Do you enjoy bottlefeeding? Am I alone?

[peaches27]

I have always felt a little put off by people who are so overenthusiastic about breastfeeding that I just cannot fathom them out. All I can remember are the cracked, sore nips, feeding for hours on end, leaking milk and generally feeling that my life was not my own. Where was the "almost orgasmic sensation at let down"? I dont think I even remember feeling a sensation, apart from dread at approaching the carrycot. When I tearfully gave up the struggle and gave DS a bottle it was love at first sight for both of us. Finally he was satisfied and full. Finally I was comfortable and got my life back. As I am typing this I can almost feel the righteous indignation of the breastfeeders.

Can you please accept that it is not the same wonderful experience for everyone and if we want to give up because we hate it we shouldnt be made to feel guilty as several generations have grown up perfectly healthily on formula. (Breastfeeders now search for statistics which prove that breastfed people are healthier).

I am writing this and viewing the subject with a very long perspective. I last breastfed in 1982. It was very fashionable then and I felt a failure when it didnt work and I didnt feel the same as the people in the pregnancy books or the NCT/LLL leaflet. (BTW in those days I didnt live in a posh enough part of the city to access NCT/LLL). This feeling of failure was compensated by the happy healthy infant who thrived on formula and also the extra free time I had even after preparing feeds!

I am raising my grandkids and obviously my DGD has formula just like her mummy did. I love giving her those bottles, especially the night ones when its just the two of us. She is happy too.

Anyone else share this experience?

I think I parped myself off this thread but just returned to note that personally insulting tiktok and hunker with the label "pathetic" is laughable.

Squarer - please pass on my regards to peaches and my admiration for what she's doing (from one grandmother to another )

I will certainly do that Jools - I know she will not be on Mumsnet for a while as she is in court over custody issues. I am she will appreciate your sentiments

am sure* she

I must second Jools, although I'm not a grandmother (yet!)

Pramfilla - the post you quoted in full (why?) from me wasn't judging peaches or anyone else for feeding methods. I was making the point that peaches' OP was inflammatory and gave examples of phrases and sentences which backed up my view.

This is not bullying.

I don't know peaches though it sounds from what others say of her life that she's doing a fantastic and difficult job. But this does not mean I am prepared to accept sneers like 'the righeous indignation of the breastfeeders' without comment.

Stay around a bit longer on mumsnet, read a bit more of the boards, and you will then be in a more informed position, I think.

Thanks to those who don't think I am 'pathetic', BTW :)

I know the thread has moved on somewhat, but just wanted to say, i take your point HC about happy mum=happy baby. In fact it makes me feel a whole lot better as i am not always happy & can be very grumpy sometimes and always guilty for being so! In addition, dd is so clearly very happy & contented in spite of any unhappiness i feel, so, thanks :) .
Also, when I was defending the phrase, i didn't mean mums who "spend so much time being happy that they don't notice the kid come in with a broken leg" as someone said. I think i was defending the right of a mother to make sure she takes enough care of herself to be able to care for her children adequately. And - of course fathers are important, i am a single mum so perhaps i was just naturally thinking of mothers only.
And, my own mother became mentally ill and hospitalised when i was little but that doesn't mean I didn't have a happy childhood.

Also want to add that this thread inspired me to read back on my diaries from when dd was a baby, and i'm to realise that my memory has gone wonky. It turns out it wasn't the feeding so much that got to me (in fact it was later on when i was trying to wean her off the breast that it did), it was the sleeping and the fact that i could only feed dd to get her to sleep therefore she only ever slept on me (i'm talking about the 1st 6 months here). And the amount of attention she needed when not feeding, from me. Breast feeding itself, it seems, was nice, and I was very overwhelmingly in love with dd and apparently told her so several times a day! So i take back all that whinging i did earlier on. :)

I have only read the first post and got glazed eyes from scanning the rest (deja vu) but would like to add that I did get a lovely feeling when breastfeeding, I wouldn't say 'orgasmic sensation' but a lovely sensation all the same.

Why to these threads always end in a row FGS who gives a shit how you feed?

But tiktok, Peaches clearly stated that this is what she was feeling and I don't think it should be taken as inflammatory.

To my mind inflammatory would have been to say "Breastfeeders are smugly self-satisfied individuals". (I'm not saying this, just trying to demonstrate the difference)

I think I understand what she mean't and I remember the look on my own mum's face when she first had the opportunity to give ds a bottlefeed as she said it brought back happy memories of cosy cuddles during feeds with her own babies. (She says she didn't breastfeed because it wasn't even mentioned when she had her kids in a provincial hospital in the mid sixties and she knew nothing about it, it was just assumed that everyone would bottlefeed but she did see one mother trying it when she had her last baby in the early seventies)

I think it's in poor taste to suggest, even jokingly, that taking time out to self-indulge in the hope of making yourself happy ("happy mum = happy baby") is on a par with considering the underlying emotional happiness of a new mum and the effect it might have on baby.

