Daily Mail Article of a lady who committed suicide because she could not breastfeed.

[pigletmania]

I read recently of a lady who committed suicide because she was not able to breastfeed.I know that his may not be the only factor for her to do this, but may have been the icing on the cake so to speak.

I have read the information on breastfeeding on Mumsnet and other forums, and advice from LLL and NCH, which undoubtedly state that breast is best, and how its superior to cows milk, and how a baby should be drinking human milk not cows milk etc. A lot of new mums do have problems in feeding, suffer from postnatal depression, have had complications during birth, and reading this can exacerbate the problem, thus making them feel like they are inadequate and not a good mum if they do not breastfeed, and if they do ff their baby it will grow up to be ill, stupid and and fat which is wrong!

Being able to breastfeed your baby is only a tiny percentage of being a good mum, and mums who are not able to breastfeed should not be made to feel bad because they ff their baby. As long as the baby is getting nutrition, and is happy and healthy, and has a happy and healthy mum both mentally and physically that is the main thing. Better to have a mum who ff their baby, then no mum at all, unlike this poor baby in the article!

disagree with Tiktok that pressure comes from the inside -- not always true

a very good friend who had pnd first time around was under heavy and unremitting pressure from an hv to breastfeed when she had found it difficult before and was in danger of falling back into depression ..it was just a big fat thing to fail at

a family member stepped in and told the hv what for

result: ff and pnd staved off

better for the baby

am really really big fan of bf but you know, there are limits

There is no evidence at all that this poor mum was 'unable' to breastfeed. She was breastfeeding. The nature of the problems she had is not explained. We just don't know what happened.

The desire to breastfeed is not ideological, surely, is it, Eilatan?

You're saying people feel bad if they don't breastfeed because of ideology? And not because they love their babies and are sad when they end up, for whatever reason, not feeding the way they planned? It's just ideology? I don't think so

i mean she bottle fed and pnd was staved off

stuffitllama, you are misunderstanding me.

I am not saying that no HCP or grandmother or friend or whoever ever puts pressure on mothers to breastfeed (or to formula feed, for that matter). Clearly this is unacceptable. Equally clearly, it's not that uncommon - mothers do experience pressure surrounding infant feeding issues.

I meant it is not 'pressure' that makes people feel bad for not breastfeeding.

nicsnigsnags my DD is now 19 days old and I stopped BFing after two weeks because she wasn't gaining weight.

The pressure that I had to BF came from inside, because I wanted to do the best for my daughter. The pressure I had to not BF also came from the inside because I couldn't handle that she wasn't putting weight on. I found it really upsetting and was so worried there was something wrong. When I stopped I spent pretty well a whole day in tears. I am not depressed by the way - if I was then the impact of it could have been enormous. I felt like such a complete failure at the time but am now far more philosophical.

In terms of what happened before formula - well my great grandmother supplemented her twins with cows milk. If you go back there was an infant mortality rate of 25%.

It just amazes me that we constantly have the message given to us that all women can BF equally - that is absolute nonsense. There are women on my AN thread who squirt milk when they take their bra off. When I stopped BFing my breasts didn't even become painful!

oh ok

but it was for my friend

i think you can't generalise tbh, however much you know about breastfeeding, you don't know about all women, and you don't know the extent of the pressure, and you don't know every individual situation

not that I think we should stop promoting breast feeding, i just think it should be accepted that actually sometimes it's not the best thing.. a depressed mother isn't compensated for with breast milk

just my opinion

stuffitllama, yes, individual circumstances are going to differ.

I think we should consider not promoting breastfeeding, though.

Just enabling it, and supporting it, would be enough. That doesn't have to involve promoting it. Just let people know it is possible, and what they need to know to help them do it.
Then the people who want to do it would have a better chance of a good experience.

yes maybe the word is out there by now

Just to chime in sorry, bf should be promoted not in a dictatorial way to mothers, but sensitively, highlighting the how can i put it, the cons that can happen (not good latching, mastitis etc) and where to go for support or how to get free support if finding it difficult, as a lot of women in these hard times cannot afford to pay for a private lactation consultant.

If the government really want to promote bf than they should allow funds for specialist bf counsellors to help new mothers not just saying breast is best and leaving the mother to get on with it.

yes! Tiktok I absolutely agree.
Stop 'promoting' bfing (never want to hear the phrase 'breast is best' again).

Let's just help women actually do it.

