Support for those grieving bf failure?

[madnortherner]

Someone told me that conceiving, giving birth and breast feeding are all biologically driven. There seems a big source of cultural understanding for the grief associated with a failure to conceive. There seems a growing source of understanding for those whose births didn't match expectations. Yet, there seems to be little understanding and support for those of us who spectacularly failed at the breastfeeding stage.

I want to speak to someone who might be able to empathise with my feelings of great sadness (grief?) for not having been able to breastfeed either of my DCs and/or people who could shed light on why I am getting milk-in-breasts feelings from time to time and even some stickyness in my nipples too as if I've had some leakage. I last gave birth 11 months ago and haven't lactated for about 6/7 months.

madnortherner - you are right. This is an unspoken, unacknowledged grief, often met by misunderstanding or downwright dismissiveness whenever a mother voices it.

You can phone the NCT breastfeeding line 0300 330 0771.

Counsellors listen, don't judge, and will understand your sadness...they will help you begin to reframe your feelings (ie you did not 'fail'...breastfeeding failed you, often aided and abetted by poor help and support).

Hope you find good help with this.

Sorry Madnortherner i know exactly how you feel. I've never thought about it as grief but i feel very sad that it didnt work for either of my children.

I hope the NCT line can help you come to terms with it.

I cried everyday for about 2 weeks about breastfeeding failure and had great feelings about letting DS down, which i still feel today and still feel an enormous amount of guilt that I have not been able to give him the best start in life. I don't cry about it anymore but I feel unable to forgive myself even though I don't know what more I could have done.
I wasn't prepared for how difficult bf would be for me/us. My mum breastfed and there was no doubt in my mind that I would do the same. We had a number of contributing factors to it not working out - DS had traumatic delivery with ventouse, I didn't have any colostrum and boobs had got so big that nipples were completely flat, he was small & I was forced into giving formula from the start to keep his blood sugar up, continued trying to breastfeed for a week but had to give formula top ups - it killed me to see him drink so happily from a bottle and then get so stressed when trying to bf! If there is a next time I will make sure I get proper support arranged as I felt this was lacking on the maternity ward.
Sometimes I feel that if I had known I wouldn't be able to breastfeed I shouldn't have started a family.

Thanks for your messages. I've just spent an hour on the phone to the NCT number you gave me, tiktok and it didn't help because I'm now more upset than I was before I called them. I think it's because I've dredged it all up by talking about it out loud and then I put the phone down and am left sitting here on my own. I think I'm searching for a way to move on, to get over it. She suggested counselling but my limited experience of counselling was that it wasn't helpful. She also suggested telling my husband about it, which I have and he understands (as far as he can) but I don't want to keep banging on about it. She wondered about my friends, but my closest friends don't have children and my new friends that I've met with my children either breastfed and are happy or didn't breastfeed but didn't give it a second thought. I wouldn't want to get this emotional in front of any of my friends anyway.

Wow, that was a long paragraph. I'm not thinking very clearly or rationally since I've just had that emotional outpouring to NCT lady.

I still feel great guilt and sadness about my failure to BF DD1 past the first few weeks (she is 9 now). I grieved for a long time after and can still recall the pain even now. I had DD2 four years later and had no expectations and made sure I had bottles and formula at the ready, but incredibly she fed so well from birth I had no problems at all and fed happily for 11 months. So all is not lost after one traumatic expreience.

x-posts Rob1n, phone ringing so can't read all, but sounds like you understand. Sorry for your experience but so pleased you've managed to move on - how did you do it?

madnortherner - I am so glad you phoned....but one phone call will not 'fix' this. It can only ever be a start....of course you are more upset now. This is not a bad thing. She was right - you need to think about who will support you, where you can get real life help, (from a source different to where you found it unhelpful), and from someone you feel you can 'bang on' about it with!

Counselling and counselling-type help - on the phone, in real life, on a talkboard - is a process, not an event which happens and then 'cures' something. It sometimes 'works' afterwards, if you know what I mean. It's not something that necessarily makes you feel better, at least not straight away. In the short term you can feel worse.

