To much pressure to breastfeed? Furious at HV!!!

[AliB1]

Do you think there is too much pressure on mothers to breastfeed?
I am not debating the pro's and con's between breast and bottle but am really annoyed at the moment about the amount of pressure to breastfeed.
My DS is 10 1/2 weeks old, Up until two weeks ago I exclusively breast fed him through thrush, mastitus, thrush again, numerous cracked nipples and a tear under one nipple. He ate every 1 1/2 to 2 hours and my son is now 15lbs! He is not lacking food! He is a happy healthy little boy! I have now decided to combination feed as I am so, so sore and got to the point where I felt I didn't want to pick him up in case he would want food - that was my breaking point, I felt we had gone on far enough! He now has three bottles and four breast feeds a day, I feel this is very managable and will continue.
However the lecture I got for HV today made me furious!!! Telling me I am letting my son down, not doing what is best for him, he will get infections, do I really understand the difference between breast and bottle, etc, etc, etc.
I am a mature, intelligent individual, any decision I make about my child is well considered, thought through thoroughly and with his best interests at heart. I am all for health professionals sharing information, but forming judgement and patronising mothers is, in my humble opinion, a step to far!

I would welcome others opinions?

I honestly think when HV's are rude to you which is what she was people need to start gathering up their things and just walk out. If anyone else spoke to you like that would you stand there nodding or listening, no you would not, so say thank you very much and get up and leave.

My experience is that there is not too much pressure to start/breastfeeding, as I think it should be very much encouraged, but there is too much pressure with very little support, to Mums who are struggling and either want/need to switch or need a LOT of support to continue.

The tremendous amount of pressure I felt wasn't matched by support, which contributed to the first week of my baby's life being a horrible and traumatic experience for all of us, which has contributed I think to my current PND issues.

So my message to the healthcare community would be, yes encourage me to BF, but if you can't also provide the support I so desparately need in getting it established, then get out of my face and let me feed my baby formula rather than watch her waste away.

I'm prepared to be criticised a bit for my viewpoint, but I am angry about how awful our first week was, and I think the blinkered approach of our MW team made it a lot worse and was no help to me or my baby, who just desparately needed nourishment.

Why does it have to be such a blanket 'breast is best' approach. Why not 'each breast feed counts'.

D

Totally agree with OP.

agree 100% OP

I had a hell of alot of pressure from my MW, HV etc to carry on BF. There was support, but when they finally seemed to realise that I really didnt want to carry on they became pretty horrible.

Personally I think that if mixed feeding is working for you and you are happy with it and baby is happy then carry on. But do see about getting the tt snipped as it might make a world of difference

Well done you, you should be proud of yourself, not be beating yourself up about it.

I tried to exclusively bf for nearly as long as that but ended up expressing for another couple of months and supplementing until my supply dried up. The main reason I had issues was that the hv pretty much ignored my problems, obviously thought i was just a whinging mum who didn't want to carry on bf ing and it was only until I paid for a lactation consultant privately on week 6 that I got some genuine and decent support - my ds was diagnosed with problems with his mouth (tongue tie and bubble palate) which meant his latch was poor and perpetuated the cycle of me not producing enough milk, and in turn, meant he fed every 20 minutes and sometimes in clusters of 6 hours. The only way i could leave him with dh for more than 20 minutes at a time was to give him a bottle. Even my lactation consultant agreed this was the best course of action.

I have often felt that a huge amount of money goes into marketing the benefits of bf but in reality, the help and support you get when you actually do it is massively inconsistent. all my friends with kids started off bf ing and with the express (pardon the pun) intention of doing at least the 6 months, but only a tiny few actually did, with the rest saying that help and support beyond the first two weeks was poor and was the main reason why they gave up - not because they were ignorant or lazy.

The nhs bf message tends to be very black and white - and doesn't take into account the spectrum of women. Eg. Of course there are mums who don't even consider bf ing, and come from a culture of bottle feeding, but there are also lots of mums who want to bf but don't get the practical and/or emotional support to continue.

Agree with OP. There is a lot of pressure to breastfeed yet the actual bf figures are so low. What does this tell us? That most women want to breastfeed but do not get the support to do so. We are all told breast is best ante natal but not warned that it is very often not plain sailing and there will be difficulties along the way and how we an deal with the difficulties. Our expectation is then that baby will be born, we'll put them to the breast and away you go, its so easy. The reality is bf can be excruciatingly painful, baby may not thrive, become dehydrated and the mother may be pushed to PND through sheer tiredness and feelings of guilt. I agree breast feeding needs to be promoted but just bleating on about breast being best is not helpful.

Impossible to generalise, seems to depend on who you get. I had plenty of support during difficulties.

You've done so well to get this far. It is absolutely shocking how some professionals go on. Can you complain about her, I strongly suggest you do. I think some pressure is needed regarding breast feeding to try and encourage ALL mothers to attempt to breast feed but when it's going wrong, i.e. it's painful, poor baby weight gain, infections after weeks of tryingt to breast feed etc etc then it quite clearly is NOT best in my opinion and these stupid health professionals fail to see the whole picture and just quote 'breast is best' in some sort of blinkered way. If I had the time I'd love to challenge some of the quoteations and the research that they spout regarding immunity and how formula destroys a childs bacteria in their gut and so on, I suspect the studies are one sided and do not provide a true representation. There is so much more to being a mum than flamming breast feeding and it sounds like your health visitor needs reminding of this. I exclusively breast fed DC1 for 4 weeks then expressed for 12 weeks before switching to formula as my supply wouldn't keep up, I suffered horrendous feelings of guilt. With DC2 I am exclusively breast feeding and we're 9 weeks in so far, not been easy again but I know how to cope this time round. The pressure I experienced to breast feed DC1 was horrendous and made me physically ill and depressed. This time round I have been more guarded about what I tell them and have been reluctant to recieve their input apart from the necessary weigh ins and baby checks. I think your doing the right thing to mix feed as this will probably help you to continue to breast feed for longer while dealing with the difficulties so well done!

As a mum who spent the first weeks of my baby's life struggling with breast feeding it is enormously helpful to see that I am not alone in my experience. My baby would not latch - she had her tongue tie snipped whilst still in hospital and we saw the lactation consultant numerous times both in hospital and at home but to no avail, despite using nipple shields. The lactation consultant advised expressing which I did for several weeks trying all the time to get baby to latch. The feelings of guilt were enormous - at the breast feeding workshop I attended before our baby was born they spent a considerable amount of time bashing formula manufacturers but did not mention once that breast feeding can be fraught with problems, and offering reassurance that it can be difficult but most problems can be overcome with the right support. The very fact we were there indicated that we wanted to give breast feeding our best shot.

When I saw my health visitor pre birth she actually told me not to be too hard on myself about breast feeding if things didn't go to plan; I felt at that time that this was not helpful but now looking back I had a blinkered view to the whole process. The guilt is still there 6 months on but has lessened, helped by the fact that I have a beautiful healthy strong baby girl. I did feel for some time after I had converted to formula feeding that I was heading for PND but luckily I seem to have avoided this; I spoke to my GP at the time and they monitored me for a while. If I'm lucky to have another child in the future then I hope my breast feeding experience is a better one. I feel that the awful feelings I had following the birth of my daughter really affected our enjoyment of being first time parents.