Is Breast Best?

[ADaddy]

First of all I want to say that my heart goes out to all the women out there that are struggling trying to breastfeed their child and feeling the pressure to continue.

My wife gave birth nearly 3 weeks ago and since then has had a really rough time with breastfeeding. I just wanted to share some words with women in a similar situation. I'll put them in points to be more concise.

1. There is so much more to being a mother than just being a milk supply. Don't ever forget this!

1. This is about feeding your baby. It is too bad that they don't have "Feeding councillors" rather than just "Breastfeeding councillors".

1. Your baby's nutrition and hydration is vital. Don't feel guilty for making sure your baby has both of these.

1. The well-being of the mother is also vital. You need to be there for your baby, does your experience with breastfeeding enhance your well-being or make you feel like the contents of your babies nappies?

1. Unless there is imminent danger, Healthcare professionals will put breastfeeding above things such as sleep, washing, bonding, jaundice. It pains them to say the word "formula" so don't expect them too.

1. Healthcare professionals are mainly interested in the colour of poo, if wee is coming out and if the baby is at least gaining some weight. In that case all is well, forget the rest. This is NOT a holistic approach and one of my main bug-bears with breastfeeding promotion. There is a much bigger, far more complicated picture to consider to determine if breastfeeding really is working for you.

1. If you have a latch problem then they like that, they can help solve that. It's different when it is a supply problem, that is not always solvable and they tend to be in denial about it (mainly because it is far more difficult to solve).

1. Demand feeding:

a. Is lack or sleep good for mother or milk supply or to that end baby?
b. Is not being able to find time to eat good for anyone?
c. Is no time to wash good?
d. Does baby sleep a lot and forget to demand only to wake up ravenous and too fractious to feed?  Can't be possible, this does not fit in the ideal world of demand feeding :)
e. No routine, no structure, no way for an adult human to live?
f. Are you told, don't worry, keep going your milk supply will come through soon?
g. Feels like it is driving you insane?  Maybe it is!

1. Is the difficulty of breastfeeding affecting your bond with your baby? It is hard enough, healing, hormones, baby blues and worse, don't be pressurised into sacrificing this important step under some misguided notion that your baby will suffer by not being breastfed. He/She is likely to suffer more if you are not able to nuture this all important bond.

Of course, these questions and statements come from our personal experiences, although from what I have read on the internet, we are not alone.

If you read through my points and breastfeeding is still the right approach for you, great! If not, then do the best thing for you and the baby (yes, that is YOU too) and consider alternative approaches.

And before you ask, the only vested interest I have is in the health of my wife and baby and doing what is best for them.

Comments welcome.

Do you mean me? :)

Hold what against you?

The fact you called me a TOTAL TWAT?

Nah - where I come from, that's a compliment :)

Insults don't bother me - people coming on to talkboards and adding to the myths and misunderstandings about feeding is what gets my goat, so if you're sorry about that, we can be friends!

cocoachannel you know, it's posters like you that make me want to continue to be a BFing supporter. I just wish that we could reach out to everyone who wants help, and give them the help that they need. I wish you peace in your decision and joy in your relationship with your lovely daughter.

Meant to add about the sexist thing,

'Not so much the playful, affectionate "my dh is so logical too" type posts (though that wouldn't go over well in reverse, would it? What would be the reaction if you'd posted "now I know that my dw is having the typical female, overly-emotional response to this...").' from cloudydays

Being logical and analytical can be excellent in many many situations, building a bridge for example - I didn't mean to make it sound negative. Breastfeeding though is more intuitive, not so linear, primal, seems not to make sense and has been ruined for many with the Truby King type logical approach. Is that sexist to say that? Or just what has happened.

You say it wouldn't go well in reverse, but it would be ok to say that approaching building a bridge with an intuitive, non linear, seems not to make sense type approach wouldn't work. It wouldn't be sexist, would it?! .

Yes, apology is for you, as I did state earlier it was not meant maliciously, as for my advice posted here, hey it worked for me albeit years ago, I will try and stop myself in the future from giving out dated advice. And i will not call you a bad name again.

:) no worries, zlaya.

Thank you for your words of encouragement and suggestions peanutdream

FWIW, I spent hours sitting feeding ds - so much so that my bum got sore and numb from just sitting! We even had to go out and buy a cordless phone (not so common back then) so that I didn't get disturbed by phonecalls!

It took me over 8 weeks to get BF established, during which time ds dropped from 8lb 15 oz to 7lb 10oz (IIRC - he's 10 now!) in the few days and then took 6-7 weeks to regain his birthweight.