All the bad stuff you have been sitting on and putting to the back of your mind while you try to get on with life has to be articulated, and that can cause a lot of pain and tears.

One option is to let time go by and see if that helps - but you have already tried this, I think, for some months. Another option is to try the helpline again, see if you can arrange some calls with the counsellor at another time, and also to share with your HV or doctor the fact you might need some counselling, and what do they have on offer?

Were there any words used by the bfc which will help you think about your situation in a less unhappy light? If you keep thinking of them?

Should add...it's not great you feel bad, IYSWIM. It's rotten to feel so crap. But it may be part of the whole thing that needs to happen before you feel better, eventually, if you get me. Hope this evening starts to get a little easier, anyway, madnortherner

It is my biggest sadness in my life that I've failed three times to breast feed (doesn't mean that everyone who fails once or twice is bound to fail again by the way: I know people who managed second or third time around). I've had some level of PND with each child which I think is in part due to my breast feeding failures and anxiety. I cry whenever someone tells me how much they love feeding their baby (it happened the other day). I am so pro-breast feeding as well people assume I fed my children. I love them all so much but I just couldn't feed them.

I can relate to your feelings. My DS didn't latch on in hospital and we were forced to give him formula top ups which we never managed to get rid of. Each feed took about 30 attempts to get him to latch on, I fed only every 4 hours as my mum told me to and ended up with sore and bleeding nipples. I was also told that if I gave a bottle I'd never be able to BF again. I gave him a bottle at a week old and he never went on the breast again although I expressed until my milk went.

I cannot put into words how much this distressed me, I think that grief is a brilliant word, I certainly grieved for 6 months about it until the point where I felt that i'd have probably given up by then so it was ok to bottlefeed. I tried not to bottle feed in public, had him on cups by 8 months to avoid bottle phobia and was massively embarrassed by the whole thing.

My DD was born 3 years later, latched on like a pro and fed beautifully from day 1. I can honestly say that her first public feed, in Starbucks, when she was a week old was one of the proudest days of my life, I felt like a proper BF'er. I only fed her for 3 months but it was such an achievement after what I'd been through the first time but the difference was that I made the decision to stop and was totally at peace with it rather than feeling that the decision was forced on to me.

I'm due DC3 in about 10 days time and am petrified that it won't work again. I've arranged for a lactation consultant to come over after birth, I've trawled the internet for information, I've got the lansinoh and I've not bought any bottles or formula. My ain this time is at least 6 months, a year in an ideal world but we'll see what happens.

I am sure my breast feeding problems with DS were the main cause of my PND. I had a great experience with DD 3 years later which helped but I'm due in 9 more weeks with DC3 and I'm very worried about another failure.

For me, the 'grief' only passed with time. Once my babies were no longer small babies, it just wasn't so raw. I am philosphical about it all, now.

I do empathise/sympathise, though. I had severe mastitis leading to an abcess and only managed 6 weeks with no.1 (was hospitalised for abcess at that point) and 10 days with no.2 (got terrible mastitis and was terrified it would all happen again, so stopped). It was very disappointing. I cried about it all the time, especially after my first was born. I got loads of support, too, and all the other women in my family have breastfed for 1 yr plus with no problems...

I have come around to thinking I was unlucky and that something (still can't work out what?) went wrong - but not my fault. I tried my best, but in the end, it was counterproductive to continue.

Mad you are not alone. I have had difficulties feeding my older 2 DC's. DS1 I managed to bf over 4 month but he didn't latch from birth so when we stopped I was upset but not too sad. I felt I did the best I could.

But with DD it was awful. She latched beautifully but was tongue tied and damaged my nipples so badly it drew gasps from the bf counselors when they saw them. I gave up after 3 1/2 months due to pain, mastitis and low supply. I never cried so much in my life over it. I would sob uncontrollably whilst holding her months later. It still bugs me this day. It was like grief.

Thankfully I have managed to bf my 3rd DC for 8 1/2m now but I still look back at my experiences (with DD mainly) and I get that sick feeling in my stomach. Looking back I reckon I had proper PND with her too so that may have contributed to my feelings.

