Another article about how awful breastfeeding is, this time in a feminist publication

[Caligula]

I thought some of you would like to read this.

This misinformation bugged me:

"Times change though, and the formulas on the market are hopefully as close to what comes out of your boob, as they will ever be".

Wonder what the rest of you think

the new breastfeeding taboo

Well to be fair Aitch, I didn't "try as hard" with my DD (who unlike her brother, was not BF). I don't feel remotely apologetic about that.

Sometimes mothers who end up formula feeding don't try as hard on the BF front because other things in their lives have to be prioritised. And sometimes they try much, much harder than mothers who don't have to try at all because they're lucky enough to find the whole thing easy and straightforward. They shouldn't feel apologetic about either case imo.

No, not going back to work. I was thinking of the initial support and advice recieved in teh early days and often being wrong and inadequate and family members not understanding. As well as of course baby not managing it.

Agree re the peer support thing Harpsi, but that's a long-term generational shift I think. I'd like to think that by the time DD is of an age to have a baby, we won't need BF counsellors any more, but I somehow doubt it.

Wouldnt that be nice. Or if the NHS were able to provide sufficient training and time to the staff they have.

I don't think you see as many people bf in public now as you did when I had mine - ds1 is 13. You would think things would get better, wouldn't you?

They're just hiding it so well!

It's like when you get a new car - you'd never noticed that type before and suddenly they're everywhere!

Aitch, I'm one of the "bloody-minded" ones who had a horrible time but succeeded in the end, and now I'm really, really worried that something I may have said has upset you.

I would never, ever conclude that someone in a similar situation who didn't succeed had simply not tried hard enough.

I don't know if you've ever done a competitive sport but if you have, you'll know that there is a Wall waiting for everyone.

That's the point where you stop. No matter how much willpower you have, no matter how important it is to you, you simply cannot go any further.

When feeding dd1 in the early days I came in sight of the Wall a couple of times in the wee hours, but never hit it. I thank my lucky stars for that, and I will echo hercules, it is just luck.

It was a horrible experience and if I had been less bloody minded, I'd have ff for sure... but there are dozens of factors involved in bf, and I would never dream of suggesting that someone else simply ran out of willpower.

There's just a nudge of fate that separates our stories. You met your Wall; I didn't quite meet mine.

I think that using phrases such as "didn't try hard enough" and bringing "luck" into breastfeeding is a slippery slope.

A RL friend told me I was "lucky" that bfeeding had "worked for me twice". Now, I don't expect praise from people for bfeeding - of course I don't, that would be mad. But to have the blood, sweat and tears I did put into bfeeding dismissed as being "luck" - well, I found that pretty flippant.

I do get the distinction you're making, Aitch, I really do - and I honestly don't believe I worked harder at bfeeding than somebody who didn't manage to make it work out - I know if, for instance, I'd had thrush in the early days I don't know if I could have carried on.

So I'm not being smug about bfeeding - I just want to support other women to be able to do it if they want to, because I know how devastating it can be if it all goes wrong.

Oh, Hunker, absolutely, I feel really insulted when people see me as being lucky to bf 2 babies without giving me credit for enduring the awful toe curling pain and sleepless nights.

But the point I wanted to make to Aitch was that sometimes you give your 100% best - and it's a magnificent effort - and it's still not enough. I feel lucky that that didn't happen to me; I'd have found thay very hard.

nobody here has caused me any offence in the slightest... i suppose i mean lucky in the sense that welliemum does, that they knocked their pans in and succeeded and in that sense were more fortunate than those who knocked their pan in and didn't succeed.

and lord knows i'm not asking anyone to apologise for having slogged their guts out to succeed at bfing (or not having slogged their guts out and succeeded cos it was piss easy and hte most natural thing in the world ). quite the opposite, they should be enormously proud.

my point is only that i have had conversations on MN (most notably with one person, but i've read others) and i've rather got the impression that they think that those of us who couldn't make it work just weren't as committed (ideologically? politically? maternally?) to bfing in the first place. which i know for a fact is not the case.

looking at my NCT group i see 6 women, all v keen to bf. three succeeded and are all still bfing at a year. three did not succeed.

