what do you REALLY want to know about breastfeeding?

[LizaJ]

I had an absolute nightmare breastfeeding for the first 8 weeks and got really fed up with the fact that my experience was so different from the one portrayed in a lot of the 'official' information from the NHS etc. Being a nerdy scientist by trade (and therefore having free access to medical journals), I started to look into what the actual, clinical research says about breastfeeding, and was amazed by some of the inaccuracies that are out there.

I have been sharing the info in a blog, but so far I've only really written about the things that have affected me. I was wondering what breastfeeding topics other ladies would like to know 'The Truth' about..?

LizaJ - I can offer my experience also on breastfeeding a prem/IUGR baby. As you will see the problems were really from lack of support in the hospital. Once home, and weaned off of formula, my baby fed very frequently and gained weight well.

• With hindsight, I think I had dreadful support in the hospital because my baby was so tiny and people lacked the confidence to help. One midwife said that her mouth was just too small. I really struggled to get her latched on properly in the first few weeks, but once latched on, she was always well able to feed and would stay on for ages.

• I was also told to feed 3 hourly after the birth but given little help to do so and failed to get my baby latched on myself. The result was severe hypoglycaemia. I have since learned that even Gina Ford advocates more frequent feeding for prem or low birth weight babies.

• The only time someone actually helped get my baby latched on in the 8 hours after the birth, she left us immediately with the instruction to take her off after 20 min and put her on the other side. I never managed to get her to latch on again before she crashed and was taken to intensive care. That she had apparantly fed for 20 minutes meant that other midwives did not take my requests for help seriously despite my baby being so very tiny.

• I couldn't feed on demand in the SCBU. It would not have fitted in with their strict schedules. I was repeatedly told that the nappy change and breastfeed should never take more than half an hour in total and that I must learn to do it faster.

• They did not believe in kangaroo care. I was actually told off for cuddling my newborn as "she needed her rest"

• I did not have access to a photo of my baby and was harassed by nurses when I attempted to hand express at her bedside. They said their camera was broken.

• my postnatal ward was at the opposite end of the hospital on a different level. I needed to walk the distance painfully (first few trips with catheder rubbing) every three hours.

• the fridge for my EBM was another long walk from my bed so I would come back from SCBU, pump, walk to fridge, catnap, back to SCBU. I was seriously exhausted after a few days of this.

• if I did not get to SCBU precisely on time, they would simply give my DD formula. The postnatal staff never once woke me on time, despite assuring me that they would, but they did tell me off for using my mobile phone as an alarm clock.

• I was told that the milk bank was not for babies like mine.

• I never saw any other parent attempt to breastfeed in the SCBU. Not surprising really...

To add to that mammoth post - I was also pressured to use bottles and did so in order to get my DD out of SCBU. Though some nurses were very supportive of cup feeding once my baby's NG tube was out, others were dismissive of it and told me that the tube would have to go back in if I did not use a bottle. They insisted that there was no way of knowing how much she took from a cup or breastfeed, though she was feeding very well from both.

Upwind that is frightening. Well done for persisting - I'm sure a lot of other mothers just wouldn't have been able to cope with that and would have ended up using formula.

Liza, I'd had the most amazing support and encouragement from the MN prem babies forum, so I was partially prepared. Most mothers of very tiny/prem babies have no idea that it is going to happen.

Your blog is so clear and well laid out it would be great for Dads, friends and family supporting any new mother struggling to breastfeed.

I do think the insistence on knowing precisely what goes in is odd. Especially since my DD vomited after every bottle or tube feed and never after breastfeeding. I wondered why SCBU babies couldn't simply be weighed before and after feeds to work out how many oz they were taking.

upwind Your experience fills me with horror, you poor thing. I didn't experience anything as bad as that, but I was lucky in that my babies were bigger than average for their dates. I had to be a stroppy cow with all the nurses though, so that they didn't chivvy me away from the bedside - I very much felt like I was in their way. I know a lot of women who had just delivered wouldn't be physically or emotionally up to being a stroppy cow - and why should we have to be, just to be able to give our babies the breastmilk which research has shown will really help them?

lizaj thanks for the link to that study, I will print off a copy to take with me when I have next LO I think (28 weeks and fingers crossed he stays in longer than 35 weeks, but not hopeful...)

bronze I will do a search later to read up on your experiences. I really want to try to deal with the bfing in SCBU in a more collegiate way this time, rather than bursting into tears and swearing at staff when they tell me to go away! (Especially as I now know the most senior consultant in our SCBU as our daughters are best friends at school! Wonder if that will make it easier or harder.... hmmmmm)

Sorry haven't read whole thread so apologies if this has been covered already - but I want to know why if you have a large baby (over 10lbs) you're sent to Special Care, where they will insist that if said baby won't feed straight away (long labour, em cs, exhausted baby) he has to be topped up with formula despite colostrum pouring out of my breasts?

I expressed 12 ml of colostrum which the deliver midwife told me was a large amount and fed it to DS2 with a syringe - but apparently he still had to be topped up with formula to keep his blood sugar up. Why couldn't he be topped up with more colostrum which I was gaily squeezing out every two hours?

