Writing essay about bf - come & tell me your experiences

[rosmerta]

As the title says, I'm writing an essay about bf and looking at what support women need both ante- & post-natally in order to successfully breastfeed.

I'm looking for some anecdotal evidence to put in - no names mentioned!

I'd appreciate your experiences of either successful or unsuccessful bf and why it might have gone that way. Did you have good support? Who did you turn to? Did you have any information about bf/ff ante-natally and was it adequate? What was the post-natal support like?

If there any any antenatal tutors out there, how do you present bf/ff to classes?

Tiktok & Hunker - not picking on you, just know you two as the resident bfcs - do you find most problems women have bf are common and easily solvable?

Sorry for the long post, thanks if you've got this far!

Some really sad stories here

Looby - your tale is awful. Can I just say that NCT counsellors are volunteers. Usually, they will respond to messages left on voicemail immediately, but they may be sometimes be unable to do so. Someone else said the NCT bfc did not make a home visit at the weekend. This is perfectly reasonable. Some bfcs do visit at the weekend, but others choose not to, because that's how they manage their volunteer life. I don't ever see people at weekends, for instance. My own family takes priority.

Volunteer counsellors (of whom there will never be more than a few hundred) can never take the place of a properly-trained, sufficiently-staffed service of healthcare professionals (who number 1000s).

Having said that, all mothers should be given the telephone numbers of the helplines, and they will normally get through to someone, or else be able to leave a message and their call will be returned. In NCT's case, we can say confidently that the service returns all calls the same day, unless something has gone awry (sometimes, mums leave the wrong phone no. or the recording is unclear).

My ds is 6 weeks old and I am mix feeding, something I never thought I would do as I always assumed I would breastfeed.

Antenatally I was asked whether I would breastfeed to which I said yes. That was it really. I knew about what a good latch should be like and just assumed I would be able to do it.

When ds was born he had inhaled meconium so was taken away for 2 minutes to be suctioned. When he was brought back he was wrapped in a blanket, so I had to unwrap him to have him skin to skin. None of the midwives I encountered seemed to know much about bf, which I didn't realise at the time. There was a lot of squeezing of my nipples, but in hindsight I realise they didn't seem to know how to help him to latch on. Also I didn't realise how important it was to get his position right, I wasn't putting him tummy to tummy. I also think that someone should have checked his position and latch instead of just asking me, as I did thought it was alright, but really I didn't have a clue and said everything was ok.

When I got home, was feeding for hours and hours, but ds never put any weight on during his first 3 weeks. Two different community midwives told me to remedy this by eating " cream cakes, mars bars and drinking pop" Despite me knowing this was a load of crap, I was sort of thinking "well why would they say it?" One of these women was the one who runs the local bf support group. She also said ds was lazy and that was why he was not feeding effectively. It was actually because he was so weak, as he was not getting enough milk as the latch was wrong. I asked her why he would not feed if the milk was there and why would he just let himself waste away and she said "he's a baby, he doesn't know" I really hate that midwife!!

After that I went to my doctor who out me in touch with a bf counsellor who has been brilliant. I am still topping him up with formula, but feel my supply is increasing now. I have had to accept that I may not fully bf him, but have let myself off the hook about this after crying too many times over it. I would love a time machine as I regret the bad start we had so much, Ds has now just exceeded his birthweight at 6 weeks, but is contented now after a very unhappy start for both of us,

Sorry for the very long post!