Reasons why women don't breastfeed

[ohthegoats]

Today's breastfeeding 'news' from Brazil. I finally heard a sensible comment on the story at about lunchtime today - a woman saying that there shouldn't be surveys on whether or not it's a good thing to breastfeed, because everyone knows it is. The research should be into why so many women don't do it, or don't stick with it.

Here are my reasons why I don't like breastfeeding - has anyone got any to add? Or ideas to mitigate the issues?

After being so out of control of your body during pregnancy, being poked and prodded and 'nanny stated' out of your mind, you want control back.

Little help available when you have problems - I know this isn't true for all people.

Having to wear such unflattering underwear in order to be able to get your boobs out easily. Why hasn't this been sorted out? Why so few underwired options that actually work without causing duct blockages? Why so expensive to get even a crappy underwired one?

Having to wear clothes that are mostly unflattering too. I have one reasonable breastfeeding top out of the 10 I have bought - H&M for a tenner in the sale, not been able to find it again. They are all either too plain coloured, too low necked, horrible material, too tight in other places etc etc.

Getting stared at in public for doing it.

Being confined to the sofa for days on end.

Waking up covered in yoghurt for reasons you don't understand.

Boobs squirting milk during sex.

Think that's my starter list.

I'm 5 and a half months into ebf with my baby... plan to start moving away from it at 6 months. I've done it because it's the 'right' thing, but I've mostly hated it.

Formula is good quality

Absolutely formula is good quality but the thing about formula is it is just food. Bf is also an immunological boost to an immature immune system. I was reading a bottle of Milton during the week when it said at 1 babies only have 17% of their adult immune system, obviously why sterilising is important. It is apples and oranges comparing ff and bf IMO. Not that you won't get a healthy child ff but in those crucial years with an under developed immune system they don't have that immune boost offered from mother's milk. I think that point is consistently lost along with the fact that dummies were designed to replace bf so there is also the comfort factors babies get from it.

So often now you see people who would happily give a baby a soother aged 1 feeling totally weirded out by babies being bf at the same age.

How is it apples and oranges when they are both valid means of feeding a baby.

The thing is we have surpassed the times when breast milk was crucial to a baby's survival. Of course now it is a brilliant bonus, there's no denying that, but it shouldn't come to the point that women are having to explain their choices and even women fearing admitting they don't want to breastfeed.

I have never heard a formula feed baby landing or almost landing in hospital, purely as a result of a problem with sterilising or failure in the process of feeding

I have frequently as a result of "failure" in the process of breastfeeding. They don't release those facts because they don't fit with the it's natural and the best way narrative.

To me the best way is the one with the lowest chance of landing a baby in hospital for malnutrition

Some women just don't want to. That's fine. You make lots of choices as a parent, this is just one.

I found bf extremely painful, difficult, tiring and emotional. I still struggled on for a couple of months with dc1.

Dc2 I wanted to try, but he wasn't interested the first few hrs after he was born, then I slowly slipped into a coma with bacterial meningitis. Should have been bf'ing and bonding the first week of his life, but I was in ICU fighting for my life. I tried desperately to bf him when I got out of hospital a couple of weeks later, but was just too exhausted. Beat myself up over it of course.

I just think we should support women regardless of their choice or situation. Be more compassionate, and try to understand that we're not all the same.

It's a feminist issue. Just the same as birth is. If you want a CS, or to labour in a campervan, then that's your choice. If you want to BF, great and if you want to FF, same.
There are distinguishable benefits in both cases but stats tell you nothing about the individual, and it's an individual feminist choice.

And ANY woman who passes judgement on these choices should be ashamed.

Toffee, I accept your experience of not knowing of any admissions to hospital of babies associated with the use of formula, while knowing of several instances of admissions associated with bf.

But there are stats on this which show the opposite. It's always hard to judge situations like this based on personal experience. Hospital treatment of term babies is unusual, and the only accurate way of assessing it is to count all of them. This is done, in the UK, together with the reason for admission. In particular, admission for dehydration in breastfed neonates is a topic that's carefully studied and there are several studies on it. Serious cases are rare. It's more common for babies who are ff to face admission.

This is not to scare anyone. Babies recover, treatment in the UK is good, and the vast majority of babies don't need hospital anyway.

I can post links to studies if anyone's interested. It's just bizarre to suggest that admission to hospital of bf babies is hidden or secret.

Signora mental health is health. I'm staving off meds which could protect me from a stroke to breastfeed.
That kind of thing has nothing to do with convenience. It is what I was advised to do.

I had to think long and hard about it. Do the extra antibodies balance out the panic attacks I sometimes have so my mum has to come round and help? Would those extra IQ points be worth it if dd ended up caring for me crippled by a stroke or thrombosis?

But you know ... that's about the incubator mother, so it's selfish "convenience".

Things aren't always that black and white.

Tiktok I think I remember you from a 'things I wish I'd know about bf' thread a while back, and you were incredibly dismissive and patronising then too, as well as insisting the problems/bad advice people had were 'personal to them'. I agree with Jassy your post was really unhelpful.
I agree with the list made in the OP, my baby is 3 months now and bf is no longer painful (tt divided, latch sorted) but I don't enjoy it and can't wait to wear my full wardrobe again and generally get my body back.

