Breastfeeding makes me feel sad

[Sterny]

Ds and I had many many problems getting bfeeding going. He was 6 weeks premature and whisked off to intensive care after birth for three weeks. I then got agonising sore nipples and decided to give him ebm for a few days to let myself heal and ended up expressing and bottle feeding for 4 months, until I finally got exclusive bfeeding going. He is now 6 and a half months old.

The whole experience of breastfeeding for me is tied up with sadness. I feel like my body failed ds because I couldn't carry him to term. I never got to hold and breastfeed my newborn baby. I felt guilty for failing to breastfeed when we had problems and now I feel guilty because I want to stop. I have kept waiting for a lovely breastfeeding moment that so many people have talked about but it has never happened. I have talked about stopping bfeeding before but guilt about stopping has kept me going (even through five hideous bouts of mastitis). I am scared of stopping because I won't be able to start again.

What should I do?

What a lovely note by your dh. Well done for getting to 7 months - you did amazingly well.

That's a lovely note (and my dh is also a vet, so sympathies in being compared to various types of livestock ). But well done on doing so amazingly well, expressing so long and re-establishing bfing! Feel proud of every ml of that 210litres!

Sterny,

You deserve a medallion and a great big hug you have done a FANTASTIC job to continue bfing given the hurdles you have faced. expressing is extremely hard work and mastitis 5 times.. you have given him the best possible start in life.

Think what you need is a good proper pampering session, a small wine and a box of chocolates to re-consider your views on this! You have given 250% and have been truly outstanding. Well Done

i think Califrau should shake her pom poms for you

Hi Sterny. I've had many of the same problems as you and most of the same guilt. If it helps, I'm really quite jealous of you, because you managed to make it to exclusive breastfeeding, and a part of me feels guilty because it makes me think I didn't try hard enough to get there. I'm going to give my pump back to the hospital after 4.5 months because I have to leave the country, so I've been winding down my expressing for a couple of weeks, and last night for the first time since I had my baby, I went to bed at 9pm, didn't wait around for the midnight pump. I've woken up this morning feeling brilliant, played with my baby all morning until she's just fallen asleep now, and just have such a sense of calm and peace. You've done everything you could do and there is no way your baby will be disadvantaged by any of your choices, not at all. He's grown and is healthy and loved. It's so easy for me to tell someone in your position not to feel guilty because I can see so clearly how you should feel the opposite of guilty, but I know how hard it is for to believe it when you're in this position, and no matter how many hours you spend expressing you just feel like the more time you do it, the more you're a failure. I just feel like, reading your posts, if someone like you can feel guilty, then my guilt is probably halfway as ridiculous. And bottle feeding may be more faffy than breastfeeding, but an INSANE amount of time is spent when you're doing both. You're going to love how much you can relax now. Please enjoy it.

Thanks guys. I feel all warm and fluffy now. For the first time since ds was born I feel like I am looking forward not back, if that makes sense.

Macneil, your posts were some of the first I read on mumsnet and for the first time I felt like there was someone else out there in the world who was going through the same things that I was. I was lucky that I was able to produce so much milk and that I had the time and support to get breastfeeding going. It could very easily have been different. Your sense of humour about your whole situation kept me going when I felt really terrible about things.

Dh and I are going to have a celebratory takeaway tonight

"We guess that Alice has spent about 140 hours being milked and has produced about 210 litres in that time, which is about a bath full. Writing as a vet, I can tell you this compares fairly favourably with a good dairy goat. But you mustn?t tell Alice that."

im PMSL!!!!!!!!!!

Tell me about it. When I was in labour he kept comparing me to a whelping dog. I also remember the midwife asking him how long her cat's stitches needed to be in for while I was having a contraction. Good job I've got a good sense of humour!

lol, thats so funny!

