Dp seems very against me BF baby. Help or advice?

[toddle]

Hello I'm not sure if this is the right place to post but I guess some people on here will have a idea that may help.

I really want to breast feed baby when he/she arrives. For lots of reasons really so I can't pin point my biggest case for it.

As the weeks go by Dp is becoming much more negative about the idea and I'm getting snide comments such as - 'doesn't matter when he takes paternity as he can't do anything anway', 'feel like you won't trust me as you will have to be with me everywhere do can't take baby alone'. He feels like the baby won't like him, he won't be able to bond, take the baby to see his family on a three hour one way journey without me, I'll be pushing him away because I'll be doing everything.

In some ways I see where he is coming from and have tried to reassure him that he can do other things like bath the baby, pass he baby to me in the night for me to feed then he could change and settle them back down etc.

it's getting no where it's stressing me out and im feeling aweful. nothing I say helps and the matter will get worse when baby arrives as his parents will jump on board expecting to take the child out for days and overnight. I've tried to explain that after a while and Bf is established could possibly express then they can do as they please and take it out for hours etc.

Sorry it's long and rambley but has anyone faced these issues and how did they work out. Is there anything you do to make it work? I'm sure it cannot be a horrid process or people would not chose to breatfeed.

Thanks for any help in advance

I really don't get this. Would he also like to give birth? Well, no, because he can't. He's the father. The mother gives birth. The mother also breastfeeds the baby. He does not have the equipment. Sure, he could feed the baby, but given that the mother has the milk, the equipment and the strong desire to feed the baby herself, why on earth would be want to?

Seriously, I think he sounds as if he has some problems that he needs to get through with you before the baby arrives. On the face of it, he sounds selfish and immature, but I'd not want to cast the first stone - parenthood does bring these things out in most of us at some point. Most people have flashes of 'but what about ME?' and it is entirely human - after all, your whole life is being turned upside-down. But if he's going into this with a me me attitude, you and he need to talk about it.

BF is perfect for keeping inlaws in check. I know mine tried to hog DD when they came to visit and my OH was no help as he told me to hand her over (after I told his father no when he demanded asked - apparently that was rude, but I was having a cuddle)

Seriously though... I hope you can get you OH to see your point of view. BF or bottlefed - baby is going to take up a lot of time that you usually had for one another. My OH is not really the jealous type but he struggled with the changes after baby.

I know I wouldn't have let OH push me into bottle-feeding as it would be me being the one making up feeds at 2am and going to bed half an hour later because I had to sterilize bottles and getting up earlier to make up the breakfast feed. I do love being able to just get her out of her cot in the morning and bringing her into bed for another half an hour while she feeds and I rest. Oh and remembering that BF babies are ill less often, it would be me who would be expected to take a day off work if she was poorly to look after her. Really worth taking on all that for the sake of the inlaws who (if I understand this correctly) weren't even excited when you told them your DC was on the way? Maybe I'm just selfish!

I've breastfed for 15mo and my DS has refused a bottle for all that time. Yet my DH has played an intensive, invaluable role for all that time. Without the three months that DS spent sleeping (well, a bit) on his father's chest for just one thing, we would all be up shit creek.

Also, the point of your partner taking paternity leave isn't just to bond with the baby. It's also to help look after you. If you are lucky, you will have a great birth. If not, like me, you will need a bit of hands-on care from your partner. So you can definitely reassure him that he will play a massive role in your child's life. And yours. You will be a family and everyone will have to help each other.

Good luck.

How are things, Toddle?

Hello sorry hadn't posted back been busy with horrendous sickness

Things are better ish. Dp is more with me then against me which is a huge relief. I think he still has reservations but guess we will see how it works out when the baby arrives.

I'm still getting comments from people including my mother now how 'oh I was looking forward to having baby while you recover and showing baby of', 'does that mean I can't have him/her overnight'. Lots of 'Oooh you can express'.

So is it me being 'hormonal' or is it normal for family etc to expect to have a newborn baby over night/all day. I think although I guess I won't truly know until I'm in the situation, that I wont want to be that far away from baby when him/her is so young? Regardless of how the baby is fed.