I wish Peaches all the best for raising her dgd and hope she can turn to MN for information or support in the future.

olive, the problem with this thread is that it started with a row right from the very first post....it had no hope of morphing into something sweet and lovely, poor thing :(

yes it was a bit of a red rag. But still, how many threads do we need with this them vs us attitude?

But I can't stay away!!! (and neither can you!)

I think Peaches OP has been misinterpreted and blown out of proportion but I can understand why bf may think it is a dig at them. As others have said, it's nobody else's business how you feed your child and we shouldn't judge if people do not feed how we do/would like to - but then what's the point in that? Reading these controversial threads has opened my eyes to whole world I would have never known about. Often stats are included which I would have never seen had it not been for mn.

For what it's worth I bf for 4 weeks and am now ff for reasons I have explained before. I think as a whole we are all just trying to give our own opinions/experiences, right or wrong. I have only come across one person who I generally think is outrightly rude about people's choice to ff but on the other hand it seems there are also one or two people that seem to have to go out of their way to make a point that they are completely happy with ff and in some respects diss the bfs with 'bf mafia' and the like.

And, to say that Tictoc and HM are pathetic is clearly from somebody who has not read enough threads to prove otherwise. Both made comments on my threads when I was struggling with bf and without them I would have only managed 2 weeks but instead I am proud to say I achieved 4

Norms, maybe you haven't read my post (despite pramfilla kindly repeating it in full ) but I didn't say every word of the OP was inflammatory. I picked out six hostile or sneering phrases which were, in my book, designed to be provocative (I mean, even saying what 'the breastfeeders' would do in response to her post was unnecessarily divisive).

Why would I take offence at someone describing their feelings of pleasure at bottle feeding? It was the digs and swipes at 'the breastfeeders' that I objected to.

I was concentrating on understanding Peaches post for myself and how it appeared to me, not an interpretation of it.

I'm not picking on you Tiktok or breastfeeding in general and I do think that there has been a mean post made against you and others who do help so many b/feeding mums with advice on MN. That particular poster seems to have been new to MN and clearly hasn't browsed the archives to see the facts for themselves. Hopefully they will change their name and start afresh if they are to continue posting unless they feel the need to apologise for not researching enough before jumping in and post so vociferously.

:) for bl0ndie

Nice post, blondie

Sparklemagic, I take your point.

I guess my reservation is that so many people, in seeing ff as an acceptable alternative to bf, are not seeing it as acceptable because they are fully informed of all the facts and fully supported, but because they aren't, and would in fact not see it as acceptable for their circumstances if they were. Which is why I always get a little twitchy about descriptions of ff as being "on a par" or "near as dammit" or "so close to breastmilk anyway" because I feel very strongly that those descriptions must be challenged in the interests of women being properly informed. And "acceptable alternative" is bordering on that territory, iyswim, although it doesn't have to be and I accept your observation about your own case and that it may well apply to many other ff mothers.

I guess the OP may be new and not realise how many of these threads there have been and how very provocative her post would have appeared to those of us who are veterans of such threads. (I always wonder when I will look at a thread like this and think "Oh I can't be arsed to get involved with that." Roll on that day! )

caligula - can I ask you something? (or anyone else who hates the 'close to mothers milk' comparison)

genuine question - how would you like to see formula described? Bearing in mind there are all sorts of reasons why mothers formula feed. Whose responsibility do you think it is to inform mothers of a satisfactory substitute if they aren't able to breastfeed?

Ha ha! It's just difficult to pass these threads by isn't it, they bring up such strong feelings! Of course as I've said I understand your view and support you in that, definitely.

I'm a breastfeeder trapped in a formala feeders body, is how I looked at it at the time

It should be described accurately and saying it's close to breastmilk isn't accurate. It's a perfectly adequate alternative and of course mothers wishing (or needing) to formula feed should be told about it but they should receive honest and accurate information and descriptions.

Jools -
I think an honest definition/description would be 'infant formula milk: formulated from modified cows milk according to UK regulations for babies who do not receive human milk.'
As for responsibility, I think it is a public health responsibility to inform formula feeding mothers about different sorts of formula. That means midwives and health visitors should be more clued up.

That sounds perfectly acceptable to me tiktok.

Hmmm, I'm pretty sure on the 'other' thread it was felt that formula feeders should all be told about how it included fish eyes and other nasties - presumably to make us all feel horrified at our choice.

Bit of a turnaround there then.

Hmm, interesting question Jools, which I'll have to think about before I answer it properly, because I think it deserves some thought.

Off the top of my head what springs to mind is the cultural landscape in which you ask and answer that question. In a society where the majority of women are breastfeeding successfully, formula feed ought to be a largely unnecessary but sometimes in a minority of cases where breastfeeding is impossible, a crucially important (and in some cases life-saving) ingredient for a baby. In a society where a large number of women are feeding their babies condensed milk, I presume that formula ought to be described as a much more appropriate and healthy option! (Someone will put me right if I'm wrong about that.) But in a society where formula feeding has become the norm, to the extent that it has totally undermined breastfeeding and a whole society has to be re-educated and re-informed about the whole feeding issue, then it has got to be described differently. But quite how, I would have to mull over and I'm thinking of going off to watch the apprentice! Will think about it.