I had plans of printing off those claim form quotes that are halerious.. ended up going 4 weeks early and labour last just 1 hour so i didn't get a chance... heres some for a laugh though!

funny motor insurance claims

"Going to work at 7am this morning I drove out of my drive straight into a bus. The bus was 5 minutes early." (thanks N Bradley)

"I was driving along when I saw two kangaroos copulating in the middle of the road causing me to ejaculate through the sun roof." (from an Australian claim form - ack N Shepherd)

"The accident happened because I had one eye on the lorry in front, one eye on the pedestrian and the other on the car behind." (Thanks Sharon Burrows)

"I started to slow down but the traffic was more stationary than I thought."

"I pulled into a lay-by with smoke coming from under the hood. I realised the car was on fire so took my dog and smothered it with a blanket."

Q: Could either driver have done anything to avoid the accident? A: Travelled by bus?

The claimant had collided with a cow. The questions and answers on the claim form were - Q: What warning was given by you? A: Horn. Q: What warning was given by the other party? A: Moo.

"I started to turn and it was at this point I noticed a camel and an elephant tethered at the verge. This distraction caused me to lose concentration and hit a bollard."

"On approach to the traffic lights the car in front suddenly broke."

"I was going at about 70 or 80 mph when my girlfriend on the pillion reached over and grabbed my testicles so I lost control."

"I didn't think the speed limit applied after midnight"

"I knew the dog was possessive about the car but I would not have asked her to drive it if I had thought there was any risk."

funny quotes

Your husband sounds like he's been brilliant - supportive and not too serious.

The other day I took my dd for a scan at the hospital, and the way I always do when I meet medical professionals, they just say 'Is she breastfeeding?' or 'How is she feeding?' and then I open up with a 20 minute torrent of incredible detail about why I've been mixed feeding and how that happened and what's going on and how often I pump and exactly how many mls of formula vs breastmilk she's getting, and then, because I know how nuts I always sound, added 'sorry, I get a bit insane and guilty about this', and she said 'I didn't do a day's breastfeeding, you're telling the wrong person.' Six and a half months is a LOT of breastfeeding. I know there are marathon breastfeeders here, and they're great and dedicated but mostly they ENJOY it. There are so many women who do four months, have no feelings of guilt because it came easily to them and they did it right from the start, and they just stop! And then if they're asked if they breastfed, would proudly say yes, because they did, and wouldn't think twice about whether they've done the right thing. No guilt! I always assumed my mum breastfed me for about a year, because I always knew she liked breastfeeding. She also did four months and never gave the matter any thought afterwards.

I only fed ds twice today. Am now feeling a bit sad about giving up, although I know I am doing the right thing. I think I would feel sad whenever I gave up. Keep thinking about what you said macneil about your mother never giving breastfeeding another thought after she had stopped. Wish I could be like that.

Now sitting here with boobs like rocks. I wish the moment you decided to give up bf your milk dried up instantly! Seems such a waste. The whole drying up gradually seems to have sparked a big guilt trip

Sterny,

If you eat fresh Sage (The Herb) that will dry your milk up extremely quickly. Also i know that Motherlove do a potent Sage Mixture that you could buy to dry it up too.

You have given him more Breastmilk than most children get, you made his legs go chubby!
be proud of yourself

Sterny, you've done brilliantly! You are incredible!

Your last post made me wonder whether you're 100% sure you want to stop? Want to talk about it a bit? See how you think you'll feel in a day/week/month if you keep feeding or stop? Am around for a bit if you want to post xx xx

Hi Hunker,

Well I am not 100% I want to stop, but I don't think I will ever be though. I have agonised about stopping for months and months to the point where the whole thing is making me so miserable. To be honest, I have never enjoyed breastfeeding and I feel it is getting in the way of me enjoying my lovely ds. There is definitely a deep rooted reason why I am not enjoying it which is related to my early failures and the traumatic nature of ds's early days in intensive care but I don't know how to unravel that one. I am hoping that that will resolve itself when/if I have another baby as I know so much more now and am confident that we will be able to get off to a good start next time.

