Why are BF rates so low in the UK?

[LastNerve1]

Compared to other parts of the world, e.g the Scandinavian countries. And why is the level of BF knowledge sometimes so low/inadequate amongst HVs/midwives? Just curious.

In my case, no-one told me that (some/all?) bf babies need feeding every 2 hours. How many exhausted new mothers can sustain that? I did initially bf but eventually switched to formula so that I could get some sleep.

@HowDeDo

In my case, no-one told me that (some/all?) bf babies need feeding every 2 hours. How many exhausted new mothers can sustain that? I did initially bf but eventually switched to formula so that I could get some sleep.

Not all. My BF baby slept right through from birth (10pm to 7am). Was told not to wake him since he wasn't jaundice or low birth weight, so I did. He gained weight in his first week even, despite no night feeds.

There's not a chance in hell I'd have BF a baby waking every 2 hours. Sounds like living hell

Both mine woke every two hours for the first year but they were/are just shit sleepers! I'm not sure anything I did could have changed that to be honest!

My FF never slept ..she’s 18 now and still is a rubbish sleeper!!! She also struggled to put on weight so we had to demand bottle feed her... none of that nice and every 4 hours feed! The bottle cleaning, making (she would only have warm milk) meant she was in a sling clung to me while I was trying to make bottles! We had both really struggled with breastfeeding (within 24 hours she was on a bottle!) so I was just happy she was being fed!

EBF slept well once routine in place - still a good sleeper at 12. She took to breastfeeding immediately (it hurt and took a while to settle but once it clicked into place it all worked well)

But FF child has always been well never really got ill and has only had antibiotics 3 times in 18 years. BF has allergies and suffered terribly with ear and chest infections! Numerous antibiotics!

Swings and roundabouts!

I’ve both formula fed one and breastfed another for various reasons. I found a lot of pressure and some ‘support’ both times from midwives/HV but the actual knowledge and experience was seriously lacking. I only got as far as I did the second time due to the guilt and upset from failing the first time so I was so determined I forced it to work.

It’s a difficult one. I never felt looked down on either way but certainly felt more self conscious and guilty for formula rather than breastfeeding but I am in a v middle class area. I found the constant barage of ‘you must breastfeed’ very difficult during the second pregnancy as I still had a lot of guilt from my recent first child there.

I think the pro breastfeeding team need to realise that breastfeeding won’t save the worlds ills. Even if every woman in the UK was forced to breastfeed, no alternative, we would still have childhood illness, obesity, poverty. To me there are so many more issues that money needs to be ploughed into to support women and children’s health instead of endless breastfeeding propaganda. Women who want to breastfeed need support from their partners, medical and practical support from midwives and specialists and the support of society (no judgement for bf in public etc). Largely, in theory, we have those in a lot of places. But formula is available, it’s safe, it’s a lifesaver and mental health saver for a lot of mums. It’s not that expensive that it would put a lot of people off (bf cost me a fortune for various reasons!) and some people prefer it. Instead of making formula negative (eg no boots points) we should be supporting women to make choices and discuss combination feeding. EBF is incredibly hard work and as the sibling study showed that hard work doesn’t actually correlate to amazingly improved health or social outcomes. People aren’t stupid, that information is out there and it only takes a bit of research to see breastfeeding doesn’t actually impact hugely on the individual.

I think we should just genuinely support mothers, breastfeeding or not.

Has the rate gone down massively in the last few years? I had DS in 2003. Met other mum's through a group organised by local GP / Health Visitors (which incidentally they stopped organising a year later). Out of 20 of us, about 80% breast fed. We were a bit older, middle-class I suppose.

I found it easy in terms of I could just get my breast out, rather than buying formula and heating bottles, which I found a faff.

@Charley50

Has the rate gone down massively in the last few years? I had DS in 2003. Met other mum's through a group organised by local GP / Health Visitors (which incidentally they stopped organising a year later). Out of 20 of us, about 80% breast fed. We were a bit older, middle-class I suppose.

