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.

ADaddy, your wife says her boobs are empty from all the feeding they might be well drained, but that doesn't mean they are empty it doesn't work in quite the way we all think before we have babies.

Please support your wife to succeed if that is what she wants by bringing her food and drink and cuddling and talking to your baby while she washes and sleeps if she needs to. You could also drive her to a breastfeeding support group so she can talk to other breastfeeding mums and get help and reassurance from

Your statistical thing about the supply of women doesn't quite work in the way you think it would either. Yes there are rare cases of women not having enough milk and some have enough to feed ten babies (which can be a problem in itself), but as Tiktok said, storage capacity varies more than the amount a baby will get in a 24hour period - most babies will get enough to grow happily - some just have to feed more often than others.

What everyone else said to.

too

If I had read the OP after my DC was born then I would have agreed with everything. He was bf for two weeks and my DH could have written what you did word for word.

However...

Second time around I had proper support, not from an HV, but from a BF group of peer supporters who busted most of the myths, got the latch sorted out and explained to me clearly that babies do feed all the blooming time when they are newborns, and when on a growth spurt!!

Difference is - DC1, rubbish help / misinformation, BF 2 weeks. DC2 - struggled in the same way, got proper help, BF for 12 months.

Breastmilk is better than formula, full stop and I can say that even though I FF my first child.

Voiture, if you are approaching the NCT or similar I suspect they would think you are hoping to sort out your bfing problems, so will aim to help you sort out those primarily. They should offer advice on how to transition between the two though if that is what you decide.

Voiture a HV or MW will discuss formula feeding with a patient on an individual basis but will not offer group discussions of ff. If you need help or information on ff, as for it directly and it will be given.

voiture - an HV who refuses to advise on bottle feeding to a mother who is considering or actually doing it is not carrying out her job properly, and she should be retrained/redeployed.

NCT trains breastfeeding counsellors - the clue is in the name :) However, there is NCT info about formula and using formula, and any breastfeeding counsellor would be able to share this with you, if you asked. What we cannot do - because it is bordering on medical advice which we cannot give - is say what is the right formula for a particular baby, or what to do if formula appears to be causing a reaction. We'd refer the questions we cannot deal with about formula to the HV.

Real breastmilk supply issues are not "incredibly rare". Even Jack Newman puts the number at around 1%. That's a larger percentage of the population than that which has Type 1 Diabetes or MS, for example. We don't think of those conditions as incredibly rare, and if someone tells us that they have one of those conditions, we don't give them a face.

One of the main differences, of course, between breastmilk supply issues and those other conditions, is that people in our society who live with Type 1 Diabetes or MS almost always (eventually) get a diagnosis, whereas there is a much shorter window for diagnosis - and no sense of urgency about it - when it comes to supply issues caused by conditions such as hypoplasia (and probably others; hypoplasia is my own experience).

My opinion is that the 1% estimate is very, very low, and is an accurate reflection of how many women have diagnosed supply problems that can't be improved by good advice and commitment, not how many women have genuine supply problems that can't be improved by good advice and commitment. Those are entirely different concepts, yet they seem to be used interchangeably in BF discussions, whenever someone mentions an experience of poor supply.

Everything is stacked against the likelihood of diagnosis for women who have conditions that cause poor breastmilk supply:

1. Formula companies ensure that bottle feeding remains the social norm, so the inability to produce enough breastmilk is not seen as any kind of major medical event that requires intervention. The message from the broader culture is "just give a bottle and don't look back."

1. Some BF advocates are so keen to extol the natural and convenient virtues of breastfeeding, and/or are so frustrated by the uphill battle of building awareness and acceptance of breastfeeding as the biological norm, that they gloss over or deny the common-sense fact that like every biological function, it works better for some than others, and for some it works not at all. Real problems are not incredibly rare when it comes to breathing, walking, seeing, hearing or fertility, so why on earth would they be incredibly rare only when it comes to the natural bodily function of breastfeeding?

1. The inability to produce enough breastmilk is a condition that does not threaten the life of the mother or the child (because of the availability of formula), and in any case it only remains an issue for a short period of mother's and baby's life. Once the first couple of months have passed, and either the supply has increased or the mother has supplemented or switched to formula, the question of why the supply wasn't there at the start is something of a moot point and is very unlikely to be investigated further.

