Bfing is ruining my marriage (v long, sorry)

[Rockymarriage]

Obviously I've name changed but you'll probably all know who I am, it's just for the record really.

I've been bfing dd for 6 months. It's not been easy. There have been, and still are occasions where DD won't feed from the breast for some reason and we have had to resort to ebm. But now I am mostly enjoying it. We fed in the bath for the first time yesterday and omg she looked so blissed out her eye we rolling into the back of her head But sometimes, yeah, I still get frustrated, occasionally it's a chore, like changing her nappy, just another mundane thing in my day. And yes, sometimes I get annoyed because she won't just get on with it and I need to be doing something else. Is that normal?

Anyway last night with DH we were talking about when I will stop and I said I don't know, and he started saying he doesn't want her being fed when she's 5 and it escalated in to a huge fight where his arguments were

-breastfeeding is dominating our life - it's who we are and all we do
-is it really the best thing for her? Does she really enjoy it? If so why would she refuse to feed sometimes?
-am I really enjoying it? Why do I get so frustrated then when she won't feed
-he hates seeing us both getting stressed over her not feeding sometime
-he doesn't have any choice in the matter, he feels like an outsider, he also wants to have a say in when we stop
-he keeps talking about "getting abck to normal" after DD
-and...this is where is all got nasty, my body seems out of bounds while I'm bfing

My counter arguments were:
-yes occasionally we have problems where she won't bf, and it really stresses me out because I want to succeed at this I and I feel like I should be able to feed my baby whenever she needs it
-yes, sometimes I get frustrated, but there are going to be so many aspects where I am going to get frustrated, not just bfing, it's a human emotion, I can't help it. I don't suddenly become mother Theresa now I have a baby
-bfing is my decision, no he doesn't have much say in it. That's the perk I get for carry her around for night months and going through all that fucking pain to bring her into the world, I don't know when I want to stop, can't I just see how it goes now I am actually enjoying it
-It may seem like I make more of the decisions with DD (like choosing to BLW) but they affect me more than him as he workd full time and I am on mat leave
-And life doesn't "go back to normal" you get a new normality, and yes things are hard at the moment, but we are both still adjusting to having a baby, but he thinks it should be better now
-The sex this, well this is probably my fault as I used bfing in defence of why we haven't properly had sex yet, personal space issues etc. Not to mention it fucking hurts at the moment! But I'm sure bfing is only part f it, and well if he'd been torn up down below, restitched so that it hurt everytime you tried to have sex and had your tummy blown up and shrunken like a wrinkly shrivelled balloon how much would he want to have sex.

Anyway, it got a bit worse after that, more than I want to divulge (not violent or anything, just hurtful). I threatened to go the shop and get formula if that's what he wanted but it would break my heart. And well, we didn't really resolve it, it seemed to have gone too far by then and he didn't want to talk about it any further. I don't know what to do, I can't say the right thing, am I a terrible person. Is it normal for bfing to still be hard sometimes after 6 months? Am I a terrible person for carrying on in spite of this? DH thinks DD doesn't have a choice in bfing, it's forced upon her and maybe she isn't happy doing it and what does she get out of it?

The things is, I've really come to realise I feel v passionately about bfing, and even when I stop I think I will. I want to be involved in making it better for people. I haven't felt this fired up about anything in a long time. Am I getting too hung up on it?

Thank you if you have read this far. I want my marriage to be better, I want to know that it's normal to have hit a rocky patch even after 6 months, and that it will get better, and how?

Hmm, no immediate answers but off the top of my head it sounds like BF might not be the real issue, but perhaps your DH feels like he is pushed out of the love affair between you and DD (compounded by lack of physical intimacy) and he is blaming the BF, so going on to formula would not solve the problem.

no advice but wanted to say im sorry this is happening, think he is being unreasonable x

As for suggestions for what might help?

I would stick with BF if you want to, of course it is the best for your DD, maybe see a BF counsellor if you think you still have problems with latch etc?

Can DH do some EBM feeds and/or help with solid feeding so he sees he can still be involved in feeding her.

Can you find ways to be intimate without sex, eg massage, having a bath together, to make you feel closer without the pressure to have sex.

I'm with Meg, this is about a lot more than BFing.
Hope you manage to resolve things.

