Why do some people have such a problem with breast feeding??

[Writerwannabe83]

I need to scream as after visiting my Grandparents and enduring more of their 'helpful comments' as to why formula feeding is better than breast feeding I'm about ready to explode!

Today I was told the reason my baby is a little sicky is because of how quickly he feeds - therefore I should use bottles of formula as at least I can adjust teat sizes.

The fact I'm not giving my baby water in a bottle is the reason he has the hiccups. No matter how many times I explain that BF babies do not need water my Nan snidely mentions it every single bloody time I go round!

Apparently my milk is 'nasty stuff'

Apparently I'm only BF as a form of control so nobody else can feed my baby. I'm also preventing my DH from bonding with his son apparently...

The reason he had an episode of diarrhoea a few weeks ago was because of the mutations in my breast milk according to my Grandad....

My MIL is also another one who keeps on saying I should be giving my baby water!!

And even though my baby is growing fine I should still give him a few bottles of formula "just in case". Just in case of what exactly???

Is it a generation thing????

My nan is easily the worst when it comes to making such comments (she's in her 80's) and it's really, really starting to grate on me now!!

I've managed to bite my tongue so far but it's getting harder and harder!!

Why do some people think that breast milk isn't sufficient or good enough?! GRRRRR!

And breathe......

control freaks?? The irony!

I remember your other thread, writer. Can't believe you're still having so many problems with your relatives. They do sound unusually over-involved &, frankly, bloody rude; & I speak as someone whose MIL had opinions about absolutely everything we did with our twins when they were babies (most of which flew in the face of all current medical advice).

The thing is that this isn't just about feeding - it's about your boundaries, or rather the need to establish some pretty damned quickly! You're already getting comments about sleeping too, I see. This really isn't going to stop - they'll be interfering & expressing their ill thought out views about everything - unless you put a stop to it.

You need to tell them clearly that you're not going to discuss these issues any more, that you're making the decisions about your child. You need to stop defending yourself, & you need to stop caring about whether or not they agree with your way of doing things. As long as they respect that you make the decisions, it doesn't matter what they think.

Start gathering an arsenal of polite, assertive phrases for "mind your own bloody business" & use them, or this will still be going on when your child is a teenager.

So many bonkers anecdotes here!

I'm so lucky to have come from a family of bf fans. My paternal grandma bf all 8 of her babies (in the 1940s and 1950s). 7 of those were girls, who all went on to bf their own children. I don't know what my maternal grandmother did, but my mum bf my brother and me.

My MIL didn't bf as she found the idea of it very distasteful, but she never once questioned or criticised my decision to bf, nor my SIL's. She was very supportive indeed.

My mum did harp on about 'a little bit of boiled water from a spoon' as a cure for colic, but I just nodded and smiled.

I haven't had any negative comments (to my face) which I'm a bit gutted about as god help the person who has a go at me in public!

From a family perspective, on my side everyone is all for it, my sister has been particularly supportive and helpful through all the problems I've had. On my in laws side my DHs Aunty is a HV and BF support so she has been incredible. His mum is supportive on the face of it but I've noticed a few snippy comments sneaking in about how I should give up if I'm finding it hard. Mainly driven by the fact she's realised that while I carry on there's no chance of her having him and a touch of the guilts over her giving up herself with her 2 ( one after 10days, who she then went on to wean at 3months!)
She's already 'asked' how soon I'll be weaning, I said 6 months because the gut isn't properly developed before then and can lead to stomach problems. She responded 'I weaned S at 3months' cue long silence while we all think about how S has chronic stomach problems!

Everyone's got an opinion, and when it comes to my baby, if it's not the same as mine I don't want to hear it. I've used that phrase too!

Pasta I was the same - Mum, MIL and Nan all bf and so I had loads of support. My Nan had babies in 1952 and 1959 and says the HV didn't like her feeding but she insisted!

Has anyone had someone who has BFed almost seem to try to put them off? Insisting it will be incredibly hard - lots of 'rules - and you don't have the willpower? Mummy-wars type of thing.

I've had one friend who does this. Ostensibly pro-BF, but her clear take is I'm "not the sort" (i.e. not motherly enough and/or posh enough) and she believes all the stuff about you can't eat about 101 foods/drinks, must co-sleep (those bedside cots from NCT apparently don't exist to her), can't have a career/return to work etc'.

