BF support - preaching to the converted

[fleacircus]

It's clear from the BF threads that people feel the support they've received often isn't up to much, and that many mothers stop BF before they would otherwise choose to. I've always been surprised that so few women breastfeed, but my own extremely painful experience over the last three months has made me realise it's often nothing to do with choice. In fact, given the struggle I've had to get any help at all, I'm amazed that anyone manages at all.

Anyway, I've been immensely grateful to MN and to these boards, but I'm very aware that an awful lot of women aren't lucky enough to have the resources (educational or financial) to fight for support. So I've written to my MP to suggest two things that would have made a huge difference to me: that postnatal wards routinely check for and correct tongue tie; and that one of the early postnatal MW visits be replaced with a visit from a BFC. I can't believe that the training costs involved would outweigh the longterm financial gain, given the preventative health benefits of BF for both mothers and babies.

So - and I'm sure this has been done before - if you feel strongly enough to post on MN about it, please take the time to write to the people who can actually change things! I'm more than happy to email a copy of my letter to anyone who'd like a look, just CAT me.

Wish I had swc - I was just too exhausted and bewildered to think properly.

Should have realised something was wrong that day when a relative who came to visit commented on dd's "lovely olive complexion" when dp and I are both the pastiest of celts! I didn't know anything about jaundice at the time.

i think part of the problem is - well was for me anyway - that you don't realise until afterwards that the help/advice you are being given is so poor.

I read about bf-ing while pregnant (in rubbish places it now turns out) and attended the ante-natal session - I felt informed and confident.

In the hospital i thought that dd latched on well, no-one checked to tell me otherwise. i was pleased that she slept so much and didn't wake too often for feeds (d'oh - i know - but again no-one told me otherwise even though they were checking my feeding logs daily).

Once home (signed out as an "established bf-er" too) I got signed off from MW care after a couple of visits. They asked how bf was going, I said I thought fine although one side was getting a bit sore. Advice was "feed from that side first" and off they went!

Fast forward 4/5 weeks and DD is losing weight, getting labelled failure to thrive, I'm in agony,etc etc!

Thanks to mumsnet I got in touch with the BFN who have been the most wonderful support, and combined with MN are the only reason we are still bf-ing at 15wks.

Looking back I now realise:

• I got no support in hospital apart from one MW who grabbed my boob and squished and shoved it in dd's mouth
• the things the community team told me were all wrong, some just stupid and some downright dangerous (eg at my day 10 "sign off" visit I was told dd should go about 5hrs between feeds!, feed from one side only, she's losing weight because your diet is poor...so on and so forth)
• the ante-natal session was crap

i consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person, and have since done a lot of reading and research and feel a lot more clued up. i am the type to read about 3 guide books before i go somewhere! i thought i had done my bf-ing homework but it turns out not and i feel a bit silly about that. but i also don't think it's too much to ask that the advice given out at hospital etc is correct.

i agree with IorekByrnison that a oollation of mnetters experiences would be powerful (depressing?!) stuff.

It all comes down to money doesn't it? to train mw's and hv's, to keep women in hospital care longer etc.

a oollation is a collation obviously...says the reasonably intelligent person...

I stayed in hospital as long as poss with my first, as was I not confident BFing. Each shift change brought a MW with a completely different idea of what I should be doing. I finally thought I'd got the hang of it on day 5 and went home. My own MW was very supportive and I BFed DS for a year and DD for 18 months. I was perturbed though by the mixed messages I got on the Mat.unit, so I'm having some training to be a peer supporter. (and learning what an amazing thing the human boob is!)

"And now I realise that when I told the midwife on day 2 that he was sleeping all the time and not interested in latching on at all, it was not best practice for her to tell me that "all the other mothers complain that their babies cry all the time" and that I should be grateful for the rest..."

OMG that is... I have no words

I don't think I got great support in hospital and was told some weird things, but they at least were very keen to make sure the baby was feeding lots.

ImPink I found the shift change = new approach thing very challenging. I was in for 5 days too. By the time I left I just had to get out of there despite feeding not being established as I was getting further rather than closer to figuring it out because there was no continuity of approach and I was mithered by it.

skidoodle, i know - and a bit too, for not being at the time! i'm very much with caz; i thought i had done a reasonable amount of preparation and was at least clued-up enough to ask for help when things didn't seem right (and i saw in my post-natal notes, before they were taken by the community midwife, the number of times different hospital staff had written "asked for help with bf") and yet we ended up with 3-day-old ds on a drip being fed my meagre scraps of expressed colostrum through a tube down his nose. it was all so completely avoidable, i now know - thanks to MN.
the hospital was in such a rush to discharge us (they "offered" to let me go home the day after my cs but relented when they saw the look on my face!), and ds was and is a big baby so they assumed he'd be fine, even though i told them, inc the paediatrician who officially discharged him, that he wasn't showing any interest in feeding.
thanks tiktok, i'll write to all those you mention. it's a flagship teaching hospital so they really ought to be getting the basics right

I agree with Iorek about a collation of MN experiences. It wouldn't just be a lobbying tool but of great interest to other new mums: "what happened to me, how it turned out, what I wish I had known with retrospect, and and 'a (non-judgemental, research evidence-based) expert comments' ". You hear the same stories again and again, especially about jaundiced babies slow to feed (my particular case) and the jumble of advice one receives way too late.

Just as soon as I have a spare month or two I'd love to do it as a project. Hopefully someone already has.

I actually felt that I had way too much "help" with bf. We were "helped" by (deep breath): a half day ante-natal course, six different midwives on the post-natal ward, one bf counsellor in hospital (visited across 5 days), four nurses on the children's ward, two paediatricians, four different midwives at home (we weren't signed off for 2 weeks), five different health visitors (two at home, three at the clinic), one breastfeeding counsellor at a Baby Group and one NCT volunteer (on the phone). And my mum, SIL, BIL (a GP) and three friends who are also mothers also dispensed advice. And there were two booklets in the pack I was discharged from hospital with, and details of six different breastfeeding support groups across three London boroughs. And bugger me if they didn't all say different things. I really just wanted some continuity of care, one person who knew my story, knew what they were talking about and could help me. I sure as anything didn't want yet ANOTHER different person coming to my house to grab my tit without asking and push it into my baby's mouth.

The real low point was when one HV told me that my DD "wasn't feeding, just sucking- listen you can't hear her swallowing" at a time I was spending six hours a day pinned to the sofa feeding. It was rubbish of course, how could she not be swallowing, she was posseting breastmilk ffs. That's when I decided not to bother consulting any more experts.

It was actually MN, believe it or not, who offered some of the best advice. That was, don't beat yourself up about ff, but if you want to keep bf then offer the boob a lot. Sensible people those MN-etters.