Breastfeeding - a contentious rant!

[jenbird]

I may get flamed for this post but here goes:

I am very pro choice when it comes to breastfeeding. I have breastfed all 3 of my babies and I plan on doing the same with this one. However I would never say just because that is my choice it is right for everyone. I understand that different people have different needs and that actually although nutritionally BF may be best if it is making the mother incredibly anxious or miserable then I believe it is not necessarily the best thing for that mother or baby.
What I do hate though is people who say "I just didn't have enough milk" when actually what they mean is "I tried breastfeeding for 2 days, I didn't like it, it didn't work for me and I have decided to bottle feed".
This has happened very recently in my life. A very good friend said she couldn't feed her baby as she didn't have any milk. The reality was that the baby was unsettled a lot and she wasn't sure what to do. Her mother said she "needed" a bottle so she went with that. Her baby is sleeping pretty well at night now and all is fine.
Breastfeeding your first can be really hard work. It hurts, it comes with a huge uncertainty and you seem to spend an inordinate amount of your time feeding but it does have it's rewards too and once you get going it is far easier.
I just hate those flippant comments about not having any milk when actually it is just about choice. Don't devalue the effort I put in just because you didn't want to go down that path.

I obviously can't say this to my friend in RL so I bite my tongue.

Rant over. Hope I don't offend anyone. If I do blame it on crazy lady hormones!

Thank you duelling, I appreciate that. I just wish people would think before making assumptions. It's great you got to see your DS so quickly and establish bf-ing. I am envious of you tbh. I didn't see my son for the best part of a week. I saw pictures of him and was given a pump. It wasn't ideal, but we were both too ill to be in a room together to establish bf-ing. If I'm meant to be able to pop a baby out without pain relief and without injury, then I've screwed up on both fronts. I didn't bf my baby. I had a failed crash section and a forceps vaginal delivery. I will take myself away to baby mummy prison immediately.

I don't want to list all the people I know who FF and criticise them online as I have been busted once already by someone who kindly passed on my posts to the person I had posted about (not about feeding) and caused all sorts of shit, plus I don't want to upset anyone.

On one extreme end of the scale I know someone who did a catsbum face when talking about how she would feed her baby (To be fair someone else asked her 'will you be breastfeeding?' which I thought was quite a rude question to be asking a pregnant woman) and who didn't ever intend to breastfeed. I do not understand why she just wasn't prepared to give it a go and believe this decision was based upon the fact that she found it distasteful and icky.

I find that odd. I didn't say so however.

I'd pity any health care professional trying to educate me about breastfeeding. It wouldn't be pretty. It's a convenient myth that women not breastfeeding is due to lack of education. Real women are rather more awkward than dim. Why not simply support those who want to do it and leave those who don't (for whatever reason) in peace? Ironically enough that might also actually work to increase bfing rates because more women might find it easier and tell their positive stories about it to others rather than horror stories of neglect and confusion. But of course that won't happen because it wouldn't help anyone to feel superior about their mothering which is the real purpose of this 'education'.

I hope you don't feel you have failed in any way now Wednesday.

I had severe complications after birth back in a week after for week or two. There were latch issues I was ill bleeding and in a tremendous amount of pain bleeding profusely driving myself mad and trying to pump. Medication eventually ruled it out.

One thing I have taken from it is that if I am ill like that again I will concentrate on getting well and not put myself my family or the baby through acting like that again.

I can't even imagine to have the baby ill whilst recovering from a birth like that either you poor thing.

"just to be "clear" I am not calling all FF feeding mothers "selfish".
I think it's all been "taken" a bit out of "context""

You said:

"I just think choosing not to give your child the best thing for it and deciding to give them something else which is not as good for them is a selfish decision."

I don't think anyone is disagreeing that it's a selfish decision, Duelling- just making the point that parents make selfish decisions every day and to do so is completely normal- ergo, to label FF as a selfish decision is somewhat irrelevant and inflammatory, and does nothing to increase the rate of BFing.

It's perfectly possible (in fact, necessary) to make a number of these selfish decisions and be an excellent parent. Which makes me wonder why you mentioned it in the first place?

Sioda

And Sioda, I am deadly serious. Let's elope.

"I didn't bf my baby. I had a failed crash section and a forceps vaginal delivery. I will take myself away to baby mummy prison immediately."

Don't worry, Wednesday, I had TWO elcs and have never even felt a contraction and FF BOTH babies. I win!

I mentioned it in the first place because I was responding to someone else who had mentioned the word Selfish "I agree there's no point me going up to someone who is FF and telling them they are selfish." then I did say that I agreed with another post I had seen where someone had thought it selfish, or that it was putting their own needs before the baby. Can't find the post I mean (The one I was responding to) but that's the reason I used that word.

Tethers I reckon to make a decision you feel for whatever reason is the best thing for you & your family isn't particularly selfish.

Maybe if you did it purely because you wanted to prop feed and cane special brew, but that's a mini mini minuscule of people.

