such reassuring things to say! I love your posts, they have helped me a lot of times when i have been lurking on threads.

You are so right about getting the right support. I was in hospital for over 2 weeks after a complicated delivery, and a lot of the midwives were unhelpful to say the least. i had a lot of difficulties establishing breastfeeding as DS had horrific cuts on his neck and forehead after a cocked-up forceps attempt, so it was really hard to to hold him, so i was trying to feed him lying down. Cue the following "helpful" comments..

"Get the baby out of your bed, it is unhygenic to have a baby in bed with a woman who has just delivered"

"Do you want your baby to starve just so you can say you breast fed him"

"If your baby had lost this much weight at home (he lost 13% in first three days )i would call social services to investigate your neglect"

There was one midwife who was absolutely fantastic and I would definitely have given up if it hadn't been for her. Since coming home I have had amazing support from a community nursery nurse. Without these people, DS would have been on a bottle as soon as the colostrum ran out.

Oh AngryGnome and . Have you complained? That kind of attitude in hcps is totally, totally unacceptable. You're so lucky tha your own determination managed to see you through, but I worry about the hundreds of unsure, insecure mums sitting on a ward and hearing all of those, unhelpful, disempowering and undermining maternalistic RUBBISH!

In fact I'm livid!!!

All of that. Obv.

Hi mummeyberryjuice. To be honest, it is only now that I am starting to reflect on my whole birth experience and the first few weeks of motherhood, and I am now starting to get angry! At the time I didn't complain, I felt so overwhelmed. Looking back I think it all made me feel a bit like a little girl - I didn't want to be the "troublemaker" and make a fuss so I didn't say anything. I had a really traumatic delivery that i wasn't at all prepared for (but who is prepared for childbirth the first time around!), and I really just accepted everything I was told and assumed my own views were naive and a bit silly. Starting to get back to my old self now, and feeling much more [hmmm]

My health visitor is setting up a debrief of the birth for me in a couple of months (not sure i can really handle it before then ) and I am definitely going to bring it up then.

Unfotunately I don't think my experience was unique, and as I said if it hadn't been for one fab midwife and community nursery nurse there is no way I could have done it.

I can't believe that midwives said these things to you angrygnome- terrible, terrible.

To all those who felt that they have been misled, lied to and duped about breastfeeding - what do you think HCPs can do about this?

Do they give you information (antenatally)about every possible problem and issue about feeding that you may encounter
...mastitis, thrush, blocked ducts, abscesses, poor supply, oversupply, nipple confusion, exhaustion, sore nipples etc etc.....

Surely this would just put people off, no?

Some women don't suffer with any of these problems. They just latch the baby on after birth and it's plain sailing from then on.

Angry I don't want to hijack the thread but I think you've raised a very important point here. Please join this thread and lets get a discussion going.

I agree crikeybadger - it could be a bit scary to overload pregnant women with horror stories about how hard breastfeeding could be. Perhaps the answer could be to encourage pregnant women to attend a breastfeeding support group once or twice - that they way they could speak to different women about all their experiences, so they can hear the good with the bad?

I think also it would be helpful to tell women about the wide range of normal breastfeeding behaviour, e.g. there will be days (many in my experience) where your baby will just want to snooze, feed, snooze, feed all day. There's nothing wrong with you or your baby, this is just part of feeding. If you are expecting it, you can probably enjoy it rather than wondering what is wrong, is by baby getting enough nutrition, am i producing enough milk etc, and all the other worries that first time bf'ers seem to have!

Hmmm, there was a midwife who kept worrying my husband about me breastfeeding to the point where he was trying to convince me I should just formula feed dd.

I was having trouble getting my appetite back as I felt sick and tired after my deliery. The midwife told me husband that this would affect the quality and quantity of my milk and that it wouldn't be enough for dd. He was really upset that I could be inadvertently harming dd and he was pleading with me to let him give her formula too. I stuck to my guns because there was another midwife there who said so long as I kept drinking sweet tea and eating something little and often no matter what, it would be fine and I'd get my appetite back soon enough and she'd be fine. And she was, but no thanks to the first midwife who had a private chat with dh as she was concerned about dd (on the first day, when I couldn't even stand or prop myself in bed properly after epidural) my dh kept telling me to let him give her formula for about the first 6 weeks until it was obvious she was gaining weight fine!

