Am I the only mother on the planet who CHOSE bottle-feeding?

[CottageChicken]

I read extensively, did lots of soul-searching, and decided breastfeeding just wasn't something that was the right path for me and DC. Consulted DP who wanted a very active role in the feeding and supported 100%, we did 50/50 on all feeds from Day 1. Most people have been great about it, but of course there are the Breastfeeding Nazis and just general disapproval stares.

Did anyone else actively choose not to breastfeed? I don't regret my choice at all but it would be nice to hear from others.

By the way - mine are very happy, rarely ill, well-adjusted babies before you ask how many ear infections they've had, as more than 1 random person on the street has done .

breast is best does not suggest superior imo but 'natural' and 'healthiest'

i loathe bfing but do it...

i have struggled and wept

i think it is best - but wish it weren't

there is lots of support out there

I chose to FF my son for all the wrong reaspons unfortunately but I never even intended to BF!

When I found out I was pregnant I went to my mum as you do, she bought me bottles and a steriliser when I was 5 months gone. I was led to believe that was the norm noone else in my family has ever BF so the idea never occurred to me. HV did'nt really mention it either when she asked about feeding method I replied 'Well I don't jknow a thing abotut BF so I will just FF and stick with what I know' was told that's fine, no info offered nothing now I think back I'm a bit about it!

If I had another I would definately try and BF as I now have 2 friends who do it and I really wish I'd known it was'nt all falshing your boobs around the place and sore boobs! Which is what I thought

It's your choice but you can't get away from the fact that breast is best.

sorry did the pro-bfers attempt to exterminate you adn all your bottle feeding friends? did they tattoo you and starve you in work camps before gassing you.

stop using such offensive language and get a grip.

Lets just say my boobs leaked (a lot) at inconvenient intimate moments!

Nan - that's not uncommon It dies down. It can be managed pretty easily in the meantime....shame if you wanted to bf and that was the main reason for stopping as the leaking really is manageable Hope you manage to do what you want to do next time.

OP, yawn

night

Havenot read whole thread. Do no understand this whoe BF/FF divide that sometimes goes on ( and just sometimes in peoples heads). Glad you and your baby are well. I am still BF my 11 mth old baby but do not care how other people feed their babies - it just suits me better to BF. I would give another mum of small baby the same smile of comeraderie (sp) however she was feeding. Bottle/boob, we are all mums.

Also use cloth nappies, hope my disposable using friends don't think I am some kind of eco warrior?! Just suits me better.

Believe it or not, most people don't give a shit what others do. We just get so defensive over our choices these days. Do what is best for you and your baby and be happy.

Yes, PT, they think we are hippy-dippy eco-loons! But they are too nice to say it to our faces because they are real friends!

OP yes. You are indeed a freak and the only woman in the world to formula feed. I don't know why manufacturers make all this formula and stock it on supermarket shelves. Your DC must have prodigious appetites as they are the only ones glugging this stuff up.

Oh my goodness, I have just had time to read the posts by Rockingsocksbunnies, what planet is she on. Where do I start. Well you all on here have done a good job of putting her right and I dont have anything further to add. I cannot believe with an attitude like that, she is a peer support for bf, rather than helping them, she would put women off. Her disaproving stares in the street at women bf might be the straw that breaks the camels back for some women who struggled to bf.

RSB you sound quite young and immature and really need to grow up and see that life is not always black and white like you think. More so, you may actually be putting women off bf and do nothing to promote it with that attitude. You seem quite proud of yourself and justified in your way of thinking. If you were so passionate about bf you would not have the attitude that you do

sorry meant to say bottlefeeding not bf in my first paragraph. how do you know that the bottle containes formula, you dont? It might contain breastmilk. yOu are just making small minded assumptions which you should keep to yourself.

agree pigmetmania

we should not second guess what is in the bottle!

Yes, my SIL expresses instead of putting baby on breast. Also one does not know the circumstances behind that lady bottle feeding, and that she may have a medical condition that prevents her from bf.

I'm a regular who has name-changed for this, but I have to say I find threads like this (particularly the more judgemental posts on here) hugely depressing, and they make me despair for the future of feminism!

If men had babies, they would all make their own decisions about how to feed those babies, and they wouldn't give a sh*t what anyone else did. This is exactly how women should be.

Yes, of course, there are convincing health arguments to breastfeed, but there are also a lot of serious reasons not to - not least the feminist argument, i.e. breastfeeding effectively shackles a woman to her baby for as long as she does it, and removes any chance of effective 'shared' responsibility re feeding, night-waking and so on. This is not an insignificant consideration.

