"Breastfeeding is oppressing women" (from The Guardian)

[morningpaper]

Let the breastfeeding rebellion begin

"In the 70s, many women protested that they were shackled to domesticity by the unreasonably high bar set for housework. Now, some say, it's not the vacuum cleaner that's oppressing women, but another sucking sound ..."

But but but but

This is a depressing article.

A British academic wouldn't give her name "because she is concerned about attacks from the pro-breastfeeding lobby"

I also fidn it really annoying when people say "I really tried to breastfeed for six days and it didn't work" - By six days lots of women will be in agony. The message that if you haven't got it cracked by six days then it hasn't worked - is just wrong.

And if there is such enormous pressure to exclusively breastfeed then why are only 3% of mothers still doing it at 5 months?

Yes women will feel guilty if they don't breastfeed. Women have the chance to feel guilty if they don't do a million things that are 'optimal' for their children's health and wellbeing. We can all agree that women need more support in the transition to motherhood, by setting up this monster of a pro-breastfeeding lobby is utterly unhelpful.

Having children BLOWS for women - your fanjo is shot to pieces, your career goes down the shitter, you piss yourself every time you sneeze, you lose your pension rights, your brain turns to mush, you have no social standing, boys stop grinning at your in the street - but BREASTFEEDING IS STILL THE OPTIMAL WAY TO FEED YOUR BABIES. You can't un-do that boring fact. And handing women a bottle isn't going to make everything better.

pinkfizzle - thanks for the link!

Cory I am not determined to blame your HV, I don't know why you think I am. I accept what you're saying about your own overriding wish to BF in this instance, my point is a more general one, that NHS staff are usually not good at supporting women to breastfeed. If they were, it would show up in the figures, I don't think that's particularly contentious.

Sorry if I seemed to be ignoring your experience.

Wish I'd found this thread earlier. Haven't read it from start to finish, but FWIW, I think the article is over the top but agree with the sentiment in general.

I did everything within my power to BF (went to classes pre-birth, read books, joined BF support groups etc) and find the suggestion (that someone made close to the beginning of this thread) that those who "fail" to breastfeed just haven't managed to "overcome the difficulties" very offensive and rather ignorant.

I feel I was put under a huge amount of pressure to BF though DD was prescribed formula top-ups from a few days old because her blood sugar dropped dangerously low despite me having her sucking away almost continuously up until that point. Despite this and the week we spent in the transitional care unit the horrendous MW I saw back at home saw fit to tell me that formula top-ups were putting my child at risk of "obesity, eating disorders and diabetes". I panicked, stopped the formula and again DD's health suffered so from that point I happily mix-fed with no ill effects whatsoever. Amazingly, she's now a happy, healthy, non-obese toddler.

Where I live (v much Yummy Mummy territory) BF seems to be considered mandatory and bottle feeding is most definitely frowned on by many.

I think better support is definitely needed to help those struggling to BF but equally some passionate BF advocates need to develop a rather less judgemental attitudes to those who don't manage to BF.

Going back to stats: the fall in breastfeeding rates in the first two weeks is genuine and consistent.

The ticks in red books or HVs' notes play no part in the collection of the quinquennial Infant Feeding reports, fortunately, given the cavalier attitude to accuracy reported on here . Happily, the researchers don't ask HVs, but mothers - about 15,000 of them, every 5 years.

In all seven of these reports, the surveying shows a clear drop in the first weeks after birth.

itsalwaysthequietones - yours is a classic case.
"...DD was prescribed formula top-ups from a few days old because her blood sugar dropped dangerously low despite me having her sucking away almost continuously up until that point."

It really is no good at all promoting breastfeeding if the maternity services cannot prevent this easily preventable condition happening (ask me if you want more details in how staff could have prevented it - easily, as I say).

Then, to add insult to the injury of poor postnatal care, you get a midwife listing some of the effects of formula....sheesh. I'm assuming she fell a bit short in the 'lets help you get back to effective, full breastfeeding' department, too, itsalways, as she managed to 'panic' you and your baby's health suffered as a result.

