feel such a failure that bf didnt work out for us

[gingerbreadgirl]

hi
im feeling so bad that bf didn't work out for me and dd. i "moved her"[ie gave up] onto bottles at 3 weeks.
and deeply wish, i had stuck it out for longer, but it was so hard, i was crying all the time.
i was totally shattered and never had enough to satisfy dd.
she wanted feeding constantly even after feeding 45 mins both sides, she was still not satisfied
now dd is 6 months i still feel bad
how long do these sad feeling last

I know it's all been said many times in this post, but none of us should feel guilty about "giving up" breastfeeding. I only managed 3 days before DD was rushed back to hospital suffering from severe dyhdration and jaundice, all because she hadn't been feeding properly and no-one had noticed. We ended up in hospital in the High Dependency Unit for 5 days, which was without doubt the most traumatic experience of mine and my husband's lives, and it still gives me nightmares.

My beautiful girl has just turned 1 last week, and her birthday bought back hugely painful memories of that week. No matter what anyone says, or how reassuring they try to be, I am still overcome with guilt about what happened, and still feel like it was partly my fault. I was desperately tryng to do the "right" thing by BFing but ended up with the worst possible scenario.

I wish I could feel differently, and that I could make the guilt feeling go away, hopefully over time it will fade. DD is a gorgeous, happy, healthy girl and for that I am so thankful. But I am also terrified about what to do when baby no 2 comes along. Any advice from those mums who managed to BF second time around?

Gingergirl. I was obsessed about failing to bf my dd2. you have my total sympathy. Can I just say though.... I think you might have some lovely fun and feel tremendous when you make her really nice veg and fruit. I took huge pride in feeding dd from 6 months. The less formula there was around, and the more organic veg and stuff, the fewer reiminders....

okay listen up... something that happened ages ago - the BF drama, happened to me, but forgive me if i sound mean - you just need to move on, it happened, I cried for nearly 3 months, then decided that I could either carry on being forlorn and worrying about whether i was callous, mean and an unworthy mother or could step back, look at my bb who was healthy, happy and fat, and then at myself - a less stressed, back in my own bras, organised bottle feeding mum, and, accept that for me bottle feeding was the way to go. my milk didn't come in for 11 days and when it did - it wouldn't have satisfied a kitten let alone a bb, 3 weeks of a hungry bb was not good, formula worked, whole generations have been brought up on it.... it can't be that bad!

Also the next time someone asks you how you fed your baby say you BF, and then moved to bottles - be vague about the timings it will avoid the disapproving looks (they will find out how hard it can be when they are mums!)

Finally, imagine how difficult it is for your other half to understand BF traumas when it was difficult for you to... give in, 2 wrongs don't make a right, and will probably make 3 wrongs, 4 wrongs, 5 wrongs etc.... be nice, break the tit for tat, rise above it and say what he needs to hear, if he is working hard, doing exams and needing support give it to him, it can only do good... and, it is Christmas

Please don't waste another moment feeling bad about this. I tried to bf and after the 5th day when my son was sucking in blood I decided to hang up my breasts! He thrived on the bottle as did my daughter. They are now aged 7 and 5, they are rarely ill and do not have exzma or astma (even though it is on both sides of the family). I put this down to their diet which is rich in fruit and veg, plenty of exercise and luck.
At the end of the day, bottle is not liquid poison, and your genes, diet, exercise and whether or not you smoke is going to have a far greater impact on your longterm health. Yes, breastfeeding is a great start - but that's all it is - a start. The best thing I ever did was wean my children on fresh food (the jars all taste vaguely the same)- make lots of those ice cube trays of carrots etc and you can't go wrong!

o you poor poor woman. I remember those feelings - I couldn't feed dd because of a medical condition which made it dangerous for me to do so. I spent the following 8 months explaining to everyone who would listen why I had to get a bottle out, that I had bf my other 2, and that actually i loved bf but our consultant had told me to stop. No one cared in the slightest and thought I was bonkers for telling them...just don't worry about it at all., Enjoy the positives - that others can feed, that you can get some sleep, that you are less exhausted, that sometimes bottle fed babies sleep longer, that you are doing what is right for you and your baby and you answer to no one but your self! You're doing your complete best - be proud of yourself and enjoy the sleep. And your tits not leaking is also very nice and a plus that should not be overlooked!