I also find it very offensive when the 'surely every mother should want what is best for her baby?' argument is trotted out apropos breastfeeding. On many, many occasions, we selfishly prioritise our own needs over those of our children. I'm sure it is riskier health-wise for a baby to be placed in a car than it is to bottle-feed them. Yet how many women consider giving up driving to safeguard their babies' health? Would we think that a woman who chose to stay living in a big city was selfishly not considering the damage it might do to her baby's lungs? And if not, why not?

Each women should make her own decision, having weighed up all the evidence, and then other women should - frankly - just shut up about it altogether. Everyone wants what is best for their children, just not everyone agrees on what that is.

hittingthebottle, your argument discounts the public health aspect of infant feeding - without removing individual choice, society has a role in promoting positive health, especially when it includes people who have no choice at all (in this case, babies). It's like smoking - people have a right to smoke, but not when and where it affects the health and comfort of other people, especially people who may not have a choice to be around smoke or not (like bar workers).

There is also a cost involved. My taxes and yours pay for the treatment of the excess illness in formula fed infants.

I am a feminist, and the use of that argument in favour of formula feeding is very depressing, as I don't regard breastfeeding as 'shackling' or as a means of not sharing responsibility for care with my partner. In fact, I take the idea that women are effectively shackled by breastfeeding as personally insulting.

I have no idea of the comparative risks of a car journey compared to formula feeding and nor have you - not that that prevents you from being 'sure' the car is riskier. Breathtakingly ridiculous comparison anyway. What are you comparing? Incidence of ear infection compared with a road crash? SIDS compared with a fatal car accident? Or to use your other spurious argument, is rural living riskier or not to the infant than bottle feeding.....daft.

Most women want to breastfeed. Most women who do stop before they wanted to - not because they chose to bottle feed. I'm on the side of these mothers and I would like barriers to their choice to be removed.

You are clearly not bothered about their choice because you think formula is safer than a car and it's a lot of fuss about nothing and in any case breastfeeding shackles women.

Here's a hint: read the Politics of Breastfeeding and get an education.

I was effectively shackled to my baby for the first 9-12 months. I don't think that would have been any different if he was ff at any stage. I have friends who either ff from 6 months or so, or earlier (some from a few weeks in) and they seemed pretty shackled to me too!

Tiktok - I'm sorry if my message made you so angry, it certainly wasn't intended in a hostile way. I was simply saying that women should be understanding and supportive of each other's choices, and also understand that whilst there are undoubtedly risks to bottle-feeding, there are also risks to many many things we do with our babies every day.

Your analogy with smoking is equally spurious though because smoking directly causes thousands of deaths every year, whereas the health benefits/risks are quite a lot more complex in the case of bottle-feeding. And I have actually read an awful lot about this topic, so there's no need for the 'get an education' dig.

And you're right, of course I don't have the stats re cars. But I would be willing to bet that for an individual baby, they have a greater risk of being in a car accident, than of developing a health-related problem as a result of bottle-feeding. If I'm wrong, I stand corrected and apologise but my overall point remains valid: we all put our children at risk every day, and we all decide what we consider an 'acceptable' level of risk.

I genuinely apologise for my possibly emotive use of the word 'shackled' - I didn't mean it that way, and I know that's not how breasfeeding women feel; it's certainly not how I feel about breasfeeding. But equally, there's no doubt that it does set up an element of inequality in a relationship which isn't there in bottle-feeding. I'm not saying that it outweighs the health advantages; I'm just saying it needs to be put into the equation and then each woman needs to make her own choice. And that choice needs to be respected.

It's a bit like the whole childcare debate - there is a lot of evidence that very young children do better in their home environment than in nurseries. But this needs to be balanced against the huge disadvantage of women being unable to return to work.

We all need to make our own decisions on all of these issues, and bottle-feeding mums should have their choices respected. That's all I was saying.

Completely agree with respecting choices
But from a PH point of view promotion of bf and suppression of ff advertising might make some women choose to bf when they otherwise wouldn't have considered it - which can only be a good thing. Can't remember who it was further down the thread who said she ff because it was 'the thing to do' and is now qiute annoyed that no-one even suggested bf to her.
Upping the importance of bf and denormalising ff might also mean that more money goes to support women who struggle to bf and stop long before they wanted to.

I agree completely that for public health reasons, breasfeeding should be promoted and encouraged. But then that's it - women should be educated and left to make their choice and not judged.

