I am a militant lactivist - have you got a problem with that?

[chillybangbang]

Couldn't resist the bolshy thread title...

... but actually I would describe myself on having 'militant' beliefs and feelings on the subject of baby feeding. I wanted to post on this issue because I see a lot of ire directed at militant bf advocates - I wanted to see if I could flush out any other people on this board who feel the same.

Should explain, when I say 'militant' what I mean is that I see the fact that the majority of babies in this country are not breastfed as a political issue and one of public concern. I also see it as an ecological and economic scandal - that one of the world's greatest natural resources, one that's produced by women alone, is being squandered, and that there are people who are profiting hugely from this situation being allowed to continue unchecked.

I want to reclaim the phrase 'breastfeeding militant' from people who are currently using it as an insult. I don't think being a bf militant means you are against choice or that you are judgemental of women who don't breastfeed. In fact the more I understand about the barriers to initiating breastfeeding and the challenges breastfeeding mothers face that make them give up, the more militant I become!

So there you go, cards on the table. Are there any others on this board who want to put their hands up and say: "I am a bf militant"?

chilly, i can understand a lot more where you are coming from having read your last post. i am most definitly not anti breastfeeding.

i suppose for me i was just exhausted. i am very slim naturally, didnt put on much weight during pregnancies and i found breastfeeding so physically draining i could not keep up with other demands eg. family life!

i had my children 15months apart. with the second i decided during pregnancy i would breastfeed dd for a month no matter what, as i got to the end of that month my partner had to work away for a week. after a few days of cluster feeding through the night and struggling to take care of my other child in the day i switched to formula because i felt i had responsibility to care care for my other child too which went beyondwhat i could offer by breastfeeding if rthat makes sense?

both my children were born by c-section so i guess that would have major impact on my energy levels ( although i certainly never felt it prevented bonding)

i was lucky with my first baby- i had excellent midwife on my ward who told me jokingly that she had all 3 of her kids by c-section, and they practically starved for the first 6weeks whilst she established breastfeeding. really i have to be grateful to her for giving me the confidence that my babies would sort it out for themselves.

i have reacted very emotionally to this thread, but it touched a nerve for me. i believe in the benefits of breastfeeding, but i resenedt feeling like someone elses values should be my own, and i felt such pressure to breastfeed i didnt feel able to do what i needed

ljhooray - it's not that no one believed you, now, is it? You're rewriting history Aitch asked you to re-read the thread you remembered in case you read it at a sensitive and vulnerable time and misinterpreted the intention of it, and I asked you to link to the thread so we could read it.

Rosiejoy - I understand how you feel about exhaustion and how it affects your life.

I had two babies within 22 months at the age of 38/39. I had gestational diabetes in my pregnancy and was quite unwell with it: two weeks after the birth I weighed a stone and a half less than I had at my booking visit. I also have PCOS, endometriosis, Gilbert's syndrome (liver issues) and am hypothyroid.

I was also very, very exhausted after the birth of my third baby - difficult labour followed by a pph, but because bf was so important to my family as a whole we just put it at the centre of things for a short while and worked around it. I'm not saying you should have done this too, I'm just saying that the physical reality of life with a new breastfed baby was what shaped the way we ran our family for a few months, and that made it possible, and satisfying for me to keep going. Basically the house went to hell, and I was constantly feeding on the go - before, during and after school runs (I also have an older child), while dog walking.... I spent a lot of time on the sofa and in bed. My husband cooked in the evenings.

I think the bottom line is that it's not always just exhaustion and family pressures that inevitably make women feel unhappy with breastfeeding. I had both of those things but was content to carry on - it didn't make me unhappy. Maybe that's because I really value bf a lot and was doing something I believed in and that I felt had benefits for our family in the long term. I have also had previous very positive experiences of bf that made me want to continue, even in the face of those challenges.

Tiktok - I get what you're saying about the term 'artificial feeding' (as someone who's had cerclage twice because of an apparently 'incompetent cervix' I was able to appreciate the comparison). On the other hand I think the term 'formula' for bm substitutes is also not great, even though of course that's what it is - a 'formula'. I value the term 'artificial feeding' (though understand people's negative feelings about it) because for me it forgrounds the important differences between breast and formula feeding - it's not just about the milk, it's about mode of delivery.