TBH this wound me up much more than people who have old fashioned information.

Oh my God squizita - how on earth does anyone think they have the right to tell someone that they don't have the willpower to breast feed?? What a really horrible, smug thing to say!! And to say you aren't motherly enough? What a really hurtful thing to say!!

She sounds delightful.....

I live in Scotland and slyhough we have a law which makes it illegal to stop breast feeding in public, attitudes are still really in the dark ages.

There is an attitude that you are 'making a show of yourself'..who do you think you are?Just give baby a bottle it wax good enough for my children... It's just middle class women with nothing better to do who breastfeed.

In fact we were out Friday might and I wandered past the ice cream parlour was bf her baby who was snuggled under a scarf, while eating an enormous ice cream. I smiled to myself but another woman coming in the opposite direction remarked to her partner 'oh look at her thinking that she can just breastfeed in the window and eat ice cream.'

My mums sure of the family always breastfeed and I loved that sense of connection through the generations.

Writer honestly she is like this about everything. Better. She pretends she went to private school and doesn't like it when someone mentions our (rather naice ex-grammar) state school days in front of the wrong company. I just roll my eyes.
I think for her it comes in a mental 'package' with beige non-gendered handcrafted everything, Boden and Cath Kidston everywhere, kiddy Mozart etc'. Almost an indication of class and quality all round.
Whereas I was thinking of it as how a baby gets milk?

Makes me a bit as I am sure it intimidates some people - i.e. BFing is so good and wholesome that it's not for the likes of you commoners IYSWIM.

...I wear jeans and Guns-n-Roses t-shirts, and my colour choices for PFB will only include beige is that's what my mate who's just had a girl hands-me-down, otherwise it's cheesy cartoon animals all the way.

You go for it with your cheesy cartoon animals!!

Ps) I love Guns-n-Roses!!

This water they want you to give, is it bottled?

I had an aunt sound horrified I gave my daughter tap water - I had to quote statistics that bottled water is NOT recommeded for babies and toddlers!

My DD didn't have water until 6 months when she started weaning, and that included trips to Portugal... I just gave extra bfs for fluids...

BTW my daughter is 2.4 yo and still likes her mummy milk... everyone has stopped asking if she still bfs...

Also, when my daughter went to nursery at 8 months, she never took bottles. they gave her some milk in a cup and she took probably 1 or 2 oz at most and then reverse cycled to have milk with me morning, 5pm, bedtime and through the night (yawn) and yet she thrived and then settled to drink milk in cereal and in a beaker (about 3oz)...

Even now, she asks either for mummy milk or for milk in a cup... she knows the difference and one is also for comfort

I had an ex boyfriend who completely believed women only bf for their own sexual gratification. He also thought women who choose to use tampons were doing it for the erotic kicks too

I'm sad to hear he isn't the only one walking around with these bizarre ideas- unless the DH mentioned above is my ex, in which case you have my very deepest sympathy.

I think it is a generation thing, my dps mum did not bf and weaned ridiculously early and was wanting my ds to sleep through stupidly early. I just let it go in one ear and out the other.

They'd be getting told to put a sock in it if they were talking like yours! They sound incredibly rude and ignorant.

It is because of sexualisation of the breast, page 3, strip clubs etc etc. No doubt about it.

Jelly I'm not sure if it's just page 3 etc' ... breasts have been sexualised for millennia. There seems to be this weird thing with breasts (which doesn't happen with for example the mouth) where their other/main function has been ignored and this seems to have started BEFORE censorship was lifted (e.g.The disgust people express here seems to be from women who were told BFing was unsafe or for poor people in the past) .
E.g. Mouths are an erogenous zone. But they are also for eating and talking. People 'get this'. If you eat something no one is disgusted or freaked out: they don't think of sex acts or passionate kissing.

Breasts are there to feed babies, but when not lactating are an erogenous zone (biologically and historically across cultures). For some reason people don't get that they have different uses during different phases of life i.e. lactating vs not lactating. And TBH Ive seen it both ways - that they're 'for sex' and anti BFing or that women who admit to them being erogenous are 'sluts'/bad-feminists because they're only for feeding.