It's tragic all the guilt tripping that goes on.

I had a epidural and felt that it was all my fault I had complications.

I've got a grip now though.

The use of "" is because these discussions are absolutely rife with euphemisms and attempts to manipulate people through clever framing and it's an abuse of the English language. For example, 'education' in a breastfeeding conversation has very little to do with the meaning of that term in any other context. Naturalness and normality, risks and benefits likewise are used in this context to manipulate. I should say that that's not usually the intention of those who use them of course They're usually just repeating what they've heard or read elsewhere. But those terms were and are chosen deliberately by breastfeeding advocates and organisations for the specific purpose of manipulating the debate. I abhor that, hence the overuse of "".

I am a trained bf peer supporter and we were told very clearly on our course that our job was to support women who chose to breastfeed, not to brow beat women who chose to ff for whatever reason (whether or not they had also been bf-ing).
Some of the people in my class had great difficulty understanding / accepting this. I hope that they got it in the end and are not out there making ff-ing mothers miserable.

However I think it is very important to note that while individuals might be judgey about bfing, you can safely discount them (easier said than done). It's as irrelevant as the neighbour not liking what you have planted in the flower beds - they can have their opinion, they may even be rude enough to tell you what it is, but so what?
Breastfeeding support is not supposed to make people feel bad about ff-ing, and if it is, they are doing it wrong.

well then I apologise that "we" came over as a euphemism. I didn't mean anything other than "I don't, as I said, think we should force women into doing it though". Apologies if it came across as some kind of clever use of the English language - I am flattered

Pickles Thanks. Fortunately, my son and I are physically okay now. He had to be resuscitated and had a severe swelling on his skull which made them reluctant to move him. I still feel guilty and I expect I will carry that around for quite some time. I feel I failed at the two things I should have been able to do: give birth and feed my son. I'm sorry to hear you had such a bad time. I would be the same as you though, I would give up bf-ing to concentrate on recovery. I was no use to anyone in that state.

tethers Gutted. There's always one who has to go and beat you...

that is really interesting Vezzie, maybe the problem is that most Midwives are not given the same kind of training as you had and so they are making women feel like failures. Couple this with them also not knowing very much about proper latch and so on it must be part of the reason why breastfeeding rates are so low.

I really do think that getting the support in hospital and in the first few days is vital. I didn't make it to my local breastfeeding group until my son was over 6 weeks, luckily I had been given some great help and had managed to fight off the offer of bottles of formula and top-ups. DS came home from hospital on bottles of expressed milk with the occasional breastfeed (when I could visit him in hospital) but within days (partly because of Mumsnet) he was back on teh breast exclusively. So by the time I got to the group I had got my supply sorted, got over any worries I had about exposing myself and so on.

"I feel I failed at the two things I should have been able to do: give birth and feed my son."

Plenty of women throughout history also 'failed' to do this. Unfortunately they were not around to feel guilty about it .

The natural way is not always the best way. You have nothing to feel bad about.

Yes totally. Without modern medicine me and you and our babies would have been a gonner.

How old is your ds Wednesday? I started feeling loads better after weaning, now he won't eat anything and likes mud and cat biscuits. It's given me a lot if perspective.

tethers very true. Me and DS are alive because of the interventions we have. Nature would have killed us. I'm going to leave the bastard!!

Pickles DS just turned one. Well weaned but reacts poorly to pure cow's milk, so I'm still feeding him the "poison". He's eaten rabbit pellets (of the pre-consumed and post-consumed variety). It does give some perspective...

I wonder if people now would be more judgey of the bottles he has or the bunny poop he chews. It's a tough call.

I think a lot of good stuff has been said on here about not iconising the "natural" (which is of course an extremely artificial cultural construct). I mean yes, there is the awful harsh reality that under "natural" conditions, babies and mothers are prone to death. But also, for the ones that survive, life can be awfully bloody. Imagine a life with no washing machine, no running hot water, no shops, cooking over a range or an open fire... people (especially the incontinent, like babies) would have been very dirty and eaten a lot of nasty, inadequate food. Even imagining looking after my pukey babies without a washing machine makes me quail. Maybe we wouldn't have died of pukey cheesy garments (although they might, sounds like listeria or something waiting to happen) but ... would we have had much fun? No.
Nature doesn't care whether you are having a good time or not. In return, you can feel entitled to not care much about Nature.

Wednesdaynext - how awful. I hope you're feeling better about it now. If it helps, I failed on both those fronts too. Like pickles said, weaning helped for me too. Dd was never much of a guzzler but she'll almost literally bite your hand off for real food. Especially if it isn't hers!

x-post with Wednesday. Totally LTB!

Vezzie - why can't there be more people like you round my way?

Please work in my hospital in feb vezzie.

"Imagine a life with no washing machine, no running hot water, no shops, cooking over a range or an open fire... "

my mum bought up (and breastfed ) 3 children in these exact conditions. She was depressed for much of it!