I honestly think that the reason so few people I know are breastfeeding is that because the health proffessionals want you to breast feed so badly they..

[AnguaVonUberwald]

Don't tell you how hard it is.

Then when it is hard, people think it must be some fault in them and give up.

I went to NCT antenatal classes and was basically told: its really easy, it doesn't hurt, you just have to get the latch right.

No one mentioned anything like:

My baby wouldn't latch at all at first (we saw several breast feeding councillors (sp), he just wouldn't do it.

I then moved on to nipple shields (not mentioned before hand) which at least allowed him to carry on breast feeding although I then got lots of comments about how I shouldn't use them, they would dry up my milk etc, at least he was feeding.

At six weeks, I managed to get him to latch properly, he then started screaming every evening because he was starving, he was going through a growth spurt and simply not getting enough food. No one tells you what to do about that!

Currently, at 10 weeks, he is once again feeding for hours at a time and screaming in the evenings, I strongly suspect he is not getting enough food and am struggling with what to do.

My point is, no one tells you: There are challanges but you can get through them. Here's some help.

Instead they treat you like children, and think unless they tell you its all easy, you won't do it. Which means people then give up when its not as promised.

i.e. BREAST FEEDING DOES HURT! GETTING THE LATCH RIGHT IS NOT ENOUGH. BUT THATS OK, I AM A GROWNUP AND I CAN TAKE IT FOR MY DS, IT HURTS A LOT LESS NOW THAN IT USED, TO. BUT DON'T PATRONISE ME BY TELLING ME IT WILL NEVER HURT!

Sorry, rant over.

I agree totally that I am now being told to "top up" and that there isn't the support there to carry on breast feeding. But isn't that part of the same problem.

Paint it all as simple, and then, when it isn't, rather than being honest about challanges/rewards, etc - basically agreeing that because its not easy you can't do it, and suggesting formula.

Agree Angua and Fio - before the baby's born you're told "it's easy, it's natural, every mother can do it and it's infinitely better for your baby than formula". After, at the first sign of trouble it's "hmm - seems like you can't do it after all, you'd better use formula".

Can't think of a better system for making us all feel like freaks and failures.

I'd have to agree with the OP. I'm a student midwife and I feel that women can handle the truth about bfing, good and bad. They need to know that some difficulties can be normal and that all women and babies are different. But in our training we are actively discouraged from speaking about any 'negative' aspects, you know, as if women were all bloody simpletons and unable to make their own minds up. I'd also agree that we push breastfeeding but don't always back it up with the practical help women need.

reikizen - what has the bf training been like so far for you?

I'd agree that there's a big contrast between the official messages and the reality. I'd always assumed that I'd breastfeed because my mum breastfed all of us and was then a bit disconcerted by the horror stories that I heard from friends (e.g. "it hurts from your nipples to your toes - for the first three months" - I think the lady in question doesn't go in for understatement). Anyway having now clocked up all of 8 weeks breastfeeding my new arrival I've had mixed experience of the post natal support. The hospital has an infant feeding coordinator who is brilliant - I went to her drop in session a couple of weeks ago and found her to be very good at the reassuring / encouraging as well as the practical advice. Today was less good though - my dd has oral thrush and the gp at the baby clinic tried to convince me that we'd be fine just to treat her without treating me as well. It made me wonder how many breastfeeding mothers he comes across.

I mentioned the growth spurt AnguaWotsit! He's probably going through another growth spurt and you might want to try breast compression. See here for more info

Remember.. I'm happy to travel to deepest darkest wherever it is that you are.

Yes I wish they would tell you that if it does hurt then it will suddenly stop hurting just when you feel like you can't cope anymore.

I got in such a mess with ds1. I had to hold onto dh's hand whilst trying to latch him on then do a muffled scream for the first few sucks. Bloody hell it was painful.

Then suddenly it wasn't & it was bliss. Took a few weeks to get to that point though.

I am PMSL at Catz's dog

I'm also enjoying Catz' dog! SOunds like a dream I kept on having while pregnant - only with me, it was my cat...

For those who are tallying up people who had a lot of pain and people who didn't - I was a lucky one who didn't! Yet. At 14 weeks, I still have an unopened tube of Lansinoh. The only time I yelp is when we're feeding lying down, I'm half asleep and don't control his latch-on, and he sucks my aereola and not the nipple! Ow. He gave my dp a hickey on his arm that lasted days, too.

But there have been other probs, none of which were hinted at by NCT classes. We struggled with his latch in the early days - thank god (sort of) I was confined to hospital for 9 days after the birth because at least I had midwives on call - and for weeks and weeks, he'd have a paddy in the middle of a feed, shaking his head and spitting the nipple out. It used to make me cry with frustration and panic! None of the HVs, MWs or GPs I ran it past ever suggested anything helpful, or why he did it. A friend who's a BF counsellor came and did some troubleshooting, but couldn't really suggest anything either. In the end, he just passed through that phase and is now doing it swimmingly.

I have a lot of sympathy with the OP, because I've often thought that this might sometimes be the case - the HCPs don't want to scare us off, so it's all the most natural thing in the world and all roses and buttercups, etc. A little realism - with support and encouragement - might go a long way to helping us realise none of us are freaks or failures.

I've been reading the literature that comes with my new NHS welcome to pregnancy pack and there's a little cartoon book about breastfeeding. It correctly states all the advantages, and it definitely shows it as a serene and easy thing - the husband remarks on how the baby just knows what to do immediately (though mentions it was because of skin contact - but still!) and there are tips, not cautions or what to do if's, and the tips do not mention things like pain, difficulty latching, or anything. They just show the mother being reassured when she thinks the baby isn't drinking enough. So I think that's not realistic - few advice manuals don't give ANY warnings about common problems.

I think there is a really difficult balance here between emphasising the naturalness of BF and informing pregnant women about possible difficulties, and we all have different experiences about which elements was over/under emphasized.

Personally it didn't ever occur to me that BF would NOT work and in my case that was a good thing. DS1 really struggled at first but I put it down to the fact that he and I were exhausted and just waited for him to get it right. I know I was lucky in that after about 24 hours we got it sorted by ourselves and I had a really easy time after that. Of course it is important that help is available for those who want/need it, but in my case an increased emphasis on problems would have just made me more stressed and less willing to patiently wait for us to get the hang of it by ourselves.

Well I compleely agree with the OP. My antenatal class did not mention breastfeeding at all, It was all about the birth itself. A bit like planning a wedding in minute detail but giving no thought to the marriage itself. Where I live the hospital is also incredibly pro breastfeeding and I was actively discouraged from giving formula in the early days for which I am now grateful. However the combination of pressure (and there was a great deal in my hospital) to breastfeed and almost no practical help or support was in my opinion a terrible combination.

My experience FWIW was that I breastfed for 2 years. Practically every feed (and I mean evey feed) in that 2 years involved some pain, sometimes through the whole feed, sometimes just at the beginning.

The thing that actually inspired me to keep going was a friend who breastfed 4 children for over a year each who, when I complained about the pain of breastfeeding, just smiled and said 'oh yes all mine hurt too, sometimes for the whole feed'

I figured if she was saying that then maybe I wasn't as abnormal as I felt.

Well, the personal good news is that DS has put on 12oz in a week, and has stopped his constant feeding.

WRT the wider point. yes I was advised to top up while this was going on, and this was from a health visitor who previously told me that if I didn't breastfeed DS would be obese. They just don't seem to give you the support when it gets difficult, or warn you about it before hand.