What would you like to have been told?

[NorahBone]

Like a lot of people I found bfeeding quite hard to begin with and 6m on I'm glad I was able to carry on. But I still wish that with all the leaflets, 2 hr talks and one-to-one advice on breast feeding, someone had told me that (although my latch was ok) it might be painful at first. The relentlessly positive NHS advice made me feel like I'd failed before I started and it took the more down to earth Mumsnet page to give me the confidence to carry on. What would you like to have been told about breast or bottle feeding before you ended up sobbing hormonally in the middle of the night? (Oh, it might also have been nice if the chart showing the colour and frequency of poos had mentioned that bf babies might suddenly go from 5 poos a day to 1 every 3 days. I didn't want to google baby poo.)

That it's bloomin hard and not as easy for some women/babies as others. And your baby might not put on weight as the charts say they should. And just when you think it's all going swimmingly the 3/4 month growth spurt happens and you feel like you don't have enough milk again.

minipie, I get ya!

It's still not an 'extremely common cause' of bf problems - bf problems are far more commonly caused by other things.

And you don't need to check every baby to count prevalence of tongue tie. You only need to check a bunch of them, and work out the proportion of them that way. In the literature, estimates vary ('cos the samples of babies vary, and probably some researchers are defining TT a little differently). Estimates are from 3 per cent to 10 per cent - though most studies are at the lower end. Most studies say that TT causes difficulties in about half of these cases, but again, that differs.

Whatever - it's still a lot of babies and it's still definitely under- and over- diagnosed :(

I defer to your vastly superior knowledge tiktok!

I guess it seems like a bigger issue to me, perhaps because I know lots of people for whom it's been a problem (I don't think it was misdiagnosed since they got on much better post snip...) but of course anecdote does not equal data.

More realistic advice before hand and more positive support after wards. that it's not all or nothing - that a little bit of formula doesn't mean giving up completely and might stop baby being hospitalized for loosing too much weight in the first few hours/days. For more practical tips than the first thing a mw said when I tried should be 'don't do it like that you'll suffocate the baby'
that actually if you are feeding expressed milk from a bottle or anything from a bottle you still bond - i used to have a let down when I fed from a bottle and spurt everywhere.
That BF has been made into such a political issue which doesn't benefit women.
That really by believing in breast milk so much i pumped for 6 months as ds would not feed and that really it would have been ok to give formula so i spent more time cuddling ds rather than pumping. By that I am so conflicted as i do think ff is wrong but that the bf evangelists don't understand how things can really really go wrong - then sit their judging.

That actually sometimes when I was struggling to BF that the experience of it actually made me want to be sick. i wasn't in pain i just found it physically revolting. It was a few months after giving up my efforts and my milk had dried up after swapping to pumping that I could even look at a bf woman without gagging - and believe me i believe in BM.
God i am so glad the bf bit is over the worst part of motherhood so far for me.

How hard and emotionally draining it could be.

Not to freak out over green poo.

What infective mastitis was like, and to take paracetmol as well as get to the dr

That a few bottles of formula didnt guarantee the end of breastfeeding but did enable me to continur.

All the above would have saved me a lot of tears!

That toe curling pain of the first week or so really does go away.

See, I got told that so I battled on in agony with DD's undiagnosed tongue tie and it had some very unhappy consequences for us.

That if LO refuses to latch even though they can its not your fault and using formula so they don't starve is not the end of BF.

It took until my milk came through before DD finally fed properly and then she cluster fed.

And if you are at your wits end with sore nipples that aren't given the chance to recover, because of cluster feeding, you will not hurt baby by handing them over to be cuddled for an hour or 2 while you sleep. That and just because you can't get any wind up or they won't sleep unless attached, doesn't mean baby's hungry. Giving mysrlf that break gave me the strength to keep going

Honestly there's so much I could fill a page.

That when he was still demanding food after an hour or two it was often tiredness rather than hunger and that he did much better if I persuaded him to have a nap and then feed properly rather than grumpily grazing for hours on end.

Oh yes, lmeg, howblinked sleeo and feeding are. Dd fed for 10mins on every half hour for about a week until i figured ot that she needed to sleep to eat properly

I'm going to remember all of this if I ever pluck up the courage to have a second DC!! I never knew that I had to basically BF constantly at the beginning. I 'gave up' after a MW panicked about DD losing 10% birth weight, caused by reflux and looking back, I don't think my milk was in.
Thanks to everyone for being honest. I know what to expect next time...!

Aww Lindsey sucks about the panickmy MW, my DD lost 9% of her weight and not an eyelid was batted. It's not an issue unless they lose 12%, or so I was told.