Ok so no one was a bit strong, but there's little point in fighting over the fact that in support of bf, a minority take it too far and give the impression that ff is a sign of failure. Just as some ff assume bf are unable to see the benefits in some circumstances of ff. Both views are unhelpful at best and distressing for new mums.

I would just like to know why on this issue there can be a conspicuous lack of middle ground!

Chilly: How awful & sad to read your description about breastfeeding in the maternity ward. I really understand where you're coming from... and in fact, my experience in the maternity ward was horrible (even though I was at a good hospital with relatively good breastfeeding support: but still- NOT ENOUGH support, much much more is needed). You're right that this is a very important issue & support needs to be given in a very different way than it currently is. The midwives in our hospital were actually good, & helped us with the bf, but I have to say I still remember those 2 nights (without my partner) in hospital with a screaming newborn who was not latching on as a nightmare, one of the worst experiences in my life. They wanted to keep me in a 3rd night (I hadn't fully recovered from a forceps delivery) but DP & I basically made the decision to discharge myself, because I could just not stand one more night like that. What I'm saying is, the postnatal period is already extremely difficult as it is, especially for hospital births, & especially for first-time mothers. So obviously in the middle of all that, lots lots lots LOTS of support needs to be given to help bf get going. I'm not talking about just patronizing support (e.g. 'you know bf is better for your baby') or support of the 'shoving-the-breast-into-the-baby's-mouth' kind. I'm talking about real, warm support, with loads of time given. OK obviously this would be an ideal world where this would happen. But I do feel very strongly about this. For me the hospital birth itself was relatively ok; the aftermath was (as I said) a nightmare. The only reason the bf went well was because we had a doula coming in once a week for 3 hours for the first 5 weeks, and she came at least 2-3 times in the early days when that baby wasn't latching on.

Breastfeeding is NOT easy. It's particularly not easy when there is no family support, especially when there are no women (relatives) who have bf themselves. I don't know about Gambia or any other place where it supposedly comes oh so easily. To me that sounds again a bit patronizing, the whole idyll of the traditional society where things are done 'naturally'. I have many many doubts about that kind of picture. Probably though it's true that in societies where lots of generations bf, then people have more realistic expectations of what it involves & more family support.

Anyway. I'm sure all this is known by everyone here. So not sure really why I sat & wrote it all down . I do feel (as we all do) very strongly about this whole issue...

Oh and TikTok: ok, point taken. The incompetent cervix term is another example of textbooks going mad (in my opinion).

Chilly - my experiences are very similar to yours. I too was determined to bf dd even though it actually wasnt the best thing for me. It was however the best thing for my daughter and we reorganised our lives around it.

We had some support from friends and family (not that much though - all my family live far away) and my dp rearranged his working hours so that he could be home at 6 each evening and got up in the night every night so that I could rest and recover.

I didnt even consider ff to be honest - I dont know what has made me that way although my mother bf me in the early 70s after a single mastectomy so I obviously had a good role model.

I think people do need to view it as something they are definately going to do (barring milk not coming in at all etc - thats awful and unavoidable and noone should be made to feel guilty in that situation - thats exactly what ff is for) and not just a choice that can be reversed if it becomes problematic.

I dont really like it when people say they are going to try and bf - I think you should think that you are going to bf.

LJHooray- I think though there is a middle ground.... Lots of people on this thread are talking about how they ended up ff, how they do mixed feeding, or how they object to the term militant. It is possible, you know, to support bf wholeheartedly, and still to be able to support a more-middle-ground point of view.

But then one point to make here is that it's important to clarify what we're talking about (or at least how I see it). I think for the very early days of bf (e.g. first 6 weeks) there does need to be some insistence on how to do it 'right' so that the milk supply gets well established. I'm not saying that women don't (for various reasons) do mixed feeding successfully even then. I'm just saying that bf, like everything else, is something that needs to be learnt & established if you see what I mean. Once that is done then perhaps there can be more room for flexibility & different solutions for different women. For me, that happened at 4 months (the introduction of some formula). For others it may happen later or a bit sooner. But it's a different, I think, to support a 'middle ground' at the very beginning, and a very different thing to support it in the long run.

