was shocked by the amount of bottle-feeders in hospital

[misdee]

found it quite upsetting at times. my bed was by the empties 'bottle bank', so saw how many people on the ward were bottle feeding. in the 4 days i was there, there were 10 women on the ward in total, and only myself and another lady was breastfeeding. The midwives offered help to everyone, but most decided on bottles.

the reason i found it upsetting was because i didnt want dd3 to have formula but that choice was basically taken away from me whilst she was SCBU and was given formula by tube.

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dejags made a very interesting contribution to this thread actually and brought to the debate another factor in why some mums do not breastfeed.

i thought breastfeeding was not best for my babies becuase i could hardly cope as it was. lets have a good scneario and just have one week of pain cracked nipples or bleeding nipples. with home life being rubbish, support non existant - my future ( as it seemed) non existant - my baby a parasite. then a near fatal birth for me with somuch loss of blood i was told do go home and "do nothing" for a couple of weeks - how easy it it then to do nothing? add all this together and not breastfeeding was a great idea as it probably saved either my childs life or mine literally.

i know now that i have not got the mental stability to deal with babies. i dislike them infact due to my experiences. when someone comes to show a new baby at work - i go outside.

i am glad that most of you have great baby experiences, however i hope you can grasp that some people barely manage the drudgery,slavery, uncertainty and sheer misery of being the mother of a small baby. i did what i did to get through each minute hour of every single day. i don't know how i did it actually, but i know for certain that i couldn't have breastfed as well.

Custardo - I think you were very brave to tell your story "warts and all" like that - I think it shows very well that BF isnt for everyone - especially those who have had a bad birth experience and/or no support from friends and family

Custardo. It sounds like you had a really tough time.

thank you Custardo.

Oops sorry Custado - the was for being brave! I should have added a for your horrible experience

Moondog, don't be cowardly. To state that you think I am offensive for attacking Misdee when she said she felt sorry for babies being breast fed in the ward is breathtaking in its blatant attempt by you to ingratiate yourself with others on here. You had absolutely nothing intelligent to say to me last night or this morning on this subject, hence my post to you about being a bore. The only comment you had to make was not to me directly but to others mocking the way I speak. If that is the way you like to deal with people on here then that is a matter for you. Now I see you are mocking me for my user name (which you annoyingly can't spell correctly) and my use of inverted commas. Really Moondog, you are revealing yourself to be someone with a very spiteful and childish nature. It was quite clear from my post to Misdee that I had no wish to upset her, we had a difference of opinion and there was nothing spiteful about my post to her. You deliberately inflamed the situation by mocking the way I speak and not even to me directly. Let's stay away from each other on here please, I won't communicate with you further and will ignore any spiteful little post which is bound to come my way.

yet again i didnt say i felt sorry for the babies being given bottles.

I'm quoting Moondog, I know you didn't.

didn't add quotation marks for fear of being slagged off for my misuse of them

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I was desperate to breast feed,and my baby was early and had to go to special care.He was little and very jaundiced and I was stressed and not managing to express enough and he could't feed properly as tired through jaundice.People do not always bottle feed through choice.I still do not like the fact I had to bottle feed my ds,I hate making up the bottles and still wish I was breast feeding 16 wks down the line .At the end of the day It is a very personal choice,but do not assume that bottlefeeding is an easy decision to make .I cried buckets when I could't express anymor and had to resort to formula!!!!

I've re-read this and I'm off too, I'm fed up with it! Bye Misdee, I'm sure we'll meet again on another thread, good luck with the new baby, hope you get some sleep soon. My ds2 is only a few months old so I feel like a new mum still too. Hope you do stay happymumof2, I enjoyed talking with you, its been a good thread in parts and a truly 'terrible' one in others. Just for you Moondog, terrible and bad syntax all in the same sentence. Knock yourself out x

I am amased at how many people on this website have the incredible ability to twist what other people say out of all proportion !

BF / bottlefeeding are choices people make. What I was trying to say is that SOME women SOMETIMES are given NO choices due to family or peer pressure, propaganada, lack of information, etc. This is especially true for SOME poor, relatively uneducated women in SOME developing countries.

