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.

But expatinscotland - you did consider it and for very valid reasons that were right for you, you went on to bottle feed and because of that will bottle feed number 2. You have reasons.

What Misdee was surprised at was the number of people who were bottle feeding from the start - and (I pressume) was wondering if they had even given breast feeding a thought.

From my own knowledge (the stats) and experience (collegaues/relatives) here in the West of Scotland, many mothers don't even get as far as thinking about whether or not "Breast is Best" for their own circumstances as they don't even give the option of breast feeding a second thought. Whether it is because they know no-one who has breast fed, so have no examples, or because they are "disgusted" by the idea, or beause they simply think that bottle feeding is going to be easier, I honestly don't know.

Because I think that part of it is because of the lack of positive examples of breast feeding (one person I know hadn't known anyone who had breast fed, so automatically bottle fed her kids), that is why I did make a point of telling people I had breast fed - and saying that I had had problems, but had worked them through and ended up feeding ds for just over 12 months.

Ane As I have said, mummytosteven, there are obviously some women who cannot breast feed-but that still does not change the fact that breast milk cannot be replicated and is best for babies. A fact cannot be made untrue just because it upsets people!

can I ask a question???

If a mother breastfeeds are their daughters likely to breastfeed??

My mum breastfeed all 4 of us and me and my sisters also breastfed.

Well, Sparklymiaouw, My mother breastfed me and I breastfed all 5 of mine (even before it was being promoted as best-my eldest is 23 now!)
So I think there is certainly more likelihood of daughters doing so if their mums did.

SM - yes.

All the info points to it being cultural in that sense - if daughters have the support of their mothers and bf is seen as normal, then they are more likely to bf themselves.

I thought so, My mum was very supportive of me breastfeeding and I breastfed all 3 of mine.

tiggiwinkle.....5 kids.....wow.
supermum.

More like tired old mum Lucykatie! All boys as well, by the way!

no tiggiwinkle will not here of you calling yourself that.....5 kids............it brings me out in a sweat.

boys are cool.....dont know about five of them though.

My Mum b/f my brother and I - which in the early 60s was not "usual"

I kow that at the antenatal breast feeding workshop I went to (with my mum ), they said that the main determinant of successful breast feeding, ie continuing, wasn't the mother (ie grandmother) but whether or not the new mum got support from her partner.

However, I can't remember whether the fact that their mothers had breast fed was a factor in starting - my gut feel would say that it was.

sparklymieow, I think there is certainly evidence to support your suggestion regarding mother and daughter attitude and influence on this thread; Joolstoo and GDG and before this gets shirty again I am not judging those MNers or disparaging their choices or rights or abilities. There are other mothers and daughters I could give as examples in RL but, clearly, that would mean very little to the rest of you.

I would like to say sorry for S&&t-stirring about Moondog, I do believe she is a genuine poster really I was merely referring to details of style.

I'm sure I've read stuff about it being an important factor in whether someone might be pre-disposed to bf. Mind you, I've also read somewhere that if a mother has an eating disorder, her child is also more likely than the average to develop one. (Slightly OT but sort of semi-related.)

You are sort of right SuzyW but actually I breast fed ds1 for a few months before switching to bottle and tbh that was for my own reasons - I was really struggling and in a lot of pain and starting to become depressed (which I'm quite prone to so I was quite concerned about that). It really marred the first few months of my time with ds1 and I felt like an almighty weight had been lifted from my shoulders when I switched to formula.

It was for that reason that I went straight to bottles with ds2 and ds3 - perhaps I should have tried again, ds1 was a poor feeder which probably didn't help first time but ds2 was much better so perhaps breastfeeding would have been easier. At the end of the day though, I really didn't want to go through what I did with ds1 and I did find the early months with ds2 and ds3 much easier and more enjoyable using formula.

As I said on the other thread about bottle feeding, I was also very uncomfortable about breastfeeding in front of other people and when ds1 was born my FIL visited and it was hell - ds1 was feeding all the time and I had to keep going upstairs to sit in the bedroom and do it and I was mighty, mighty miserable. I know some people are happy doing it in front of others and that's fine but I wasn't.

JT was very supportive of my choice to breastfeed and even when I was struggling and in tears she left the decision to me (obviously) though I won't deny that she reassured me that ds1 would come to no harm if I switched to formula. She certainly didn't cajole me into it but both dh and she were really quite worried about the state I was getting in so both were supportive of whatever was going to be best for me based on the fact that neither believed ds1 would suffer on formula.

suzywong, please don't worry about s**stirring.
It is impossible to offend me
I was merely trying to parody the bizarre and irrelevent meanderings of this thread. Obviously some people took them at face value.

I promise not to be naughty AT ALL today ok? Actually, my mother has got the children so I am going off to have lunch (on my own!) and shop.

I will enjoy reading further contributions this evening.

Auu Revoir!!

Wanted to also explain why I am so pro-breastfeeding apart from the obvious reasons of course. A lot of it is largely down to my experience with ds and how bad it was and how a lot of it was totally unnecessary. As I said before I had a difficult baby but there were many ways in which the first few weeks could have been made easier. I decided to breastfeed early in the pregnancy. These were the mistakes made by me and others (5 ½ years ago ? I think things are better now) ?