Other reasons I want to stop are that ds spends the whole time feeding grabbing and scratching me and has just started biting me. He also won't drink ebm fresh or frozen and, as I work two days a week he has to have formula then anyway.

Plus I am a real ditherer and prone to guilt trips anyway, which isn't helping

Hello, Sterny - really sorry - after saying I was around for a bit, my PC crashed.

I think you should ring one of the bfing helplines to talk about how you feel - a good counsellor will help you unravel some of this and if you do it now, you'll have a chance to keep feeding if that's what you decide.

How do you feel about talking to someone on the phone?

The biting and scratching thing is common at this age - and fixable.

Keep posting, try talking to someone in RL - and never lose sight of the fact that if you DO stop now, you have done a brilliant, brilliant thing for your DS and you are a fantastically strong woman x x x

Just wondered - do you think there's a chance you might have PND?

"Now sitting here with boobs like rocks. I wish the moment you decided to give up bf your milk dried up instantly! Seems such a waste. The whole drying up gradually seems to have sparked a big guilt trip"

Sorry I can't do proper quotes. A huge number of women give up at four months and it wouldn't occur to them to feel guilty about it because they have breastfed their babies. So have you, and then some. I'm not trying to urge you to give up, but I do think you should have some perspective on the guilt.

That said, here's what's happened to me. I went down to four pumps a day for a week, then three, then two and am now on 1. My milk supply just VANISHED from producing (only) 400mls or a little more when I was pumping 6 or 7 times a day, to less than 100 today. I had one day of very hard painful breasts when I went down to 1. THIS made ME sad and guilty, so you can't win. I love giving my daughter bottles of breast milk, and now I'm just giving her a tiny dribble of it, supplemented with more than the same amount of formula, and formula, godloveit, just doesn't give you the same feeling of I-am-nourishing-my-darling. The truth is, I wouldn't have given up so quickly if I'd stayed in the same place, I'd still be doing my 6-7 pumps a day, and I'd still be spending up to 4 hours a day just wired to the machine.

However, now I've stopped, apart from the twinges of guilt because there's no more milk, I also feel so much relief, and am much more relaxed because I can spend time with my baby and don't have to fit the time we go out with working in my next pump. It was awful having to tear myself away when she was in a cute laughy mood because I had to go and pump and if I leaned over her would start spraying her with milk.

"related to my early failures"

NO! Go and tell your husband you said that and get him to hold you and kiss some sense into you. You haven't failed. And your baby didn't fail. You just didn't get it together from the get go. These things happen sometimes - I wish I'd known this beforehand, although maybe it wouldn't have helped. I was lying in the bath with my baby today, and I was lying back with her on her back, laughing up at me, kicking my face with her little warm feet, and I was just so perfectly happy, and we just have to look forward to all the moments like that and stop obsessing over the weeks when we couldn't make anything work. They don't count. They don't get stored up to mean anything later. It's just good from now on.

Thanks for your replies Hunker and macneil.

I feel a bit daunted about the idea of speaking to someone on the telephone about this to be honest and in real life. My dh is very supportive of whatever I want to do but is very much of the 'well if you want to stop, then stop and if you want to carry on then carry on' mentality. He doesn't really seem to understand that it is about more than just milk for me. I'm so glad I found mumsnet because I wouldn't have been able to talk to anyone about this. My mum breastfed me and my sister but only for a few months and had no qualms about putting us on formula so she doesn't really understand where I am coming from. Even my friends who have breastfed think my dedication to the breastfeeding cause was a bit extreme.

You hit the nail on the head about formula not giving the same feeling as breastmilk macneil. Ds clearly has no taste as he won't drink ebm any more when I'm at work but will scoff down formula. Let's just hope he doesn't inherit his father's taste for Herta frankfurters...

I don't think I have pnd. The experience of having a small sick baby who was kept in hospital without me for the first 3 weeks of his life has affected me I think. If he had been a 'normal' term baby I probably wouldn't have got so hung up on the milk thing, but who knows?