Whether people want to accept it or not, BF is EXTREMELY political. CLASS is about POLITICS and in most countries the poor (poor does NOT equal uneducated) are manipulated. For example, I am relatively poor (I am claiming JSA because my maternity pay has run out), but I am very educated, so ?

Why is this offensive ? Why is it so offensive to say that one woman is better educated than the other ? The better educated an individual and the more access that person has to technology, such as the internet, the better INFORMED that person tends to be? Why is this so controversial ?

I strongly believe that ALL, especially first-time mums, need as much info,. and encouragement to BF as possible. The reason I say that is that despite the fact that I am a middle-class, well-educated, private school bint with a posh accent, I didn't understand enough about BF in the early days and had ZERO support from the NHS in BF and had an extremely hungry, crying newborn whom I still hadn't managed to feed anything at all by day 4 (because poor thing didn't know how to latch on). It is only because a friend who was an expert BF came to our rescue on day 4 that I am still BF my DS at 8 months (and will continue until he no longer wants my boobs).

That is not saying that women should not have the choice to bottlefeed. What we all want are CHOICES. Choices are best made via thorough information. Information sometimes has to come from the so-called BF experts. Why is this such a controversial issue ?

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Prunegirl - absolutely. I think I tried to say this earlier but you've put it much better than me. I agree 100%.

Wanda - well OK you think that, but can you prove it? And why would it not be true? Doesn't really make sense does it? As has been stated ad nauseum there is a difference - for some it will be very small and for some very large but it is there.

I am surprised as I thought that most people b/fed precisley for those very health benefits that are plastered all over doctors surgery ... some even here on Mumsnet have said they've done it despite really hating it because of them feeling they should becasue their child has allergies for example - are you saying they are wasting their time?

i hope i'm not wasting my time breastfeeding. feeling a bit shite this evening as dd1 had an allergic reaction today at school lunch. but we dont know what to, so am facing the prospect of moving her onto packed lunches.

Prunegirl - "it's cheap" is a good argument. I was gutted that I had to pay over a fiver a week for milk. I couldn't wait till I could move DD onto normal cow's milk (£1.56 for 6 pints)!

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Have to say that despite being so upset that breastfeeding did not work out well for me I now look back and wonder what I got so upset about. DS is now 2 and well, healthy and happy. Yes I would have liked to breastfeed for longer but I no longer think it's the end of the world that I didn't.

Yep, Amanda, I have to say, I don't care! (Mind you, didn't care that much at the time - bottle-feeding was a practical solution for me at the time in the situation I was in. I never felt guilty or bad about it, I don't see why mothers should be expected to.)

But I do care that other mothers who really want to bf and really need support to do that aren't getting it. And I want them to get it!

prunegirl - just caught your post, really don't have time to read all of this... yes you are quite right and well put and even this thread has shown that, that there is a disbelief of it really making that much difference. However even just those few things you stated may be enough for some to persevere like myself rememberng my ear infections. Also what about childhood diabetes which is more common in bottle fed babies - this may take years to develop. Also the health benefits to the mother seem to often forgotten about in this equation...

I have no idea how the formula milk I was given as a child has affected me but yes indeed I suppose I am a fully functioning adult as you state but I'd not say that there was a lot of these around ... depends on how you look at it of course but you could argue that we are an unhealthy lot with a lot of heart disease, cancers, diabetes etc...

Legalbegle (yes I am aware of how I spelt it)
Your conclusion that by defending misdee i am trying to ingratiate myself with others on this thread is as intriguing as it is inaccuarate.

If my being 'terribly clever' (note correct use of inverted commas) succeeds in riling someone with their head as firmly up their a*e as yours is then I have succeeded in my aim.

I sigh when I see your name too, in this case with relief as I see that you have decided to go elsewhere.

Don't dish out what you can't take youself.

Caligula-laid off the wine. Wasn't organic. Had a huge mug of Green&Black cocoa with organic yaks' milk instead.