Some midwives are not very helpful in being supportive :-s

I had a very fraught relationship with BF, lasted 3 weeks. All the HCPs I saw were encouraging, but could offer no explanation as to why it was so very very painful. They just kept saying "the latch looks fine, it shouldn't hurt".

The point I'm making is that nobody seemed to have any knowledge beyond parroting the info in the purple BF book.

Fast forward 4 months and it turned out DD had tongue tie. She was checked at a few days old by a SCBU nurse on my request who declared there was nothing wrong.

I'm angry that I wasn't able to BF my baby beyond 3 weeks due to the HCPs I saw being no more knowledgeable about BF problems than I was.

Suggestions of co-sleeping, cuddling, retiring to bed for a fortnight naked etc all IMO over-simplify BF problems. For some of us none of these tactics will work. My baby hated lying down beside me, her reflux made her scream and thrash wildly, she to this day doesn't really like being cuddled, and biological nurturing turned into a screamfest as she hated being on her stomach. She just wanted food, she wasn't interested in it being an beautiful experience!

In terms of what HCP could improve, I would suggest using the phrase "it shouldn't hurt if you're doing it right" be a sackable offence, as should grabbing a woman's breast and stuffing it into her baby's mouth.

Samraves, that unsupportive midwife wasn't just unhelpful - she was wrong: unless you're seriously malnourished, not eating much wouldn't have any effect on your milk.

All these different experiences bring home to me once again that what we have lost is BFing being an established part of our culture - I don't know about any of you, but prior to me trying for a family and eventually having children, I had seen v few people BF: maybe on occasion another woman in a cafe, but a stranger, not somebody you could actually 'watch' and learn by osmosis. Like seeing your mother/aunt/big sister/neighbour/random woman in church (! - yes apparently this used to be common practice to keep babies quiet during services) feed her child.

Striking the balance between encouraging BFing and being realistic about it, seems to me to be the hard thing.
I am a GP and before my own BFing problems (and education through some helpful HCP/NCT/LLL/books/interweb, natch) I knew v little to nothing about BFing beyond that it was good for mum and baby .
Once I have come up for air from TTC/being pregnant/having v young kids to look after, I would love to set up some kind of 'infant feeding support' in our practice, but really do not know were to start, because I am aware that my experiences were individual to me and lots of women will BF without any problems and do not need to be put off by technicolour descriptions of every single thing that could possible go wrong.
At the same time, like I said in previous posts, it would have been positively helpful if somebody had confirmed that it can at times be hard.

AngryGnome, that is shocking! I do hope you will find your debrief helpful and that you and you LO enjoy lots of cuddles anyway.

Overtired

AngryGnome that is fecking awful! Some miwives are great but others are total twats. I too also agree with tiktok. I am only just starting to cut myself some slack after reading other posts on MN and realising that what my dd is doing is NORMAL ie. cluster feeding now and then, crying at night and sometimes finding it hard to settle etc etc.

I didn't have anywhere near as bad an experience as you AngryGnome, but I had a CS and I HATED the 2 nights I spent in hospital. After sleeping all day my dd would start the SECOND my dp left. I couldn't even shift myself from a lying to sitting position and vice versa or roll over to pick up dd from cot because of CS so I had no choice but to keep calling MWs to help with transfers etc. Some were lovely and did their best to help me get her settled as I couldn't get out of bed and rock her properly etc, others were at best impatient and brusque and made my feel like I was really doing something wrong as dd kept crying and that it was really something unusual/terrible. One actually said to dd, "Oh you're a horrible little girl aren't you, if you keep carrying on like this your mummy will get very fed up with you". Er, no I won't, because she is a newborn baby and correct me if I'm wrong they are supposed to cry sometimes...

Couldn't wait to get home so DD could help me. They were really no help at all and just made me feel inadequate and a nuisance.

I sympathise too. Dd is now 21 weeks, but at 12 weeks I felt the same as you...take heart though, in our experience we had no sleep regression, or growth spurt.

At 14 weeks dd started sleeping through the night and at 16 weeks moved to a four hour schedule - suddenly the burden that had been there before disappeared.

Plus once a week I feed her at 7pm, dh puts her to bed and I meet up with some girlfriends at the pub. I get home for 11pm for the last feed and have a few hours 'release'.

Finally, if it makes you feel better, I did get the advice about giving a bottle at two weeks to get her used to it. We did that, then three weeks ago she suddenly started refusing it. So it may not have been better had you known?

