why is you can't say a word about bf, without feeling paranoid people think your smug?

[feelinggutted]

name changed, MN regular.

yesterday went to a family "do", was asked are you still feeding dd? [5months btw]
i replied simply yes, one of my cousin turns around saying to another family member, something along the lines of people that bf are so smug,

i wouldnt mind if i had been "going on" or something i simply answered a question, with a very simple yes and smile.

fucking hell, is it rude to even answer questions these days

grrrrrrrr!!!!!!

i definitely thought of it in terms of success and failure, in my eyes anything but exclusive bfing was a failure. because that's what i wanted to do.
some HCPs, over the months of mix-feeding, did help me to see that i was doing a bit of good with every mouthful of bm but still... all told i am a bfing failure.
i'm one of the massive majority of women who show up in the statistics as someone who wanted to bf but ultimately didn't.
and i need to be heard, dammit, because if they ignore me and pat me on the head and tell me i did my best (i sodding know i did) then i'll scream. it's change we need, so that there's more bfing and less head patting all round.
only when women have a real choice will we be able to say that we're happy with and proud of feeding our children the way we want to, whatever that is.

Something I really struggle to convey sometimes is how I can be so strongly in favour of bf, yet not feel critical of women who decide to ff. I'm not being polite - I really don't secretly judge people who make different choices from me. I don't even think about their choices much. I'm happy to assume that everyone is doing their best for their baby without needing to know the reasons for their choices.

And yet it's hard to make that point without sounding a bit "I don't care about your baby" which is not right either.

Aaaarrghh....

I think many of us couch a lot of what we do in unhelpful terms of success/failure, whilst never applying those internal standards to others.

I found myself thinking yesterday about visiting an old acquaintance who I haven't seen since I had my baby, and then dismissed the idea, because I (to my shame) am worried about being judged as a "failed breastfeeder" despite exclusive bf, because my dd is so skinny. When I meet people for the first time and register their surprise at the size of dd, I wonder if they are thinking that I have breastfed at my daughter's expense. And every time someone tells me they switched to formula because their baby wasn't gaining weight well, I wonder if they are looking at me and dd and thinking I have been selfish for not doing the same.

Do I consider myself a success or a failure? Both. I have tried to make the right choices for me and dd, and in that sense I am successful. But I failed to get the perfect, textbook outcome I expected. And to some extent, that makes me feel I have failed.

I would never think these things about someone else. I think it is very difficult to divorce oneself from feelings of success or failure, no matter what one's experience.

feelinggutted - i know exactly what you mean but it is really not your problem it is hers[cousin] - a lot of people who failed to b/f feel massive guilt and seeing someone b/f sucessfully like it was the most natural thing in the world makes them feel a failure and renews the guilt - personally i don't understand why people get so emotional about it but i did b/f both of mine with no major problems till they were toddlers so i could never fully understand the feeling some have experienced - however i would never be mean about how someone chooses to feed their child

You know aitch, your post illustrates really vividly how perception is everything here.

You talk of yourself as a "bf failure". Well, there've been a couple of big studies in the news recently, based on cohorts of babies born in the 70s, showing advantages for bf babies.

Very, very few of the babies recorded as "breastfed" would have been exclusively breastfed in those societies, and hardly any would have been breastfed for any length of time. If your baby had been part of that study cohort, she'd have been regarded simply as a breastfed baby like many, many others.

This isn't a "there, there" type of post by the way - you wanted to bf exclusively and you didn't and I don't suppose it matters hugely to you what anonymous people did in the 70s - just to point out that the whole "success" and "failure" thing is defined in very personal terms, not objective ones.

i often felt slightly guilty about my sucessfull b/feeding - how daft is that?

i think for me it's dead simple, tbh. i struggled like a bastard to mix feed for four and a half months before bfing gave me up. so i think it's that which cuts deep. i doubt i've tried harder at anything in my life, and yet i didn't do it, so that's why i failed, iykwim? i'm not used to failing (i'm not that used to trying, tbh) so that's why it's cut and dried for me. but if anyone said that to me i'd want to rip their heads off, it's a completely internal thing to me.

I guess the other issue is that many women are not warned about how difficult BFing can be.

I didn't even know what mastitis was, until I got it (and subsequently realised that I must have had it right after my milk came in and not even noticed).

aitch.

Well, I guess I'm also an example of what I was saying - that we measure success or failure by our own internal standards which ar far stricter than others' - because on paper, dd1 is breastfed. She was exclusively bf at 6 months, and bf til she self weaned at 19 months.

But in the early weeks she had some ff top-ups, and this drives me crazy with guilt even now. She has eczema and cows milk allergy, and her eczema started the same week she had the first formula top up.

I gave her the top-ups against my will and better judgement because of pressure from health professionals - I can't even now bring myself to write the words they used to "persuade" me.

I stopped the ff as soon as I could (which was not easy, my supply was dodgy and the top-ups were killing it very quickly) but the damage was done and dd1 had really horrible eczema as a small baby.

I know I didn't cause her eczema, but I triggered it. So even though breastfeeding ultimately "worked" with dd1, I still feel that I failed her, by giving in to pressure early on.