I have surprised myself by nearly crying reading some of this thread. I have recently started giving my DS2 2 bottles during the day and it has broken my heart. DS2 was a very unsettled baby. I posted many times on MN about the despiar I felt. He cried seemingly constantly. I have 2 other young Dcs and I felt at breaking point. My feelings towards DS2 had also become quite negative. Since having these bottles he smiles and laughs and we have started to bond. Despite all of this I am sitting here in tears because I feel like I have failed him. I don't know why because life before the bottles was unbearable. He is not an 'easy' baby, but he has got easier. I feel like I'm rambling but I wanted to get these feelings off my chest. (Sorry for the hijack)

I had this problem and totally understand your feelings. They are not rational though. I'm sure you know as well as me that it matters much more what you feed your child over the next 18 years than how many weeks or months you may have breastfed. Is it possible that you are slightly depressed as a result? It might fit with the negative feelings about DH.... (Just speaking from my experience.)

Really hope you feel better soon. (By the way, my DD's don't have excema or allergies or any of the things I was worried about at the time...)

I am afraid that my dd is nearly 3 years old and I still have trouble dealing with the fact that I stopped bf at 5 days (but only from time to time.) I have been suffering from post natal depression ever since. I'm sorry that this is not what you want to hear and I am not trying to say that you are ill. I got a really bad score on the Edinburgh test that the hv did at 6 weeks and got referred (via my GP) to a psychiatrist, which really shocked me but in the long term has been a great help. Luckily for me the chap that I see used to be an obstetrician and so really understood what I had been through (I had not been looked after very well in hospital but that's another story!)

This summer, I visited a dear friend who was bf her 3 month old and after watching her feed a couple of times I burst into tears. I felt so full of regret that I had not tried for longer. I now know that for me, in my situation, in February 2005, bf was not possible. I was too exhausted, too miserable and too traumatised by the labour and delivery and frankly I had had enough pain!

I have no doubt that there are plenty of people who might somehow soldier on in this situation but for me it was too much. I am slowly learning to accept that I had my limitations and that I did what I had to do for me, dd and dh.

No one should rate their ability as a mother purely based on the amount of breastmilk they managed to feed their baby. I know that breastmilk is the perfect food for babies but at the end of the day we all have to get on with life whatever way we can. Babies need food, also lots and lots of love and your dd, gingerbreadgirl, has that in abundance.

Thinking of you xxx

I know the health professionals/government want to strongly promote breastfeeding to persuade people who might not otherwise have tried it or persevered to do so, but I wonder if they realise the terrible effect it has on other mothers who can't for any reason?

I always comforted myself with the fact that there are lots of chemicals in people's bodies now, and that must offset to some extent the positives of breastfeeding

I also had a baby who needed to feed all the time, and was still not thriving. When I gave her formula, she was able to start lookng around and interacting with her world; something that was also vital for proper development.

i feel so that women feel SO guilty about not b/f - you all did what you had to do you tried your hardest so you should not feel bad - formula feeding is not child abuse - hopefully all the money the government is spending on promoting b/f will eventually pay-off and there will be enough support out there for everyone - i had it fairly easy breastfeeding my 2 dc - so trained as a breastfriend so i could offer my support locally

I wanted to add that I am another failed breastfeeder. There are so many of us out there! This was a very timely post for me. Yesterday, I was throwing out a load of leaflets I got when I was pregnant. I found an NCT one on breastfeeding that stated "don't worry that you don't have enough milk -this won't be the case" or something to that effect and I found myself in tears of sadness and anger as poor milk supply was was my problem. I hadn't got upset about it in months. My son is now 8 months. My overwhelming feeling is not guilt but inadequacy. I am sick of the propaganda spouted from various agencies that suggest that all you need to breastfeed is the inclination and a little will power. The sensible part of me knows that I did my best. I know that "breast is best" but the current trend for pushing breast feeding as a black and white issue is at risk of producing a lot of depressed and unhappy mothers. I hope that this thread is being read by people who produce nhs leaflets, books on caring for babies and antenatal class leaders. Rant over!

