Can I ask, how hard is breastfeeding? Honestly?

[Firstimer2015]

I'm overdue with DC1, so have been possibly stupidly reading online about bf to try and prepare myself for what's to come.

I'm not adverse to formula feeding at all, in fact I don't know anyone who has breastfed so ff is the norm to me. However, I decided months ago to give bf a try because of the health benefits, but also, mostly because I thought it would be easier.

I have an illness called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome so I get tired very quickly (although I know anyone with a newborn baby would be chornically tired!). I thought bf would be easier, in that I wouldn't have to get up and make bottles, wait for them to be ready, steralise them etc etc, especially in the middle of the night. I thought I could just put the baby on my boob without having to even get up and it would be easier that way.

I'm having doubts now though. I knew before it can be painful if the latch isn't right so your nipples can be sore etc, but what I really, really didn't anticipate was how often babies feed! As I said, I've only ever been around ff babies, so I'm used to them feeding every 3 hours or so. I had no idea bf can sometimes be every 2 hours, and for hours and hours at a time (cluster feeding I think I read it's called).

It's just made me question my decision, as I thought bf would be the easier option (that is of course, if baby takes to it - have bought bottles just in case) but now I'm wondering if it's actually the harder option?

I just want to do best by my baby, but also I don't want to wear myself out so much that I'm unable to care for the baby properly, so just wondered what other peoples experiences are?

X-post with merry and YES YES YES YES YES to the hormones being incredibly helpful - for me, staved off depression and flooded me with love every time I fed (especially DC2) - I always forget to say this bit.

Really easy for me. Make your bed safe for co-sleeping, whether you plan to full time or not, and then you can just doze. I barely got out of bed for the first three weeks. Just there in a cosy nest with my baby and people bringing my food and drink. It was fantastic!

Make sure you learn how to feed lying down while you're still in hospital. It's an invaluable skill.

I know I wouldn't be able to do the same if I had a second child but I feel like I know what I'm doing now, so I think it is worth doing with the first.

I think the message here is that it's different for everyone! Personally I have been extremely lucky - I just plonked both my babies on my chest and they started feeding. No pain, no sore nipples, no supply issues. It was easy, cheap and convenient. I don't think I would have stuck with it if I had found it hard or painful. So I think the best plan is to see how you go - you don't have to make any decisions in advance and you can change your mind at any point - just don't let anyone else make you feel bad about whatever you choose to do (although I can't recall anyone other than the HV ever paying any attention to how I was feeding my DC)!

It is absolutely draining. I would ff in your shoes. Ready made formula, lots of bottles and a steam steriliser make it fast and easy in the early days. A tommee tippee perfect prep after the initial few weeks.

By all means give it a go because some babies do feed for 20 minutes every 3 hours but that's very rare. Most that I know feed most hours of the day for the first 6 months.

I think you need to prioritise your health. Mix feeding could work but you will be likely to need a break.

Worlds Good grief that sounds awful. Are you ok now?

I think a lot of the mn wisdom about bf- box sets, nesting on the sofa, going with the flow etc is much easier with your first. Sometimes with two it's just not possible to sit on the sofa for a month.

It is a bit relentless at first but I learned to bf lying down in the hospital and it was actually pretty restful. I'm a deep sleeper and awfully clumsy and muddled when tired so for me bf was far easier than anything involving boiling water or pouring or measuring anything.

Honestly for me impossibly hard, and in the end too hard, i lasted 6 miserable weeks.

My friend found it easy and never had any bother.

If i were you I would try to BF but be totally prepared to swap. FF wasn't difficult at all or a faff.

It will be very hard at first while you are both learning how to do it,

I disagree.

Everyone's experience is different. Like birth.
It can be hard and painful or it can be amazingly easy.

I found it a piece of cake, with no support, very easy, no pain. I have breastfed for a total of 7 years ( more than one child!!) and always found it a complete doddle.
Even in the first few days & weeks, it came naturally - you can't catagorically say it "will be very hard"- because it may not.

THe only thing to do is give it a go.

I think you can say it 'could' be very hard, but you don't know til you try. I wish someone had told me it might not work out. No HCP in 1999 mentioned that to me.

The first 8 weeks were hard -sore nipples and constant feeding. After that it was easy

I also have CFS but bf DD for a year.

In a hurry (haven't read other replies).

From what you've said in your OP I think you may well find the first 6 weeks pretty hard, and this is where you'll need a lot of practical support from your partner and family ie they look after you and the house and you look after the baby and yourself.

If you can get over that massive learning curve for both of you and start to see a pattern emerging it soon becomes easier than ff IMO.

It can be a steep learning curve (for both you and the baby) but every mum/baby pair s different and you won't know until you try it.

I would suggest you stick at it for at least six weeks rather than just try a few days because it does really get much easier over time. Learning to feed lying down as well as sitting up was really helpful to me.

I found it just so convenient, no need to worry about carting things around when out and about, a good excuse to stop for a drink if baby was hungry. My ds1 only cluster fed at growth spurts (which ff babies do as well), mostly he fed every four hours or so, even as a newborn. As I said, every baby is different.

Good luck!

Another one who had no trouble and found it easy. Babies (I've had 2) both took to it straight off, with no pain and no help needed.

The intervals were short sometimes and I did have a cluster feeder, but actually it just meant I needed to have some nice snacks and a big drink next to me on the sofa while I watched box sets in the evenings for the cluster feeds. It was nice to be honest, to have a reason to sit and rest for a couple of hours.