Once you start getting more sleep, it all seems so much better, do hang in there - you'll be so proud of yourself when the misery is a distant memory!

MsScarlett I can't believe a midwife said that about your DD I hope things are going well now.

PacificDogwood you are absolutely right about the lack of a breastfeeding culture. Before I had DS, I had only ever seen one person breastfeed once. I think it is very common for first timers to learn about bf from books, or being told things rather than seeing women feed their babies, which is why we tend to know lots about the theory, but often not much about the practicalities of it all!

My god MsScarlett and and !!!

Someone who says that to tiny little newborns should get the sack retire.

Indeed, I had only seen a few women breastfeeding. My point was that anyone can educate themselves in the theory of breastfeeding, I had attended parentcraft classes, and a talk given by the hospital's breast feeding co-ordinator, in addition to being given the purple book.

What should distinguish a mum who has read up a bit from a HCP, is the HCP's ability to recognise why things aren't going well if they're not, and to have solutions that will work. Otherwise I think mums are entirely justified in thinking they have been sold a lie about BF, as the OP says.

PacificDogwood, the idea you're proposing for your surgery sounds great, but for mums to have confidence I think the doctors and HVs who staff it have to offer something beyond what a mum can teach herself. And the service needs to be readily available. I was so so grateful for the NCT helpline, but unfortunately my feeding meltdown coincided with local holidays so no groups were running, the lactation consultant was on holiday, and the hospital breastfeeding consultant was on leave.

'readily available' - I entirely agree with you, Overtired, but at the same time the issues with that are what make me weary of starting up anyting at all...
It may be foolish to come up with some kind of halfbaked idea just because I am all fired up about infant feeding and then not be able to back it up with timely support for a mum in need IYKWIM. It may well need to be more about propganda education rather than practical support - luckily we are reasonably well provided with that. Although you still have to be really quite persistent, articulate and motivated to get help quickly when you need it.
I think in the absence of a BFing culture it is always going to be difficult to get more people to even consider BFing without coming across as 'putting pressure on young mothers' and being unreasonably fanatical about it. Although it seems the softly-softly approach is not working - maybe 'The Politics of Breastfeeding' should be required reading before anybody gets their Parentling Licence ??

As you have mentioned before pacific, the biggest barriers to bf are cultural and not medical. Could your practise (and you obv
) not somehow support a local peer-support group? Or start a training programme for all the GPs in your practise and surrounding practises?

Pacific, I think it is about practical support and knowledge about how bf works and how to help it work, and not education of mothers of why to do it.

At present, the cultural barriers against breastfeeding are shored up, every time someone tries to breastfeed and has a bad experience due to poor support/knowledge. See a current thread at the moment - really sad stories from women who wanted to bf.

Your GP practice could have a wonderful bf support clinic - you'd need to hire an expert bf supporter person, appropriately experienced and qualified.

Hope you do it :)

Like I said, just half-baked ideas at the moment.

TikTok, sadly where I work some mothers do lack knowledge about reasons FOR BFing because all they have grown-up with is prejudice against it .

Before I (or anybody) could do anything, we'd have to move from the rabbit hutch the surgery is currently in to more adequate premises... Pipe dreams, but who knows.

Anyway, don't really want to hijack the thread, apologies, OP! Hope you are still going strong .

Totally agree with tiktok on that point. Of my friends and peers, I can't think of a single person who didn't at least try to breastfeed. I realise there are variations across the country but it really isn't a case of people not knowing that it's the optimal way to feed a baby. It's a case of people having so little decent support and reassurance in place when they run into trouble that it all falls by the wayside. And also the question of the quality of advice - not much good having a lovely midwife visit every day for ten days if she doesn't know how BFing works.

I think a resource such as a feeding clinic would be superb, and anything which encourages a close interface between medics and BFing-aware professionals is a good thing IME, because poor knowledge of the fundamentals on the part of HCPs undermines an awful lot of the good work done by BFing supporters IMO.

That first IME should have been an IMO in place of the second one (need some methinks!)

I agree with doricpatter - often even the specific support services (like our HV-run bf cafe) are run in a way that suggests they don't understand the fundamentals. (I went when I was worried about my 6 week old's sudden change in feeding pattern & general fussiness / crying / not sleeping etc and they completely failed to mention growth spurts).