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?

brettgirl - that's the reason why I am scared to bf dd. She is on the 25 centile as well (on expressed bm) and I don't think she can afford to lose any weight. I want her to get to at least 7lb before I try to get bf going. I know she might not ever take to it though, so in that case I will have to continue expressing which is a bit of a pain but at least I know she is gaining weight.

DS2 was born on 9th centile; crawled up a bit to 10th by 8 weeks. I didn't go to the baby clinic at all. I knew where it would all go - 'ooh, small baby, are you feeding him enough, maybe a formula top-up' blah, blah blah.

He was slowly growing out of his clothes, peeing and pooing all the time, and his 8 week medical check was fine. I felt no need to have HCPs making me feel I should worry over nothing.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being on the lower centile lines - the problem I had was that dd lost 12% of body weight and from 25th centile ended up below 9th, then weight 'stagnated' and we weren't exactly getting back to birth weight in a hurry.

Ladylush have you been told that your dd's weight is a problem or are you just worried because she is tiny?

My point about my daughter's centile was just that some babies are born massive but in fact are destined to be average in life.

brettgirl - yes dd was born 10 weeks early weighing only 3lbs 10 oz, then went down to 2lbs 10 the following week. She was +90th centile at birth but then went down to 25th. If she hadn't been premature she'd have probably been a good weight as ds was 9lb 3oz and at the 22 week scan the sonographer predicted dd would be bigger than average due to femur length. Health visitor will not discharge dd until she gets to a "decent weight".

Oh and she is still on the 25th centile.

That must be really hard, I didn't realise that she was premature. Surely if she is growing along the 25th centile line though that is really good? They are quite close together at that stage the lines anyway aren't they?

Haven't read the entire thread but totally agree with OP and her 2nd post too. My NCT classes were pretty up front about the amount of bf and varying frequency but still didn't feel prepared really and certainly listening to relative/friends didn't help. I tried putting my DS to 'bed' in the first couple of weeks and eventually accepted he wanted to be with me/DP - slept in our arms in the evening and the stress lifted.

There is such an expectation to get out and about and live life as normal where as if women were told to plan very little, get some food in and some good TV and set yourself up on the sofa with your baby maybe they wouldn't feel like such failures.

Also when I realised that I don't eat the same amount at the same time every day (or sleep the same) so why should a baby things became a hell of alot easier

brettgirl - thanks. Yeah I'm glad she is at least not dropping off from the 25th centile.

It's a perennial dilemma, this, I know. For what it's worth, I know of no NCT breastfeeding counsellor who would go along with presenting a false picture of early babycare and bf so as 'not to put people off bf'...who are these people who think that is a good way to prepare new parents, a way to treat grown ups, a way to get discussion and mutual support going? Crackers.

However, nor do I (or anyone else I know) say (in GreenMonkies's words) "your baby will want to be held 24 hours a day and feed every hour or so for the first 6-12 weeks" because that is simply not true for every baby.

Mostly, I think, the antenatal bf class aims to help parents understand a baby's normal, varying unpredictable needs, which may well include periods of varying lengths of needing close, uninterrupted contact and very frequent feeding, and which is, indeed, normal. But we try to do this not in a dogmatic 'this is what will happen way' but in a way which doesn't 'warn' them so much as get them thinking about how they will respond. I am sure we don't get it right for every parent every time.

My experience is that some people come to a class with already negative expectations, to be honest - because they have friends and family who have had unhappy bf experiences. So there is sometimes an element of 'sounds like your sister needed more help/understanding/better midwifery care' - but it's hard to get right, especially when someone tells you of the terrible time their sister was having 'because she never seemed to have enough milk and she was feeding all the time and becoming exhausted'...and you cannot unpick a vicarious experience like that.

I agree, any class or any encounter between an HV, midwife or whoever and a new mother needs to describe normal baby behaviour. But when people are faced with it, they don't always apply what they have heard or read about it to themselves! And voices telling them 'it's not normal' or 'you havent got enough milk' and all the rest of the crap are louder than anything else, sometimes. At the same time, there is a loud voice inside saying 'you are a crap mother because breastfeeding is hard/your baby keeps crying/your baby won't sleep'.

No wonder new motherhood can be so stressful

I think Tiktok you're very right in everything you say! You present such a balanced view, that's really refreshing. Personally, if someone told me before I had DS "your baby will want to be held 24 hours a day and feed every hour or so for the first 6-12 weeks" I don't know if I would have dared bf!! On the other hand, I think more specific info might have helped... The real problem though, as I see it (and as I tried to say earlier in this thread) is that new mums mainly don't have enough role models of other bf relatives. They also have far too little support & a model of mum-infant always together is presented as the absolutely best model (and this is normalised, in my opinion, in a problematic way through the attachment parenting ideas). I think new mums need- less guilt, far more support, a better understanding of what babies are really like- including an idea about babies' resilience!!- and particularly partners / husbands who support them and their bf. They also need a wider community that makes it easy for them to go out & about with their babies, to bf (or bottle feed) in public without guilt. And many other thins. Sigh....

This is my first ever post on Mumsnet, but I felt I should share my experience bf my DD. I had a very traumatic birth (ended up emergency CS) and both DD and I caught really bad flu in the hospital. When I got home I was in shock and couldn't stop thinking & crying about the birth; I also had flu, mastitis and (it turned out later) MRSA in my CS wound which took 5 months to heal in the end. I can honestly say I have never felt so ill in my life - I had a high temperature for 6 weeks straight.