My guess is it's because men don't have breasts and the adults in power tending to not be babies, culturally society's only interested in 'what it can get'.

dizzy is that why women don't generally get periods when breastfeeding? Feeding with a tampon in might make us hysterical

@ Nora

I might go pop a tampon in when DS next wakes for a feed, I quite fancy some multiple orgasms!!

This thread is both hilarious and making me go WTAF at some people opinions/ideas about why or why not women should BF.

I love using their logic against them and asking why would you give DS water when it will make him gay. Hilarious.

I fed DS and the last baby in DH's family was DH so it's been a little over 30 years since any of them thought about babies. MIL kept asking "you can still bf?!" as if somehow it would just suddenly dry out. Very odd.
The PIL would also run away when I was feeding DS. I would sit myself in a quiet corner out of the way and out of direct line of sight and they would suddenly need to be in another room that didn't bother me.
What did bother me was SIL peering over my shoulder to see what/how I was doing. That was a bit bizarre.

Oh, and I'm surprised nothing was said about us being selfish with DS. PIL turned up when DS was about 6 weeks old wanting a "schedule".

'breasts have been sexualised for millennia'

That isn't true in all cultures though.

I've had an horrendous night with DS, he's been waking every 1.5 hours for a feed and I'm so tired. I can't wait to see how long it is until someone tells me to give formula overnight....

I'm going to purposely tell my nan about my night to see what Gems she comes out with to explain why it's happening (it will somehow be my fault) and see what she suggests might help.....I'm guessing offering some water will be her answer

Jelly Most though - by far most. Spent many years studying this (performative language, the body and sexuality worldwide).

They are also at times physically erogenous for the woman- they will be associated with sex by women as part of their sensual body when not lactating.
Just as a mouth/lips can be erogenous or functional/caring/communicative - it is this which has been lost in modern society.
But as only women have the dual function with their breasts, breasts are viewed very differently to mouths, which men have.
Society can understand mouths do more than one thing, no one gets 'turned on' by their dinner, talking etc'.

I find flat denial (in some people- not saying you, but I've seen this) a bit problematic because (a) it could - does - make some women who have ever found their breasts sensual worried they are 'wrong' (anti-feminist or anti-BF because of a part of their intimate relationships) and (b) it ignores what has actually happened: FETISHISATION. This is different from sexuality, essentially they have been stripped of any other role, as has much of the female body by the modern media.

In practical terms of breastfeeding, to pull out two examples, breastfeeding was not considered a problem in the ancient Middle East, where a lot of sensual poetry was also written about breasts. Similarly with our own Tudor period.
The 'us or them' sex or feeding polarisation is a 20th-21st century thing (although actually our uptight ancestors The Victorians really had a lot to do with the fetishisation of female body parts - a lot. I often wonder if that is where our modern attitude took root, ready to flourish when the idea of 'dirty' body parts was still there but there was less censorship: immediately resulting in deliberately shocking/fetishised imagery for kicks). Essentially, the functional element of breasts was hidden/wiped out by those who covered women head-to-toe, and the covering suggested 'sex'. Thus, when photography and marketing came into its own, the only thing left to be signified was sex-sex-sex ... which sells.

V. interesting, Squiz.

Marketing of infant foods, sold to replace or supplement breastfeeding, in particular, starts in the mid to late 19th century (people think branded formula is a recent invention - it is not). I agree with you about the fetishisation of body parts, though I would say the Victorians were by no means the first to do it - art and literature of all sorts going back thousands of years show there were times and places where it flourished. We are, today, still experiencing the effects of the Victorian idea of the body and sex.

Early marketing of infant foods made a great play of mother's milk being insufficient, which helped to build up and build on, a mistrust in the female body.

TikTok Yes! Certainly fetishisation isn't new, but that Victorian "saint or sinner", "sex or home" thing haunts us (as does the idea that women/nature is nonsense, men/science/commerce is logical and best). Sorry can you guess I'm a geeky feminist type nerd with an obsession with food/nutrition history That's so true ... there's also that 'science makes it best' attitude of the last 100 years that got us such bizarre things as radium face cream. No wonder people wanted scientific "wonder" foods not breast milk followed by mushed up carrot for their child's first couple of years!