rachel, your rant is well-deserved if the leaflet you saw said '"don't worry that you don't have enough milk -this won't be the case". I am a breastfeeding counsellor with NCT and I honestly don't know of any leaflet that would give that impression....we know that concerns about supply are widespread and people need a lot more than ill-conceived platitudes. If you can fish the leaflet out of the bin, can you post here with the exact wording and the title of the leaflet? If it's giving that impression, then we need to change it.

The difficulty is that milk supply worries are often misplaced - you only have to read the posts on mumsnet to know that people get worried if their baby doesn't feed to a schedule, or feeds often, or takes a long time/short time to feed, or if the baby is big, or small, or whatever, and the truth is that supply is actually ok.

OTOH, there may be an issue with supply that can be fixed with the right help. Or poor supply is actually caused by inadequate help in the beginning. It's a complex thing.

For some women, the inclination and a little will power is nowhere near the answer to the issue of supply, and I can understand your anger and frustration if you read or hear things that imply it.

But the main thing in this post is to ask you to find the leaflet and it can be made clearer....hope you can do this.

Hi

I must confess I haven't read all of the posts but I felt I had to say something. Please please don't feel guilty for stopping bf. I gave up bf my dd when she was 6 days old simply because she was starving and I was exhausted! She's now almost two and whilst I occasionally had a pang of guilt I felt more relived that my dd was no longer hungry!

My husband's behaviour during and immediadely following the birth ofour dd made me really resentful towards him and at times I didn;t ever imagine that we could get through it. There came a crunch point and I broke down and told him exactly how he had made me feel and what he had done to me (not physicaly!). Turns out he had no idea how awful he had made me feel and what a dramatic effect he had had upon my emotions, confidence and our relationship. Anyway a lot of conversations, tears and love have come inbetween and we're now planning baby number 2. I think ou really have to get anything making you resentful out in the open otherwise it can destroy relationships.

Sorry for such a long post but I just found great parallell's between our stories.

xx

Gingerbreadgirl,

I'm so sorry you're feeling such regret.

You did what was right for you, at the time, in the circumstances.

What you really needed was someone to 'mother' you so that you could hibernate, feed dd as much as she needed until your supply was established and the pair of you were beginning to gain confidence. You needed someone to hug you and say that they appreciate it's hard work getting established, but not to worry cos they were going to feed you and bring you drinks, they were going to keep on top of the washing and hoovering, and generally attend to your needs so that you could attend to dd's needs. And that they would make sure the helplines for NCT BF support, or ABM etc were to hand whenever you needed to talk to someone who understands and is trained in lactation support.

So next time, tell dh and dm and mil etc that this is how they can best support you.

Enjoy your dd, she will love you no matter what!

Hi Tiktok,

Thank you for responding. I did not wish to malign the NCT as I think that they are a great organisation. Personally, I found the telephone help line and a one to one session with an NCT breast feeding counsellor very helpful, although she was unable to explain my babies failure to thrive and said I was doing all the right things. I've been through the bin and found my source! Pg55 of bumps and babies Vol.2 no.7.
Have I got enough milk?
"If your baby is well latched on and you are feeding him when he asks for it - usually around eight to twelve times a day in the early weeks - then you will make plenty of milk."

My health visitor (who was also very good) said that she thought the frequency of milk production problems were underestimated and my own experience of talking to other women suggest that poor weight gain and incessant crying due to hunger are very common.

I suppose what I am really trying to say is that most mums want to do the best for their children. The almost evangelical, national drive to get more mums to breastfeed is having a detrimental effect on the emotional welfare of thousands; who for one reason or another, cannot live up to the high expectations that we have been encouraged to set ourselves as new mums. There are so many valid reasons why women stop breastfeeding before they thought they would. This could be dealt with more sensitively in antenatal classes and reading material so that we don't beat ourselves up over it and take great pride in whatever way we feed our babies.