After 6 weeks, my beautiful baby had still not regained her birthweight and was really skinny even though I was bf all the time (I had a lot of support from my DP who stayed at home the whole time helping). At no point did I get any useful advice from MW/HV - they just kept telling me I was doing it wrong and going on and on about too much foremilk giving the baby green poo (ignoring the fact she had a streaming runny nose). None of the health professionals acknowledged that my ill health and state of shock after a dreadful birth experience might have anything to do with my lack of milk.

Well, in a nutshell - I ignored what the HV said and started topping up with formula as otherwise my baby was going to starve. I topped her up for about 3 months, always bf as much as possible first, and I am happy to say that by the time she was 4 1/2 months old I managed to get back to exclusive bf. I carried on exclusive bf until she was 13 1/2 months old and then I only stopped because I was pregnant with our second.

I know that for most people topping up with formula does mean the end of bf - but it didn't for me, and I just thought I should share that experience.

Welcome to mumsnet, helloflowers....your story is sad and trimuphant at the same time!

It is dreadful no one was able to help you make bf a better experience from the start. It's pathetic no MW or HV could do anything bar telling you you were doing it wrong - it's their JOB to help you make bf work, FGS.

Shock and chronic illness can have an impact on breastfeeding - would need more details to be sure it was lack of milk, because it might not have been. Whatever...clearly your baby's intake was not as it should be, but that could have been fixed, and should have been, without leaving you to struggle on .

Did you see any volunteer breastfeeding counsellors or call any of the helplines? If so, did they help?

trimuphant = triumphant

Thanks tiktok

I didn't see any volunteer breastfeeding counsellors - looking back, I think that could well have helped. For instance, I had quite bad mastitis but nobody diagnosed it or prescribed antibiotics. I was just feeling too ill and out of it to go and find help which was independent of the NHS. The only experts I saw were MW, HV and the breastfeeding counsellors at our local children's centre, who just made me feel worse - one counsellor told me my nipples were too big and another that my boobs pointed the wrong way... just what you need when in a state of trauma, really personal body criticism! And they were all completely obsessed with the hindmilk/foremilk thing.

My milk supply did seem to recover along with my physical health and as my stress level from the shock of the birth reduced. My next baby is due in 1 month and if I have problems again, I will definitely seek help from the volunteer bf counsellors, and try to ignore the HV as much as possible... (not to upset all HVs, I am sure plenty are helpful, it's just that the ones where I live in East London don't seem that great!)

Interesting topic - I have only skimmed through so apologies if what I have to say is repetitive.

I do feel that there is not enough information on what breastfeeding can really be like for some and IMO it can hinder ones success at bf (hate to use the phrase 'fail at bf').

I did NCT during pg and read lots of "informative" books. I understood that pregnancy could be hard for some, labour/delivery was painful and could have complications and so on. The only thing I understood about bf was that initially a baby feeds constantly but by 6-8 weeks all should be settled and it shouldn't hurt.

Here is what I encountered:
DS1 (4 yrs ago) after a long traumatic birth he did not latch, we got thrush several times and he was 'cluster feeder'. I remember freaking out when this all happened thinking it could not be normal and having to scramble for info on a Sat night at 2am with a screaming (starving) baby on what to do. No phone lines to call and bf groups to go to...long story short, we resorted to mix feeding until I stopped all bf by 4 1/2 months to my dismay.

DD (2yrs ago) I thought I'd get bf this time round as surely I heard about or been through what could possibly go wrong with bf. Not me - she was born w/tongue tie that was not recognised until she was nearly 8 weeks old by which point my nipples were severely damaged, bouts of mastitis and low milk supply due to nipple shields and ff introduced early on. I remember crying in agony (again at crazy o'clock) almost begging my DH to get some formula cause the pain was too much to bear and DD had not had a wet nappy in hours! BF ended by 3 1/2 months and I ended up with PND and felt like I just couldn't cope and do what was supposed to be the most natural thing in the world. I hated myself and hated my boobs for not doing what they were made for.

DS2 (8 weeks) Finally I am fully bf a child of mine (well also a bottle of ebm at night). It has been hard and we have had tongue tie (and thrush; mastitis) BUT I am armed with information and experience on how to tackle bf issues as they come up instead of it coming to a head as it did my previous 2.

Looking back, if I had known these issues could possibly occur it would not have discouraged me from breastfeeding at all. I feel I would have been able to tackle the problems sooner (and better) had I recognised the signs earlier on (especially for things like thrush and tongue tie).

I also believe because my mother did not bf (I am a product of the 70's) I did not have any personal anecdotes to relate to either so my knowledge of bf was limited. I could chat to her about my pg and birth but never about feeding and what to expect.

I have vowed to help my DD with bf when she is older and has her first LO (in many many years of course) .

I also want to help my little sister who is pg with her first LO. I have told her the reality of my bf experiences BUT made sure to let her know it may not happen to her and there is help/support she can get (incl me) if it does happen. She has said she will give bf a go which I am so glad about (especially as she is very young, 22, and at uni).

All I can hope for now is that in the years to come more and more of us encourage our offspring to bf and more realistic information is put out there so help women succeed at bf.