I actually know more women who've felt embarrassed/ashamed about bottle-feeding than about smoking, which is completely ridiculous and a very good illustration of what I'm talking about! Women are - unfortunately - worryingly good at making other women feel bad about their decisions. And I think that's a shame.

hittingthebottle, I accept your apology.

I was not equating smoking with formula feeding. The comparison I made was with public health - we leave people free to make their own choices while protecting people who may be affected by those choices.

That women's choices should be respected and that women should not be judged is not all you are saying. If it was, no one could or should disagree with you.

But you have gone on from this totally non-controversial opinion to say the health impact is negligible and that cars are more dangerous than formula.

This is patently not true.

Each year, 100 infants are injured when a passenger in car accidents (figures from the Child Accident Prevention Trust). These include serious and non-serious injuries. The CAPT say 'a handful' are killed.

So - how many infants are affected by formula feeding? We can work that one out, too, by looking at the hospitalisation stats for (just to take one condition only) diarrhoea. 53 per cent of admissions would be prevented if all babies were exclusively bf ( Pediatrics 2007;119;e837-e842). In this study, 1.1 per cent of their sample were admitted for diarrhoea, which in an average year would mean 6,000 babies...and if over half of them would not need hospitalisation if fully bf, then we can say 3,250 babies are ill (with this condition only) because of ff each year.

This means that it is riskier to ff than to put your baby in a car.

But it's a daft equation anyway - I only worked it out because you brought it up

I don't understand the point of your own survey - 'more women who have felt embarassed/ashamed about bottle feeding than smoking' . Maybe they feel sad that they didn't breastfeed - what's wrong with that?

At no point did I say the health impact of bottle-feeding was 'negligible'. I said it was one of a variety of important factors that needed consideration.

On the statistics, I stand corrected, assuming of course that the statistics you have posted are uncontroversial - i.e. if we're sure that in the cases of all those forula-fed babies who got diarrhoea, it has been proved conclusively that the FF directly caused the diarrhoea. Because a lot of the medical literature I've read on this topic acknowledges that it is very difficult to get truly comparable data in the cases of breast/bottle-feeding. That is to say, we don't always know what else is/isn't happening in the households where babies are breast or bottle-fed that could lead to these health differences.

And you are also assuming that getting diarrhoea is comparable to being in a car accident. I would say it is usually significantly less traumatic!

But all of this aside, you are still failing to accept my fundamental point, which is that how a baby is fed is one of a multiplicity of factors affecting its and its mother's health and well-being, but you wouldn't know that by reading many of the posts on this thread, or indeed other MN threads on this topic.

Of course a woman is entitled to feel sad if she wants to bf and can't. What I was referring to was the significant number of women I know who admit that they always secretly wanted to formula feed and were quite relieved when breastfeeding didn't work out or who say that they 'pretended' to try and breastfeed for fear of the judgement of their friends.

That is the kind of thing you would never hear a man saying, and I think as women we need to question why any woman is made to feel like this.

hitting
'more women who have felt embarassed/ashamed about bottle feeding than smoking' .

Surely if they feel ashamed then that must mean they think that breast is best, but have chose to ff anyway. the fact that they feel ashamed is not the fault of anyone else.

If you are fully informed and make a choice to ff, then be proud of your choice, not ashamed.

hittingthebottle - with a massive study (like the one I quoted) you can show the difference in outcome, and as this study controlled for socio-economic factors then it's as close as you can get to what you are asking for.

No, I am not assuming that diarrhoea is comparable. I am using this daft comparison because you were daft enough to use it first.

No, you won;t see much about the other factors affecting infant health on this thread, because of the folder it is in. It's the breast and bottle feeding folder. Elsewhere on these boards you will see other issues discussed.

No, no one sensible thinks this is the only factor that affects infant and maternal health. But the sole source of nutrition for a baby in the first few months of life is important, and it's important mothers get the support to do it.

There's nothing 'daft' about mentioning other risks we all take in day-to-day life in the context of a discussion about child health so please don't call me daft because I'm really not.

And don't speak to me as though I am.

If you don't like the car analogy, pick another. We all expose our children to multiple risks every single day, and it's up to us to judge which risks we consider acceptable. As a society, we are notoriously bad at calculating risk which is why I think it does matter if - even in the context of just this discussion and just this folder - feeding is presented as the be-all and end-all of a baby's health.

Anyway, given that the point I originally started out by making was how depressing it is the way in which women turn on each other over this issue, I think I'll shut up now as it seems I can't even say that without being told I'm stupid.