Undermining comments about breastfeeding

[frogs]

Following on from other people's rants, I thought it would be good to assemble a collection of daft and undermining comments people make about breastfeeding -- particularly friends and family who supposedly have our 'best interests' at heart.

I'll kick off with one from my mum, who really doesn't mean to undermine, bless her, but can't help herself.

This one was made having just watched dd2 (6 months) eat a grand total of three rice krispies at breakfasttime: "I would have thought you'd only be breastfeeding morning and evening by now." What's the poor baby supposed to be living on, FFS, fresh air?

And then there are the golden oldies: "Isn't she on solids yet?"; "Are you still breastfeeding?" and "She looks hungry to me, perhaps you should give her a bottle."

More of the same, please, for our rogues gallery, so we can all remind ourselves what nonsense they are.

A friend of mine b/f until her daughter was over 2 yrs and she was so fed up with negative comments that she ended up doing it secretly (bedtime feed in the bedroom)

Personally I managed 9 mths with my 2, but they seemed to lose interest - probably because they became used to day-time bottles when I went back to work. I do remember getting negative commnents though - such as "he's not still on the pump is he?" in disparaging tones

From DH's aunt

"Are you still doing that demand feeding thing?"

Followed up by "I didn't manage to bf any of mine longer than 6 weeks - I didn't have enough milk" . At least that makes me feel glad I am still demand feeding and that I manage to keep up with DS's growth spurts

From my GP - 'Won't you be wanting to give up soon?' - when I told him ds was still feeding x2 a day at 11 months.

From my HV at same time - 'Well, you're doing very well to still be feeding, but after 6 months there's no nutritional vlaue to it anyway' - implying that I was doing this for myself, perhaps? Just call me selfish, eh?

Good old supportive health professionals...

I feel like I must live on a different planet, or at least inhabit circles where everyone breastfeeds/approves of breastfeeding, because after breastfeeding 2 children I can honestly say I never received anything but supportive comments from my friends, relatives, and everyone I knew in the medical profession.

An aunt:
"which feed is this then?"
"oh, this must be the 11.17 feed"
"so what feed is THIS?"
"This must be the 12.29 one, mustn't it?"
And so on, round the feed-on-demand clock.

But tiktok & others: is breastfeeding countercultural? In my circle of RL friends I only know 2 people who elected not to breastfeed and 20-30 who do/did breastfeed. Maybe breastfeeding past 1 yr is slightly countercultural, but I'm under the impression that most people at least aim to feed up to a year. But maybe I have a very specific circle of friends/acquaintances?

I'm not saying it isn't countercultural, btw, I'm just asking.

Blu at aunt's questions. Reminds me of my dad, who saw me using the breast pump. He said, in wonderment, "Good God just like a cow on a farm!" He was in awe, mainly--and very happy I was breastfeeding. Do you think your aunt was maybe similarly in awe, and trying to wrap her head around this strange notion (for her) of round the clock feeding? Or was the tone more critical? I guess I just find a lot of older folks quite curious about breastfeeding, and wanting to ask a lot of harmless if annoying questions.

XPK: Borderline critical, in a sort of 'where's the ROUTINE in this new fangled mollycoddling approach'.

Before becoming a parent I will admit that I thought bf-ing children over a year was downright weird, and thought that I'd stick it out for a dutiful three months and then gratefully stop. But changed my attitude overnight and fed DS til about 20 months.

"I guessno onegetsto feedthatbaby except you?" from my mother, about my 1-week old.
("No," I replied, "But you're welcome to change her nappy."
Funny enough, my mom didn't take the offer up.)

Expatkat, I'm convinced British women r more prudish/shy about nudity than almost another culture. Very hung about it.

'Fraid all the stats show bf to be profoundly counter-cultural, expatkate....the majority of babies (67 per cent) begin bf (though this figures disguises massive disparities in regional and class and age choices) but only a minority are still getting any breastmilk at the age of four months. Sorry - figures are somewhere, but I know it's about 28 per cent (again with disparities).

Trusting the body and the baby to work properly without an artificial structure (like the clock) is counter-cultural - hence the argument 'in favour' of the bottle that 'you can see what they are getting'.

I think your friends are unusual, though there certainly are circles of friends like that. I'm unusual too...I have no real life friends who didn't start breastfeeding - and they have all continued, to varying lengths of time, all of them beyond four months and several w.....a......y past that. I know for sure I have been an influence on many, just as the friends who had babies before me influenced me.

I'll take it back about the Tactful Looks. It's just they were so very, very pointedly not at me.

Don't think the concern was fake so much as grossly misplaced, quite frankly. It was very, VERY annoying.

I think a smile at my face would have been nice. Or even - I'm not proud - a smile at the baby.

I guess it's countercultural inasmuch as lots of today's grandmothers didn't manage to bfeed in the sixties and seventies, and have issues around breastfeeding that may cause them to make these kinds of comments.

Also, although breastfeeding maybe widespread among middle-class new-labour southern types, in other parts of the country and other social groups it's not at all the done thing. And that's not just deprived areas either -- a West London banker's wife yummy-mummy acquaintance told me recently that she didn't know anyone among her friends who had exclusively bfed for longer than 6 WEEKS.

