I am ashamed of myself for being so judgemental.

[Gingerbear]

A mum from DD's school had a baby last week. I saw her yesterday and was chatting to her about all things baby. Then she got out a bottle and filled it with a carton of formula. I felt my heart sink and I thought, oh no, she hasn't even tried to breastfeed. I was about to say, 'I will be breastfeeding again next time' but held my tongue. I have no idea about her views, if she had problems with breastfeeding and I don't know her well enough to broach the subject.
It is such a personal issue, and so easy to offend someone. I just feel so sad and frustrated at myself for being unable to speak to her.

Just wanted to redress the balance here - I know a lot of people have said they didn't find their HV or midwives helpful when they struggled with bf.

I'm in Norfolk and ours were great - i was bf but dd couldn't latch on very well and got so dehydrated we had to take her to hospital.

The doctor told us we had a get a certain amount of food in her every three hours. Even then, they still supported me trying to breastfeed and taught us how to cupfeed so we wouldn't have to introduce a bottle so early.

We ended up putting her to the breast then topping up with cupfeeding for quite some time.

in the end, we did introduce bottles but it was my decision with no pressure from the midwives or HV - they couldn't have been more helpful. It's sad that not everyone has had this level of support but I just wanted to say that, if you're lucky, it is out there.

Fleecy - good to hear all was well in the end.

But when a baby ends up being hospitalised because of dehydration, the chances are the midwives have not been great at all....someone should have spotted your baby was not transferring milk effectively or sufficiently, and helped you get expressed breastmilk into him long before he was ill enough to need hospital treatment.

Seems they helped you a lot afterwards, but how much better it would have been if things had been avoided.