If you have time, please would you help with a reasearch project?

[tenacityflux]

Hi,
I'm doing a project as part of my breast feeding peer supporter training, and I would really value a moment of your time.
The information won't go further than my project and you will only be known by your screen name, so please feel free to speak your mind!
Please also be assured that I am not in anyway looking to make a judgment on your answers, I am simply interested in recording your feelings about breast feeding whatever they are.

Please ignore the questions your feel are irrelevant to you, and thank you once again for any thoughts you have time to spare.

With your first or only baby, if you decided not to breast feed, what influenced your decision?

With your first or only baby, if you decided to breast feed but stopped earlier than you would have like,when did you stop and what contributed to that decision?

Did your decision to breast feed or not change if/when you had further babies?

Thank you!

1. breast fed
2. breast fed for 8 months
3. breast fed 2nd for 10 months

2.First child - Breastfed for 3 months. I stopped as I found it incredibly difficult ans was given no support by anyone who knew what they were doing. There was no hospital support and I was not clued up enough to ask for it. No midwife seemed to care and no one asked. I gave up and felt terrible as I wanted to feed but didn't know there was help, or that it could be different.

1. With the next child, I had MN and this hospital was fantastic, skin to skin and the midwife didn't want me to leave until she had seen a proper feed, I had help with latch from both PN midwives and then my HV was fantastic with the BF help. Am still feeding now at 14 months. I was very certain that I would get it right second time around and have felt incredibly proud.

The major difference for me was support, I know that there is a lot made about HCP's being unsupportive and I have seen it from both sides of the coin, with DC1, I saw all the bad stuff and then the opposite with DC2. Which is a shame really because by the time I had DC2 I was clued up enough to speak out and demand help, so it's almost a pity it wasn't the other way round.

With your first or only baby, if you decided not to breast feed, what influenced your decision?

I have only been breastfeeding for just under two weeks, but it was always my intention. Partly because of the health benefits for me and my DD, partly because I was breast fed as was my partner and partly because it seemed so much easier and cheaper.

With your first or only baby, if you decided to breast feed but stopped earlier than you would have like,when did you stop and what contributed to that decision?

I nearly stopped last week - had it not been for willpower and posting something on here for all the lovely people to help, I would have given in. I hope to make it to about 1 year old but we'll see if I manage it.

Did your decision to breast feed or not change if/when you had further babies?

This is my first child.

1. Tried bf in hopsital after a long (3day) labour following failed induction ending in ecs. Baby slept for first 24 hours after delivery. Even mw had to agree I wasn't producing any colostrum (managed to manually express ONE drop - that is no exaggeration). I was so exhausted, in pain, fed up and conscious that baby hadn't eaten anything for 2 and a half days, I switched to bottles as soon as we got home.

1. My answer to Q1 sort of applies to this.

1. I only have the one, but I don't think I'd bother trying to bf any future babies.

I had never really though about it before I got pregnant although I knew women who had bottle fed from the start and other who had breastfed up to toddlers. I assumed I'd bf but not for over 6 months. I understood the WHO guidelines as applying more to women in countries without clean water supplies etc than women in London.

My midwife had an effect on my decision to bf. She'd finished advanced studies into bfing and suggested very, very few women couldn't feed (that these women lacked a certain hormone & would find it v hard to conceive anyway) and ran a 2 day workshop on bfing before I had dd. When dd was born she put her straight onto my breast and she started to feed. Until 6 months when she was weaned she was exclusively bf and from 6mo until today (20mo) she has breast milk anything from 1-5 times a day.

Good luck.