Also BF does get easier with an older LO ime, DS is 10mo and it is much easier than when he was younger, he just sits on my lap and launches himself at the boob, and is done in a few mins.

dont give up bf. it is the best thing for your baby. she may also refuse formula anyway so how would that help. switching milk to make your husband feel better is not in the best interests of your baby. please keep going, agree with poster above, your dh has other issues. Just to make you feel normal, i didnt fancy sex for 6 months or so either, it is about personal space, exhaustion, etc.. you dont have any duty to have sex! ime, lots of men find adapting to babyhood very tricky, its still early days. it is often difficult for men to understand the breastfeeding relationship, thats not a sexist remark, its just that they dont experience it in the same way. keep going, you're doing well to get this far

firstly - you poor thing - a really nasty argument when you're tired and stressed. other than the unsupportive dh, everything you said sounded similar to my own experience- no sex to speak of, still hard work sometimes - all perfectly normal. what got me through was knowing it's the right thing - a baby fussing at the breast means nothing - babies have been doing that 1000s of years before formula existed- you are projecting your insecurities onto your baby.
a lot of mums have commented about men wanting to get back to normal - i do think there has to be a middle ground - you can never go back to no kids, but popping out to the pub for an hour certainly helped my dh and i feel we hadn't lost ourselves completely and i did think it was necessary for both of us to have sex by 6 months because it was becoming a bigger issue than it should be - not very often though!
i think you spoke a lot of sense to your dh, but if it's not sinking in perhaps you could appeal to his macho side - say you need looking after andneed to know he still finds you attractive - that works both ways!
nothing wrong with being a 'lactivist', but don't confuse that with you marital issues - you need to sort this out together - make plans to work on your relationship.

I also think he is (unfairly) blaming bfing for the lack of intimacy. I can understand why you don't want him anywhere near you if you are still in pain, I really can, but he is feeling neglected and you need to do something about that... I won't go into graphic detail but there are plenty of things you can do in place of penetrative sex.

t really is worth investing some time ib your relationship

The rest of his complaints are, imho, totally unreasonable.

I think Meg is spot on with her theory. The first few months with a new baby is so increadibly stressful on a relationship. I've been with DH 14 years and have argued more in the last year than in all the previous 13 put together. We've almost walked out on each other loads of times, said very hurtful things and had, what sounds like, very similar experiences to you guys. You have to be prepared to say sorry after a blow out. I think me and DH 'accept' the fact that we're really stinking horrid to each other occassionally and that it's all down to lack of sleep, trying to do the right thing etc but we always make amends.

B'fing is a very emotional thing. I felt exactly the same as you. Loved it, but felt so trapped by it sometimes. I also had about 2 months of agony before getting it established properly. DH was similar to yours but I think it was more a feeling of total helplessness. He wanted to be able to take the pressure off of me but I (despite being seriously in need of a rest) was not willing to let go at all. I think I was / am a control freak. I had set myself very high standards and felt like a desperate failure if I couldn't live up to them. Looking back I now they were totally unrealistic and that I should have allowed DH to take some of the pressure off. I was the walking dead but I'd insist on going for a walk with them despite the offer being there to let me rest. I just didn't want to let DD out of my sight.

Could you be doing this? Shutting DH out and not wanting to loose control because you don't want to feel like a failure? Which you're not. You say you want to succeed but you have, you've done six months which is more than most. I went on to 10 months and then I knew I didn't want to anymore. You will know and I think if you have doubts about it, you're probably not ready. I think I understand why you DH wants to have a say in you stopping and i don't think it's because of BF as such, more because he can't offer any help or support and thinks BF is the cause of the problem.

With regards to DD not feeding, my DD would have days where she wouldn't feed but these pass. I'm no expert but I'd say that if she's feeding normally at other times then maybe it's one of those things and try not to worry too much. She could be teething too which makes feeding uncomfortable.

I know I've rambled on but just wanted to let you know that it's very common to feel exactly as you both do but it will get better, you just need to stick at it. Accept that this isn't the best your relationship has been but it will get better.

You've done an amazing job and looks like your counter arguments are spot on!

As others have said, sounds like there's more going on here - you'd still be having the odd feeding panic even if DD was on formula. You are not a bad person, you are doing what is best for you and your child and anyone who tries to come between that, whatever their motivation, is being very selfish.

You are not a bad person. My boobs were out of bounds to DP for almost a year until DS stopped BF. I had a real emotional thing about it, it's like they were suddenly about food for DS and it seemed wrong or almost disrespectful to let a horny person get hold of them. It might sound odd but its how I felt, and it's a fairly normal hormonal reaction, so please don't feel bad, I think it's quite common.

