"Do you know anyone who looked back and was angry at their mothers because they weren't breastfed ?"
Well I have met a couple of people actually - but they didn't feel this way after they came to understand how little TRUE informed choice most women in the past had as to how they fed their babies - as is true of many women today IMO. My own mum didn't feed any of us for very long. We were big babies and she was told she wouldn't be able to make enough milk for us and that formula was better. Do I resent her for being duped by this bad advice into stopping breastfeeding early? Nope of course not.
Thinking about it, I know people whose mothers have smoked during their pregnancies, and fed them utter cr*p as children. None of them resents their mums for doing this because they understand the pressures they were under at the time. If you grow up feeling loved and valued you're not going to hold a grudge about not being breastfed. That doesn't mean you haven't missed out on something that would have given you a huge amount of pleasure as a baby, and something that you would have benefited from in the short and long term, in all sorts of intangible ways.
"Do you know anyone who has suffered in some way and put it down to the fact they weren't breast fed "
Come on - you know these things don't work this way. Even with things like smoking in pregnancy, or extremely poor diet in pregnancy it's very difficult make connections with specific health problems that develop in individuals at a later date. I'm sure you can accept this is the case for most health issues - that there isn't usually a simple, identifiable cause and effect relationship whereby we can pin health problems on one particular cause. If it was easy for us to make clear, easy links then cigarette companies would have been sued out of existence years ago. Why should it be any different with not being breastfed?
All I know is that when you look at what the research says you have to come to this conclusion: that there will be babies who end up being hospitalised WHO WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SICK HAD THEY BEEN BREASTFED. In other words - there are real children and babies - NOW - in hospital or at home sick, who wouldn't have been sick if they'd got breastmilk.
I appreciate that most people who choose to ff (the overwhelming majority I assume), either don't know this or don't believe it - that's fine. Most people don't look at the cold, hard medical research before coming to a decision about feeding their babies - god I never knew this stuff before I had my first. I was shocked when I stumbled across this information. (which as far as I can see btw comes from reliable sources - this is information that appears on the NHS Direct website as well as in every recent midwifery textbook on breastfeeding - it's just not passed on to parents generally).
The thing is though - once you know these things you can't forget them, and you listen in to the discussions on feeding feeling like you come from a different planet. I just sit there thinking - why haven't all mums been told this stuff while they're still in a position to make a choice? If midwives know this then why the heck aren't we being told? Given that we're told about all the other things we might inadvertantly do that might increase the risk of illness to our child, even to a very small degree?
. "So at the end of the day, if women try it and it isn't for them for whatever reason - just applaud the fact that they tried.
Yes - I do applaud people for trying. I also accept that mothers who choose not to breastfeed also believe that they are not disadvantaging their babies in any way and that the majority of babies thrive on formula.
But - I don't accept that we should be complacent that a third of babies never get any breastmilk, and that the majority of babies over four weeks are artificially fed. How can it be right that the majority of healthy, well-fed women in this country are failing with a normal biological function that most women in developing countries have no problem with? It's mad. How many of you would feel happy about a c-section rate of 80% in this country if you thought most women were ending up with sections because a) they weren't being given full information on the pros and cons of cs vs vb so were choosing to have electives without knowing what the real risks were or b) they weren't being cared for properly by midwives so they were ending up in theatre, when with the right care they could have had safe vaginal births? That's the way I see it.
Puppymonkey - I've never told anyone that they should or should't do anything as regards the way they feed their baby. Only you know what your limits are - that's true of all of us. I think it's just in your interest to make people like me out to be really unsympathetic and frankly completely brutal and unreasonable - then you can comfortably disregard everything else we say on the subject as nonsense - especially the things that raise questions or issues you might not have considered before.