Thanks for going through your bins, rachel

I can't find my Bumps&Babies to see what else is said, but I agree with you - that statement on its own, while generally true, is not enough. However, we see many, many problems where the baby is not well-attached, or not as well as he could be, and where the baby is not feeding often enough. When these issues are addressed, the baby does thrive, but you are right, in some cases, it doesn't happen. Some babies need to be on or near the breast more or less all the time, which is difficult. In other cases, the baby's weight causes concern, but it could be a result of a naturally slow gaining baby. It's a complex situation, and the sentence you have quoted over-simplifies it.

'Getting more women to breastfeed' is at the very least unkind, if we leave the ones who don't manage it feeling awful. In Norway, where everyone begins breastfeeding and where only a tiny percentage switch to the bottle, women who don't breastfeed are (I am reliably informed) supported and sympathised with and it is assumed something major has occured for which the mother needs a lot of understanding. They are not told 'it doesn't matter' or 'happy mother = happy baby' or some other fatuity (when the mother plainly is not happy!).

What I mean is, it's not the drive to promote breastfeeding that is at fault per se - it's this plus maternity hospital practices that mess it up, this plus midwives and health visitors who don't know how to recognise and then fix problems, this plus ridiculous social barriers to breastfeeding, and this plus a lack of real understanding of the distress some mothers feel if breastfeeding doesn't work out.

Any reading material saying breastfeeding is 'a good thing' is a kick in the teeth for some mothers and a reminder of their grief, so yes, I agree, we should be sensitive, never glib, and think carefully about what we say, all the time.

thankyou to everyone for all the help and support

and to the odd 1 or 2 that has said just move on, thats a bit like telling someone thats depressed to pull themseleves toghter or cheer up
its not very kind or helpful
although im sure you intened it to be helpful

dh really doesnt want to go to relate, but ive told him if i still feel this way about him after xmas, we really need to

my problem is i honestly feel i could of tried harde, but i honestly just couldn't do it without support
that is thye hionst truth

hopfully i will in time get over this and thankyou to everyone that has shared there story with me, that is such a kind and generous thing to do

thank you very much

ginger, good to hear from you.....lots of side-tracking with your thread, hope that's ok

Have been thinking about this a lot today (even though it's been quite a while since I was breastfeeing it's still a very emotionally charged subject for me.)

There are a few things I would like to mention with regard to my experiences with breastfeeding counsellors and HVs. Everyone I spoke to was very supportive, but some of the people who were very pro breastfeeding were unable to deal with the part of the conversation or the follow-up phone call where I said that despite trying everything I still felt my baby was hungry and what should I do? Eventually I found a section in Penelope Leach about top-up feeding and used that successfully for several months. It would be useful for any would-be counsellor to know more about that topic as it is a good way to maintain at least some breastfeeding.
(Perhaps many do, but not the NCT breastfeeding cousellors I dealt with - they refused to give me any information about formula at all.)

Secondly, I learned a good lesson in that I understood my baby better than any HV who said that the feeding and latch were fine. In fact when I thought she was hungry and unhappy after a feed she actually was. She was a totally different baby when I supplemented her.

I would like to second Rachel's comment about the concept that we can all make enough milk - I certainly remember reading that every woman (apart from those who've had surgery, etc,) can breastfeed, which makes people who can't feel such failures.

I did a lot of research online before my next child was born, and found studies which say that it's rare, but there are people who don't produce enough milk, also that the baby's mouth formation or a tiny, undetectable tongue tie may make the latch inefficient enough to reduce milk production.
Although most things work well in nature, some things do go wrong - babies get stuck during childbirth and some mothers don't produce as much milk as others. I just wish more people had known that at the time when I was struggling.

Well, I dunno.....the breastfeeding counsellors I know (inc myself) do know about how to use formula with a minimal impact on continued breastfeeding, though they will not be able to talk about which brand to use etc.

