Breastfeeding myths overheard in hospital

[hunkermunker]

Woman in the bed next to me was bottlefeeding because she "couldn't be arsed to breastfeed, and they're more settled on a bottle, innit". Er, yours wasn't, love - he cried, you snored through it. And as for the method of getting your newborn baby to take a bottle that your partner had discovered... Heard her telling her mum and dad as if it was hilarious that her DP had said "Finish the fucking bottle, then" and he'd drunk it

Woman in bed opposite me was told to "put the baby to the breast and leave him there as long as it took. It might be two hours. Just let him suck". Well, OK, but might've been nice to actually show her what to do, as she had no idea. Baby had a bottle in his mouth the next morning

Woman who was in the bed after woman opposite left said, "My milk isn't in yet, so I've been giving him bottles until it is". Instead of being told, "Just let him feed, you have colostrum, which is all he needs, your milk will be in soon, I'll help you if you need it" she was asked which formula she wanted

And today I've been told to only offer one breast at each feed and since I had DS2, they've asked me how often he's feeding - am I trying to get him to go three-hourly? Er, no, he's had low blood sugar. Nobody has mentioned feeding on demand to establish supply.

Am and and

I'm new to this section of MN and hope that you don't mind me adding my experience. Trying to get a bit more information about BF ready for number 2.

DS born in George Eliot Nuneaton, was given no support for BF and when I asked for help with latching the ward assistants (not sure what their proper titles are) just grabbed DS head and my breast and shoved his face into it - not helpful! Had a bit of a problem after delivery and ended up having a blood transfusion, over night - so ended up with drips in both arms and blood pressure monitor on as well and trying to breast feed - needless to say ended up in tears me and DS and no help.

Had very sore cracked and bleeding nipples and all the MW's /HV's said (in and out of hospital) was well I'm amazed your still trying . Asked an NCT BFC to come round and she just sat and ate the lunch she'd brought for herself and her DS!

Think I need to read this section end to end.

Just looked it up on mear's link and it has had it's 'accreditation suspended'

According to that link, 0% of births in Essex (including Harlow) occur in a baby friendly environment, but lots of us still had positive experiences.

Jackstini

I had dd at Nottingham City 7 months ago. I had real problems getting her to latch as it was the hottest week of the year and all the babies were very sleepy - she was also very mucousy. MWs were willing to come and try to help latch her whenever she woke, but with no success for 27 hours . A nursing assistant then decided that she thought dd should have formula , but 2 young (but very pro breastfeeding) midwives supported me when I said no, helped me express colostrum all day (at one point they were literally hand expressing for me into a syringe), and finally at 11pm on the second night an experienced older midwife came to help us latch, wrangled the boob in and she latched on (dd not the mw obviously ). The support is definately there if you ask for it and in all our ante natal classes there, they were very pro breastfeeding. I was just so grateful to the mws who helped us.

They would also take her to the nursery to give me a rest at night, so I could bung in some earplugs, to shut out other noises on the ward (I asked them to bring her to me if she woke for a feed). But you have to ask!
Oh the baby massage classes they offer are worth finding out about too. I did them and I still massage dd at bedtime .

The food is really ropey, so if you are staying in get plenty of fruit, biscuits etc to snack on.

Good Luck!

Hmmm... The hospital I gave birth in has "Full Accreditation"... althought from the 'what to expect' list I can see that they missed out quite a few points with me!

My hospital wasn't bad but wasn't great either. Although midwives wanted to help, when you buzzed to ask if they could help you they would say "give me a few minutes" and never appear. You would give them a shout again in half an hour and they would say the same. After almost an hour, I used to just give it a shot myself and 'wing it!'. They would eventually come, take a brief look at the latch and say "You're doing well". So how, come my nipples were cracked and bleeding??? Thank goodness for mumsnet and kellymom when I got home!

Other things they 'failed' on were after he was born, I was given skin to skin with DS and he had a sort of feed. I was then rushed to get a shower and shoved on the ward abandonded by DH (was the middle of the night and he wasn't allowed in) and left pretty clueless about what I should be doing and when I should be feeding next etc. I was also encouraged to lay my DS in his cot to sleep. So we didn't have much skin to skin until we came home and I relised the importance of it while surfing MN.