Just wanted to add that I hope your dd is okay macneil as you posted earlier that you took her to the hospital for a scan x

I think she is, yes. She was subjected to all the flashing lights and just got cross with all of us, nothing worse. We've still to hear back from the paediatrician, but the scanning lady said it went well.

My mum has also been urging me to stop since quite early on. At the beginning, I thought it was a sort of brusque, impatient thing, like she thought it was self-indulgence on my part (I've believed everyone has thought this from the start, it's all part of the guilt package) but now I'm looking at things a bit more clearly, I think she was aware of how much stress I was under and how much of my life this was taking up - emotionally as well as the time - and wished I'd make it easier for myself. Listen, in two years' time we'll be giving them turkey twizzlers. At 6m, remember he'll VERY soon be eating purees of the best organic broccoli and butternut squash and you can channel your anxiety into making sure that's superhealthy, and that really will start sooner than you know. Whatever decision you make, it isn't going to affect your life for much longer, either way, so the guilt really shouldn't come into it. Try and do what makes you feel happy. But the thread tells you, you've already done enough to be very happy with yourself.

Sterny - you could always keep going for 1 or 2 feeds a day if you want. Feed when you feel the urge. That way you might actually get to enjoy a feed. You do not need to do a specific number of feeds a day at this age. You might find that your DS will ask for a feed by nuzzling in - no need to deny him if you feel like doing it IYSWIM?

hi to macneil as well. Both you ladies have my full admiration

haven't read all the posts but I just wanted to say that I really wanted to exclusively bf, was hell, flat nips, hard to latch = screaming baby who lost LOADS of wieght = v stressed new Mum. After 31/2 weeks I gave her ff bottle - I often feel very guilty now that I didn't give her ff sooner I can still see her all wrinkly and screaming with hunger (didn't know 'cos I was trying my best and a new Mum) I think you feel a certain amount of guilt no matter what you do - we can only do our best at the time.

Hi Sterny

I'm sorry I didn't see this thread earlier, I've been keeping off this board for a while as it makes me feel too sad. I want to tell you that I have always been impressed with what you have done for your DS, whilst expressing and then BF. I know how hard expressing is, and also how hard it is to carry on trying to get the LO to BF. You have worked so hard. And now your DS is older and has had many months of your breastmilk, so if you feel the time is right then you have nothing to feel guitly about. You actually have a lot to be proud of, but you just can't see it yet because you are too tied up in the emotions of it all at the moment.

I wish you all of the very best. Your posts helped to keep me going during some very difficult times and my DS gets breastmilk partly because of that. I think you are amazing!

Nine

Hi Nine, wondered if you were around. You have inspired me too as I really felt you knew how I was feeling about the whole bf saga. I'm sorry that you're feeling sad. You have done amazingly well to still be expressing. I don't think I could have expressed any longer than I did. It was driving me mad. If you find that coming on to mumsnet is making you sad, you are always welcome to e-mail me directly, same for you too macneil. I think you are both great.

Mears, I think what you suggested sounds like the best idea. Ds was a bit tired earlier and I gave him a lovely snuggly feed and really enjoyed it for once. I think I will just see what happens over the coming week. I won't be able to feed him much on Tues or Thurs this week anyway as I will be at work, nor will I be able to express much as I've just given the flipping breast pump back and can't get anything out other than a few drops by hand or with my mini electric one. I'll just see how it goes!

Thank you all so much

Glad that helped. Don't worry about not being around Tues and Thurs - in the scheme of thingsit will make no odds. If you are full try hand expressing then or use your minipuimp. Although you had no joy before, you are a champion expresser which proves it will come out! If you try hand expressing again, feel for the pea like reservoirs near the areola and gently suqeeze them between your thumb and 1st twofingers. Best to practce in the bath. You will know when you have hit the right spot.

Just aiming to feed him when you around will be enough to maintain supply.

You will only need to give formula until his solid intake is up. When my babes were on 3 meals a day they had juice/water to drink and breastfeeds from me when I was at home. Didn't need to express inbetween then.