A reason not to BF that I had no answer for, any thoughts?

[bohemianbint]

I recently qualified as a peer counsellor and the training was great. However, I met up with a friend of mine the other day whose daughter is about a month old.

She had BF up until the day before I met her but decided to pack it in and had just started FF. Her reason was that she already has a son who is 11, is very busy and didn't have the time to physically sit all day and BF.

I didn't say anything, as she wasn't asking for advice, she'd made the decision and had already acted on it. But it struck me that I have no idea what to say to someone who sites this as a reason to give up? I remember when DS went through growth spurts just sitting on the sofa literally all day with my boobs out and everything else went to pot, and whilst this didn't bother me I can see how it would be a deal breaker for some people.

So what can you say to that? Obviously FF is inconvenient in the prep time and faff, but does it eliminate that all day sitting around during a growth spurt? Interested to hear what you think...

ANyway all this is slightly irrelevant. The OP was about someone stopping bfeeding because of the needs of an older child. That's what happened here. Someone else may have juggled the children's needs differently. They may have decided that ds1 was safe unsupervised whilst bfeeding was taking place. That wasn't my judgment of the situation, and so establishing milk supply became impossible.

It's not really up to a bfeeding counsellor to say whether my judgment of the level of supervision needed by ds1 was correct or not. Likewise it's not really up to anyone outside the immediate family to say whether a particular 11 year old needs attention that will interfere with breastfeeding.

hazeyjane, that's a tricky one about the "smugness". You see, when I was battling to get bf going with dd1 - it was very hard - I took a lot of comfort from the stories of other people who'd also had a difficult time and managed to carry on. It was really encouraging at a time when I was getting a lot of gloom and doom from the people advising me about bf in real life.

I've often stopped myself from posting about my own experience because I had a hard time and I managed to breastfeed, and it worries me a lot that someone might, like you, interpret my post as being boastful and smug when it's meant to be encouraging.

Very difficult issue I think.

I would love to have excl bf both my boys (4 yrs & 4 mon) but for some reason i never produced enough milk so i did / do both i bf first then top up with formula, i did this for 18 months for my first and will hopefully do the same with my second. i never had leaking boobs and am desperately jealous of my bf who has. i put a lot of pressure on my self when i realised exclusive bf wasn't working for me and my boys and felt at the time that giving them formula was like giving them poison but like my partner said to me formula was invented for a reason, to help babies like mine whose mums for whatever reason could not produce enough milk.

"I really don't agree with F&Z's idea that you teach an 11 year old that their needs have to come second to a baby"

I think that you should teach them that their needs have to come second to a baby SOMETIMES. I didn't mean, or say, that this should happen all the time.

Welliemum, I don't think there is any smugness in people's success stories with b'feeding (and sorry if it came across that way). Like you I feel encouraged that it can work out, and although it is unlikely that I will have a 3rd child, hopefully the people who have struggled will provide me with help and advice!

I think what I have a problem with is that some posters give the impression that there is no way they would ever f'feed, because they are so determined that they will always succeed at b'feeding. From reading lots of threads in this section, I think it is clear that each experience of feeding each baby is different, and that there is always the chance that it might not work out.

It's the ... I b'fed with a 3 1/2 year old, moved house ..."wasn't that hard". "It's a crap excuse..." ..."You just manage" comments that I find smug, because they seem to assume that the people that can't manage, and fail just, "..couldn't be arsed".

I do see what you mean hazeyjane. Obviously there are people who did absolutely everything they could and it still didn't work out, so any "I did it, therefore you can do it" type statement is missing the point in a big way.

I just worry that any story about overcoming difficulties is almost bound to be read as "I put in a lot of effort and made it work, and if you'd tried as hard as me you'd have managed too" to someone who's in a fragile state about breastfeeding.

ie, not so much what people actually say, but how their posts are read by others. Which is the tricky bit, because you can only control what you say - you've no control over what people think you're saying.