I was fortunate - I had really good support from the BFC midwives at the maternity hospital and also (strangely) the fact that I was re-admitted with a nasty infection after 2 weeks and spent 5 days on IV antiobiotics meant that I had nothing to do except feed and express. Again, I was fortunate in that I was able to express plenty (because the amount that you are able to express is actually no reflection on how much you are producing while feeding the baby), so that I could see that every 2nd feed was plenty - and it made no difference to his weight gain, which continued to be extremely slow.

You also mention that your baby sleeps a lot: I was recommended to wake ds, as sometimes a vicious circle can develop of sleepiness through lack of intake. Ds could (and would) have slept through from 2 weeks () but I had to wake him to feed him. However, the little tike darling learnt to pretend to be feeding to stop me hassling encouraging him to stay awake! Once we had identified that little quirk, I learnt to listen for the proper swallowing sound rather than go by the misleading visual cues of wiggling jaw and earlobe.

I also - from as soon as I got home from hosptial (Day 6 'cos ds had jaundice and needed light therapy) made a point of always having a relaxing bath in the morning. I told myself it was for medicinal purposes as well (put lavender oil to help heal the stitiches I had had to have). I made sure that ds was fed and changed before getting in - and then even if he cried, I knew that there couln't be much seriously wrong - at least, nothing that couldn't wait at least 15 minutes.

I ended up successfully feeding ds for 13 months - thanks to the good support from the BF counsellors, my own bloody mindedness, the support of my dh and avoiding HVs

Sorry - forgot to finish with good luck to you and your dw and congratulations on your new baby! :)

Thank you so much organiccarrotcake. Please keep going with being a supporter- I may need to call on you in a few years time, as I am damned sure I will be quick to ask for help if I am blessed with another baby and struggle again !

DD is currently practising her new found rolling and giggling skills, and a delight, it reminds me that important as it is breastfeeding isn't the be all and end all. I will keep expressing so she gets some milk from me and I will try and shake off the guilt, and be thankful we managed 14 weeks of EBF!

Thank you prettybird

Hi peanutdream :)

I do think I made it clear in my post that the sexism I found offensive was the series of assumptions by one poster about ADaddy's feelings about women (that he wanted his wife to stop breastfeeding so she could have makeup on and dinner on the table, and that he disagreed with some people on here because he doesn't like for women to express their opinions) and the implication by another that it was somehow inappropriate for him to post about his wife's experience of breastfeeding if she didn't want to post herself. I just thought that these were awfully big leaps to make about someone none of us knows, and I think those assumptions fell into the category of man-bashing sexism rather than reasonable discussion.

Because yourself and others had also commented - after the comments I thought were offensive but before my own post - about how ADaddy seems to be taking a "typical male" view of breastfeeding by trying to "fit it into a logical plan", I actually made a point of distinguishing those good-natured comments from the ones I thought were offensive, by saying that I wasn't really talking about "the playful, affectionate, 'my dh is so logical too' type posts". You obviously saw that I bothered to make that distinction, because you quoted that part of my post!

I'm missing something in your bridge-building analogy - I don't think I said anything that implied that a logical approach is better for breastfeeding, or that an intuitive approach would be better for bridge-building. When I was trying to clarify that I wasn't referring to your comments (or to the other poster who mentioned her dh) when I said that the sexism was out of order, I just wanted to make the point that those stereotypes of men being logical, inflexible, overly-reliant on structure, are somewhat comparable to stereotypes of women being irrational, illogical, and overly-reliant on emotion. My dh isn't particularly structured or logical at all, but he is wonderfully sensitive and intuitive. In dd's first weeks, I was the one with the spreadsheet of feeding times, wet and dirty nappies, and spit-up .

I didn't want to get into a debate about gender stereotypes, I just felt that the OP was being treated unfairly by some. Not by you, particularly, which is why I made the distinction between "playful and affectionate" stereotyping and sexist man-bashing.

i did notice cloudydays - no worries at all. just wanted to clarify as the OP himself had called what i put sexist... putting ds to bed - will come back to read rest of your post

tbh i think i was being a bit pendantic and wanted to clarify to the OP that I wasn't trying to be sexist, (although I did have my suspicions too that the OP was PERHAPS a man who didn't want his wife to be sat on the sofa feeding while he had to do all the chores/make dinner)...

i thought you were trying to say that I had used logical in a negative way in general (rather than in particular in regards to breastfeeding), which if 'reversed' wouldn't be acceptable ie using a woman's irrationality as an opposite to logical... i think i am reading into things too much ... i do also agree that 'male' and 'female' qualities don't have to apply to men and women respectively - like you saying your dh was the sensitive and intuitive one.

