Do we set new mums up for bf failure?

[GreenMonkies]

Bear with me, I fear this may be as much a rant than a genuine question.

I see so many threads about tiny babies wanting to feed all the time, wanting to be held all the time, being "high needs" and velcro-babies or cling-ons. Yet this is perfectly natural baby behaviour!!

Why don't ante-natal classes actually tell mums what to really expect? Why do so many say in total shock "when I put little Johnny down he cries!!" and "s/he falls asleep in my arms but wakes when I put him/her down". Why do so many think they should be able to feed their tiny baby every three or four hours and then put them down and "get on with things" in between?

When are we going to give women the information they really need?

I was talking to a colleague this week ad she was telling me about her first 6-12 weeks of motherhood. A classic tale of constant feeding, crying when put in the moses basket/cot, being a "hungry baby" who wasn't "satisfied" by her milk alone and so on. We chatted and compared experiences and at one point I said to her "if your midwife/healthvisitor had said to you 'your baby will want to be held 24 hours a day and feed every hour or so for the first 6-12 weeks, it's totally normal' would you have worried so much about the way he was behaving?" And she said no, of course not.

And she then said "isn't it a shame that the first couple of months with our new babies were spoiled by so much stress when if we'd known what to really expect it could have been so much nicer"

It just seems to me that by giving new mums false expectations and not telling them the truth about normal, natural baby behaviour that we set them up for breastfeeding failure. Or am I just banging my head against a brick wall here?

OMG!
I had a premature.
I was feeding 2 hourly at night-that can´t take much and they digest it more easily than formula.
That´s why ff babies sleep longer.
They are stuffed full & digesting it more slowly!

I think they do Diddl.

At our ante-natal BF lesson, they said that newborns feed every 2-3 hours.

One of the dads asked "even at night?"!!!!!!!!!!!

Cue everyone else going and his DW looking utterly mortified!

Best advice for BF new baby is to prepare yourself to be sat on the sofa for the first few weeks and to bank on doing nothing else.

You're quite right OP. And not just expectant mothers - it carries on with the advice given after the baby is born. One of my HVs told me earlier this week that my ds (now 3 weeks) should be going 3 hours between feeds, more at night. I told her about his cluster feeding in the evenings and pretty much hourly or 2-hourly feeds during the day and she actually wrote in his red book that he was feeding too often . I would love him to go longer between feeds (and so would my 3yo who is not getting the attention he is used to), I just don't want the crying it would involve, so it makes me envious of these mothers whose babies do it.

LovelyTinof...if only someone had said that to me in the early weeks, would've meant far fewer stressful days, I really had no idea this would be the case and I thought I had done 'a bit of research'...

Totally agree, I posted on here for advice in a tearful mess because I was so underprepared, despite all the reading, NCT classes etc.
I know they say nothing can prepare you but a bit more straight talking from the MW, NCT class might have helped. When DS was 2 wks old I rang a friend who had a 4 month old and explained how shocked and overwhelmed i was with it all, she replied 'isn't it the best kept bloody secret ever!'.
I didn't expect it to be easy, just wish someone had mentionned the intensity of the first 8 wks+, I may have felt less bowled over and incompetent. I am so appreciative of the advice I got on here and am still breastfeeding at 18wks and don't think it would be this way without MN.

I was lucky in that some of my friends had had babies and BF already, and they had all struggled but kept at it, so I was pretty well informed about how it all works in real life.

I think the ante-natal classes etc should not sugar-coat anything and be open about what it can be like, warts n all. As without my friends, as someone who had never even held a baby before for more than 2 mins, i would have been absolutely clueless.

TomThumb am so pleased everything is going well for you, MN is fab isn't it!

I owe an awful lot to MN for managing to bf my ds successfully.

Feeding every 2-3hrs would have been luxury! For the first 12 weeks, he cried if he wasn't attached (or so it seemed anyway!!). Even if he was fast asleep, he didn't like to be put down.

I read loads of the breastfeeding section before ds was born, and although I wasn't fully prepared for what was to come, I was familiar enough with what was normal newborn behaviour to persevere.

I don't like to think how it might have turned out had I been expecting a baby that fed every four hours!!

Great OP, Green!

I have said this on MN BFing threads before: it would definitely helped my a lot if somebody (MW/HV/any family member) had said to me: "Yes, this can be hard, you are doing a sterling job, he needs to be fed/held/rocked". I do not think that acknowledging how hard it can be, needs to be off putting. I wanted to BF, I wanted to do Attachement Parenting but was told at every turn DS1/I were doing something "wrong" because he did not go 3-4 hrs between feeds/was unbutdownable.