When I had dd (now 4) I was given no support. the first mw I consulted told me that my breasts were too big so the milk may not come in due to having such a long way to travel. The second told me that it was because my nipples are inverted that I wouldn't be able to feed her. No mention was made of expressing.

I had ds (4mnths) at the same hospital but I told them that I had problems last time and that I wanted to feed the baby myself even if I had to express. Their lactation consultant came to see me and although she said it would be difficult due to size, inverssion and the fact that I have an underactive thyroid it is possible. She spent over an hour with me trying to teach me how to get him to latch on, she also lent me an electric breast pump to use at home. I expressed for 12 weeks and had to top up with formula as it was very painful for me and I was ocassionally getting bright red milk. Although this wasn't perfect I feel that they helped me to give him the best start I could.

I have mentioned on many occasions the lovely MWs in Ysbyty Gwynedd Bangor (and will again!)
Community MWs are also fantastic-most are bfcs as well andwill never forget one coming by (with bed hair!)one very early Sunday mornig about 15 mins after I paged her,at my lowest ebb .

I realise that some people have had fantastic experiences with their hospitals, and I in no way wished to tar all MWs with the same brush, but the overwhelming feeling from this thread is that the UK could be doing MUCH better at supporting bfeeding.

Magazines cover "how to" breastfeed - they all assume a placid newborn with a big enough mouth, who will "gape" on demand. The reality is much different.

Aloha, I agree - this thread makes me want to sob. You mention a feature - what is needed for this and who would run it, do you think? I'm happy to go into norkfrenzy and be all quotable for anyone who wants to write it

I am going to write to my (pro-bf) MP and ask him what he's going to do about it. Anyone else want to join me on doing that?

At the moment, the Government and too many health professionals pay lip service to the idea that breast is best. And they're perpetuating so many myths that things will never get better.

Just as an aside, are the NCT, ABM, BFN and LLL friendly enough with one another to do something together to sort this out? I'm sure I'm not asking that in the right way, but I have a five day old baby and I'm pretty impressed I'm upright

Yes quite HM.
Good experiences stand out by dint of their rarity don't they??

id happily convey my experiences too.

HM i was just going to do a shout for you

Hunker - are there any peer support initiatives in your area? That is where experienced B/F mums are available to help at workshops or be on hand to assist new mums continue feeding? IME, you can write as many letters as you like with no real effect. Real mums breastfeeding and helping new mums and midwives increase breastfeeding rates more effectively.

Wait till you have got over the birth though

peer support in my health board area

Mears, I'll have a look - I'm livid that my hospital hasn't done anything to rectify their support since DS1 was born in 2004. Bloody posters indeed...

Will still write letters though

I completely by-passed all this ignorance because my midwives very totally switched on.
I had no idea there was such bad advice being routinely given in hospitals.
Truly shocking and infuriating.

hunker - I think there are a lot of NCT, LLL, ABM and BfN people who do huge amounts to address the issue of support in hospital. I know many of us are on breastfeeding steering groups. training initiatives, and all sorts, but you have to remember you are talking about a few hundred people, all of them volunteers, and almost all of them with their own jobs, children, and indeed breastfeeding support work with individual mothers. They punch above their weight, when it comes to changing the reality of bf support, and they all work, to a degree, at national level with the department of health and the professional organisations. But they are limited.

I think the change may come from mothers making their feelings known. Out of all the dreadful stories here, how many have been made known to the maternity units involved? Very few. I have said this before: what is the point of moaning to a forum like mumsnet about these experiences if you don't also put your experiences down in writing to those who are in a position to change them for you next time, or the next person? I think good experiences should be written about too!
You did a great job last time in complainiing and I hope you'll do the same this time.

I hope others will copy you!

The problem is tiktok, that at the time, when you are exhausted, in desperate need of rest, not sure about what you can and cant do (lots of women have never been in hospital before having a baby) have no idea what the "rules" are, and rely on the mw and staff to advise them appropriately.

Its only when they come on an excellent forum such as MN, that they find out some aspects of their care and advice given were seriously amiss. At that point its felt that its too late to complain.

Tiktok, I know that bfeeding counsellors do loads of good stuff - and thank goodness they exist at all.

I will indeed write to my maternity unit again and go in to speak to them as well.

I totally agree that chatting on a forum like this isn't going to change things unless the people in the mat units take note of it, but feeding is SO emotive that it can be really hard to go back - if I'd not succeeded to breastfeed DS1 despite the lack of support I got, I am not sure I'd have felt up to going back to complain as I'd have been too upset (and too busy trying to convince myself that it really didn't matter).