This was at the [kids' birthday] party where people kept coming up to me going, "Oh, you're so brave to bring your baby -- my baby's at home with the maternity nurse/nanny."

best comment I ever got was

Fancy letting your kids ruin your life, your figure your finances and your tits...

Funny now I saw her a few months ago and my large much b/f mammaries are perkier and looking better than her, as is my figure and I'm not a snob but my car is a later model too
My life is really nice thanks

Old bat of a HV suggesting that I might like to set my alarm to get up in the middle of the night to eat. No, I'm not joking. According to her 'there's nothing of you dear' and eating in the middle of the night might improve my milk supply. Oh, and a baked potato at lunchtime might help too. According to her, ds wasn't putting on enough weight, even though he was still in the same centile. Wish I'd punched her. Instead I went home and bawled my eyes out and felt totally inadequate.

At nearly 8 mos, the most frequent comment is 'oh, he's a big boy, you must be exhausted'. He isn't and I'm not.

You know, I once sat in the waiting room of the ICU of a big hospital in Africa when a very conservatively dressed woman came in with a little boy about 2 or 3. The waiting room was packed with people of all ages, male and female. The child sat on her knee, she undid her top and out came her breast in full view and the child fed. No one batted an eyelid. Considered completely 'normal'.

'If you want to bf after 6 months you'll have to give the baby lots of extra vitamins as breast milk is not as good as formula' from the HV.

'When did you change to bottles' asked at dd's 7 month check by HV, leading question or what.

'My dd's never had cow's milk, I don't want her to yet' from friend when dds were 7 months old, she'd been using formula for 6 months!!!!! She still hasn't got it that formula is cow's milk no matter how many hints I drop (she has made other such comments since) and dds are 2 1/2 now.

'No you can't bf in here, we don't like that sort of thing' at M&S in Manchester (got £30 in vouchers for that one)

I'm off to try bf in the Manchester M&S to see if I can get some vouchers too

Ha, ha!! Try it round the snooty Per Una section... To be honest, that was when dd was small, now, with ds, I'd just sit on the floor and do it anyway, I'm not as timid as I was about it!!

I did get really, really stared at by a woman in Starbucks once and felt uncomfy but then she came up to my dh when I nipped to the toilet (why not to me, I don't know) to say how impressed she was and how lovely she thought it was, I think she was just looking in a good way, IYSWIM.

I think breastfeeding is very approved-of in certain socio-economic groups, at least for small babies; and outside those, considered anything from private to revolting. So if you're a nice middle-class lefty like me it's perfectly OK for a while and, in fact, very few people have commented on my continuing feeding. Apart, of course, from DP who's so concerned it's draining me

My friend, who has a 3wk old baby, asked her Health Visitor for advice on expressing so someone could give the baby a feed while friend went to a funeral. The HV told her not to bother with expressing, it would be easier to give the baby a bottle of formula. Sadly, my friend followed the advice even though she has gallons of milk.

when I asked my sister why she chose to breast feed (she did it until 5 months with both kids), she looked a bit blank and said,

" to be honest I never thought about the benefits for the baby, I just couldn't be arsed getting out of bed in the middle of the night to heat bottles"

ah, well!

Hi there. I've read all the messages and laughed at them, as during the course of breastfeeding my first 2 children I have encountered the majority of the comments mentioned. When in hospital after having my first baby, I found my bed surrounded by the whole in law family (about 6 adults and 8 kids) and I was desperate to feed. I told my MIL wearily that the reason DD was screaming was because she needed feeding and my MIL simply stuck her finger in DDs mouth and said 'for goodness sake, you can wait til we all leave can't you?'. At this point I cried and the mw sent them all packing. (This, incidentally, is the same MIL that arrived after my second baby's birth at the hospital in a flurry, saying 'Quick, your FIL is on his way up so you need to cover yourself up'. I was just lying on top of the bed in a nightshirt and ankle socks at the time!!! Sick)

?You?ve done your bit?, after 2 weeks expressing for premature twins, said (apparently) by the midwives to a colleague?s wife, to encourage her to go onto to formula. And this was at a Unicef baby friendly hospital!

They apparently said to her that the boys would have got enough benefit by now and feeding much longer would not make much difference and that she should ?look after herself?.

The babies were born at 32 weeks (good weights ? over 5lb each!) and were home 3 weeks later ? but then back in hospital a week later with various infections (although they?re home again now, at 38 weeks). My colleague has been told that because they were premature, they didn?t get a chance to develop their immune systems...... well if they?d encouraged his wife to continue to b/f as she had wanted, then they might have got more of the benefit of her immune system

This wasn't directed at me, but overheard whilst I was in hospital having just given birth to DD.
Midwife X to midwife Y
"Where's *** from bed two"?
"Oh, she's gone up to the dairy shed."

They were discussing the whereabouts of a lady who was expressing her milk for her premature baby who had had to be born by c/s.

Someone told me a similar story the other week Levanna. Her newborn baby called Daisy had to go to SCBU. Guess what the m/w had nicknamed the pump and what happened when they said to the mum, shall we bring Daisy to you?