"disagree with Tiktok that pressure comes from the inside -- not always true

a very good friend who had pnd first time around was under heavy and unremitting pressure from an hv to breastfeed when she had found it difficult before and was in danger of falling back into depression ..it was just a big fat thing to fail at"

Hmmm. I would have liked to have known exactly what the HV said that was construed as 'pressure'. I suspect that sometimes mums are reluctant to say outright that they simply want and need to stop breastfeeding. Maybe some women express these feelings in different ways ie, emphasising how challenging they are finding bf but not saying outright that they want to stop. HV's probably feel an obligation to provide strong encouragement to women who are struggling with bf - for a lot of women they really need this in order to overcome breastfeeding problems, along with very skilled support. I think that problems may arise when the HV gives lots of encouragement, in the absence of skilled support, or when an HV fails to read between the lines of what a mother is telling her - understandable when you look at the pressure many of them are working under.

not that I think we should stop promoting breast feeding, i just think it should be accepted that actually sometimes it's not the best thing.. a depressed mother isn't compensated for with breast milk"

But we do accept that sometimes bf isn't possible, for emotional as well as for physical reasons. That's why every leaflet I've ever seen on feeding choices highlights that women have to choose what's best for them and their babies.

I personally think that it's wrong that there is such a simplistic acceptance that the answer to PND associated with problematic bf is formula feeding and nothing else. I think that women ought to be offered the option of specialist counselling, just as they might be if they had serious emotional problems with any other normal physiological function, like having sex or eating.

"Just to chime in sorry, bf should be promoted not in a dictatorial way to mothers, but sensitively, highlighting the how can i put it, the cons that can happen (not good latching, mastitis etc)"

I'm not sure that bf is promoted in a 'dictatoral way'. I've never seen a MW, HV or BFC tell mothers that they should bf.

Formula on the other hand is promoted in, if not a dictatorial way, then certainly a manipulative and dishonest way, and on a far greater scale than breastfeeding.

I personally would like to see all formula marketing banned, and a scaling down of bf promotion.

I agree, fabsmum....part of 'enabling' and 'supporting' breastfeeding would be to prevent unethical marketing of formula milk.

on the subject of pnd and bfing, I found Brooke Shields' autobiography 'Down Came the Rain', very interesting.

I remember her writing that Drs and friends were very keen on her 'taking the pressure of' herself by stopping breast feeding. She felt that bfing was the one thing that helped her build a bond with her daughter and helped with her terrible pnd.

She did go on to advertise formula though!

fab, hi, yes, she did say she didn't want to, she did say she was happy not to, but it was the hv who was insistent that she keep trying and was very disapproving

that's not very nice

I mean, leaflets and so on are all very well but it's having someone come to your house every other day and making clear they think you're doing your baby a bad turn. Not good.

interesting about brooke shields -- bf did the same for me after a section, it redeemed my sense of failure.. I can see both sides.

what i mean in a dictatorial way, is highlighted perfectly by Stuffitllama's friends experience of the HV. i know that formula companies take advantage of people in the third world to promote their formula which is wrong, but here we can make an informed decision. mabey they should not advertise on TV which is wrong really.

I do hope that if your friend is feeling stronger now, she might think about contacting her trust and informing them that this HV kept turning up at her house uninvited, telling her that she 'must' breastfeed even though your friend had told her quite clearly that she didn't wish to. Seriously - if this is what the HV was doing then she needs retraining.

"i know that formula companies take advantage of people in the third world to promote their formula which is wrong, but here we can make an informed decision"

Sorry Piglet, but it is simply not true that women here are always able to see through the manipulations of formula marketing, or are always able to make an informed choice. You will not find any references to the proven and significant risks of ff on any of the websites owned by the formula companies. In addition to this these websites provide information on breastfeeding which is often questionable and subtly biased to influence women's feelings and expectations of what is 'normal' in relation to infant feeding.

There are also education and equality issues related to this issue here in developed countries, as well as in developing countries. We think of uneducated women in poor countries being bamboozled by sophisticated marketing tactics, but over here the women who are least likely to ever breastfeed are also the poorest and the youngest women, and those who have least formal education. I think that is very shocking.....

Tiktok, It isn't ideology to want to B/f but the HVs, MWs and doctors daren't suggest formula - that's what I meant.

It's like a conspiracy of silence which made me think that to suggest formula was something shocking.