Tiktok, yes, please, I think source material is always useful.

Can't remember the thread, sorry, Pomerallights, but being 'incredibly patronising and dismissive' doesn't sound like me except on a very bad day:) Whatever. I promise you, I am not part of the problem. I don't care what reasons people have for their feeding decisions. I make no distinctions, except to point out that some reasons are very specific to an individual, and others are likely to apply to whole swathes of women.

For instance it's a very general problem that hcps are not sufficiently knowledgable or helpful about bf. It's not a general problem that bras are not attractive enough. But if someone hasn't found a bra they like, despite the fact that there are more styles and price points than there used to be, then fair enough - thats gonna affect their experience, for sure.

I did 6 weeks in total. 3 ebf and then one a day until I gave up altogether.

I hated it because;

i couldn't do anything without stopping to feed.
I smelled
I had no appetite
I couldn't hold my own baby without him wanting to be fed
My let down was so painful it made me cry
Routine was impossible
It was getting in the way of bonding

Ff wasn't perfect but I was ecstatic to finish bf. Totally overrated.

I get that bf is but a small element of overall child rearing, but it does upset me to hear that people are 'grossed out" by it.

Having a child is a massive challenge and one that should be approached knowing that feeding is part of that, surely?

Fwiw, I spent a week in hospital following a high risk pregnancy and emcs, my milk didn't come in until day 7. DD fed upwards of 14 times a day and at 1 year still fed 9-10 times per day and gained just 1-2oz per week for months. I KNOW it can be very hard. But to not want to do it for fashion or 'get my body back' reasons? I don't get that at all. You've had a wonderful baby fgs! You know your body will continue to be a nourishing resource for the child after birth surely?

Letdown stings like crazy, I must admit

You see, there's another specific reason likely to be confused as a generalisable reason....the let down thing. It is really unusual for let down to be experienced as anything more than a tingling sensation, and many women ( me included) hardly ever feel it at all!

Generally speaking, let down does not 'sting like crazy'.

Jack, have you thought about what people actually mean by 'get my body back'? It's not on a par with 'fashion', FGS. How ridiculous.

Is it that tough to try to put yourself in the position of someone who feels stressed and miserable about a lack of control over her person?

Just to add- I know let down, in rare cases, can cause real pain and that is a real bugger :( :(

But sometimes it can be fixed or relieved.

Read my post. I understand. 14+ feeds per friggin' day!! Even so...

One thing I wonder is whether seasons matter.

I found it so hard in the winter. I have terrible circulation so feel the cold. Clothing was complicated and feeding with cold skin made the milk come slower/my nipples hurt.
Now its warmer a bit it is easier.
Just as it was easier in Sept - Oct. I wonder if dd was born midwinter would I have jacked it in?

I never felt letdown at all. That doesn't mean that the women who found it painful or offputting aren't entitled to feel negative about it.

I think that's the issue - if something isn't 'in general' according to current canon, individual experiences can be marginalised. And breastfeeding is an intensely individual experience, so saying to someone with terrible letdown pain 'oh, well, most women don't experience that' can have the unintended consequence of making an emotionally vulnerable woman feel like her body is failing her/her baby. Which isn't a very helpful outcome.

Ach. I probably...well I definitely martyred myself and cried every day for the first year about the amount of feeds vs. poor weight gain. It is a fucker for sure.

Getting my body back probably prevented me from having a breakdown. My DC having a healthy mother was more important to me than my baby having breastmilk.

Yep - read mine too, DS was fucking voracious and thanks to reflux screamed exactly six minutes into each feed. It was soul destroying. I still didn't have any issues about my body not feeling like my own, or needing to have control of my body back in a way that was causing me misery,

But I get that my experience isn't everyone's, and for some women that is a very real and visceral feeling, and I get that even if I haven't experienced it.

Jackshit that was your choice and your determination. Honest, good for you. But just because you were able to do that, to find that strength/determination doesn't mean that anyone else's choices are LESS valid.

If you choose to work out like Davina and have the body of Madona, smashing, seriously. But that doesn't make the rest of the more squashy majority crap, does it?

Perhaps if the adversity you'd faced WASNT something that could be overcome, you'd post differently. Or do you think that everyone can do it if they just dig deep enough?

I had such an easy experience compared to loads of people, but I found it so so so hard. DS was ebf for 4 weeks, mixed fed for another 16 weeks and due to one event it became obvious that in fact he was ff plus sucking on me, so I moved to ff and gave up trying.

I do really feel that the only thing that is really going to make a difference and that is not pie in the sky (Permanent salaried breastfeeding support 24/7 across the country! Not going to happen.) is a generation of mums who breastfed supporting their daughters. I had my mum and my MIL, who are both fantastic people but who both had the experience of attempting to breastfeed their eldest in the 60s when the advice was absolutely beyond bizarre (Condensed milk is just as good! You'll never feed a baby that large, give him baby rice and formula mixed up!) and were consequently worse than useless. So this is where we should be encouraging immigration from countries where breastfeeding is the norm, and I can hope that my ds marries someone from a family like this and my grandchildren will be breastfed a lot more successfully.

public feeding puts people off and the fact is it hard work