Kate, you're very right about saying 'I will bf' instead of 'I will try to bf'. It really helped me, I think, to see it that way before the birth. And I also (like you & like Chilly) had excellent support from my partner & we kind of shaped our lives around bf for a while. (Up to a point, we still do actually, 7 months down the line )

Hi Maria,

No intention at all to patronise with my post re) women bf in The Gambia.

I speak as someone who gave up bf DS1 after 4 weeks and who bf DS2 only after 3 months of formula topups. I agree - bf is farking hard work and I have never managed to exclusively bf either of my children - which I find sad!

I just find it interesting how other societies (not backwards or more traditional necessarily, just less money and no access to electricity with which to operate sterilizers or boil water) have no problem with bf AS A GENERAL RULE.

I would actually describe myself as a militant bf in that I feel very passionately about bf - I still feel guilty about giving up bf DS1 - and sad that I didnt get the help that I needed to continue (am sad for DS1's sake when I see how happy bf makes DS2)

Although having thought about it maybe its a bit chicken and egg - maybe people who say they are going to 'try' arent that committed and are a bit unsure about the whole thing for whatever reason and dont want to say because its taboo.

Am thinking of my SIL - maybe I intimidate her because she knows that I'm still feeding my 9 month old or whatever and is scared of saying to me that she really doesnt want to.

But then I do struggle with understanding why people dont want to - I need to work on that really. Its hard though when you cant see any downside - I mean yes its really hard and tiring and doesnt fit in with your life at all and it can be incredibly painful and disheartening etc but having a baby is all of those things anyway...

[wanders off confused]

"I too was determined to bf dd even though it actually wasnt the best thing for me."

Well - maybe not the easiest thing in the short term, but clearly the best thing for you in the medium and long term, judging from the rest of your post.

"I'm not talking about just patronizing support (e.g. 'you know bf is better for your baby') or support of the 'shoving-the-breast-into-the-baby's-mouth' kind. I'm talking about real, warm support, with loads of time given. OK obviously this would be an ideal world where this would happen."

Oh - I so agree with you! Last night the only time anyone spoke to those women or looked in on them was when they rang their bells or when the HC assistent or midwife was doing routine obs or handing out drugs. Nobody was walking the wards putting their heads around curtains and saying 'are you ok? How are you feeling?', or offering food or drink. I decided to do it myself when I had a quiet moment. I walked onto one ward, looked behind a curtain and saw an exhausted young mum completely comatose, whose baby had fallen asleep over her shoulder with its face pressed into the pillow and hanging half over the bed (and the side bars weren't pulled up.... so if baby had gone any further she could have fallen off). There were mums there who were crying out for a bit of human attention and a bit of mothering. One woman (who'd had a baby with Downs syndrome by c-section and nobody had looked in on her or asked her how she was) called me back and said 'Thank you for being so kind to me', just because I'd changed her baby and spent 10 minutes talking to her. Not to mention the first time teenage mum with grand mal epilepsy who, when she asked for someone to sit with her while she fed the baby for the first time since the birth (she'd been told by her specialist midwife not to hold the baby unsupervised) was told harshely 'you can't have one to one care here you know - we don't have the staff', before the midwife took the baby into a brightly office and bottlefed him herself, while sending me off to restock the inco pads in the under the sink in each room. She then bundled this baby into the corner pf the office and left him there sleeping in his cot there for the next 4 hours. I looked in on the mum during the night and she was lying on her bed (also under bright lights - many of the cubicles don't have bedside lights that work) staring into space with the bleakest look on her face.

Sorry, I digress. But I think the point I'm trying to get round to is that the lack of humane treatment on postnatal wards probably does as much damage to breastfeeding as bad technique or inappropriate/wrong advice. Women's oxytocin levels probably plummet in the face of all that fear and sadness. No wonder so many of them can't feed their babies. Hormonally it's a big disaster.....

Anyway, I'm going to stop thinking about work now. I'm going to go outside and take a big breath of spring air and think happy thoughts!