I was exhausted from the birth so gave in on the formula front for one feed, which he promptly vomited everywhere .

And why in god's name did they insist on giving it to him through an NG tube when he was a large, healthy, full term 10lber? They muttered something about knowing how much he'd had, but surely a syringe would do that just as well?

Hi Liza, Just wanted to say thanks for setting up this site as a resource, it's much needed.

I would echo all others who have said discomfort seems to be a prevalent experience. I personally had extremely painful sore nipples/mastitis/generally miserable start to breast-feeding. Advice at the time was incomplete/conflicting & I persevered despite this as I expect many others do. Tongue tie was spotted at 5 weeks by a HV. Once this was snipped all discomfort was eliminated immediately. I was told by the HV that checking for this at birth used to be routine (pre the advent of formula).

Would be very interested on any connections between breastfeeding & libido/disappearance of(!), especially as I'm still breastfeeding now (baby 8 months) Will it come bounding back when I stop as some posters on other threads have suggested?

Nice thread and blog Liza, thanks. Is it just aimed at the first six months? If not, then I want to know

• if toddlers really do self-wean and if so, what's the average age for this?
• how much immunity against illnesses does bf confer and for how long? I seem to get the worst of any bugs my DD catches - I like to think that's because I'm making antibodies which are passed on to her, but not sure if that's true!
• do most mothers feel down when they stop and for how long? (I remember feeling really weepy when I first went back to work and sometimes had 7-8 hours without bf. Am wondering if it'll be worse when I stop.)

To add to the discussion about proper support from the outset, I remember having a lovely midwife come over to me the first night DD was born (I had a c-section) and telling me I was doing it all fine. That was enough to reassure me - but I think getting that reassurance right at the beginning was vital to a long and mostly happy time bfing.

I was luckier than many mums on this thread as ours is a hospital very supportive of breastfeeding

for me personally it would have helped to have been told that certain conditions such as hypotonia can interfere with a baby's ability to breastfeed

having made sure that I had plenty of milk and that the latching on was fine, I just couldn't work out why things weren't working

it took 11 years (!) for someone to explain what had gone wrong

I still managed to keep breastfeeding but at enormous personal cost, and at some cost to dd (who is still the sickliest child I know )

Hospital were very good though: any topping up while we were still in there was done with donated breast milk. Can't fault them.

The blog is definitely not just the first 6 months Annie75. C is coming up to 9 months now, and I'm starting to wonder about extended bf (I realise that technically it's beyond a year, but I feel like I'm doing it already given the attitude of some family/friends).

Have just been reading about tongue tie 19fran76. It's a shame it isn't screened for routinely, given how common it is.

I didn't realise that bigger babies were subjected to this procedure WhatFreshHellIsThis. How strange they would use formula rather than colostrum. Glad to hear that at least you got some support cory.

Right, must go and do some reading about bf and libido...

thinking it over, it's not so much what I would like to have been told as what I would like midwives/breastfeeding counsellors etc to be told as part of their training.

I got support but not really the right support, because noone knew why it was happening

as I have met more experts, it has become quite clear to me that this is something that people who know about hypotonia know about

so I wish they'd tell the midwives

it was dd's OT who asked me if she'd had trouble breastfeeding- 11 years after the event; that's when I realised it was definitely dd's problem and not mine

my support mainly consisted in getting dd latched on (she was too weak to suckle so just lay there) and telling me how important it was that I was committed to breastfeeding (all very worthy but not actually helpful under the circumstances)

Blimey what a brilliant blog!

This is a real bugbear of mine - as it appears to be for so many of us.

i was the last of my friends to have a baby and all of them BF - 6 out of 6 reported difficulties to some extent - the usual problems - pain, cracked nipples, bleeding, mastitis, thrush etc.

However when i asked how best to avoid problems like this at my ante-natal class, I was told that they were very very rare to the point where there was no point even talking about them.

i said that all my friends had problems and was told that they couldn't explain that as problems were so rare.

i can't understand why there is this attitude, why women are told "if you're doing it right it won't hurt" when so many women experience pain and problems and need a lot of help.

it's like telling a woman that childbirth takes half an hour and doesn't hurt if you're dong it right.

i would rather be told the truth.

Luckily I had heard my friends stories and so was expecting a bad time - in the end it was (for me) really easy - I had the best time out of all of them - but I was still pleased that I was aware of what could happen.

As for specific things we're not told - I had excrutiating let-down pain for the first few weeks (can't remember how long now) - I know the latch etc was fine, just when she initially went on I would have to go "fuck fuck fuck fuck" under my breath for about 10 secs or something until it passed.

It would have been nice to know that that was normal and did not mean I was doing it wrong. The message "it won't hurt if you're doing it right" is too simple - the truth is "if you are doing it right you still might get let-down pain for a few weeks". That would be reassuring.

i find it patronising that potential problems are never ever mentioned as it might "put people off" - I assume this is the reason they won't talk about these things.