two of us have medical issues that will have impacted on early milk production but that no one (not even the paediatrician husband of my friend...) warned us about in advance and no-one recognised in the early days when both of us were saying 'is it the drugs we're on?' my friend mix-fed for 7 months and i for 5. that's pumping after every feed every sodding day, as well as all the cleaning, sterilising and prep that takes. as well as bfing and prepping formula. that's commitment to breastmilk...

the other person had a very difficult birth and frankly a very difficult baby who cried all the time and she suffered a blast of PND that she's still coping with and so at 8 weeks she was persuaded (rightly, i think, cos it did help her) to introduce formula. as far as she's concerned it saved her life.

i suppose all i'm saying is that we all struggled, and if you're counting the tears shed in the early days then i believe (because we've discussed this and i have no reason to think they'd be telling an untruth) that it was those of us who weren't managing to bf that needed the most support from our friends.

i don't mean bfing support, but the sort where you weep your heart out and the only person who gets it is your pal who's just had her baby as well and whose nipples are cracked to buggery.

of course, that's why i think that the NCT is rather marvellous... peer support rather than bfing support (the three times i phoned them for bfing help i got a message saying 'these people are volunteers, they might not pick up the phone' and they didn't. never have a baby over christmas...)

god, that was long and self-justificatory, wasn't it?

oh aitch, absolutely.

bf was very touch-and-go for us (my saga can be found under my former posting name, berolina). And that was without pain, thrush or mastitis. I remember the absolute despair and misery when I was looking at it not working out. Admittedly I had skipped naively into it thinking it would 'just happen just like that'. Anyway, it worked out in the end and am still bf at 20 months, and I am proud of myself, but would never ever dream of suggesting that anyone for whom it didn't work out was less 'committed'. (I also feel we got off very lightly in many ways, because after those first few weeks of struggling it really was a piece of piss). I'm not sporty in the slightest, but do like the analogy with the Wall.

Re: 'the Wall'. My wall came when ds1 was 10 days old. He'd gone 12 hours without feeding and was sleeping most of that time. He was hard to rouse and seemed to be slipping away. He'd gone from birth weight 9lb 8oz down to 7lb 12oz. My fab HV was brilliant and got my GP out to see him and get him admitted to hospital. I had a big mechanical breast pump (like something you'd see in a Dairy - nearly as big as my microwave!) to stimulate supply.
They ran all sorts of tests on ds1 - turned out he had Haemolytic Strep so he was started on antibiotics.
The next day - after having expressed milk - he was brighter and had gained 1oz.
Fortunately we got bf restarted reasonably easily after that.
But I am the most bloody minded, determined person you've ever met in your life - started off thinking that bf is natural and best so there's NO WAY I would give up.

But by 10 days I was desperate - if he hadn't put on that ounce there is no question in my mind that the best decision would have been to start formula feeds.
I would've had to punch anyone who smugly told me that formula harms babies.
So although I've been lucky enough to bf both mine - I'd leap to the defence of anyone who didn't.

I do think there is an element of luck in there as well though, as whether you succeed or not can depend on what cards you are dealt (but without wanting to sound like I'm whinging IYSWIM). For example, I've seen a lot of people on here saying that they were bloody-minded enough to get through the pain, cracked nipples, mastitis, thrush etc etc. But if they'd had a difficult feeder to contend with as well then things might have been different. Now I had all of the above, plus a baby who would fight and fight to the bitter end when I tried to latch him on. As I've said before, it took both DH and me to get him swaddled and on to the breast. And this was at every single bloody feed for weeks on end. That, in the end, was what made me hit my Wall.

Just re-read that - I meant that those bloody-minded people have said themselves that things might have been different.

I did not mean to suggest that smoking causes brain damage, but as maternal smoking deprives the unborn baby of oxygen through the placenta, I suggest that puts a baby undergoing a difficult birth in a worse position than otherwise.

I think the main reasons why breastfeeding so often fails are that we don't see enough of it in normal life, because breasts are seen as sexual objects. This is what feminists should be objecting to - come back Clare Short!IMO bf should be done and should be seen to be done. Also, we see too much of the artificial alternative, so that now seems to be the norm. Education is lacking, so children grow up with very little idea about infant feeding and many myths abound, the worst one being "...formulas on the market are hopefully as close as what comes out of your boob." Rubbish - it's a million miles from breastmilk. Also, women are required to make money so there is pressure to get back in the workplace which is often not breastfeeding friendly.