Chilly, your description brought back my own awful experience (well... not so awful actually, I guess it was just the normal, everyday awfulness of night-time in postnatal wards in NHS hospitals!). OK, they don't have the staff. I get it. So why don't they bloody let partners / husbands stay with their women during the night?! This is really something that is incomprehensible to me. In my particular hospital (where I gave birth) you were actually offered a private room in the 'nice' midwife-led unit, in which room your partner could stay overnight with you... but you could only have this treatment if you had a completely natural labour, i.e. no epidural. So we then end up with the completely paradoxical & mad (IMO) situation where women who most need the support- those who have had c-sections, forceps or whatever- end up in the busy, crowded postnatal wards, with no partner present to help them during the night, & with crying babies & very little bf support. It's no wonder, under these circumstances, that bf doesn't get to a good start. The way I saw it (in our hospital), I was almost penalized (implicitly) for having had an epidural & then a forceps delivery. If I had managed without the pain relief, I would have been in the nice, softly coloured midwife-led unit, & most importantly, my DP would have been there. This is a ridiculous system IMO & needs to be addressed urgently...

Anyway. Rant over!

Maria - That's one of my favourite rants actually:

Would you like a pain free lonely birth on a shared ward with overstretched staff unable to support you, or would you like a painful one with your DH to keep you company?

Chilly I have never experienced what you have described personally having chosen the painful birth with DH present on both ocassions but I'm afraid due to totally crap care I suffered PTSD, or something close.

I cannot believe what you write, and yet I can and it has brought me to tears.

Birthing women are a very large proportion of society, why does this not have us marching through westminster?

I'll tell you why. Because we are vulnerable at the time of the experience and then barely able to function through fear and sleep deprivation. We build ourselves back up with tremendous effort and by that time we no longer have the energy to revisit our experiences. It is in these circumstances that women are expected to establish bf in an environment and culture that works against it.

I totally take your point that bf is not isolated from the birth experience and both immediate and longer term postnatal care.

Chilly do you work in the hospital where i had dd's?! It sounds very familiar, or maybe that is just the norm in post natal care.

I must admit, when I read posts like GiantKateStacks of 14.33, it makes me feel a lump in my throat, because bugger me if I didn't try to b'feed. I truly believed I would with dd1, but after my experiences with her, truly believed I wouldn't with dd2.

We had totally reorganised our lives to have a baby, moving house when I was 36 weeks pregnant and dh starting a new job. It wasn't easy, but something we had to do. How 'problematic' is problematic enough? It's when I hear people talk like that, that I just want to hang my head in shame and cry, because, even though I feel tried, it just makes me feel that we didn't try hard enough.

Maria - your post about the midwife-led unit and not allowing DPs to stay with you really struck a cord with me. At the hospital I'm booked in for, they have three birthing suites in the midwife-led unit - birthing pools, ensuite bathrooms - but you can only go in there if you are committed to having a natural birth (which for some reason which escapes me includes gas and air, which has, naturally, been avialable to women in childbirth over the milennia , but no other form of chemical pain relief). Now the other delivery rooms are nice enough, but you get a sink. And 3 bathrooms between 8 delivery rooms. So the "good" mums-to-be get two baths each and rooms about twice the size, and the "bad" mums-to-be can manage with a sink and queue for the bathroom... I did contemplate being less than truthful with my attitude to epidurals (open-minded - I'll see how I go!), but then decided I didn't want to be surrounded by a bunch of hippy midwives with their own agendas anyway. Oh and you get two midwives with you throughout in the MW-led unit, whereas they are short-staffed on the delivery suite and they'll just pop in on you from time to time.

We women really do deserve better. Rant over.

Helen I don't want to sway you, but do need to point out that MLU very often don't practice what they preach. That's my experience anyway.

5 different midwives, refusal of the pool because no mw was competent in using it, delayed arrival of gas and air, being refused to be allowed to deliver upright and made to lie on your back.

Helen31, I couldn't agree with you more there. I started both my births in a MW led birth unit, where i would have stayed on a small ward (8 beds), with 2 bathrooms, 2 MW's during birth, a b'feeding counsellor visiting after birth. Unfortunately I ended up in a postnatal ward of 4 wards with 8 beds in each sharing 1 toilet per ward (not great after a 3rd degree tear and several hefty doses of lactulose, a different MW each time, a buzzer which didn't work and a breastfeeding councillor who spent 2 mins telling me my baby didn't have a tongue tie (6 weeks later, at a bfeeding clinic she told me she did - she didn't remember me), and that my latch was fine, despite having painful blisters on my nipples the size of my nipples!