Your DP needs to realise that you have to make a lot of room in your life when you have a baby, and lets be honest, it's in the main part the woman who has to make the room. He presumably wanted to be a father so he needs to accept that. I know it sounds a bit harsh and its also very difficult for men to adjust but he needs to try to communicate with you and get his head around it. Things do improve with time, and 6 months more breastfeeding (or however long) is nothing out of the rest of your life really. And believe me, you'll miss it when you stop!

HTH a bit. x

thanks for the advice. I know you are right about trying to forge ahead with the intimacy, but the problem is the when we have an argument like this (it's not the first) any move I now make will feel like I am doing it to solve the argument or for the sake of it, rather than because I actually want to IYSWIM? I agree, it has become a bigger issue than it should have been.

We tried it once but it farking hurt so abandoned it, and it has put me right off! I will try harder though to be be more intimate. I've tried putting it to him that I need help in this respect. How do I get past it feeling so contrived at first? And how can I make him realise it is more than the bfing?

Oh sweetheart I could've written your post when ds was four / five months old. I can't advise really except to let you know what worked for me and my dh. (Sorry, this may be long.)

To start by answering your question though: "But sometimes, yeah, I still get frustrated, occasionally it's a chore, like changing her nappy, just another mundane thing in my day. And yes, sometimes I get annoyed because she won't just get on with it and I need to be doing something else. Is that normal?" Yes imho that's perfectly normal. Sometimes I adore feeding ds, like it's the nicest thing in the world. Yet sometimes it's something else on top of my already huge workload...

...and I think that's the key. I resent nursing when I am overworked and haven't made enough time for my needs. So when ds has gone to bed at about seven I make sure I sit down put my feet up and read a book for half an hour, or have a lovely relaxing bath. Then I feel so much better.

But as for the dh thing. My dh was exactly the same as yours. He blamed everything that was going on in our marriage on the breastfeeding. He was more like a jealous older sibling than a husband.

What helped?

Giving ds a bed time helped - he used to nap downstairs in the evening and then go to bed with us; we started putting him upstairs at about seven / half seven (after the Night Garden, a massage and a double boob feed!) and until his first night waking (about eleven) I would have "quality time" with my dh. Initially this simply took the form of sitting together on the settee watching telly together cuddling, but eventually we got onto touching and in the end sex.

Dh actually bonding with ds helped. I wonder if you dh is the same and hasn't really bonded with your dd?

I am rubbish at expressing so could not really do the old "let him feed the baby" thing but I realised I had always been the one to feed ds off to sleep too, so I did pretty much everything with my magic boobs. Dh in the beginning had wanted to let ds cry it out which I was totally against, but I relented slightly. I said to dh he could start taking charge of some of ds' daytime naps. The Dr. Sears saying "a baby crying in the arms of a loving parent is not the same as crying it out" really came to bear, as ds cried and screamed as he was rocked back and forth by dh in a rocking chair. And eventually settled to sleep on dh.

Which dh now loves and ds doesn't really cry now just has a tiny wail for a second or two and then goes straight off to sleep. I can't actually mimic this way of getting ds to sleep, he won't do it with me, so now dh feels like he has something as good as magic boobs that he can use by himself.

Sex? Well, Durex Play lubricant helps with the dry feeling and with any residual pain from episiotomy. And just doing it, scaling that initial hurdle, really helps.

Also the fact that since dh has bonded with ds I actually like him again really helps.

And, simply, educating dh on the benefits of breastfeeding to ds helped. To the point now where he knows more about breastfeeding than the majority of mothers I'm sure!

He even apologised for trying to push formula, sincerely apologised.

This is what I did, and things are much better now between dh & I, although there is still a long way to go.

I don't know if any of this would work for you or not but I just wanted to document my experience in the hope it would help. Just be aware too that if you let your dh stop you breastfeeding you may resent him so much you can not forgive him. It got to that point with me and I'm glad I didn't let him stop me... he is glad too fwiw.

HTH.

I don't think we should be so harsh on her DH. Really sounds like he feels out of control. Which is a fair enough emotional response.

Think you do need to try and find a bit of time for the relationship (I don't just mean sex) but the lack of intimacy thing is probably hard on DH. He probably sees you and DD have beautiful intimate loving moments with bf and wants to share some of the emotion

Gingerninja are you me? I am a total control freak, and have had high standards throughout pg/labour/and becoming a parent, and felt pretty upset when I couldn't meet them. But I do know when to let DH take over (though I usually end up feeling guilty the whole time and can't relax ). He is a brilliant dad and just very protective over DD and he does feel helpless sometimes.

I don't consciously feel like my breasts are out of bounds, more a general sense of lack of personal space so I don't want to be pawed at by the evening.