I think that I, personally, would like to remove the word "failure" from all of this. I think that anyone that has tried their best has not failed at breastfeeding at all. I dont think you can define it as failing and succeeding or winning and losing. Any amount of b/feeding that has been accomplished through trying to establish b/feeding is an absolute bonus, so to say that someone has "failed" at b/feeding is just not correct.

semantically i'm with you, vvvqv, but emotionally one does feel very much like a failure. (i wonder if it's because all the people sent to help you tell you that if you 'just do x, y, z, that everything will be okay'? also you do see a lot of struggling and succeeding mums at bfing clinics, and you do feel very gutted to be left behind when everyone else is getting the hang of it...)

to be fair to those people on this thread who've managed to bf 'successfully', i don't think they've actually used the term. it's been us bfing losers who have!

It is such a difficult and sensitive issue.

The struggles I had when b/feeding DS i think largely contributed towards my developing PND. Exacerbated by the fact that b/feeding DD had been 'fine' and that she also had a cows milk protein allergy.

I often wonder whether it is the same reason that I continue to b/feed DS, who is 20 now months.

I have just read the article and some of it was as if i had read my own story up to a point.
I must say that i feel as though health professionals should stop sayin that BF doesn't hurt if your doing it right - yeah once your nipples have toughned up from the LO latching on with an industrial suck!
I stayed in hospital for 6 days just to learn how to do it properly. At times it was a case of mind over matter-my toes would curl as he latched on and i would find myself in tears.
Someone should have told me that your child has to learn to do it properly as well.
I feel like health professionals lie to you to get you to have a go so that they can tick that box whilst your in hosp, so that they can say they have done their job.
I'm glad to say that i am still BF (18 wks)but i would never look down at someone who FF. In fact at times i have envied them as they have much more freedom.
My LO will not have a bottle (expressed milk) or a dummy although he will suck his entire fist lol! (gone off subject a little there)

The woman who wrote this article obviously had a bad experience, but I think she was saying some dangerous things. I am still breastfeeding my 7.5 month daughter and intend to continue at least two feeds a day until she is one and I go back to work. But it hasn't been easy, and I think that the health professionals just have to be honest about that and not make you feel as though you are doing something wrong. It bloody hurts in the beginning! Your nipples aren't used to a suction pump suctioning the life out of them every two hours. You have no idea how to hold them correctly and your back, arms, side, knees... it all aches! Why can't health visitors and midwives be honest and tell people to persevere, that they're not doing it wrong, that it just takes a bit of practice by you and the baby. If a few more gave encouragement and help then a lot more women wouldn't give up. Once you get the hang of it, and if you don't have mastitis, there's no reason on earth to formula feed all the time. I was lucky enough to get a lot of help in hospital, but I don't know anyone else who had such a positive experience.

I have scanned through this thread. Yes, it seems to be a hugely controversial issue - to bf or not to, and not to judge. I had the very, very fortunate experience of a little pain and frustration during the first week and then it being a doddle, which I had the pleasure of enjoying until cutting out the one final feed a day, when DD was 18 months.
I own up to feeling self satisfied with the situation, until two antenatal group friends SHOWED me the bloody, swollen mangled results of their continued attempts. (One of them was a very down-to-earth doctor, who really couldn't believe that she just couldn't do it - her husband, thankfully took their DD downstairs at 4am one morning during a particularly awful night, and got out the formula. He was a doctor too.)
I don't know what the answer is. It just shouldn't be a thing to get so hung up about, one way or the other.

The thing is, MissM, you can't have one message for all.

So, for example, telling someone to just persevere might be completely the wrong thing to say, if the pain is caused by incorrect latch. You could be condemning them to a lot of unnecessary pain.

It would also be very unhelpful if the person has, say, PND and is absolutely at the end of their tether.

What's really needed are advisors who can respond to an individual's needs, which might involve simply jollying them along, or checking for problems of technique, or possibly, supporting them when they decide that breastfeeding is not the best way forward.

Sadly, judging by numerous stories on mn, many midwives and HVs don't seem to be able to be flexible in the help they offer.