I know both those points: that it can feel too late to complain, and it can also feel too emotional (when people around you are telling you it doesnt matter and to leave it and what's wrong with the bottle and for goodness sake, blah blah blah).....but there are people to whom those things happened within the past year or so, and people who are cross, not emotional.

I wish all those people would write!

Yes, so do I, Tiktok!

tittok - very good point. I do actually moan to the relevant people as well. So here goes:

I would like to say that I also had minimal advice or the wrong kind of advice from an NCT adviser over the telephone when my son was only 3 days old and had not managed to latch properly since birth.

NO one, and I mean absolutely NO one I spoke to suggested doing what hunkermunker had enough knowledge and experience to do for her son, which is to hand express colostrum and feed DS by spoon or syringe. The important thing is that a newborn should be fed and if you refuse to give formula like me, but the baby is NOT latching for 4 days, then someone should have told me my son is in danger of dehydration so something even worse. Thank godness it was a friend who helped me with positioning on the 4th day and my milk was in by then and my beautiful son finally managed to get the hang of latching, a few minutes at a time at first, but very soon doing 15 - 20 minute feeds on demand.

My son was born at the Edgware Birth Centre which is a wonderful place to give birth, their midwives are VERY encouraging of bf, but with hindsight I think they did not give me correct advice either. If I had known about expressing colostrum my son, my DH and I would have had many more beautiful hours together in the first days after his birth, instead of my son being so distressed and me breaking down in tears every few minutes because he wasn't latching.

In the end it was my own determination and my experienced friend who saved the day. I am now still bf-ing my 19 month old son and will do so until HE wants to stop, I am totally opposed to formula feeding where it is not medically necessary, I am an active member of LLL and BMA.

I still look back on the first few days of his life with a lot of anger and regret...because it could have been so much easier for both of us given the right info. and proper support.

Oooh all this makes me cross! After ds1 12 yrs ago, I got no help with feeding at all ( he was born after I'd had no sleep for about 40hrs, terrible episiotomy stitches (were too tight etc). After 36hrs i came home with bleeding nipples ("oh just be careful") (?), after about 6w I got mastitis - advice was "just wean him , he doesn't need your milk any more "...

I was so appalled by all this it, luckily, made me all the more determined to continue. I managed to nip the next bout of mastitis in the bud, so to speak, then went on to trouble free breastfeeding until he was nearly 1. Then he self weaned.

I bf my next 3 with no trouble whatsoever. I've spent about 4 years of my life with a lo latched to a nipple ! But in those grim early days I'd never have believed this to be possible.
Hang on in there if you're having difficulties.

No-one said anything to me in hospital that I haven't since found to be totally correct. I had my own room so I didn't hear anyone else's advice.

I have heard some secondhand corkers like "I had plenty of milk, it just wasn't very good quality". But they are from people who are already bottlefeeding and so I think the actual conversation could have been remembered a little differently than it happened.

The JR in Oxford has some superb stuff for bf including Chloe Fisher and Sally Inch at the bf clinic (not that they're paid for doing it mind you) - also Tammy in the paediatric ward - also the mws in the postnatal ward were helpful, and I've heard some good things about mws on the delivery ward. BUT overnight in the Observation Area, where anybody who had any form of major anaesthetic will spend the first night -

[MW twitches open my curtain and stands 6 feet away observing my extremely amateur efforts to get a latch]
MW: Are you finding that painful?
AB: Yes
MW: Well, he senses you're finding it difficult and it's stopping the milk coming in
[MW walks away]

I haven't read the WHOLE thread yet!! But will catch up in a mo!

Just had to tell you what was said to me when I had DS3 Being very determined to BF fully this time, I was very stubborn. It turned out I was the only B/Fing mum on the entire post natal unit . A midwife came to see me the morning after DS was born and said to me "your the one who is breastfeeding aren't you?". I said yes and she asked how it was going, to which I replied "its going really well!" I was absolutely stunned when she then said to me "well, when it doesn't, the bottle are over there" Thak s for the vote of confidence and its great to see you are supportive of B/Fing mums!!

Right, off to read all your posts......

Can't believe the ignorance. What do these people thing mothers did before bottles were invented?