Partner support the most importantt factor in influencing mothers' decision to breast feed

[popsycalindisguise]

here

Interesting that "Breastfeeding orientation provided by doctors, nurses, and nutritionists was not associated with the maternal decision to breastfeed."

discuss

THe Scottish Exec I think did try an initiative to educate blokes on the benefits of breastfeeding a few years ago. But IMO the bottle-feeding culture is so ingrained up here that most women don't even consider giving b/f a go let alone being pressured out of it after the fact by their families.

My mum was a university educated women when I was born and even in the 70s it was known the breastfeeding was good for baby but she never even contemplated b/f and said it was for women who didn't know how to make up a feed properly and hygenically

When my cousin was born in the 80s I remember my aunt b/f at a family do and being encouraged to leave the room by all the menfolk. In the end the men moved rooms hurumphing and protesting that they "didn't need to see that" etc. I was only 8 and assumed that it was my aunt who was being v selfish.

Even now b/f child n0.2, my dad always asks "When are you going to stop feeding my grandaughter like that" - admittedly with a smile - but I guess it betrays the underlying thought that b/f is really wrong. He's an intelligent university educated man too.

The whole society needs to unlearn the wrong info from the 60s and 70s. If we just educate the new mums that breastfeeding is an option, only the ones able to stand up to their families will carry on or even attempt it. Or it will become the exclusive domain of better educated women (if not that way almost already) and other mums may dismiss b/f as being for the "rich" or "posh".

I'm basing all this on overheard conversations at antenatal classes and appointments in the centre of Glasgow.

However, where I actually live is rural and very affluent. Most mums have been to college or uni. At the mums and toddlers group I go to - all the mums b/f apart from the ones who had health issues which forced them to stop.

I was the first of my generation in my family to have a baby - ds is now 19. Dh was hugely supportive even though he wasn't aware of any of his family bf. My dad was a little uncomfortable with me bf in front of him, but when I (in my naivety!) offered to leave the room, he said not likely, ds was part of the family. My grandad - then 86 - sat there smiling and nodding all the time.
Dad now has 10 grandchildren - not all mine - and he's seen all of them bf. The shortest for 3 months and the longest for about 15 months. He's not in the least uncomfortable any more!

zebra - it is obvious I guess but as the most important factor?

it also says that medical opinion (vaguely paraphrased there) has no effect

Dp wasn't overly bothered to start with. A few times when I said I was finding it hard he told me we could bottle feed if I wanted. Also he felt he was missing out a bit with not being able to feed DS. He said about the bottle as a way of being kind though IYSWIM and my reaction just made me all the more keen to continue. After a while I think he was proud that I BF DS and was always very supportive with public feeding etc.

Also it has been interesting (wrong word really but I hope YKWIM) seeing his nephew who was not BF has unfortunately not been in the best of health, bad athsma and recurrent ear infections, the latter which I think are proven linked to bottle feeding. He's had frequent hospital admissions, not helped by Mummy and Daddy (before they split) smoking.

DH has always been quietly supportive in a similar way to your dh, flossam. It made me determined to carry on

yeah I do think it is obviously likely to be a very important factor, if not the most important factor ; no one else is physically there when it's going bad; the midwife is only part of your life for a month after birth & the HV annoys you most of the time when you do see her. Society often frowns no matter how you feed the baby, so of course your partner's attitude has tremendous influence.

I think parents and siblings are really crucial too.

I had a friend BF-ed up to 5.5 months and am pretty certain the reasons she even did it for this long was peer encouragement. She had been to our NCT antenatal and the 2 women she had become friends with (myself and another who are "boob mad" and still feeding at 19 months).

In the end she gave in to some stupid advice from a doctor in Vienna not to BF when she had a cold !

The thing that put her off most was the attitude of her mother, I think. I rememebr the mother coming up to me once looking at my excl. BF son, a very chubby 2 month old at the time, and saying "how do you know he is getting enough if it's not coming out of a bottle" and I thought poor girl she isn't getting any support from her own mother.

Also her DH was dead against co-sleeping (not necessary for BF of course), but I got the general impression poor girl was under pressure from entire family to give up.

popsy(etc.) - that presumably means "the most important factor out of those included in this study" - i.e. more important than prenatal class attendance, breastfeeding support or breastfeeding orientation.

yes
that is what I was thinking.....

haven't read whole thread, but totally agree family & friends are important factors. I was a single mum from the off and stayed the first 7 weeks at my parents'. They did absolutely everything for me while I spent what seemed like every minute of the day b'feeding. I couldn't've done it if I had been on my own or with a partner who went to work. Plus, my mum b'fed me so she knew how hard it was at the beginning and was very reassuring about how it would settle down and get easier.

nanneh, my friend is a nanny so only obviously has experience of bottle fed babies, and she frequently said the same thing: "What would worry me is, how do you know they're getting enough?" Actually tbh that always worried me too esp as dd fed so frequently, but bf is entirely different bottle feeding.
As someone who exclusively bf i often wonder, "how do you cope if baby has had all the bottles he should and is STILL crying and hungry? It was wonderful to be able to just put dd to the breast to comfort her/put her to sleep/etc without worrying about over feeding.