1. One mother might experience poor supply, supplement or switch to formula with a clear conscience, and, once baby is thriving, have no desire at all to investigate the reasons for her lack of milk.

Another mother might desperately want to breastfeed, struggle for weeks and months to build supply with skin-to-skin, constant feeding, pumping, advice and support, herbs and medications, and, when all fails, turn to formula with a heavy heart and a boatload of guilt and self-recrimination. What are the chances that this exhausted, disheartened women, for whom the ebf ship has already sailed and whose baby is finally gaining weight and producing enough wet nappies, will now want to pursue a series of medical referrals to have the inadequacy of her breasts certified in a formal diagnosis?

Chances are, she won't. And if she ventures on to websites and chat rooms about infant feeding, she'll find people to tell her that she didn't try hard enough, care enough, understand enough, and that if she really did have a supply problem, she is an incredibly rare medical specimen indeed. That may help her to feel that she's either a failure, or she's very alone and freakish unusual in her experience. Just what every new mother needs.

ADaddy you sound like a loving and supportive partner. Your comment that your dw "knows her body" is evidence of your respect for her. It sounds like she really wants bf to work, so I really hope that she gets some excellent advice and finds a way to increase her supply. But if she doesn't, I hope that she knows she is not alone, unusual, or incredibly rare. Either way, it's good that she's got you in her corner.

It sounds like you've had a lack of information. Feeding for hours is normal. Routine is not usual for very small babies, and you will find that there are parents who FF who get no sleep. The baby has a tiny stomach. It doesn't care that you are rapidly becoming zombies. That's babies for you. And yes, professionals will look for wet/soiled nappies (often less dirty nappies for BF babies which is totally normal as there is less waste.) They're looking at the baby's health.

Your wife seems to think that her breasts are 'empty' because of how they feel and possibly because she can't express. This just isn't the case. If she has the baby on her breast for hours and the baby then devours a bottle this isn't a sign of lack of supply. It's a sign that babies also suckle for comfort and to stimulate future milk production, and that milk comes out of a bottle much faster than a nipple.

More practical help, ADaddy, Neal Yard's remedies shops or online sell herbal tea, called "RASPBERRY LEAF LOOSE TEA" this is a amazing tea, which promotes milk supply, I would have not had enough, no way without sipping this tea during the day while breastfeeding DD, really 2 or 3 large mugs cooled down are enough, perfectly safe and natural.

adaddy yes statistical variation occurs in nature. As does successfull feeding of infants by mammals. I'm not saying bf is easy, but as i understand it most problems with human lactatation have human causes (overhandleing, top ups, schedual feeding etc)

We must sort these issues, and other myths about supply, from the rare cases where women are genuinely unable to produce enough milk. Until we do this women with conditions like hypoplastic breasts will continue to find that their condition is not taken seriously, and that the only "solution" they are offered is formula.

That is why i do not take kindly to people coming on here describing what sounds like a normal bf situation and labeling it a supply problem.

So for the third time...what makes you think your wife has problems with supply? And what are her feelings about the situation?

Hi Moonface :) We got embroiled in the supply / diagnosis discussion on a similar thread a good while ago.

I agree with you entirely here:

"We must sort these issues, and other myths about supply, from the rare cases where women are genuinely unable to produce enough milk. Until we do this women with conditions like hypoplastic breasts will continue to find that their condition is not taken seriously, and that the only "solution" they are offered is formula."

Just coming from the perspective that when the supply issues are real for you, and the conventional wisdom among bf advocates is that it's much more likely that you're buying into myth and misinformation, it does feel a bit like adding insult to injury.

But I accept that there's probably no way to go about dispelling the very damaging myths about supply, without risking offense to hypersensitive souls like myself women who feel that they aren't believed when they say that the milk just wasn't there.

Hi cloudydays yes, as you can see i have very much taken on board what you said on that thread.

I was under the impression that 1% was quite rare from a statistical point of view, though i may be wrong on that and either way take your point and agree entirely that on a population level that is a huge number of women.

I really wouldn't want to offend anyone re this topic (or any really. Well, most ) but it makes me so sad to hear women who have really struggled to bf because they have either had crap advice, or have a medical condition that is drowned in all the crap advice. That's why i'd really like to know why the op thinks his wife has supply problems. So the mn gurus (not me) can help them get to the bottom of it.