Like threedays I avoided bottle feeding in public and even rushed into solids with the older DC's to get the milk feeding phase over and done with.

Apart from the nutritional benifits of breast feeding,I don't think that if a child is bottle fed that they miss out on any thing.The baby still gets all the cuddles and love. You are just as good as any mother who breast feeds. As humans we're fortunate to have a choice of how to feed our babies. And though you would rather have breast fed your children not doing it doesn't have any bearing on how good a mother you are or how happy and healthy your children will be. Whether there were physical barriers to you breast feeding or mostly that you lacked the support to help you do it, I don't know. But you tried your best and thats really all we can do in this life. Forgive your self. Forgive the people who weren't able to give you the support you needed.It takes alot more than breast feeding to raise emotionally whole happy children.The more problems you encounter in life (and get past) will emphasise how strong and brilliant you are.

This may be completely of mark and not what you are looking for but above all as you can see from all the other posts, you are not alone. God bless.

bumbums what you say is true but it really hurts to be unable to achieve a desired biological imperative for a DC. It is increasingly accepted that women whose birth experience was not what they hoped for have a right to mourn this and have access to counselling but for other women they are traumatised by a breast feeding "failure" With breast feeding I found that there was so much positive information to encourage women to breast feed that when I couldn't I had nowhere to turn to - I was very much mader to feel that I hadn't tried hard enough as it's natural and anyone can do it etc etc. I only started to recover when I had a successful time with DD and I'm very scared about what will happen with DC3 12 years on from my failure. I don't know the answer and I do know it hasn't made any difference to my DS in the end but knowing and feeling are 2 very different things.

Nothing bumbums says is wrong, but it misses the point, I think, sorry.

I believe this is a real grief - not like grief, or almost grief, but grief, in the sense of mourning a loss.

There is some psychodynamic speculation on this - it's not research, it's not a study, it's not proof of anything, but it is an acknowledgement that what happens when a mother does not breastfeed is a physical and an emotional phenomenon, and these two aspects are conjoined:

bliss-breastfeeding.blogspot.com/2009/08/breasts-in-mourning-how-bottle-feeding.html

Just as mothers who have a very difficult and even traumatising birth experience should not be told, even by well-meaning people, ' you have a healthy baby, that's what matters', it's no help to say the same thing to mothers breaking their heart over not breastfeeding.

madnortherner, how are you today? sorry i couldn't reply sooner. I'm not sure I have moved on tbh, I just don't cry about it anymore and felt like i had also 'banged on' about it enough to my poor dh. It's still early days though -DS is only 9 weeks, I can imagine it must be more difficult for you months down the line if you are still getting 'milk in' feelings.

I agree it's difficult to talk to people about it too but I think we should try. Before I had any children I would never have spoken to my friends with children about breastfeeding unless they raised the subject, I felt as though it was too personal. With hindsight it probably would have helped me to know more about others' experiences with bf before I tried it myself, naively because I wanted to do it I assumed it woud be easy. I realise my expectations and understanding about what it would be like to bf were completely unrealistic. We need to not be afraid about talking about this with anyone which will help us all in turn.

Also frustrating is a feeling at being left in the dark to bottle feed with no-one interested (hvs, mws, docs) in helping or giving advice. Whenever I try and talk about feeding problems it's almost like they don't want to listen when I say I'm not bf, as if to say well bottle feeding, what do you expect. I have only fed him in public once and feel so ashamed about giving bottle.

You will come through it though, as I have read many times on other conversations we have to keep telling ourselves that we have done our best and there is so much much more that our children depend on us for which is just as important, if not more, than the food they eat. (I am still coming round to this idea though!)

sorry I didn't realise there had been lots of other replies before posting

Thank you, all of you. There are some points here which totally ring true for me. I found myself nodding "yes, yes!" to lots of people's comments. It's all so very helpful to make contact with people who understand.

