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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

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Original poster

Breastfeeding ruining my friendship :-( --may be long, sorry--

43 replies

GogoTheSmall · 19/12/2007 10:49

I'm really sad about this and not sure how to handle it. My oldest friend and I both had babies within 3 months of each other. She had her ds first and bfing didn't go well - he fed all night long and she was told she had a sucky baby, also told her nipples were too flat. So she switched to formula on day 2 and also expressed for about three weeks before deciding to go ff full time.

My friend is a nurse and she has suffered a lot of guilt since giving up bfing. She has had enormous trouble watching me bf my dd (still going at 9 months and no plans to quit yet) and she used to have to leave the room when I fed her. I feel really bad for her. I love bfing but I certainly don't proselytise and I don't even mention it in front of her.

The trouble is that she keeps bringing it up when I see her. She is becoming quite defensive as time goes on and although she doesn't seem to have a problem watching me feed any more, she will say things to put down bfing in my presence. She is the type of person without much of a filter iyswim - just opens her mouth and out it comes!

Much of what she says isn't accurate either - stuff like 'oh, well breastmilk is only as healthy as the mother, so you need to eat a really healthy diet'.

And she has this awful way of comparing how many illnesses her ds has had compared with my dd and other babies by bfing mothers we know. I really hate that! My dd has only had 1 cold so far and her ds has had lots of different bugs but I'm sure there are complicated factors affecting that, not just bf vs ff.

So if she says something that I know is inaccurate I will correct her as nicely as possible, but the rest of the time I just bite my lip. All the same I can tell she thinks I am having a dig, no matter how neutral I try to keep what I say.

It is really getting in the way of our friendship now. I feel that next time my dd gets a cold or whatever my friend will be gloating in the background!

We have gone from being really close throughout our pregnancies to only speaking every few weeks. We were best friends all through school and have known each other for 25 years.

I really hope we can get over this stage in our lives but I am getting sick of the digs tbh. And she's planning number 2 - this could go on a while...

OP posts:

Zealot · 19/12/2007 23:14

i think it must be difficult when you're an HCP and have formed all sorts of judgements about people not trying hard enough etc etc and theny wehn you're faced with bfing and find out that it's not for you (whether by choice or not), that must require a superhuman adjustment.

geminigirl · 22/12/2007 12:41

I am a midwife and I had avery difficult b/f experience (feeding for 6 hours at a time, crying baby, crying mummy,) which was made worse by post c/s recovery, low haemoglobin after c/s, big hungry baby. I did everything that I would have recommended to any mums I advised plus some that I didn't, took herbs, fennel tea, motilium, expressed after feeding,introduced ffs and expressed 3 hourly and am now giving 75% ffs and expressing 6 hourly and am giving that milk to my son once a day as well as giving a breast feed in the mornings.

It took me a lomg time to reconcile myself with the fact that the b/f wasn't working out no matter what I did, sometimes it just doesn't.

I still feel that I am doing something good by expressing what I can for him and storing it up for one feed of total breastmilk, it probably does more good for me than for my son!!

I will certainly have a very good understanding of new mums who find b/f a real challenge and will not hesitate to share my own experiences with them.

Merry Christmas to all!

OhGiveUsAPruniPudding · 22/12/2007 12:46

Oh geminigirl with the best will in the world - please don't share your experiences with new mothers who are struggling. It is so hard but to hear "Well I did this and this is how it worked for me" from HCPs confuses so many of us! Especially if things have sadly not worked out despite all your efforts - the message sent is that it didn't work for me, it might not work for you either...subtly, that is really undermining when you are just starting out.
(Am very sorry things didn't work for you btw, am not wanting to have a go, just, you know, have been there with one mw telling me her experience and another telling me hers and not having a clue what is actually normal...)

LoveAngelGabriel · 22/12/2007 12:56

I haven't read all the replies (sorry) but it's a real shame your friend is behaving this way towards you . I had immense trouble with BF-ing and gave up when my son was 6 weeks old. I also suffered from feelings of failure and guilt, but I never made it anyone else's issue. It just isn't fair that all these months on she is making you feel bad about this. I totally relate with your friend and understand how she must be feeling, but I really think she has to face up to her own feelings and come to terms with them - taking it out on you and other BF-ing mums isn't healthy or fair. Why don't you sit her down for a heart to heart and bring the subject up? Be prepared for her to be extremely defensive, but perhaps gently say something along the lines of 'I value our friendship, I care about you and that is why I am bringing this up. I can see you aren't happy and that you have mixed feelings about the whole BF-ing issue. Can we talk about this?' etc..