I found it easy in terms of I could just get my breast out, rather than buying formula and heating bottles, which I found a faff.

I read they’re the lowest in the world 😕

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35438049.amp

Oh god this again? It’s a choice. Literally like dyeing your hair or not or wearing heels or flats. Personal choice.
My second child was born when I was 34. I had tonnes of milk it was leaking already , son latched fine , I’d previously successfully breast fed but I’d already decided before birth I didn’t want to this time.

I pulled him off the breast at 24 hours old and put him on formula . Because I wanted to . I had done the hellish 9 months of having him inside my body and now I wanted that body back. I love my kids but I hate pregnancy and everything related to it , if they could have arrived in Amazon boxes at around 6 months old each that would have been grand. Much preferred my sons early months because I didn’t breastfeed. Bonded better , no PND. Loved having the freedom to drink have sex and bugger off out for the evening with no worries after a couple of weeks. He was way more sleepy and easy than my first too. Wish I’d not bothered the first time it was terrible.

Having said that I have a friend that loves it and feeds till they are up and walking, and that’s great too.

No one else’s bloody business. Just the mothers.

Because support is so utterly shit in the early days.

Because people think it's more acceptable to shove a bottle in a baby's face and are disgusted by a mother feeding her baby at the breast.

DS is 18 months now and I am asked constantly is he STILL breastfeeding - um yeah because he has a nutritional need for milk until he's atleast 2 if not older and he is in face a baby human not a baby cow so I don't give him baby cow feed.

Also don't see it promoted on fictional tv shows usually bottle feeding e.g. soaps

@musthavebeenlove

Because taking care of a newborn is hard and using formula is much easier then BF’ing.

Is it easier? I admit I only have experience of bf but amongst other reasons I was delighted not to have to bother with bottles and making up formula and it being another thing to have to remember when heading out.

I did get DC1 to take a bottle because I needed to leave him for about 6 hours for a hen do at 5 months. With DC2 I couldn't be arsed bothering so she never had one.

Because it really fucking hurts and spoils the first few weeks of motherhood.

The advantage of formula (and one of reasons we decided on it) is that it isn’t always you that have to give the feeds (or make up the bottles). Life with a new born is much easier if you aren’t glued to the sofa or struggling with another night of little sleep.

@Nats1984

Oh god this again? It’s a choice. Literally like dyeing your hair or not or wearing heels or flats. Personal choice. My second child was born when I was 34. I had tonnes of milk it was leaking already , son latched fine , I’d previously successfully breast fed but I’d already decided before birth I didn’t want to this time. I pulled him off the breast at 24 hours old and put him on formula . Because I wanted to . I had done the hellish 9 months of having him inside my body and now I wanted that body back. I love my kids but I hate pregnancy and everything related to it , if they could have arrived in Amazon boxes at around 6 months old each that would have been grand. Much preferred my sons early months because I didn’t breastfeed. Bonded better , no PND. Loved having the freedom to drink have sex and bugger off out for the evening with no worries after a couple of weeks. He was way more sleepy and easy than my first too. Wish I’d not bothered the first time it was terrible.

Having said that I have a friend that loves it and feeds till they are up and walking, and that’s great too.

No one else’s bloody business. Just the mothers.

I agree that it's a choice (as it absolutely should be) but I think lots of women actually have the choice to bf taken away from them due to inadequate support in the early days.

A friend of mine desperately tried to bf for weeks, tried really, really hard but just couldn't get it established. Turned out baby had a posterior TT that had been missed on 3 separate occasions. By the time it was divided at 8 weeks she had moved to FF. If she had received a proper diagnosis and support in week 1 or 2 she may have wanted to continue to bf or she might have chosen to move to FF anyway. As it was she didn't really have a choice because she wasn't helped to bf and her baby needed to be fed!

I don't really care how people feed their babies but in an ideal world I'd like every woman to be able to access sufficient support to make an actual choice (including support to continue breastfeeding if that is their choice) rather than feeling that they have to go one way or the other.