I have never posted on this type of thread before, but really wanted to bring up the more infections on ff babies from only my own personal experience. How common it is I don't know.

I ex bf ds1 and loved it, when ds2 came along I was determined to do the same untill he was two days old! He had a tongue tie and bfing was agony. He is now 4 and has only just had it corrected - in our area I was told they would not correct tongue tie routinely.

He also would not ff well, hade chronic reflux, made the most awful noises when feeding and alot came down his nose! Frankly it was a messy distressing and time consuming business anyway.

Anyway when he was twelve weeks old he was admitted to hospital with bronchillitus, he was on a hdu bed for four days and stayed in hospital with pnuemonia and chest infections on and off throughout the first year of his life. When I would google all of this I would read that it was all more common in ff boys! To say I was upset is an understatement as I really felt I had failed him somehow.

Fastforward to when he is four and has had poor health throughout his childhood we are eventually sent to a geneticist. Two weeks later we get a diagnosis of di-georges syndrome, which one of the major symptoms is a very poor immune system but we also discovered he has a sub mucus cleft palate!(amongst many other things.)

All of a sudden it all became clear regarding feeding. Of course he couldn't suck or latch properly. This is the reason he dropped from the 50th to the 0.4th centile in five months and needed high calorie baby milk, not because I stopped breastfeeding.

I have spent most of my ds's childhood so sad that I had wronged him somehow, but now know that that wasn't the case.

The point I wanted to make (sorry for ramble) was that my ds has gone on the statistic for ff baby with respirtory infections etc when actually it was nothing to do with ff. It was already decided for him at conception!

cazcaz. My cousin was trying desperately to feed her ds2 for days until a midwife spotted he had a cleft palate. Had been missed on paed etc checks.

Yurt1, I cannot tell you how many people have looked down his throat and bloody missed it! Because it is sub mucus it still has the skin covering the hole and thefore at a distance looks normal I suppose.

The whole bf/ff issue is obviously very emotive(sp) and I'm still not sure how I feel about it all!

Meant to ask yurt - how did your cousin manage feeding after diagnosis?

'What a crap reason (sorry but it is).'

Believe it or not, when you are on your own all day and you have several other children to look after and collect or ferry around, sitting down all day isn't possible.

Not every baby can feed in a sling.

Not everyone has help or the means to buy help.

for some people, domestic disarray causes extreme anxiety - particularly for people who have PND.

She didn't cazcaz (despite being a long term bfeeder with her ds1 and dd). He needed weird teats and all sorts to get any sort of milk into him. I think she expressed as long as possible but bfeeding wasn;t possible. The whole thing was an utter nightmare.

I think iirc it was my aunt that spotted it rather than a HCP.

I'm already struggling with anxiety and antenatal depression.

I'll have a nearly 3-year-old and an SN 5-year-old. The 3-year-old has to go to a different nursery from the 5-year-old's school because the school is too small to have a nursery attached.

5-year-old has increasing appointments with ed psychs, SALTs, OTs and paeds as her learning disabilities become more and more apparent.

I'll be on my own.

There is no public transport out here and no family to help and the two friends I have here live miles away and don't drive.

I'll give bfing a try, but I'm not going to feel overwhelmed with guilt if I have to hang it up fairly soon because of other family commitments.

At toddlers today Mum of 18mo DD brings in her newborn DS (about 2 weeks old) he was born 10lbs 4ozs so a big boy.

When asked how he was feeding she answered "breast for now but I think I will switch to bottles soon I don't think I have the milk as he's so big and all I seem to be doing is feeding him and I have DD to think about to" I felt really sad for her, most of the others around her said "oh I think you are right he will need bottles" I really wish now I could have spoken to her one on one and said "if you really want to continue BFing you can, of course formula is you choice and it's no one elses business that you want to stop BFing if it's right for you but you CAN feed a big baby and look after a toddler" 2 weeks in is nothing, 2 week olds feed a lot, it does calm down.