Also, like with marriage, there is so much focus on delivery/the wedding that it is easy to forget that the real challenge (looking after a baby/a lifetime together - hopefully) comes afterwards. Even before I had DS1 I was aware that delivery only ever lasts so long, was finite, however a baby is not just for Christmas...

Totally agree with both of your posts, OP.

With DC1 I felt like a complete failure; he wanted to feed constantly whilst I was in hospital and screamed every time I put him down. I was in hospital for three days despairing because I couldn't sleep and was getting it wrong. And because one is told not to co-sleep, I kept trying and trying to put him down.
(With DC2 when she cried, I put her on. We were both so much happier.)

(Katy, we share a mum in that respect. You would think the Term "demand feeding" equated with feeding one's baby strychnine the way my mother referred to it!)

The other thing no one tells you is that BF can hurt, even if you do it right, and that it is technically difficult. I think that's another conspiracy. I make a point of warning friends now that it may hurt. I was psyched up for labour to hurt, and that made a difference with how I coped with it.
I think more women would BF if they were prepared for the reality.

(Sorry, appear to have climbed onto my soap box. Will get off now.)

Totally agree, it's really really hard... all of the above, plus being stuck home alone all day as husband works, and no local family.. and trying to get out to groups is difficult (tho I am doing it) as finding BF on random park benches hard..
The encouragement I have had on here is fantastic.. just someone saying well done can really turn feeling down about it into feeling able to carry on with it.. so thank you

Good posts OP.
I really agree with this.
I've had 2 babies and both have demanded feeding every 20 mins to 1 hour in the first weeks, night and day, and held all the time.

I had heard it said that newborns only need feeds every 3 hours, but thankfully, my mother had bf 10 kids, 5 of which were younger than me and I remember her CONSTANTLY feeding them. Therefore, my expectation was that they would feed and want held all day and night.

Pretending that bf is easy and structured is unhelpful but how many mothers would choose to do it if you actually explained about the frequency, the thrush, the cracked nipples, the lack of sleep etc...???

"Pretending that bf is easy and structured is unhelpful but how many mothers would choose to do it if you actually explained about the frequency, the thrush, the cracked nipples, the lack of sleep etc...??? "

See, I think that is why nobody tells you. And I think it is both patronising and counter productive. I would have chosen to do it anyway, and would have felt less of a failure when I had almost every problem imaginable.

The ones who will not do it if they know about the frequency, lack of sleep, cracked nipples etc, will soon give up if you trick them into starting. Being honest and also getting accross that every breastfeed counts is a better way.

I was really shocked at the reality of having a baby and was miserable for weeks. I took advice from the women in my family, which went against all my instincts.

I fed dd on demand, watching for cues but when she got colicky my mum told me that I was probably over feeding and giving her a sore stomach. I felt dreadful (and posted on here) and tried to settle her without feeding. My family knew nothing of growth spurts etc.

I was exhausted for months, often crying with tiredness. I talked about co-sleeping because I was at the end of my tether and I remember my MIL saying "but its taken so long to get her to settle in her moses basket, you don't want to undo the good work" and the HV telling me it was absolutely likely to cause cot-death. I was beside myself until I fell asleep feeding dd lying down one night and woke feeling great. We co-slept from then on and, tbh, she probably feeds more often at night now than she did then but I feel normal and I get plenty of sleep.

I spent months exhausted and upset with bf getting the blame when, infact, it was being separated from my daughter at night which made it so much harder.

I spent months questioning my dd, thinking something must be wrong because everyone told me it was strange that she didn't like her moses basket/pram/car seat and wanted to feed all the time. Now it makes perfect sense that she'd just be happy being cuddled and fed but every woman in my family looked at her like she was a freak "what baby doesn't fall asleep in a pram/the car?". MIL still refers to her, in not very kind tones, as an odd little thing because she likes to fall asleep in my arms and won't entertain the pram. I hate that people think she's strange for wanting to be held by her mum and - she's 7 months old next week not 7 years.

If I have another dc I will co-sleep from the minute it's born and not put them down when they've finished feeding. Oh and lots of skin to skin contact when starting out bf.

I wish I'd found mumsnet before dd was born, I think my expectations would have been more realistic.