Because support isn't practical bring told not to use soothers or combi feed its made to look like hard work

lots of women actually have the choice to bf taken away from them due to inadequate support in the early days

Yes

I support any woman’s choice but that should be a choice, not something you have to do when you don’t want to.

I actually feel it's cultural. We Brits shy away from things that are hard but necessary for health. Interesting how when someone is told to lose weight for their health they get told to suck it up and do it for their health, but no one says that about breastfeeding.

Because it's not considered normal by most people. I actually had a HV pull a disgusted face at my 6 week check with DC2 when she got to the "and how is baby feeding" question and I said I was happily ebf. I thought how awful, if I was a new mum was struggling with bf, that look would have made me cry. It's the everyday little things that add up and make women feel like they can't continue. Agree with pp it's a negative cycle because people don't have direct experience of their friends and family bf, on it goes.

@Soupforoneplease

I actually feel it's cultural. We Brits shy away from things that are hard but necessary for health. Interesting how when someone is told to lose weight for their health they get told to suck it up and do it for their health, but no one says that about breastfeeding.

You’re brave! Haha

I wish people wouldn’t say “Oh this again” or equivalent. It’s an incredibly important issue.

I mixed fed DD - we introduced one bottle at a week old (because I was worried about her rejecting the bottle later) and did 50:50ish to six months, then she took to solids well and I was quickly down to one morning feed which we dropped at a year.

It was hellish for longer than advertised - she used to use me as a dummy, basically, whereas I thought she was still feeding, which was lovely and cuddly but wreaked havoc on my nipples. DH found me crying one night at around 3am. Really easily avoidable but the NCT and NHS birth classes were literally all “This is natural, you can do it, use Lansinoh and carry on”. I think this is setting women up to fail.

The other point for me is that if you want to encourage BFing the infrastructure needs to be there - a dedicated BF specialist on every postnatal ward (not a MW who has 5000 other things to do), lots of “breastfeeding cafes” where women can drop in for support etc. Some areas are great at this, others are dismal.

@dopeyduck

Because support is so utterly shit in the early days.

Because people think it's more acceptable to shove a bottle in a baby's face and are disgusted by a mother feeding her baby at the breast.

DS is 18 months now and I am asked constantly is he STILL breastfeeding - um yeah because he has a nutritional need for milk until he's atleast 2 if not older and he is in face a baby human not a baby cow so I don't give him baby cow feed.

These kind of attitudes can be quite hurtful for ff/all parents you know. ‘Shoving a bottle in its face’ and ‘it’s not a baby cow I don’t give it baby cow food’.

I think there's a lot of either or. So many of my friends were in tears and felt bullied by midwives when it wasn't going right and weren't "allowed" to combi feed and when they did use formula top ups felt like failures. Once they felt that way they felt like there was no going back because they'd "ruined it".

On the other hand, I did everything wrong by the midwives guidelines but I did what worked for me - probably the only benefit of having fuck all support being a lockdown first time mum was nobody was around to judge me.

I got to grips with breastfeeding by combi feeding and my daughter did have a dummy despite the cries of nipple confusion. That lasted a month and she's been EBF since (now 10 months).

There's so much judgement about how you feed your baby but tbh I think it's mainly mums judging themselves. Once you start weaning at 6 months milk feeds become less of an issue and everything becomes more focused on how many additives you feed your child/making everything from scratch. Mum guilt never ends.

"I read they’re the lowest in the world 😕"

@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken - that is terrible!!!

So much of what we claim to be our personal choices made entirely of our own volition are actually cultural norms that we adopt. Formula feeding is the cultural norm in the UK. It's very hard to breastfeed when you're not in a culture that breastfeeds, in my opinion.

It goes the other way too. In my "community" of local mums most women breastfed for at least the first year, several of us well into toddler or childhood. I know my friend who ff found that difficult.