In July I will have 4yo DD1 and 2 1/2yo DD2 and I do worry about BFing DD3 but I am always telling them that the baby will need Mummy's milk and Mummy will have to feed the baby a lot. Cbeebies and DVDs will be used but they do go off and play on their own a bit. I remember with DD2 that DD1 was potty training and I would latch DD2 on DD1 would cry "Mummy I need a pee-pee" unlatch DD2 mid letdown, boobs squirting, DD2 screaming, attend to DD1 then come back and latch DD2. No doubt the housework will go to pot but something has to give.

aGREE WITH EXPAT.

Domestic disarray causes me axirty and i havent got/had PND. Its just the way i am.

Nice idea to sit around all day but in my house its not gonna happen.

it gives me panic attacks and intensifies my depression.

i can't afford a cleaner, even temporarily and DH pitches in when he isn't working but he's horrible at cleaning.

DD3 will just have to fit in with the rest of us, nothing else for it, think it will go something like this

morning BF, if others wake they can come into bed for a cuddle, go downstairs, breakfast get ready, nursery run, come back BF, toddlers, BF at toddlers, come home housework, lunch, BF, playtime with DDs, BF before dinner, dinner then baths, BF, bedtime for DDs, BF for rest of evening. DD3 will have to be content with BFing as and when as long as she is having little and often shouldn't be too bad.

Of course best laid plans and all that................................

bet I'm on here within a week going "HELP"

I can understand expat. Feeding your baby is very important of course,but if sitting round in a shit tip while you do it bothers you a lot then surely you feel more stressed than if you had mixed fed or ff .

I agree with giving it a go, but also agree with the(realistic) view that a new baby has to just fit in.

when i sit, i see the shit tip and my anxiety starts rising.

i can't do as much cleaning as normal because then i don't sleep.

i already have big problems with insomnia.

expat - I am the same I just cannot sit in a a shit tip, I cannot relax I can feel my anxiety rising if I haven't done my bare essentials as I call them for the day. Just now it's hard as with the SPD I cannot do things around the house and with the DDs and most days I have a good old cry about it. DP helps out when he is here but as good as he is no one can clean your house like you can, can they?

no, he just doesn't see dirt.

and i can't max out on my cocktail of anti-anxiety drugs, tranqs and antidepressants, either.

i can understand totally.Like i said i dont suffer with any depression, but i have to have some sort of order at home. i have to, or it drives me crazy.

Obviously standard do slip in the first few wks after having a baby cos it is all chaos, but i really did try to minimise it! i did sit around an awful lot in the day in the first few wks, just holding and feeding him and watching telly/reading mags(which was nice), but i tried to establish some sort of baby and house routine which i think was made easier by mixed rather than bf.

I did feel guilty when i stopped bf completely, but then again i think i would have felt guilty if id stopped whatever age he was!Thankfully that soon passes!

If i have a third baby i will probably mix feed agin but maybe try and keep the bf side of it going a bit longer. Who knows though? You do whats best for you all at the time dont you?

When I get up every morning the cat litter tray is stinking (I know I shouldn't clean it but I can't stand the smell of shit all day), the cats have spat food all over the kitchen floor and trailed cat litter over part of it so it needs to be cleaned, they have put hairs over the sofa so it needs vacuumed. I could not sit in the house if this weren't done it would drive me up the wall.

As long as the baby has had a BF upstairs recently and the DDs are eating their breakfast/playing/watching cbeebies I have to get it cleaned and tidied up.

Am desperately trying to find a sling I can comfortably BF in though.

My DP doesn't see dirt/mess either

sweetkitty,

LOL I have my bare essentials everyday too:

Make beds
washing up and kitchen tidy
clean bathroom
vac downstairs
Mop/clean kitchen and hall floor
Vac upstairs every second day
Walk dog or dp walk him(every day)
Laundry as required!(usually several lots a day)