It shouldn't be coming between you as friends. If you can show understanding for her predicament and openly acknowledge that she had a tough time and has chosen to FF (which is fine!), then the ball is i n her court. if she continues to make t an issue and put you down, you have to ask yourself how good a friend she really is..?

Another thought - is she generally ok? I mean, there isn't a chance she is depressed is there? PND can make people very bitter and down on others, when really the depressed person is feeling shit about themselves (speaking from experience here!)

Good luck

geminigirl · 22/12/2007 13:11

Hi prunipudding,

Sorry if i came across as being negative, I just felt that I had a better understanding, as a professional, of what a struggle b/f can be and had a better empathy of the emotional issues involved.

geminigirl · 22/12/2007 13:44

It may have just been me but the best support that I got was from a midwife who had real breastfeeding challenges and I felt that it allowed me not to feel as bad a mother as I thought I was. Can understand that you don't want someone lecturing on their experiences and confusing the whole thing.

OhGiveUsAPruniPudding · 22/12/2007 13:52

Completely understand gg
I had a series of midwives who kept telling me what had worked for them or didn't work for them, and I was left totally bewildered, that and the hormones and general emotional upheaval.....

cadeLaideInAManger · 22/12/2007 13:58

I would say leave it for now, carry on as you are with intermittent contact and I'll bet you anything the friendship will grow again after an interval.
Probably the arrival of another baby will alter things, I've been through a similar situation and now we're more close than ever.
Don't do anything drastic.

Aitch · 22/12/2007 14:01

yes, but pruni, it is nice just to have a blub with someone who you think does understand a bit. my visiting MWs were all so horrible to me but when the HV (temp...gggrrr) turned up and said 'oh it can be so difficult, can't it?' and told me what happened to her and what she'd do differently next time (without cross-referring it to me,iykwim?) i was so relieved that i wasn't goiing MAD and she really helped and if anything it made me more determined. (although it didn't work out in the end).

OhGiveUsAPruniPudding · 22/12/2007 14:04

Oh ok then
Yes I can see that would help
I do think it's dangerous ground iyswim because I remember being so very clueless and really latching on (arf) to any bit of personal experience I heard about hence ending up more clueless (mind you it all came delivered with great certainty, not "and here's what I would do next time" which actually would have been helpful most likely).

orangehead · 22/12/2007 14:05

I think you need to talk to her about it and how you feel. Think you also need to reassure you that you dont think any less of her for not bf, some babies feed easily others have problems and perhaps emphamise that you can see she is a good mum and she loves lo very much.
Although I am very probf, at the end of the day they are many factors to parenting that are more important, and if she had to give up, she had to give up. She needs to move on from this and get over the guilt before it eats her up and leads to depression or affects her relationship with lo.
Hope it goes ok

Aitch · 22/12/2007 14:11

exactly, Pruni, her uncertainty was exactly what i liked about her... that and the fact that she could understand why i felt so strongly that i wanted to keep trying.
she'd had the wind well and truly knocked out of her sails by her bfing experiences and was happy to say so... made me feel a bit better about my own droopy sails.

Aitch · 22/12/2007 14:14

by the way, geminigirl, bloody well done for keeping all that going. i've been there, pumped that, sterilised the other... it's a DRAG. but for the last remaining scrap of bfing, it was worth it imo.

OhGiveUsAPruniPudding · 22/12/2007 14:17

Yes the expressing is fab gg, saved my sanity in retrospect.
I hated it at the time but I think if I hadn't done it I might have eventually flipped.

Sabire · 22/12/2007 14:18

GG - would you say that big babies are harder to feed than smaller babies in general?

I'm asking because I've never seen any research evidence on this one. My personal experience has been the opposite - my largest baby (10lbs 12oz at birth) was the easiest to feed and my smallest (9lbs 3oz) was the hungriest. My third was actually feeding 10 - 15 times day and night at 4 months.

geminigirl · 22/12/2007 14:23

Hi there Aitch...Thanks!

geminigirl · 22/12/2007 14:27

Sabire, no I wouldn't say that in general bigger babies are more demanding, I just found that my wee fella was demanding more than my body could satisfy him with. In fact you may find that quite small babies, less than 7lb, are the hardest to satisfy!!

geminigirl · 22/12/2007 14:38

Getting back to the thread, I agree with LoveAngelGabriel, your friend may not realise how she is behaving towards you, you've been friends for so long and shared a lot of the same experiences so I can understand that when her bf'ing hasn't worked out she may feel that she's not as good a mother.
Anyone who has has bf not work will have these feelings but most will probably learn to deal with them and resolve them, maybe your friend just hasn't quite accepted this yet and as LAGabriel suggests there may be an element of depression involved.

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