The conversation with the counsellor that goes 'I have tried everything and my baby is still hungry, what do I do?' would lead to a discussion on expressing and topping up with expressed breastmilk, checking for tongue tie and/or latch issues, ensuring the mother has medical/health visiting support to check the baby is basically ok, exploring why the mother believes her baby is hungry ('because he doesn't like to sleep in his cot' is not necessarily hunger, for instance, and nor is 'he wants to feed all evening'....not saying this applied to you, redadmiral) , and actual suggestions to use infant formula would not come from a bfc, because that's an intervention akin to advising some sort of medical treatment and we can't do it. However, if the mother wants to talk about topping up, or is doing so, or the HV has told her to, the bfc should stay with the conversation and talk through ways to do it with least impact on her bf....and this is well within the bfc's remit.

So if you felt they could not help you in this way, red, then you have been let down and I am really sorry

Gingerbread, I bf my dd for 13 months but if I'd had the experiences and support that you'd had, I don't think I'd have even lasted 3 weeks. I think you've done brilliantly just to even consider bfing.

I was lucky, I had a baby who fed for 30 min then slept for 2 hours (albeit day and night) I didn't have bleeding nipples, mastitis etc, I had family who all bf and so it was considered natural that I would as well and I live in an area where the majority of women start off bfing and so would all sit around at the local under ones group feeding their babies. As someone said on here, it's a very line between 'success' and 'failure' (god I hate those terms) with bfing and for most of us, it's a case of 'there but for the grace of god go I'.

And really don't give a moment's thought to people asking how long you bf for. I'm always taken aback when people say 'wow it's fantastic you bf for x, I ONLY managed so-and-so'. I want to reply 'stop saying only. You bf. Full stop.' People really don't care and they really don't judge. (And if they do, they're arseholes).

We do all feel guilty about something - if it wasn't this, I assure you, your mind would find something else (and probably will do soon).

I think to move on, you have to sort it out with your husband somehow and then work out how you could prevent it happening again with another baby by building a good support network. Anyway I really hope I haven't offended you in any way. Good luck.

Hi Tiktok

Thanks for your reply. No,I know not all BF counsellors are the same, and also, as I said, the ones I spoke to were in themselves very nice and tried to be helpful. It was just that in my experience there was no more conversation after the question as to what to do next, just a kind of fading away. Basically, I got the strong impression from them that to use formula would be a VERY BAD THING. They were also so keen to reassure me that provided you do everything right breastfeeding will work it made me feel that I must have been doing something wrong to have a problem IFYSWIM.

is your little one now happy? if so that is the best reason to feed them howerver(ps you lasted longer than idid)

I was lucky enough to be able to breastfeed but I still hate reading threads like this and they upset me hugely. A big part of the reason that I managed it was that I was 100% supported by my partner, family and friends and had enough information available to me to be able to tell the HV to bog off when she suggested that my daughter feeding twelve times a day was excessive (she was only a few weeks old). I really feel sad that people are so misadvised and so unsupported in doing something that can be so difficult for so many people. I'd just like to extend a large, warm and general hug to everybody who has faced such problems and tell them also that I was entirely bottlefed, am not noticeably scarred by it and still love my mum as much as I would have done otherwise.

It's very interesting to see the same comments about breastfeeding promotion, mixed feeding, etc. coming up time and time again on these threads. As Tiktok will know, this became rather a personal crusade of mine a few months back when I was having dreadful problems with my own breastfeeding. Clearly there are issues for many women that need to be addressed, but goodness knows where to start - it is such a complicated subject. Hats off to people who are willing to give up their spare time to try and help people like us. Without them, things would be a hundred times worse.

Gingerbreadgirl - I myself cringed a little at a couple of comments on this thread, although I am sure they were written with the best of intentions. You are right, a mother in your position is suffering real distress and this can't just be dismissed or belittled without the risk of causing further hurt. Do try not to take it to heart though, and I really hope you can continue to work through this.