NON personal discussion about breastfeeding rates <no mud slinging allowed>

[JingleyJen]

Instead of personal stories and family circumstances I am really interested in the potential reasons why in this country are breastfeeding rates so much lower than in other countries?

Surely in other countries boobs are sexual things as well so it can't just be that.

Is it that ever downward spiral that as fewer women breastfeed that it is hidden and therefore fewer women feel comfortable with the whole thing?

I don't think it is the availability of formula

Have there been studies done on this? (sure there have but don't know where to find them)

Is the success rate of mothers who have chosen to breastfeed truly dependent on the support network around them - or are there really an increasing number of women whose milk doesn't come in - and why could that be the case?

This is NOT a thread for the wrongs and rights of breastfeeding vs formula it is more a question of how things have got to this stage.

Anyone?

[pooka]

That's part of it, aaahchew. What I think happened in the 50s and 60s was that formula milk was quite aggressively advertised as being superior to breast milk, and the massive uptake of formula by the middle classes led to it being fashionable and perceived to be the best thing since sliced bread. As a result of that, the uptake then spread class-wide, with mothers being given the impression that breast milk was dirty and for poor people and that if you really cared about your children you would go the extra mile to get hold of formula.
Coupled with the misogyny of medicalised births and child-rearing and the likes of Truby King, with the simultaneous downgrading of midwives and "wise women" in the community, I think it was inevitable that breastfeeding would have slumped by the 70s.

[princessmama]

I'm a BF mum and none of my family BF. My mother was not very positive about BF while I was pregnant and I have encountered negative reactions from other family members too. When I announced my intention to BF, my grandmother said:'they say it's best, don't they' whilst managing to look simultaneously disgusted and sceptical.

I am a determined person and so was able to BF without family support, but if I didn't know all the facts about the benefits of BF I can see how a lack of family role models would make things difficult. I am quite stubborn and actually enjoy being the odd one out in the family

I am now BF my second daughter and have won my mother round and she is very supportive. I hope I have helped the BF rates for the next generation - my daughter gives her dolls boo boo(her name for BF) instead of bottles.

[pooka]

Rowlers - I suppose it might be because a lot of mothers do try and breastfeed with their first baby, because of successful health campaigns. But those campaigns are not matched by adequate support for mothers who try and so if it all goes wrong and they can't feed because there isn't the support, advice and information, they are perhaps less likely to bother with subsequent babies.

[Indith]

Anyway bedtime. I shall be back to see where this has lead tomorrow tough

[JingleyJen]

Nighty night sleep tight

[pooka]

I think it's understandable that if you found it hard to establish breast feeding with your first, you are less likely to try with the second.

[princessmama]

I'm sure I've read somewhere that although fewer mums initiate breastfeeding with second or subsequent babies, those that do are more likely to continue beyond six weeks than first timers.

[Rowlers]

I looked at the survey and report.
The stats for women who bf at birth include mothers who put baby to breast even if they did this only once - this can't be the most reliable data can it?

Anyway, I would also second the point made earlier about poor post-natal bf advice / help on maternity wards and from midwives and hvs. It is random, confusing and not at all helpful.

[JingleyJen]

off to bed - thanks for keeping mud in pockets

[crimplene]

"A woman on hearing that I was still still feeding my baby of eight months exclaimed: "Good gracious! you're just like a charwoman!" and her remark may be taken as typical. The woman, in fact, who does feed her baby for the normal nine months, does so amid a chorus of criticism. And yet for the mother, as well as for the baby, the benefits are incalculable"

Mrs. Sydney Frankenburg 'Common Sense in the Nursery' 1922

[VVVQV]

Rowlers, I suspect that more women start out wanting to b/feed, but are so woefully unsupported first time around that they dont bother second time around.

[Dalrymps]

if the bf levels were so low in sweeden does anyone know what the government did to get them up? It'd be interesting to find out

[AhhChewww]

From what I observed since having my dd there are two main groups of ff mothers.

The first one consists of mothers who didn't get right help after having multiply mastitis, trash etc or whose babies struggled to put weight on and they were bullied to top up.

The second group of mothers usually bf for 4-8 weeks and then decides that it's time to have their lives back and start ff so they can go out, have a drink etc.