Fascinating thread.

I am not a militant lactivist/breastfeeder - I am more jovial persuader with steely, determined core.

I think that works better - militance gets people's backs up and makes them feel judged and pressured before you're past your first sentence.

I do agree that a different approach needs to be taken with Government/PCTs/health professionals/local councils, etc than with women themselves. After all, it's them who can put in place the policies and the day-to-day solutions to help women to breastfeed.

And a good bit of kindness - that's what I want to see for women, both antenatally and postnatally. Exploration of feelings about breastfeeding if you're unsure antenatally, if/then scenario "role-playing" (IF you meet this hiccup THEN you can try this sort of thing), etc. And then decent support and information postnatally. And a good channel to make complaints about your treatment by health professionals and good follow-up method to see they're acted upon.

Btw, you've all signed this, right? www.onemillioncampaign.org/en/Index.aspx

Signed

Thanks for the link Hunkermunker, looks like a fascinating website.

Thanks Snowlight - I'm not sure which way you weren't trying to sway me (iyswim), but I do appreciate that things aren't always what they purport to be. So my maternity notes have a bfing checklist that the hospital's policy says should have been gone through with me, but that didn't happen. I did have an afternoon through NCT with a great bfing counsellor though, who is available for advice on an ongoing basis and has given us lots of contacts for support if needed. Charitable view is that since Community MWs knew I had gone with NCT ante-natal classes, that they also knew this would happen...

I get the impression that the MLU is closed quite often due to staff shortages. London maternity services are so short-staffed (sigh). Am hoping that I will have a straightforward birth, be able to establish bfing asap and high-tail it out of there the same day! With my DH there throughout, obviously.

where are you going Helen?

Can I recommend the Edgware Birthing retreat spa unit? People travel up to 3 hours to give birth there apparently.

After no.1 described above at hospital mlu, I just breathed and no.2 swam out.

Yeah, sorry about my earlier post. I think I started off on one foot and landed on the other. i.e. was probably gonna recommend a mlu coz overall I do think that should care go as planned/promised a woman increases her chances of a better outcome iyswim, - and then ended with a horror story - sorry, - last thing you need!

I'm with you Chilly, but I doub any one here is shocked by that!!

betadad, umm; "However, it turned out DS1 was so hungry that my wife could not keep up with him and physically did not produce enough milk to satisfy him. She had to give him a bottle in the end and felt terrible guilt. It was only when she spoke to both my mother and her own mother who both told her that bottle feeding was really the only option with a very hungry baby that she started to feel better about her decision."

Whilst is is possible that some women have low milk supply (for a variety of reasons, PCOS etc) formula is not the only way to feed a hungry baby. Women can feed twins (and more), in most cases milk supply is based on supply and demand, the more you feed your baby, the more milk you will make. I have a friend who exclusively nursed a baby born weighing 12lb 2oz, another who bf her twins who were each born at 6lb+ (I can't remember exact weights) and I have tandem fed a 2 year old and a nearly 8lb "hungry" baby (and donated to the local milk bank) with out needing to resort to formula.

The reason so many women think they are not satisfying a "hungry" baby is because they have completely inaccurate expectations. They expect to feed every 3-4 hours, not every hour and a half, they are not prepared for short feeds, or comfort nursing. When thier baby is this "demanding" they think they are not satisfying them, so a bottle of formula is given, baby sleeps for several hours (apparently satisfied at last, but in fact they are comatose as they attempt to digest the highly indigestable protiens in formula) and they are then utterly convinced they are not making enough milk.

The main reasons most women don't breastfeed for very long are lack of suport, lack of knowledge and lack of understanding. It is rarely lack of milk.

St George's, and honestly couldn't face the thought of getting to Edgeware (I am a bit worried about 10min drive to StG! Anxious, me?). But thank you for the thought - and you didn't say anything to make me worry, honest.