Layman opinion, not profesional: lack of rest, highly strung mum,mum not drinking enough fluids, very hungry baby, very big baby, not enough areole in babies mouth, mum not eating enough, all of these can be a factor for not having enough milk. stress and worry and baby blues also big factors.

But zlaya......lack of rest = no effect on milk supply; mum not drinking enough fluids = no effect on milk supply; size of baby = irrelevant; hungry baby = irrelevant; mum not eating enough = no effect on milk supply; stress and worry and blues ditto. No effect. Irrelevant. And part of the mythology that sees breastfeeding as physically fragile, which it is not.

All these things can effect the mother's well-being, but not her milk, happily.

You suggested not enough areola in baby's mouth - positioning can lead to problems, it's true.

zlaya I would say they are more likely to be things that make a woman believe she didn?t have enough milk. Certainly mum not eating or drinking or resting enough has no bearing on anything other than their comfort. Big baby and hungry baby would mean that a baby will be more likely to want to feed an awful lot in the early days to get the mother?s supply up to what it requires, but if it is allowed access to the breast whenever it needs it, there is (in most cases) no reason that there would not be enough milk.

Stress can cause lack of supply, but only in very severe cases. It can however slow down let down.

Not taking enough areola in to its mouth would probably mean that mother would get pain while feeding and damaged nipples and the baby may feed ineffectively ? I would say this is the only one of your list that could lead to supply issues.

Beveridge, Hullygully

Vitamin D?

Tiktok, only my personal experience, due dh being redundant and being riddled with worry about our existence when DD was just over six months old, I went from more then enough to nothing in weeks, how do you explain that? Also well documented, importance of eating plentifully and drinking enough, surly mother's well being has got everything to do with her milk being plentiful.

If that were the case zlaya, mothers in starvation situations would not be able to bf and they can.

Cosmosis, as I said this was my experience to which you did not give sufficient answer.

peanutdream

"Please support your wife to succeed" "You could also drive her to a breastfeeding support group". Do you mean, "please pressure your wife to continue because I am under the notion that it is only the nutritional value of breast milk that matters"?

I will support my wife to raise a happy, loved and cared for child.

With respect to supply, all you and Tiktok seem to be saying is the baby will get what he needs as long as you breastfeed him often enough. Great, and sleep for the mother?

Back to my original point, all things considered, is it best?

zlaya - sorry you had that worry, but your single experience cannot tell us anything. There may have been many reasons why your supply was judged nothing, and I'd need to know more. There is no documented evidence that eating and drinking makes any difference - quite the opposite in fact. The studies that have been done show that malnourished women are perfectly able to make sufficient milk, and that drinking to satisfy thirst only is perfectly adequate. Deliberately 'over-drinking' has a supply reduction effect - something to do with the way the body handles excess fluid.

Fortunately for the human race, nature has got it all figured out and a mother's own well-being (emotional or physical) is irrelevant to her 'performance' as a breastfeeder :)

OP, only you and your wife can decide if breastfeeding is 'best' for you and your baby, making an individual decision and taking your individual situation into account - you have already found agreement here that the actual milk and whether it is 'best' or not is only part of this decision.

No one can, or should, say to you 'of course your baby should be formula fed - it's not worth making all this fuss over. Just do what you want to do and all will be well!'

It's not up to anyone to make that choice for you!

MoonFaceMamaaaaargh

"what makes you think your wife has problems with supply? And what are her feelings about the situation?"

I don't think this, she does. I only look at the signs and how it is tearing her apart. I am happy for her to do exactly what she feels is right as long as both her and the baby can stay healthy (both mentally and physically).

Unfortunately, the argument about supply again has several dimensions. You refer to particular medical conditions, I refer to the fact that it seems that only unsustainable feeding regimes would provide the baby with enough milk.

you've just got to look further down the line - neither of mine was and they are no different to any other child in the class - both healthy, intelligent etc etc....

Happily, the 'regimes' that make bf 'sustainable' in the early days don't tend to persist. Frequent feeding becomes less frequent feeding; endless feed-a-thons become little snackettes in comparison; babies who are on and off, on and off, on and off, become more focussed and 'business-like' as they grow.

So looking at bf when a baby is no more than a few days, or a few weeks, old and saying 'this is what breastfeeding is' is very misleading.