No wonder you feel a bit cross

itsalwaysthequietones - my tiny baby's blood sugar dropped so low she became unresponsive, needed intensive care and may have hypoglycaemic brain damage. Nobody at the hospital seemed to take me seriously when I repeatedly pointed out that she was not latching on. Nobody suggested hand expressing or formula until it was too late. Instead, they said things that were really stupid under the circumstances like "skin to skin is the best way to get breastfeeding established".

I think that if I had been failing to get her to drink any formula, it would have rang alarm bells. The untrained health care assistants who provided the front line breastfeeding support at my hospital simply did not have the competence to recognise that an extremely small baby who had not really been fed for nearly 8 hours after her birth might need some intervention.

When articles like the one in the OP demand a breastfeeding rebellion, they should be targeting that rebellion against the extraordinarily poor support available on maternity units. I had no experience of newborns, I foolishly trusted that the staff would help me to breastfeed and/or explain why I needed to give formula. I think antenatal classes should make it explicit that that assumption should not be made.

Yes. Rebellion is needed.

Tiktok, what in your experienced view is the way all of us who feel strongly about it can help to improve the 'first response' to BF of Midwives and HCPs for new mothers?

Because it seems shockingly little had changed in the 10 years I have been a mother. I'm sure the NCT etc are chipping away at it but soooooo far to go.

So. Is there anything the ordinary bod can do?

Vulpisina - everyone who has a bad experience with breastfeeding support, and especially the ones whose babies have become ill as a result of ignorance, should detail their experiences in a letter and send a copy to the chief exec of the PCT, the chief exec of the RHA, the director of midwifery, the chair of the MSLC, and ask what they are going to do about it.

Local NCT, and national NCT, would be interested, too, and would support any action.

Most PCTs have a 'breastfeeding lead' and this person should get a letter, too.

Ask them how they are going to make sure other women don't have the same experience.

Women hardly ever write these letters. I don't know why.

Because they're too busy looking after the baby!

I wrote one when DS was 6 months old because that was the earliest I could face sitting down and detailing it. It was just too painful before then and also I was too busy looking after DS.

But I kind of felt that 6 months later, it was probably too late and they would think I was mad for still thinking about it - that I should jsut "get over it". I felt it was very important to write though and I suspect that a lot of women feel that if they don't do it within a few weeks, they will be perceived as whingeing "dog with a bone" types by the medical professionals - and if some of the posts on here are anythign to go by, they're not wrong.

Tiktok - in my case, and that of other mothers I know, it is difficult at first, when you have no time and are still raw. There is also immense guilt. If only I had been more assertive, maybe everything would have been okay. My DD was in my care, I did not ensure she was fed. I failed her horribly on my first day as a mother.

Though I have spoken at length with the lead midwife at the hospital I attended, I recognise that is probably not enough and will write that letter.

x posts Bella - agree wholeheartedly

I was being disingenuous, sorry.

I do know why women don't write, of course. To add to 'too busy' and 'worried they'll think I am whinging' and 'too late' and 'feeling horrible about it' you can list 'too distressed', 'partner thinks I should just forget about it'.

My point is that mothers can do something about it, and actually, none of these reasons justify silence, really. I know that's judgemental, but women have a role to play in ensuring the people who made breastfeeding so difficult/impossible for them take action to stop it happening to other women.

The other reason for no formal complaint is a (hopefully irrational) fear that it might be on our files should we have a subsequent child, and have a negative affect on our care.

I do feel guilt for not doing my bit to stop it happening to other women. But I also feel a bit of self pity that I have wound up with so much to feel guilty about, when I truly did my best.

Yes and also what stopped me second time round, is that the mw's on the ward were all really, really nice and I didn't want to complain about them and make them feel bad - I just wanted to complain about the fact that they are not trained to support mothers to BF but they think they are and they gave me wrong advice.