Adaddy, I'm glad you are thanking people as after coming back from work today and reading through the posts I was getting a bit annoyed with you not seeming to want to take any advice and support offered. I was considering posting that if you were my husband I would bang you over the head with the nearest large item as your posts have been very frustrating. People are giving you time to try and help and you didn't seem to actually want that help as other posters have stated.

I do think that in our UK society that we generally have very easy lives, we don't get up at dawn to chop wood for a fire, we don't walk miles and miles for our water or go hungry when there is not enough food so when we have babies, the effort involved is just massive in comparsion to what we are used to in our daily lives, it is a shock to have a baby and feeding is only ever given a very small smount of space prior to the birth, so it's a skill that has to be learnt quickly with a precious life involved. With a baby you are going all primeval for a while.

Health Professionals are in quite difficult positions of having very little time to sit and help with feeding and the message that they give out tends to be condensed instead of the amount of information that they could give with unlimited time, sometimes they haven't the training to do it properly. Also as a health professional myself but nothing to do with this area, there are techniques which can be employed to enable and empower people to make decisions without making them feeling guilty or brow beaten. I agree that the UK falls very short on proper support within this area across all health related topics. That aside, given the flaws in our system, the important thing is not to dwell on that at this time but to take the useful advice posted here and to try and acheive what your DW actually wants to do. You can always help by speaking or writing to the head of midwives later to explain to them how they could have helped better in the early days. Unless they have feedback they can't change their practice.

cocoachannel :) I would love to. You are, of course, totally right, and she's clearly gorgeous. Your expressing for her is doing wonderful things and if you ever did want to, you could always try just putting her to the breast and see what happens. Or snuggle up topless and let her take the lead. If there's no need to feed - you never know :)

also, might have been covered upthread but worth looking at WHO weight charts which are specifically for bf babies. the ones in your red book are based on amercian ff babies.

have a look [http://www.who.int/childgrowth/standards/chts_wfa_girls_z/en/index.html here]

I think the redbook ones are updated now suntangirl

sorry, here!

The rebook charts have been updated and are now based on bf babies (although not exclusive to 6 months - too few of those around in the UK) but are still not the same as the WHO bf charts which have been calculated using a much larger population base.

(I know I said I'd be going )

also intersting info on centiles and bf babies here

I didn't know that re the WHO charts, thanks MBJ :)

TheRealMBJ thank you for that - I'll have to keep a note in case I ever have another one (gulp!).

And just to add (in case it sounded like I was being dismissive of the advice I was given) that I really do appreciate the time taken by everyone who helped me*. The NCT peer supporter was lovely and I did follow her advice but as many have said there are some issues which just need face-to-face help. In the end, the thing I most appreciated was when the BF support people said they were amazed I kept coming back, that lots of people would have given up ages ago, that they were surprised I was still feeding on nipples that bad. And they didn't advise me, they just gave me as much information about different options to try as they possibly could, and lots of support (and some tissues when it all got a bit too much). Sometimes I think I've "failed" at BF, but then my baby still gets all the BM I can reasonably express (he's not EBF though, he's huge and hungry, and ultimately I wanted to bond with him, not the pump!). We still have a go at breastfeeding every day or so, just in case I can deepen the latch this time... and we both enjoy the snuggling, and it does comfort him even if it hurts me sometimes.

• OK, so maybe not the MW on the first night after my C-section who told me that if I'd heard of "baby-friendly" then I'd know that it said babies didn't necessarily need to feed for the first 12 hours and that I should just be grateful for being able to have a baby in the first place. She was under incredible pressure staffing-wise but I still want to slap her, frankly.

Glad to help Mollcat

Still some misunderstanding about charts - hope this helps:

No charts in use in the UK were ever based on American ff babies. The charts in use in the UK for about 18 years were almost all from the 'UK 1990' data set, which was UK babies whose feeding was not differentiated.

From May 2009, these charts were replaced by the UK version of WHO/UNICEF charts, using solely bf babies, and the data is the same, though the presentation is the UK's. The information in them is identical.

There is now no need for anyone to be concerned their red book has an old chart in it - everywhere (AFAIK) has changed to the correct charts.

Babies grow almost identically on both old and new charts until about four months, when the charts start to diverge.