1. I didn?t go to a breastfeeding class. I didn?t even know I had to. I was incredibly naive about it and thought that if you wanted to do something enough it would work. I consider myself to be well educated and informed and yet I made this mistake. BTW our one ante-natal class on the topic consisted of passing round nursing bras.
2. I didn?t buy a book until I already had problems. I eventually got an excellent book from the La Leche League which went into great detail and stopped me from (for example) wasting time boiling and cooling water to give my ds for hiccups (I just b.fed him again). Knew better next time - dd never even tasted water till she was 6 months. Why aren?t these kind of things talked about in ante-natal classes?
3. ds wouldn?t? latch on after birth and I was refused a breast pump on the grounds that it wouldn?t work ? this was never properly explained to me. Ds was given formula after some feeds as his blood sugar was low. By the time I got home my supply was already affected. The next 3 sleepless weeks were spent trying to build it up again ? and it took 8 weeks altogether before ds was off formula. Fortunately I didn?t have any of the problems that others have like mastitis or PND. If I?d been given the pump then things could have been a lot easier. I see this now as obstruction to my attempts to breastfeed.

I could have so easily given up and blamed myself for not trying hard enough or having inadequate milk or any number of reasons. Fortunately I had a supportive husband, no other children to attend to and ds himself finally grew a little stronger and worked out what to do (he was diagnosed as autistic 4 years later which may have played a part in this). What struck me at the hospital was that there were only token efforts to support me in breastfeeding (whilst at the same time lots of posters of happy smiling breastfeeders around) kind of contradiction there ? the only thing the staff were interested in was feeding the baby. Yes of course that is important but breastfeeding is a long term thing and has to be thought of in those terms not just filling the baby up for the next 3 hours. I didn?t know about the planning and preparation and thinking that was required for the next 6 weeks or so.

Without sounding stupidly noble I genuinely don?t want anyone else to go through this and it seems like there is an awful lot of ignorance and bad practice still around. I?ve been called ?smug? (can?t remember the exact insult but along those lines) for discussing b/feeding. I don?t feel smug at all just bloody lucky. I don?t think there is anything clever at all about breast.feeding ? as I said my babies have done all the work. Almost every one can breastfeed and some unfortunately will have the difficulties I had and worse but an awful lot of them can be prevented. We can?t prevent them unless we know what they are which is why I think discussing breastfeeding on Mumsnet is useful and important.

Essay over ? sorry for the long post.

Fantastic post, Eulalia (as always) Sorry you had problems (I found bfeeding very hard for about the first five weeks, but am SO stubborn that I would not let it beat me - not necessarily a positive personality trait in other situations...ask DH!) - but agree that sharing these stories is a good way to encourage other people who are finding it hard that it does get better.

expatinscotland - interesting points and totally agree about the guilt thing which I felt but obviously not to the same degree as you as I didn't go through what you did.

Can I ask (and please ignore me if you don't want to talk about it) if you had a completely different birth experience this time round and an easy baby to feed, if you would consider breastfeeding this time? Genuinely interested and don't want to cause offence. Thanks very much.

Eulalai- I completely agree about the lack of information, although it is 5 years since I breastfed so I hope there have been some improvements since then. Certainly with my eldest two, (now 22 and 23 years old!) if I had followed the advice I was given I would never have succeeded. I was told things like "only 1 minute each side gradually building up the time on each breast", and not to feed more often than every four hours! Luckily I had read enough to be able to ignore the advice! I also always told to offer boiled water-a complete waste of time, as you said!
Even for those of us who are committed to b'feeding, it is not always easy-my 3rd DS was 8 weeks premature, and very ill. He was ventilated for 5 days and unable to even be tube fed with my espressed milk. It was nearly a month before he could suck properly and that was an exhausting time-commuting back and forth to the SCBU, caring for his two brothers and expressing as well. But the SCBU staff were supportive and with prem babies it is even more important to b'feed.

Eulalia
We're only TTC no. 2, but nope, not going to even try bfing next time around no matter how the birth goes. Don't even want to go there and get flashbacks just thinking about it. I don't have a very high pain threshold and found bfing incredibly painful. Also will have a small child to deal with and have to return to work as soon as I'm able after the birth b/c of finances.

Thanks for expanding on that GDG, I didn't pick it up in your other posts

It's all very interesting isn't it (not being sarccy)

Message withdrawn

Thanks expat ? sorry thought you were already pregnant. I found it painful too but ds didn?t latch on properly, kept on nibbling the end of it ? ouch! Dd acted like she?d always been doing it. That?s why I asked really because it can be so completely different between babies - hurt like hell or be really easy and pleasurable. I realise that the psychological side of things are just as important though. Good luck with ttc.

prunegirl - 2nd babies are usually bigger which does help so here's hoping.

Pamina ? that?s interesting and sorry to hear about your mum. There was a study recently that promoted longer term breastfeeding because in the past women used to breastfeed for a longer time period because they had more babies. So even if they only breastfed each one for a short time, in total it all added up to many years. The study was saying that because we now have fewer children it would help with breast cancer if we were to feed those one or two for longer.

My mum b/fed my two older sisters and me and my twin for about 3 weeks and then moved onto formula. this was largely based on the doctors advice "you can't possibly feed twins" even though she was managing fine. Also it was the 'fashion' in the 60s to bottlefeed. I don't resent her for it at all - am more annoyed with the family doctor!