I don't want to single anyone's comments out above the rest because everyone's comments are great and right on the money (even bumbums, who I think was written with the best possible intentions and gives a good perspective which is also necessary of course - however perhaps the other viewpoint is that you can't really rationalise it, like if you're mum had died after a terribly long painful illess, people might say "well at least she's not in pain anymore" which would of course be true in one way but wouldn't make your pain and sadness and longing go away). Sorry to relate this feeling to a close family death, but my friend is going through this at the moment and it's making me draw comparisons, thinking, well I accept her sadness why am I rushing myself to get over my own sadness?

I'm typing this quickly since I have two small children with a very small age gap (less than a year apart - failed bfeeding both times, lower expectations second time around but still failed, anavoidable-without-lot-of-specific-one-to-one-help physical problems leading to other complications such as mastitis, oversupply, baby that wouldn't suck, strong let down reflex...list goes on).

Anyway, both of them are miraculously asleep at the same time and I don't know how long I've got hence the wiffly nature of this message.

Thanks for asking how I am today Rob1n. I'm fine today. It's as if yesterday didn't happen.

...Wow, hold the phone. I just scrolled back up to read the comments again so I could reply more specifically and I clicked on tiktok's link....will just read to the end.

Hm, OK well whilst it is complete conjecture, as you say tiktok, it does make a compelling link between cessation of breast feeding after birth of healthy infant due to death and due to a switch to bottle feeding. Maybe in 10 years' time, when some actual research has been published, we can begin to understand the feelings we have. Although, that theory doesn't explain why many mothers bottlefeed without a backwards glance.

I meant psychologically, but that last comment reminded me of something a couple of people have said about not wanting to bottle feed in public. I had a similar feeling at first with my first baby but decided to "brazen it out" as my Mum would say. I just sort of hardened my mind at those points and think "This is my DC and this is how I feed DC". I would feel protective about myself and my baby against their judgements (although those judgements were probably in my head). I did fantasise from time to time that I had a t-shirt or hat that said in big letters "I tried to breastfeed but I couldn't" or something similar. I felt I needed to justify it to everyone.

With number two (still bottle feeding, whereas number one is slightly older and completely weaned) I went through a long stage of wanting him to hurry up with every bottle so it wouldn't go on so long. It's awful isn't, it? Totally irrational.

He also went through a very splashy in the bathy stage in which I'd finish his bath naked on my top half from my soaking. I'd then get into bed with him to give him his last feed and he'd snuggle against my (defunct) breast and have his feed. It was lovely to feel him there but I'd often cry with the yearning feeling it gave me.

Heck, noone is still reading this, I'm sure. And it's doing me no good now because its dredging those old feelings up again which isn't healthy since I'm having a good day.

Can't believe they're still asleep. Might make another cuppa.

Am still here for a bit if anyone's there.

Sheeez, that was LONG! Do I get a prize for the longest, wiffliest message on MN?

I'm here and I'm reading this... really interesting posts from everybody. This is clearly not an isolated issue. I can completely understand why bfing failure evokes genuine grief. I hope yours passes in time. Also hoping your good day continues to be good - both dc asleep at same time seems like a good omen...

Hello xandrarama. Thank you for that.

Maybe it's because I'm back to feeling fine today, but I can't help thinking that there are other people in life (and lots on MN) who are grieving real losses and who deserve real support.

I think I just stop bloody wallowing and get on with enjoying my lovely DCs (who are STILL asleep - I'd have slept for a bit if I'd known I was going to have this long to myself!).

Aw, madnortherner - I think it is great you have posted and that this thread will be here for people who share the same feelings and need to know they are not alone.

You have some great insights. Once you know it is normal to feel sad, and normal to grieve, you'll be more patient with yourself. Just as you say, you don't expect someone who is sad about a bereavement to put it behind them - people need time and space and support and in time, things do look more bearable, but the feeling of loss is still there for some time.

How lovely you were able to enjoy some wonderful times with your little boy after his bath! I have a very strong feeling that women and babies who bottle feed, for whatever reason, gain a great deal from recognising the intimacy of bottle feeding, indulging it, and allowing it expression, and that breastfeeding a baby need not cease when the transfer of milk is not working well.

I am sure your posts will help others.