I overheard just a snippet in a supermarket that, while not about breastfeeding, says it all about what seems to be a way too common attitude to babies, and part of the problem with breastfeeding rates.

From a woman with a tiny newborn "Yes he's lovely but he just wants to be held all the time and I'm not giving in to him".

Made me want to cry.

ChairmumMiaow - I have heard similar comments from parents when the baby is less than an hour old ffs and has just has its head squeezed through the birth canal!! I might want a bit of attention after that too.

Oh no that is dreadful

'Giving in' to a baby is a ridiculous notion - until they have learned to be naughty of course which doesn't happen until they are nearly 2 IME

It is crazy, isn't it? The idea that giving a baby a cuddle = "giving in" to them. Would people say the same about cuddling their spouse? Or how would they feel if their spouse said that about them?

Tip Top post.

Have absolutely nothing to add other than as I have grasped the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding at the Laptop, if JimmyMcNulty would like to give me the name and address of her HV, it would be my great pleasure to get her the sack retrained! Is it just me that thinks that's outrageous?

My DH, who is fab and learnt everything he could, once had a 'proper chat' with me about the fact that she fed all day in the first few weeks. It took me a good couple of days to find out, on MN, how normal/good that was. I cannot begin to tell you how depressed, insecure and unconfident it made me. Still, all mended now and even he will correct well-meaning rellies who make comments.

It is difficult to learn motherhood from family these days, thus God invented MN

I agree with you GreenMonkies. It's true that women (and their men) are unprepared for the very difficult experience that life with a newborn (including bf) can be. However, I simply don't think it has anything to do with information or lack of information. However many times the HVs or MWs say 'it's going to be hard' that won't mean a thing when most of us live in nuclear families, have had no experience (or very little) of 'real life' bf, and have minimum support during those first difficult weeks.

In most cultures- especially in ones where there is more of a community feel & family lives close-by- the new mother is pampered, fed strong nutritious food & left to bf. There is endless help with the baby from family members & the mother is responsible only for her own recovery (quite an important piece of the puzzle) & bf her baby. It's true that 'it takes a village to raise a child'. It's not easy... and however much info women have about it, that won't change the fact that our modern lives are not well suited to what bf demands of us women (especially when it goes wrong).

I actually think this is a big problem with attachment parenting (as much as it has its heart in the right place). Women nowadays live quite isolated lives & are expected to look after a baby single-handedly, including bf. Their partners are back to work after 2 weeks (usually). There is also the physical recovery to take into account. Of course some women manage to bf successfully & feel a strong sense of achievement after that, and that's wonderful. But what about those who can't? What about those who- given the inadequate support, the lack of info, the bad birth experience, or all of the above- choose not to bf because they're in a spiral of tiredness & depression & think that stopping the bf will help them feel better (and actually, lets be honest, in some cases it does! we've heard stories like that on MN loads of times).

So I don't believe it's a matter of lack of info. It's a wider cultural problem that I can't quite imagine an easy solution to. But I think it's simplifying it hugely & basically putting the blame on new mums (that's what it ends up being) saying that if only the right info was available then bf would be more possible. Because- as I said- that precludes a huge number of the population who choose to stop bf for various reasons.

One last small comment. It's right to say babies bf all the time at first, want to be held at first all the time, & cry a lot (certainly mine did all these things for months!) But what about women trusting their instincts & knowing when something is not quite right? What about genuine cases of babies not getting enough milk? What about dehydration? I think mums should also have info on these conditions because often a bad latch can lead to very little milk taken in by the bay. And an emphasis only on 'constant bf/constant crying is normal' can sometimes mask genuine, existing, even serious problems.

(very little milk taken in by the baby even!)

Thanks LovelyTinofSpam. Its people like you, offering support and advice, that can change the whole experience of having a baby. That is huge and deserves major appreciation.

Maria constant crying isn't normal, if you are feeding on demand and holding/cuddling/carrying your baby pretty much all the time they shouldn't be crying. If they are, alarm bells should ring!!

I do agree with most of what you have said, we need to shift cultural expectations and behaviours, as it is these, in the form of misleading "help & advice" that make most women feel inadequate and hopeless, not just on the bf front, but as mothers in general.

Interesting thread.

I wonder how much of the difference in my children's behaviour is due to their personalities and how much is due to me relaxing and going with the flow.

I have found my demand fed, co-sleeping second child much easier (relatively) compared to my first child. He barely cried as a baby and fitted into our lives so well.