I think also wrt the sex thing, I just don't feel horny at them moment, it's hard to switch of from being a mummy, but I know that if DH, you know, had a go, I'm sure I'd get into it. But he doesn't like to initiate things for fear of rejection.

Rocky, I think sometimes making ammends will feel contrived but if it saves the feelings of the other partner then I think it's something that you have to do occassionally. You can then talk properly when you've both calmed down.

I didn't mean to be harsh, sorry.

I do think that men sometimes feel pushed out by bfing because they feel they cannot bond in the same way as the mother.

However suggesting switching to formula and losing all the benefits of breastfeeding just so that the partner can feel more involved can't be right and is a bit selfish on the part of the partner.

I think that when the father finds his own unique way to do something special for the child, something that the mother can't do, he in his own way has something just as special as breastfeeding. For my dh it was rocking ds to sleep, for other men it could be something different.

I don't have anything new to add but just wanted to say that having a baby is a real bombshell in a marriage. There were 2 of you for years and now someone else takes priority, just about every minute of every day. It's very hard to be the one that feels pushed out, but it's only a feeling that your dh has, it's not true - you still love him, you are just being a good mum.

It would be great if he could see how brilliant you are being, how hard it must be for you and how his demands are not helping. I remember that trapped-under-a-heavy-weight feeling all too well. It settles down once you get to 6 months. We found a routine, interspersed with mush, that was a lot easier.

The onus is on him, as an adult, to resolve how he feels, not for you to compromise on what you want for your baby. That's parenthood - there will plenty more versions of this to come, I'm afraid he needs to try and come to terms with it!

At the risk of sounding crude, I think a good shag would sort all this out, honestly. Could you not give the baby a really good feed, have a stiff glass of wine and try and have - and enjoy - relaxed sex?

Rocky, totally understand. Even though DD is 15 months I get irritated if I'm pestered for sex when I haven't had any time for myself. I personally need to feel good about myself to have sex. It's taken me a long time to accept that my body has changed but it's just as hard seeing yourself as a sexual being again. Without getting too emboiled in advice of a sexual kind , perhaps you can just spend some time stroking each other and relaxing in each others company (with boundaries that you've already talked about before hand). Start small.

Sorry you are going through this - all good stuff from other wiser mumsnetters.

Just wanted to ask how involved is your DH in caring for your baby? A lot? A moderate amount? Not much at all? It sounds like instead of being a threesome, there are two twosomes in your house and the one in the middle (ie you) is stuck.

Can you do something to help them bond well? Could you express lots and leave them to it for an overnighter while you go get yourself pampered?

Xmoss thanks for your advice, it makes me feel better that I am not a bad mother for sometimes finding nursing a chore. I told DH that I would find bottle feeding much more of a chore.

I know it sounds like DH hasn't bonded or is jealous of our closeness. But in actually fact it's the opposite problem. DH is fiercely protective of DD and all he can see in his mind about bfing is how hard it has been, and how frustrated I get when I am tired. That's all he remembers. He doesn't see us all day every day when it is going well, and it is easy and convenient and lovely. So it's kind of the opposite problem to how it seems. He gives her a bottle perhaps once every 3 days and the little minx just gulps it down no problemo! And DH thinks that's how feeding should be and that's how it always would be with bottles.

GGG I think you are right in a way but I need to feel ready and not like I am just doing it out of duty, that'll make me feel like shit.

Rocky, would your dh be prepared to read a book or some information about the benefits of breastfeeding to your dd?

I do agree with GGG that a good shag (I second the glass or two of wine idea too) might actually help things but if you don't feel up to it yet could you make time for some intimacy; touching, cuddling, snogging - a bit like the things you'd do when you were a teenager and didn't want to "do it" iyswim!

Blimey - if someone doesn't feel emotionally up to having sex they should do it anyway to keep a man happy?

I understand that sometimes these things aren't as bad as you think they're going to be, but for some people it might be. I understand that regular sex means a lot to men but sometimes, particularly after a baby arrives, they may have to learn to make do with a hand job now and again until normal service is resumed!

And would you want to have sex with someone if you knew they really didn't want to? Sounds a bit rum to me...

BB, I'm not suggesting Rocky has sex if she really doesn't want to, but some intimacy in one form or another might stop her dh from latching onto (no pun intended) the breastfeeding relationship as the cause of all ills.

SOrry MerryXMoss, it was more in response to this:

"I think sometimes making ammends will feel contrived but if it saves the feelings of the other partner then I think it's something that you have to do occassionally"