One of my babies was a great sleeper from birth, giving me 4 - 6 hours after only a few weeks, still breast fed, and the other was a horror, feeding every 2 hours for what felt like forever. I considered introducing a bottle to get more sleep, but was too lazy, it really is nice to just be able to get the boob out and settle them in seconds, night or day where ever you are.

I hope it goes well for you, but remember whatever choice you make you can at least say you tried.

I still think it is a bit much for her to drive 2 hours on Sunday and then 1hr again Mon evening and Tue evening. I think this should have been anticipated, especially if she is already overbearing. Even if she usually works on Monday - if it were me, I would have booked a day off work too, to reduce that much travelling. I am around 20 years away from having granchildren (hopefully!), but I wouldn't want to drive that much in such a short space of time.

I think the advice to let her stay/ have a nice breakfast together and evening meal, and then say you had planned to go out for the day just the 3 of you, is probably the best way to go. And if I were you, I would get your dh to deal with it, and enforce the boundary, since it is his Mum.

Oops, completely the wrong thread !

I have two children and I breastfed both. One was a great feeder and took to the breast on day one like a duck to water and we had an easy time of it. I ebf her for 6 months. The second was just not interested, he was never too bothered - it was never as easy as DC#1. As a result of my being sick when he was 2 months old he started having an occasional bottle (maybe one a day, possibly not even that regularly. I fed him for well over a year but it didn't get much easier. I didn't get mastitis so it wasn't that sort of difficult, it's just that, had he been my first, I might have been a bit more hesitant to bf my second - would have been less enamored with breastfeeding.
I think it is healthiest to go in with an open mind. Go for breastfeeding but ultimately do what is best for you and for baby - and don't beat yourself up over what is deemed to be best by others: best is a happy mum.

It really depends on you and your baby! I think generally you can say that initially it's hard, but once you've 'cracked it' it is so much easier and more convenient than FFing.
I breastfed all of mine till about 13 months, though DS1 was bottle-fed expressed milk from around day 5 to ~8 weeks. I found BFing incredibly hard; my nipples had turned black and fallen off basically, I was bleeding all the time, and yeah it was painful! I was very determined though, so I pumped and went to my local breastfeeding clinic all the time, until eventually my boobs healed and I tried latching him on again and it just 'clicked'.
As for the time, yes, you will spend an awful lot of your time stuck on the sofa, feeding. But I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing, especially if it's your first/only child - just get yourself set up with tea and snacks beforehand, and enjoy catching up on some DVD box sets!
At night, I think BFing is massively easier as you just grab them, feed them, pop them back, and mostly stay asleep through this.
And once you get the hang of breastfeeding, you can feed baby anytime, anywhere; you don't need to prepare stuff or remember to bring paraphernalia with you.

I found the start of breastfeeding easy. Really easy. I was completely out of it after the birth but DD was latched on by a midwife and that was it. She did only go 2 hours max in the day but much longer at night. However at 3 weeks my supply started to faulter. But we still did another 4 months with her having one bottle at bedtime. For me it was so much easier at night and out and about than bottle feeding (which we did from 5 months as my supply just got worse and worse from about 3 months). I probably could have tried to increased supply which probably would have put us in the breastfeeding is quite hard group. But I really enjoyed our stress-free breastfeeding time even if it wasn't exclusive for very long. I know I'm very lucky though.

Horrific at first - I am fair, and had a tiny baby who fed very frequently. The pain of latching on plus contraction pains (bf helps your womb shrink back to normal size) was worse than childbirth at times.

Then it gradually became easier, to the point where all I had to do was stick DS up my top, unclip my bra and no problem. Much much easier then than preparing bottles, sterilizing, checking temperatures etc etc. And like the pain of childbirth, you do sort of forget about the difficulties once you have come through it.

But I had the luxury of months of maternity leave, a supportive husband (who only once, watching me cry as I fed, asked if he should go to the 24 hour garage for some formula), a supportive family and a baby without a tongue tie, thrush or other complications that can really impact on bf.

If you are under a consultant for your CFS have a chat with them about breastfeeding. Mine was very encouraging but raised some things that I hadn't really thought of. He said that night feeds may exacerbate the CFS so if DH can take over some or all night feeds with expressed BM then it will help hugely. I am hoping DH can do weekend night feeds but he probably won't be able to do many in the week. He also suggested keeping a stock of frozen expressed milk if possible to cover and really bad days. I haven't yet BF as I am pg with my first but I wanted to pass on the food for thought he shared with me.

Just re-read your OP - worth saying that in the early days and when ds was clusterfeeding I did find it very draining and I expended a lot of calories (the only time I could eat chocolate cake in large quantities and still lose weight). I can imagine that bf might exacerbate existing conditions that make you tired, although the hormones that are produced might also be helpful in offsetting that. I think you just won't know unless you try (but of course a bottle really isn't the end of the world, if that is what you end up doing)

It's lovely, OP. These stories are very negative. It can be a quite sore in the first few days. But after that it is so lovely and loving and bonding. And so much less faff!

I don't think they are negative TBH, they are very personal and very real.

I think you will get answers from "hell on earth" to "piece of cake". Depends on the baby i think.

I bf all 3 of mine with no problems. None of them ever spent more than 15 minutes feeding, went 3 hours or so between feeds from about 4-6 weeks, and upto 6 hours at night. Cluster feeds tended to be 7-11pm, so after older siblings in bed...

But i know many who found it far harder and not because they did anything " wrong", it isn't fair but for some it is easier than others. See how you get on, change if you need to. Good luck.