I would like to know about the differences between women and storage capacity and if it is related to differences in fat content of the milk between women and if this is linked to the mothers metabolism and all sorts of scientific info like that - does it exist?

On the painful nipple thing - my first child was excruciating for a long time - I think the latch was wrong as we ended up with cracked nipples but then after they had healed it was better. My second was absolutely fine even though I knew the latch was lazy (I have a very strong letdown and so can get away with a lazy latch iyswim).

Love the blog!

Re: the post partum night sweats, - I experienced this too as did other people in my nct class. I assumed it was one of the ways the body returns to the normal levels of circulating fluid (increased by ?50% in pregnancy?) along with weeing a lot! The women who ff experienced it too iirc, so not just connected to breastfeeding. Would be interested to hear if anyone has some scientific info on this - rather than my assumptions!

The sweats are a hormone regulation thingy - I had them to the point of needing to change my PJs through the night with each of my 3. It also happened when I was training for a marathon and upping the intensity - my GP investigated me for hypothyroidism because of funny blood results but they decided it was just a hormone settling issue.

Have read bits of the blog as well as this thread and it is all v interesting.

I gave birth to DS2 a month ago and was asked to complete a questionnaire for a PhD student studying the causal relationship between pain and mothers giving up BFing. I received a follow up phone call a few days ago, asking about my general mental state (was I overwhelmed, crying, feeling useless, etc.) as well as about the pain.

TBH, the fact that someone was asking me whether I felt useless would have been a great relief after DS1 was born, as the questions themselves imply that lots of mothers do suffer pain, do feel overwhelmed, useless, cry, etc, whereas I thought I was an abnormal failure of a mother.

But beyond that I'm hoping the study and similar research might lead to better help for BFing mothers here in France, where BFing is not given much support and where statutory ML is so short (10 wks after the birth) that many women don't BF.

With DS1, I remember asking a nurse to come and watch me putting him to my breast, because I was sure I was doing it wrong, and was in considerable pain. Her reply was, "Madame, BFing is painful", after which helpful comment she returned to her room.

It wasn't till I got home after the regulation 4 days - having undergone lots of pressure to FF because the baby "was going to becomedehydrated" - and looked at a couple of books to see how latching worked, that DS finally fed OK.

It is not right for new mums to be left so utterly alone when a few words of support would make a world of difference.

Hi LizaJ, forgot to say how brilliant it is to read the blog too!

I'm not sure why this policy applies to big babies, or whether it's a widespread policy either - would be interesting to know if there's any research supporting it.

Exactly what Gala said.

Again, not being smug but never had any problems. Certainly would never have described it as painful. Slight discomfort perhaps for a couple of weeks? Can't really remember, so obviously was not too traumatic.

Did get her weighed each week for about 12 weeks though, out of interest.

Wow, hearing about what happens in France makes me grateful for the well-meaning (albeit not necessarily useful) support I had here.

Bf does work well for some women straightaway, I just think it's ridiculous to deny it doesn't for lots of others. I like the childbirth analogy, BigBellasBeerBelly!

It's worrying that none of the midwives knew that hypotonia might cause a problem. Perhaps they are more aware now?

The whole metabolism and bf thing is really interesting and very complicated. I started investigating it a while back and have only got a few papers into the pile of about 100 that came up...

LizaJ, that was the hospital where I had DS1.
DS2 was born in an amazing French hospital, so my initial experience wasn't the only one possible in France.
However, I fear it may indeed have been more typical than this time around, unfortunately.

The pain I had with DS 1 was intense and so bad that when I had mastitis I didn't notice as I was in so much pain anyway. The fever made me realise there was somethign else at play. The GP told me to stop using the breast with Mastitis but another GP said that was wrong. However when I expressed the milk frm the infected breast seperated and looked odd. Also I come from farming background and when a cow has mastitis you discard the milk.

It did get better after a few months. With DD my nipples went from being intensly sore to irritated and never stopped hurting completly even though I fed her for 2.5 years. An old wives tale suggests that my being very fair could be a factor. Is it? Or could it be that I have huge nipples?

Why do I get a flood of depressed like feelings in the first few mins of breast feeding. it goes away after a few mins.

Why am I craving sugar all day every day while I breast feed.

I think painful breastfeeding effects bonding - any evidence of this?

just seen this thread and love it!

ACE blog!!!

i am BF DS who is now nearly 6 weeks and i'm guessing 11lbs plus as he's already growing out of the 0-3 month baby grows!

he is obviously thriving given his weight gain but my nipples are in bits. i was hoping getting his tongue tie fixed on monday would help but TBH as he has found a way to feed that suits him i don't think he had an incentive to change his feeding habits.
my latch and positioning have been checked but it still aches - even hours after feeds! we've also been checked for thrush etc so think my nipples are just V sensitive.

anyhow my question is...

does having a c section lead to mums often stopping BF sooner than a 'normal' delivery? i really don't think i can make it to the magic 6 month mark and wonder if the trauma of birth being not what you planned and all the recovery aches etc had anything to do with it.