I work in a children's centre so we have breast feeding support ladies in and I have spoke to them who have been really informative. They kind of confirmed what I already expected that it's not as simple as expressing a huge amount of milk so parents can have baby overnight etc.

I wondered if anyone would mind sharing with me there sort of experience with how breast feeding went? Like how long they feed for and how long in between feeds? And if you tried how did expressing go so maybe I can give people some realistic expectations as I occasionally think they expect me to be milking like a cow or something.

Mammoth post but thank you so much for all of your thoughts

it is NOT normal for family to have a newborn overnight/all day. You need to tell them that they can help in other ways like making you a cup of tea!

My experience is that I have an 11 month old baby who has only ever been away from me for a maximum of 9 hours and I have left 2 bottles of expressed milk for him to have. He was 9 months old before I did that.

As a newborn my baby fed every 1 and a half to 2 hours, he would (if he could) now feed every 3 hours but since I returned to work he has been taking expressed milk from a cup.

No one ever pressured me to give him a bottle, infact we went from breast to cup but he is still mostly breastfed. You will probably have to re-educate people, particularly those who only ever bottle fed and will think that your baby should be on a 4 hour bottle feeding schedule!

Tell them you are feeding on demand, or 'feeding responsively' which is a nicer phrase I learned from mumsnet ... ie you are feeding the baby according to its needs and not trying to get it into any kind of feeding/sleeping routine yet.

I think you will just have to find your own way with the length of feeds atc as every baby is different. My baby would feed really quickly but quite often.

toddle I think you should stop worrying so much about making everyone else happy!

In my experience of BFing 2 babies, it is not plain sailing. The first weeks are hard work, and you will spend a lot of time on the sofa or on your bed feeding.
It is common for newborns (so up to about a month in age) to feed very frequently, every 1-2 hours, and for the feed to take time - but there is a whole range of 'normal' from 5-10 minutes to 45 minutes :)

I would tell all your family to back off, that you will be BFing. They will be very welcome to take the baby out for a walk in the pram while you nap, and they will be welcome in your home to make you cups of tea and cook the dinner while you feed and rest.
Once your baby is a bit older then you can express - if you want to - and leave the baby with your Mum or MIL or whoever.

But agree to nothing in advance - in all truth some women are unable to express, or unable to express enough to allow them to leave their baby for long. I didn't leave my DS1 overnight until I had stopped feeding him (when he was 2), and DS2 is only 8 months so I am feeding him and have been away from him for a few hours a couple of times but nothing more than that.

It is your baby, and BFing is a delicate process. You and your DP need to do some serious reading up, there is a website called kellymom.com which has great info.
Nothing is more likely to fuck BFing up, than family coming in and trying to ram a bottle down the baby at every opportunity and whisking it away from its mother.

Your baby, you are in charge. Tell them how they can be helpful in other ways.

Good luck!

my DD is 5 weeks and EBF. To begin with it was anywhere between 30 mins ans 2 hrs between feeds and each feed could last between 5-15 mins. I started expressing at 3 weeks but only because breastfeeding was going well and she took to that well- we were doing a bottle every other day. It was nice as it gave me a chance to have a long bath or walk the dogs.

Have had to stop expressing for now as 1. I have got a oversupply issue so I'm trying to persuade my boobs to make less milk not more., and 2. I seemed to get friction burns from the breast pump.
She now (and she is still super tiny) feeds every 2-4 hrs and is only away from me for an hour max and that is only with her Dad. Much as I love and trust MIL and my mum and they are welcome to love and hug here when I take her over to theirs, DD stays with me! Overnight is not an option for a long while!!!

Go along with it all. Then when baby arrives tell them that he/she won't take a bottle so can't be left. If you have a browse on this topic you'll see that is very common for BF babies. And true of my DS. I haven't left him for more than 3.5 hours yet - and that was with DH.

Think my DM was a bit upset about not being able to do an overnighter, especially as she had my ff niece very often from very early on. Then DDad let slip one day that she would never leave me or my brother with anyone when we were babies, so have that as ammo if she complains!

Thank you so much for your super quick replies

. Yeah I guess in the secret corner of my mind I think where feeding is concerned its my baby and they can all jog on me and baby come first but if I act like that's what I think now, people won't be happy. As me and dp's parents still aren't speaking I don't want to rock the boat too much for the time being. Hoping that when baby is here they will see the actual process and understand ( possibly deluded).