I had one very jolly hockey sticks type HV (nursed in the 'colonies' as she put it) who came to see me before the birth and said on no account buy any formula or equipment, B/Fing was a doddle, in fact, she'd heard cased of women giving birth alone, being unconscious (dead?) at the end and the baby crawling up her baby and finding the breast and having a "jolly good feed".

No really!

Then afterwards, the po faced MW who looked on in horror and said nothing each time she weighed my rapidly diminshing baby.

I had a shit time in hospital. Didn't see anyone after the birth or the next day (except a nice lady who wanted to take photographs - for a price!)I just sat there in blood stained sheets and wondered what to do. I know that sounds thick but I did my nurse training in the early 1980s and it was all bed baths and clean sheets. (not that I wanted a bed bath but just someone telling me what I could and couldn't so would have been good). No one came anywhere near. I asked a student MW for some clean sheets and eventually I showed the poor thing how to make a hospital bed (she didn't know that they go up and down etc..) I don't blame her or anyone personally, teachings getting like that, you spend most of your time engaged in things that aren't teaching. I guess nursing is going the same way.

This went on for two days, they didn't have time to discharge me! My dad and husband had to plead with them at the nurses station to let us go. THEN they decided to stick pins in my little ones heel and proclaimed his blood sugar was low (it wasn't) - they did this 7 times. Then they tried to squeeze my boobs until they were bruised (funny enough nothing came out)then they said there's some cow and gate in the fridge and here's a syringe - so I formula fed with that for a night and the blood sugar went up. Then I cried because they still wouldn't discharge me. Then my dad and husband camped at the nursing station for two hours and eventually they sent a little girl who did her speaking and listening presentation in front of me. (Complete with rhetorical question "have you thought about contraception...she didn't wait for an answer before launching into "Sahll I say 'undecided'?" and "I'll put 'both' for feeding shall I?" I would have said yes to strychnine for feeding by then, just wanted to get out of the godforsaken place...

Funny enough, after all that. I couldn't breast feed. Althought I did try everything from pumps to fenegreek, skin to skin, imodium you name it... But I reckon my body gave up with the shock of modern nursing 'care'!

Sorry, I do sound a bitter old cow and I'm not really but this was a big upset.

Oh did i mention that when I got home, I noticed that baby's DOB on notes was two days earlier than it was. Which MAY have explained the decision they made to formula. I think my milk just hadn't come in yet and then it decided not to bother. Straight after the birth (again left alone for two hours in the delivery room WHAT'S HAPPENING? I kept saying) He latched on and had a good feed of the colostrum but after two days hospital care, I could produce hardly ANYTHING.

Sorry, sorry, Sorry to rant. But at least I've got it off my chest!

Baby boy is two in June and A OK . Despite giving me a swine flu scare on Sunday high temp and sick, better and scoffing biscuits in two hours...his immunity is quite amazing for a poor formula fed kid!

The thing is fabismum, if you have no milk and cannot bf than you have no choice but to ff.i would have liked to have bf but to lack of support and other factors,I were not able to past 2 weeks, i needed formula to nourish my child, not its not better than bf but if there is no other way than yes. Some mums do not even want to try and this should be addressed though at the end of the day the decision is in their hands.

Oh my goodness Elitan what a horribal time you had. I know some HV, MW see formula as poison or some bad thing, its not to me when i was not producing enough milk it was the only way that my daughter could get nourishment, when your milk stops there is nought much you can do.

fabsmum I am greatly insulted i was 18 and from poor working class family and I bf. Im only joking you are correct most health professionals are shocked I bf. I have also been told that they havn't see anyone my age feeding.

I disagree that there is a 'conspiracy of silence' around formula feeding.

My experience is the opposite and 'top ups' were the answer to any breast feeding 'problem', however solvable.

My midwife advised, with no prompting at all, that I introduce a bottle at 6 weeks as it would help ds sleep.

fab, ten years ago that was what hvs did, they came every day in fact for ten days

she was doing her best I guess, most people do, and I suppose a lot of hvs go the other way

they can't do right for doing wrong

but it could have been really damaging

stuffitllama - you're mixing up midwives with HVs, I think. HVs have never visited daily. 10-20 years ago, community midwives would visit most days until the 10-11th day and transfer care to the HV, who made a 'primary visit' at about day 12-14.

Eilatan, what you are describing is absolutely appalling and dangerous and ignorant post-natal care - I hope you complained. I would agree with you that the mis-dating of your baby's DOB might have had something to do with it, but that's no excuse at all for the other stuff.