Smellen, people are influenced by the media and I think that if seeing breastfeeding on t.v etc was the norm then there would be less opposition to it. Breastfeeding wasn't as promoted or dare I say it fashionable in the 60's and 70's so many grandmothers of today are ignorant of the process and the benefits and as others have pointed out those close to you do need to be 100% for feeding. Maybe we need another thread running on where people can remember seeing breastfeeding in magazines, t.v etc

bouneville - you are right babies need the boob for comfort and warmth too, a difficult concept to someone who isn't pro-BF.

My answer to "how do you know they get enough" is a bit arsey and technical, but it is also true: if the baby is gaining weight, is happy and alert and healthy, he is getting enough !

Rachel bfed in Friends (tho only showed the expressed milk in a bottle) can't think of another example.

It does seem that breast feeding is the preserve of the middle classes (from a prog on R4 recently). Possibly because the more education and wider outlook you have the less you are likely to be influenced by others on issues like this. Personally, I didn't once consider my partner in my decision to bf (poor bloke) but was influenced hugely by my mum who bfed my brother and I as babies.

Message deleted

nanneh, but who says whether they are gaining weight? I had horrible HV with stupid graph who said dd wasn't gaining weight enough and that i should cut down the bf to get her to eat more solids. It resulted in me being panicky around food for a while, as well as wondering if my milk was substantial enough, but looking back i shouldn't've listened to them and gone with my instincts - I knew dd was happy & healthy and just finding her own natural weight.

My dh has always been very supportive of me bf but think that has something to do with the fact that he doesn't have to feed then!
It has always fascinated him when i'm feeding, not in a weird way though. My mum bf 3 of us and my granny also bf all 5 of hers, neither were university educated but both very intelligent women.
So i do think you need the support from them unless you are a very strong minded/willed person.
I made sure my ds{4} has seen me bf both his sisters and try to make sure its just a very normal thing to do.

I've also had the "how do you know how much thet're getting?" and I think its pretty obvious, if the baby is content, sleeping and growing then its not starving is it?!!
My cousin recently said "Oh, I've just heard too many horror stories about it" ?????
She doesn't have any kids.

BV - yes HV's are a complete waste of time when it comes to weight and exclusively BF babies.

I stopped worrying about weight when I looked at the WHO charts on kellymom.com. These are a bit old, but based on babies exclsively BF for at least 6 months and then BF-until the age of 1. So much more accurate.

When I told my HV the "Red Book" NHS charts are out of date and no good to a breastfeeding mother and then showed her my copy of the WHO chart, she looked at me like I was a nutter (which I am !!)

I stopped weighing my son at the baby clinic when he was about 2 months old. He was gaining well, but at some stage I knew I would get a bollocking from said HV, so I bought baby scales and have been weighing him at home for past 17 months !

We need to get women to trust their own instincts and stop worrying about those bloody NHS charts.

My dh's support has been crucial in continuing breastfeeding ds (17 weeks old). I would've given up weeks ago if it wasn't for his support, especially when I've had
"Do you think he's getting enough"
"I'd have had him on a bottle by now"
"Isn't he sleeping through yet. He'll be better when he's on solids"
from various friends and relatives.

Strangely my mum and dad who haven't come across breastfeeding before had no problem with me feeding in front of them(or they never let on if they did have a problem), bit MIL (whose own daughter bf) walked in on me feeding in the living room said "ooo" and disappeared to make cups of tea. Maybe it was because SIL always disappeared to a bedroom to do it. {shrug}

Can I raise a point here? While pregnant with my first, I was told emphatically by someone who had breast fed -

"Don't bother, it hurts, it's a nightmare hassle, you can't do anything, you get no sleep and you can never leave the baby with anyone for more than an hour."

I was told by my friend, about her neighbour, who was breastfeeding a toddler -

"She says she wishes she'd never done it, he won't leave her alone for 5 minutes, he screams if she doesn't let him, she says she could really hurt him sometimes because she never gets a second to herself. I've heard her screaming at him through the walls."

From my own mother, when I told her I was considering it -

"Oh Jesus, what the hell for? I tried with you, you did nothing but scream, the midwives were bullying me, until one nice one came round when you were 3 weeks old and told me I could give you a bottle if I wanted. You shut up immediately, and I handed you to your dad for the rest of the night."

There are a lot more negative experiences of breastfeeding than people seem prepared to admit to. It's all very well midwives saying how wonderful breastfeeding is, but we all know that they are supposed to say that. We aren't going to get honest opinions from them. Whereas friends and family are honest, all the above are honest accounts from people that I know personally and closely. Nobody I spoke to, bar health professionals, had anything good to say about breastfeeding.

This of course impacted majorly on my decision about how to feed. I chose the bottle, because nobody I knew had told me anything positive about breastfeeding, and it sounded at the time like a nightmare I did not need. Yes, it was a selfish way to make a decision, but then I think a lot of decisions are selfish.

yes I agree colditz
personal experiences are by far the most inflential in this type of decision making

so it is not just educating parents to be - its everyone.
as someone said earlier, start young

colditz - I think it's the same thing as with good/bad customer service. If you have a good experience you typically don't tell anyone, while if you have a bad experience you tell (on average) 12 other people. I suspect the same is true for bf (although probably more than 12...).

From a large enough sample size of bf mothers I think the overwhelming majority of the experiences would be positive (even if not a bed of roses from start to finish) but I suspect many women in the UK either (a) don't get exposed to a large enough sample of bf mothers, so that a few negative experiences can take on too much significance, or (b) get exposed to a large enough sample but only hear the negative experiences (with the same result).