Posting from silly iPhone app so can't see who said it but yes even dp came out with the four hour feed thing and others that I was mean for not wanting baby to have a dummy as I'm lead to understand that can also lead to some confusion with sucking?

The health visitor I work with has selectively chosen a few leaflets to accidentally leave round places

Arghhhh that whole 'having them overnight' thing winds me up. I dont know how older women forget the wrench of having your baby away from you. Already my mil called this week to tell us of a theatre show my 3yr old dd would like and dont worry she'll look after my newborn that will be about 8 weeks. Dh asked mil how, was she planning on lactating?

My dd is 3 and she's stayed at each grandparents once each. She's very clingy and a terrible sleeper. I breastfed for 6 months and wanted to do more but she learned to crawl and kept climbing off! Anyway, i fed 2 hourly for those 6 months. I had a bad time with dd putting on weight and had lots of posts here begging for help. I pumped at night to boost my supply and still only ever got 1oz at a time which i had to give to dd to help her weight so never enough to accumulate for a babysitting favour!

My mil and mum both had issue, after 6 weeks they were asking 'are you still feeding that baby'. I had a lot of pressure to wean early and to try bottles purely because they all wanted to takeover and feel wanted. Because i was desperate to keep feeding, when i did switch to formula i still insisted on doing it as it was my special time with dd.

Many a time dd was crying and mil would take her into the garden away from me whilst my let down kicked in.

With dc2, im going in far more assertive. There are no guarantees with a baby, the best laid plans etc fall by the wayside. I'm ready to tell everyone to do one because having learned with dd, that time is special and flies past. Everyone else will get their turn with dc's over the coming years but breastfeeding is a snapshot in time. Enjoy it. Be selfish as you need to be.

OH I always feel so lucky when I read these kinds of posts. Both my MIL and my mum have been very supportive of breastfeeding. They both did so themselves. DH's gran was apparently not keen when her daughter (My MIL) breastfed and kept telling her to stop! It helps to have a husband on your side too so hopefully those leaflets will give him some clues about how breastfeeding works and why it's good for the baby.

Toddle, when my DS was born, I found it hard to leave him for a moment, let alone a night. I felt like we were one person rather than two (well, we had been!) and I was so highly attuned to his needs.

Also, he didn't feed every four hours. Or even two hours. For the first three months, he fed in 40 minute bursts every 90 minutes! And some evenings I would stick him on the boob at 6pm and he would have the gall to scream when I wanted a quick pee at 10pm.

Luckily both my mum and MIL breastfed and said encouraging things. The odd ignorant relative in my DH's family remarked that it was sad for my MIL not to have her grandson more "because you can't let him be away from you" () but MIL herself always said "he's a breastfed baby who loves his mum - that's normal".

DS also refused bottles, so the experience for any grandparent getting him overnight would be a distressed baby vomiting down himself with anger. Yes, the last two times either my mum or MIL have had him just for the evening, they have actually BROUGHT HIM BACK as he is in such a state. (Disclaimer: he is otherwise normal and goes nicely to nursery and is very, very sociable.)

So maybe you will want family to have your baby overnight at some stage, but if not, that's fine too. It seems to me that you are approaching this whole thing with reasonable expectations and your head screwed on, whereas frankly everyone else seems to have lost their minds.

YY, be selfish! It sounds like you're getting some lovely support from your co-workers :) It's fine and perfectly normal to not want to be separated from your baby (especially a newborn!) so don't think that you are being unreasonable for not letting your family take your baby so you can rest- there are plenty of other things they can do if they want to help.

Glad your DP is more onside now.

Having a baby makes you more aware of putting your own priorities first if it doesn't make you aware of anything else.
Tell your family to back off.
Its not normal for them to expect to have little one, at least not suggesting to whilst you're still bloody pregnant.
Your little ones long term health vs them getting to give a bottle every now and again? Really.
You are in the right here. But I do think you need to find out what breastfeeding support is around you in advance, because if there are any difficulties at all, it sounds like you won't get much support.