[Sycamoretree]

IMO it's about normalisation, and that fact that suddenly there was a choice, and people general believe authority figures if they say things are ok - or more than that, good for you. If there wasn't a choice, OBVIOUSLY everyone would still BF, and we wouldn't have ridiculous growth charts to make us stressed about how sufficient or not our own milk my be in nourishing our own babies.

I read something a month or so ago in the broadsheets about this whole issue (prob Observer) which you might be interested to try and search out.

I didn't BF DD1. This is personal stuff but relevant to my above point. I was desperate to. Bought the t-shirt and the special chair and the pump and everything before hand. Had huge birth trauma, c-section etc and huge hungry baby. My milk did not come in....SOON ENOUGH to outstep pressure from midwives over DD's rapidly declining birth weight, pressure from my own mother who did not BF me because she was so distraught to see me so distraught at not being able to BF successfully at that point or my own rapidly declining resolve and sanity. So DD went to formula approx day 6 of her life. DS is another story - BF from the start and still going strong.

[Catkin08]

VVVQV, You've just summed up my thinking whilst reading this thread. I'd considered myself open minded and well read on the subject of BF before giving birth to my 1st child last year. I was determined to give it my best shot and looked forward to BF but found it incredibly difficult.
I received absolutely no support whilst in hospital and was then told 2 days later that my DS could not leave hospital that day unless I got a certain amount of formula into him as I'd not been feeding him properly and he was severly underfed. With this I was handed a syringe and a bottle of formula and was left to it. Just recalling this now makes me want to cry actually
I continued to try and BF once at home but because of an incredibly painful episiotomy, I couldn't sit down and so had huge difficulties trying to get DS to latch on. I ended up expressing for several months and exclusively bottle feeding with ebm. In the end this was so stressful that I gave up and have ff ever since.

I now wonder how it'll be with my second as i'm sure i'll not get the support that time around either. Reading this thread has made me feel really sad. I thought i'd BF with no problem but really feel that I was let down by the NHS. What hope does that leave for others who don't get the hang of it straight away?

[Sycamoretree]

Catkin - read my post for some hope for next time round! :}

[Catkin08]

Reading those posts that were made in the time it took me to write my mammoth (and rather personal-sorry! ) post, It does seem that postnatal support and also maybe birth complications play a major role. I forgot that Ds's birth was very traumatic at the end and he was whisked away to be resuscitated which meant that we missed out on that early skin to skin. I've always wondered if this may have had something to do with the problems we later experienced.
I also agree that steps need to be taken in this country to re-normalise BF as it is frequently seen as the strange option which is, quite frankly ridiculous!

[Catkin08]

Thanks Sycamoretree!

[MegBusset]

I had an NHS antenatal class dedicated to breastfeeding, which covered the basic mechanism of let-down, latch etc, and yet at no point was anything mentioned about cluster feeding, growth spurts etc. If it hadn't been for logging on to MN when DS was three weeks old and feeding literally round the clock non-stop, I may well have thought I didn't have enough milk and given up.

Someone I know with a similar-aged DS cheerfully told me, "I formula-fed because I couldn't make enough milk, DS needs 7oz and my breasts can only make 3oz". I mean, surely there needs to be more info out there about the actual realities of bf...

[duchesse]

I think Kikisdee the nail on head right early on. When I was born in 1968 in a large hospital in Newcastle, my mother was the only mother in the entire hospital to be b/fing- the entire medical establishment of the maternity hospital, doctors, nurses, midwives, all turned out to watch this wondrous thing. So b/f as an art seems to have almost died out by then in that area. Can't speak for the rates now.

[Heated]

I really wish there had been a community bf team just as there had been a community mw team.

I was just so ill-informed even having read all the advice given. I've learnt so much more about bf (too late sadly) from reading MN.

Being told milk not coming in soon enough (day 6, first signs of some) when I'd assumed it would be almost there on tap; in hospital being perpetually hooked up to an electric breast pump like a milking cow and getting nowhere, and alarmed hosp. mws talking about ds' dropping sugar levels, baby not interested etc panicked me as a 1st time mum. I had such conflicting advice it was a relief to ff despite the guilt I felt .

[MegBusset]

Also the lack of hands-on support in hospitals, I think in a lot of them you have to be quite pushy to get the midwives to come and help you every time you want to feed, until you get the hang of it. (Luckily I am!)

I know people who have been refused help by midwives (very rudely in some cases ) so no wonder they turn to formula.