Ireland is a hard place to live

[Mooshamoo]

Just watching the video of the black child being not given a medal by Irish gymnastics.

I was wondering if there is anyone else on here on craicnet, who is not Irish, living in Ireland. What your experiences are.

I think that Ireland can be a very hard place to live if you are not fully white and fully irish.

I'm half Irish. I was bullied all the way through school for not having an Irish surname. Then when I grew up and lived in the same small town, all of the same girls from my school were living in that town. And as adults they refused to talk to me.

I see the women who are fully Irish, being popular , having great lives.

To be totally acceptable and popular in ireland, you have to have a rich family, brothers/father who play gaa etc.

All the rich girls in my school hung around together. And again as adults all the rich Irish women hung around together in small town Ireland.

If you were foreign, from a single parent family, seen as poor, you were not accepted at all.

And it's who you know

I think this makes Ireland a very difficult place to live

We have literally got one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in all of Europe.
I honestly never see Irish women breastfeed. I am late 30’s and had my first child in a different country where bf was v much supported( 14 years ago ) and had two dcs in Ireland in 2012 and 2016 and was encouraged to give a bottle of formula in the hospital to get my babies bowels moving (this would have the opposite affect from my experience), I didn’t and they had a bm normally with being bf. The public health nurse kept telling me to get a bottle of formula just in case, my baby wasn’t losing much weight (the standard amount after birth while waiting for milk to come in) and they were all putting on normal weight as standard. I constantly hear women describe them giving up bf as the “baby wasn’t getting enough “, I think due to lack of knowledge or education on bf mothers attempts are undermined or they are scared into giving formula. Maybe it’s changing again though post Covid and people looking into protecting with antibodies more etc , my dcs are older but this was my experience when they were small.

I was bfing around that time and definitely wasn't alone. But there wasn't huge support either. My mum was so against it, she thought I was mad! But I was stuck in the gaff, away from everyone, so it ended up being sensible to get the bottles when I had to go back into hospital. There is a strange cohort that believe bf is worse tho, don't know why, but it's there.

I didn't believe it was worse, but felt almost intimidated into trying, and with multiples! Luckily partner who supported what I needed as well as babies.
When it came to the next time round it wasn't even in my head as baby had health issues which were more pressing.

My mum definitely poo pooed the idea. On the other side I had a friend who was militantly pro bf. I ended up bamboozled! But the hospital stay put paid to it in the end, between birth injuries and pumping without her actually there, it just didn't work out in the end. But I definitely gave it my best shot, so I feel no guilt over stopping. And I really appreciate the short time I did have bfing, it was lovely 😍

I must say I had the opposite experience and found bf to be very much encouraged when I gave birth. I had my last child around 2012 so overlapped in time periods with you. I got lucky and didn't encounter problems with bf, at least not with my first and by then I was used to it.

I do think 24/7 support was lacking for those who needed it, at least at that time. Encouragement is one thing, but you do need expert advice, at the very least at the other end of the phone, when you're having problems on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend! I also have friends who gave up as they felt baby wasn't getting enough...even though they most probably were fine. And the grannies were quite bemused by the whole thing I agree. I ended up bf for 5-6 years so there are definitely Irish women breastfeeding and doing extended bf, though rates are low I know.

My mother, who had us in the early 70s and 80s, says it never even occurred to her to breastfeed. She says (and I've heard similar from other women of her generation) that it was 'only Traveller women and doctors' wives' who breastfed then. I'm sure that's not literally true, but it's certainly her perception (poor, from a rural area, but had moved to the city) that breastfeeding was something for those near the bottom of the class ladder and those near the top.

I gave birth in London in 2012 and never got a supply at all, despite advice and blood tests from GP, midwife, HV, La Leche League and NCT peer supporters, a paid lactation consultant -- but I got quite a few hostile comments out and about about formula-feeding, which upset me hugely at the time, because it had never occurred to me not to breast-feed.

My mam said similar @GhostGarden The only woman she knew who was breastfeeding in the 70s was the doctor's wife. It just wasn't the done thing for most.
Much later she wondered if the doctor and his wife had known something she didn't...if they had access to information that wasn't widely publicised at the time.

I had a 2012 baby and exclusively breastfed. I do remember I was the only one on the ward so the lac consultant spent ages with me. But even she missed an incorrect latch that my SIL spotted within seconds when she visited - because the LC wasn't a mother herself and there's only so much you can learn from a book.

DM never breastfed us, had succumbed to the formula propaganda from her UK childhood herself but SIL and DS breastfed and it was their direct experience that I and the other new mums that came after me, relied on. Every mother in our generation in our family have now successfully breastfed, and I think that's really down to how normalised it had became in our family and among friends. The knowledge of peers for breastfeeding is so important I think.

Having said that, some babies just don't take to it no matter how experienced a BFer you might be. Before formula that's when neighbours would help wet-nurse. My other SIL BF her 1st and 3rd, but the middle one just wouldn't take to the breast and only ever took bottles. It happens!