Baby's not even born yet and we are arguing about how long to BF......

[Nettee]

DH was really supportive of my BF DS for a year and then we argued for about 5 months - him saying it was time to stop and me not wanting to or seeing any reason to. It was horrible and made the last 5 months of feeding almost like a guilty secret. DC2 is due in just over a month and we have had the same arguement again this evening. I am just so upset and feel this issue is going to colour the whole of the breast feeding time with our new baby. DH feels I won't compromise or negotiate and that I exclude him from the decision making but I don't see that we can compromise on this. If I stop when he says then I will feel resentful towards him about it. I hoped this would go away because I did stop eventually and I am sure I will again next time. I think the resentments just built up too much last time for either of us to talk about it rationally. DH is a brilliant dad and DS is now such a daddy's boy - they have a great relationship and it is so lovely. This really seems to be the only big thing we disagree about in parenting and it was only by a few months. I am so sad because with DS, DH was so positive about BF at the beginning and used to bring him to me when he was hungry and say things like - DS is getting a perfectly balanced meal.

Please don't all lay into my DH I don't really know what I want from mumsnet in relation to this - just to let off steam I think. I wish this hadn't come up now - or ever to be honest - BF was just such a happy experience until we started fighting about it.

Without wanting to get too deep into it - could your perhaps express later on so that he can give the odd bottle of EBM???

Thank you for your message but that really wasn't the problem. DS was mostly on bottles of cows milk with the odd BF - maybe once per day - at a year tailing off over the next few months. DH just though he should be growing up and moving on - which of course he was doing

i fed my dd for 18 months (having bfed ds for 6 months). dp wasn't terribly impressed, especially once she was a year, & did go on at me rather to stop. that made me dig my heels in & carry on & we came to an impasse.....

i eventually stopped earlier than i would have liked & later than he would, so i suppose that was a compromise of sorts. i felt bad for dd when i stopped (she was boob obsessed!), but not really for me, as 18 months is pretty good going.

why does yr dh feel this way?

he says:

I want your body back - but at this stage it doesn't really have an impact imo

The health benefits are minimal after 1 year - but they are still there

The child needs to become more independent/grown up - but extended breastfeeders grow up to be very secure people in general as far as I am aware.

And he says it isn't to do with what other people thin - especially as by then I wasn't feeding in public - neither or us wanted DS to be old enough to demand to be breast fed in public and still be feeding

so at least we agreed on something.

So basically I could counter all his arguments fairly successfully which probably frustrated him and both of us go more resentful as time went on

Nettee - it's hard when you don't have support at home. I wonder how much your DH actually knows about bfing & what normal-term bfing should be? If he is like my OH I doubt he spends very much time reading about bfing or chatting about it irl or on online. So unless you have given him lots of reading previously he probably has a rather skewed idea about how long bfing should be done for. Lots of us Mums in the know know that it's normal & beneficial to feed for as long as possible, know all about the WHO guidelines of a minimum of 2 years etc etc....but it's unlikely he does as neither do the majority of society at large.

Maybe it's worth pointing him in the direction of a few sites with info about the benefits of bfing in general so he can see without a doubt that bfing is a good thing to be doing no matter how long it it done for....and then a few links about "extended" bfing...shout if you want some suggestions....

You may find that attitudes will change over time with a second child, especially as your first child obvioulsy continues to grow too. Dh may be less keen for your second child to grow up so quickly once he can see how fast this stage goes. If you can, please don't worry about it, and try not to get into arguments about a situation that you haven't come to yet. Second children are often fed for a different period from first children - each situation is unique. Concentrate on what you do agree on - that you will be looking to establish brest feeding again with dc2. Leave what comes later until later.

Thank you for your posts - very good advice. We patched things up this morning and agreed that we would try not to argue about this again at least until the new baby is a year old. - I know people whose babies have self weaned at under a year so it may not come up at all. just hope we can get out of the habit of being defensive about BF when the new baby is tiny - if he or she is anything like ds it will be quite constant to start with so we will have to get over it.

I remember quite early in our relationship we had a row about whether any future children would be allowed into our room/bed. I was so upset about it at the time as dh said not and I was so used to it from my own childhood. Of course now that DS is here he is in and out of our bed like a yo yo and dh is completely relaxed about it so as you say it is silly to argue about future things that might not happen.