Yet I know of other parents of allergic children who ff to a greater or lesser degree and I wouldn't dream of judging them in the way I judge myself.

i can understand why you feel as you do, i think. [sympathy] we just want to control the variables, don't we? as it is, dd appears to have no allergies, no excema, is bright has only had a couple of gastro things in two years and no antibiotics (was prescribed once but she spat it out, ha ha) so on the one hand i don't feel there's much of a case to answer wrt to my bfing or otherwise. thank god, i think i'd be tearing myself up if i had.

Welliemum, this may be some very tiny consolation, but I do remember your words to me weeks ago, when you shared what had happened to your dd with the top ups and the excema, and it making no difference to her weight anyway. I've reminded myself of that many times, and remembering it has fortified my resolve when I've been getting wobbly.

I'm very grateful for your generosity of spirit in sharing your story. It has played it's part in helping us. In fact I've used that example to others when I've wanted to explain how being pressured into decisions can cause deep regret.

I'm sad that you had such a bad experience. But thanks for giving me the opportunity to avoid it too.

I am still bf my 8.5 mo dd and hope to continue until she is 1.

I would just like to say that I would not judge someone who ff but it does upset me when people do not even try.

I think Welliemum is saying exactly what I feel too.

welliemum - i b/f both my kids, my ds exclusively and they both have eczema - as do lots of us in my family - i really don't think you should blame yourself/formula milk for dd's eczema - you'll never know for sure but she probably would've got it anyway.

Its not soley a bf issue.

Ive had people comment for taking ds1 to the library.

Walking/catching bus and taking kids!

Cooking from scratch

Making cakes with ds

"ooh you like doing all that family stuff dont you?" or "You always try and do things properly"

And the latest thing to get on my nerves is MIL asking when i feed ds2(FF): "Is he having anything else yet?". Else, as in what? Vodka, gin, steak and chips? She cant quite bring herself to actaully ask if im giving him solids

Oh yea and bedtime stories too. One of my mates rolls her eyes.

I must admit I think that was totally out of order what your family said, however I bottlefed both my children as I couldnt bf they tried for about a hour and then gave up I had no support. People do rub it in your face that you cant breastfeed and usually make you feel on top of the world with comments like they are missing out ect and this is usually done by hv, doctors and so on. I wish I ccould have bf my kids but it wasnt to be though its everyones choice and comments like that from family do make you .

laughalot - it's horrible when people make comments about anyone's feeding methods

Did doctors and HVs really say 'oh, they're missing out'? That's insensitive and unkind.

Most people who end up bottle feeding after wanting/trying to breastfeed have usually had very poor support - someone in hospital seeing you switch after an hour could have told you it was worth having another go and that it's not at all uncommon for babies not to manage to do it straight off....too often, they assume it's the mother's choice and say nothing

The health visitor did and it made me feel crap however you become stronger from comments like that. I got no help what so ever with even trying to help my son a hour in the hospital and that was it even the hv who was nasty dident offer to get someone to help me. I felt alone and felt I had let my ds down but now I dont care I have two very healthy and happy children.

I dont think you can win either way. Breast is best its just a shame that people dont get the support they sometimes need to get bf started.

aitch, vlc, violet, thanks for those kind words. It means a lot.

There's a lot of talk about "smug breastfeeders" and yet looking over this thread, I just don't know where they are, any more than the militant ones.

And I think carmen is right - it extends to all sorts of other parenting activities. It's as if other people want you to fail and be less "good" than you'd hoped to be. I can't understand it, I don't feel this way about other parents at all - completely the opposite, in fact.

I breastfed my ds until 11 months and never gave him a bottle. Once I heard one of my friends say to another 'it looks weird to see such a big baby breastfeeding'.

Now with dd people keep asking me if I'm going to introduce a bottle, and I find myself being apologetic about it and make excuses - I'm too disorganised to sterilise, I'd mix the formula incorrectly, I'd forget how old the expressed milk was etc - but truth is I like breastfeeding and so do my babies!

Like hunkermunker, I know people who have been made to feel horribly guilty about bottle feeding. Whatever's best for you and your lo, is what I say - I wish everyone else felt the same!

I was actually speaking to the head of a big maternity hospital about this yesterday, he was very kind to me when i was having my bfing issues but his support (and it was support) was tempered by having seen his wife suffer with bfing and been one of the people who encouraged her to use formula.

this was in the 70s, mind, different times, but he knows how much his wife wanted to do it and what it cost her not to. and yet his point when i was having my difficulties was that he had two beautiful girls at uni who were ff and in great health, so i shouldn't feel bad.

anyway, now he's the head of the whole shebang so i'd emailed him to ask what he was doing about bfing support and to offer my services if arse-kicking consulation with users was required.

so we were chatting about it again and he was saying that his was a unicef bfing friendly etc hospital (my response was something like ppppssssshhahahhaahhaaw) and he expressed his discomfort with the idea that it is talked about in terms of 'failure' or 'success'. (not that they mind talking in those terms if your baby is failing to thrive, please note.)

i was trying to explain that it's an internal thing, and that all women should be asked is 'what do YOU want to do?' and if the answer is bf/stop bf then they should be supported in that. but it was difficult to explain, really. and he is a bear of very big brain.

anyway, am goinig to keep nipping his head, he is a good guy and i've so far couched it in terms of short, medium and long-term savings to the NHS, but really, what can i say if he doesn't want to hurt womens' feelings? that's nice, decent behaviour, just as i would expect from him. how can i explain how wretched important it is to some of us without sounding fixated?