Yes eaurouge has it nailed when says there are other ways to help. Everyone used to say to me 'i'll give you a break, i'll have the baby' drove me mental. I didnt want or need a break from my baby. I needed a break from tje house, chores, cooking, appointments, constant bloody visits. The one thing i did want was more time to just adore my lovely baby!

"I felt like we were one person rather than two (well, we had been!)"

Human babies are born very, very early into their gestation. You may have heard the phrase "9 months in, 9 months out". Humans have to be born desperately premature to be able to pass their large heads through the birth canal. Thereafter they continue their development to the point where they can survive as a separate individual as a mother-baby dyad. Essentially, you remain one person.

The only way that this dyad can be physically broken is with the introduction of non-breast-feeding (expressed milk or formula). Yet babies need and expect to be with one or two care givers almost all the time and will become stressed without being next to the person that they understand the smell of, and whose voice they have heard most in utero (mum, and also usually dad).

Formula feeding per se doesn't break the closeness between mother and baby (although it has other risks of course) provided that it's done in a way that retains that connection, but to formula feed specifically in order to break it will certainly have negative effects on both the baby and mother.

Expressing for the same reason is tough. Breastfeeding can be hard going to start with (usually becoming beautifully easy in time) and anyone saying you can just express so they can have the baby overnight has no idea at all about what that would entail. Not only the hassle of expressing, but the risk to you of mastitis and also messing up your milk supply.

I am always massively bemused by people who think it is reasonable to take another women's newborn baby away from her for extended periods to look after it. It's not a bloody doll FFS.

I think you need to get firm with your mum and MIL now. Make it clear that you will not be relinquishing care of your newborn baby. Don't worry about offending them. If they manage to bully you into letting them have your newborn overnight, it will probably be the end of bf. BF in the early days requires 24/7 full on commitment, not bringing you the baby from time to time. If they really want to help, show them where the hoover and iron are.

I really hope your DP has realised that none of this is about him and to put himself into competition with a newborn baby is sort of, well, sad and sick! You can tell him I said so!

Good luck with it all. Get the bf ladies at the surestart centre on your side and it might also be worth having a word with your midwife to see if there is any more support available.

Remember they have many years to enjoy the grandchild. Breastfeeding is such a very very short period of their life. If it all goes well, it's 6mo exclusive breastfeeding, and then a slow ramp down of milk over the next half year.

At the risk of being lambasted by other posters on this thread, some of whom seem to think bf is the only way, and that the OP's DP is a selfish pig, this is what I think...
Your DP is sensitive and overawed by the prospect of a newborn baby. He is feeling like he will be superfluous to requirements (which a lot of fathers feel) and probably a little bit scared he will no longer be the centre of your attention. This is why he is making noises about bf. However, until your baby is born it is impossible to know what life will be like for you as a couple, or you as parents. As for the bf, go with the flow (pardon the pun). I was intent on bf my dc1, and I had an awful time of it and was very inept/ill/miserable doing it, I won't bore with details. I bf my Dc2 for 3 days. Both children are absolutely fine and our bond is as strong as it is possible to be. My DH wanted me to bf, but understood why I had to stop. This does not make me a Bad Mother.
As for your DP's parents... It sounds to me that they want to help you, and offering to take the baby for a time is their way of doing it. They are trying to be kind, not hijack your bf plans, or bonding.
I reckon you should just try to relax, don't let all this stress you out, and remember, YOU are the Mummy, you are the boss of this baby and everything to do with it. In the early days it is ultimately your decision who feeds it, and who cares for it.
Sorry for long post.

Superene The point is that the OP wants to breastfeed, not that posters are saying that BFing is the only way.

No one has said that formula feeding mothers are bad mothers so please don't bring that old chestnut into the equation. I find it quite hard to hear those sorts of phrases as if by trying to support breastfeeding one is therefore opposed to FF, or by explaining about the way that BFing workss by default that FF mothers can't bond. This just isn't the case.

It is perfectly possible to bond just as strongly as a FF mother, provided FF is done in a way which encourages that bond. It is not ok to separate a mother from her baby against her wishes just because the Grandparents want to spend time with the baby. If a family member or friend truly wants to help the mother then they must find out what the mother wants. If that's a break - that's fine. If it's for house chores to be done, that's what should be done.