It's diffiuclt to word it in such a way that you are not complaining about individuals but about a whole system which shortchanges us as mothers and them as professionals (because they're not trained properly and they don't know they're not unless they have a personal interest and pursue it as an "extra-curricular" IYSWIM).

Why I didn't write that letter - because apart from feeling terrible, it took a long long time for me to really even begin to understand what had happened and get clued up - by which time I was worrying about being able to feed ds2 (when pregnant), and then fighting my way through the system after he was born (by emergency CS).

I thought some of you may like to read this.

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1201285/Sorry-breast-IS-best-As-leading-scientist-questions-benef its-mother-sorts-myths-facts.html

A slightly different take on things

I think there should be some kind of follow-up survey for new mums to ask how they'd felt about breastfeeding support. If there are workers / lead midwives whose job it is to do these things, they ought to at least investigate how it's all working.

As others have said, it can be very difficult to know what is happening when breastfeeding is failing, so that makes it harder for the mum to complain. Plus you are very hormonal. And you do tend to assume that anything that happens to your baby- particularly if it isn't happening to all the other little fatties around- is going to be your fault.

Dd's condition is relatively rare and was then little known: it took 7 years to diagnose and 10 years before someone told me what would have happened with the breastfeeding. I now know it was nothing to do with me, any more than the fact that she cannot walk much is my fault. It seems OTs are the only people who really know about it: most paediatricians I have met are pretty clueless.

But at least I was lucky in that the hospital had a very good breastfeeding counsellor who without any of that information to go on put a lot of work into turning dd around while still respecting my wishes to carry on breastfeeding. It is only with hindsight that I think I would have been wiser to have given up- I needed my strength to care for her in other ways. But we weren't to know.

It would also have helped if I had been more upfront with the health professionals about the side-effects of the medicine I was taking, as I stuck to that particular one simply to be able to breastfeed, and the side-effects were quite nasty. But then the fact that it was turning me into a zombie probably interfered with my ability to understand the potential benefits of not being a zombie.

I so desperately wanted to bf both mine, but for different reasons, it didn't work out. Both times I was advised by the MW to switch to formula for the good of the baby. I was devastated but did so and never looked back. They are both exceptionally healthy teenagers, both managed to go through years 5-13 at school with no time off for sickness at all and are academically able to boot. All the pitfalls of ffing appear to have passed them by. I was very lucky though that both the MW and my HV were very supportive of me and firmly believed in making sure that both me and my DCs were happy and healthy, rather than pushing for BF which just was not going to happen for mine.

I'm going to be controversial here. I am only talking about me, btw.

I breastfed both my children for only a fairly short period (months with DS, weeks with DD). I had huge problems both times and was hospitalised for mastitis and abcesses. I hated it. Hated it. I came to associate it with pain and with being physically unwell. I had also had difficult pregnancies where I was quite debilitated - breastfeeding just added to the feeling of being trapped, tied down, with multiple physical demands on my already overstretched body. It felt like the final straw, really.

It was a blessed relief when I stopped. I felt free. I felt physically well again. I could have copious amounts of wine. I could leave my babies with their dad and go out and be me. I felt great.

If breastfeeding had ever felt comfortable and happy for me, obviously it would have been great and I would have continued. But I gave up, if you like, for 'selfish' reasons. It did make me feel tied down and shitty. That might not fit with the 'but it's the most natural thing in the world' school of thought, but that was my experience.

I would never breastfeed again, btw. OK, I might consider a couple of days of colustrum, but once my milk comes in, I will stop and switch to formula. It was all too horrendous.

MrsMattie I managed to bf until 10 months with no problems but I never got the 'but it's the most natural thing in the world' thing. If I could live with the (internal) guilt next time I would put my baby onto formula from the word go exactly for the reasons you stated when you stoped. It's not that I don't like being a mum but it's VERY important to me to feel like me as well and I didn't feel like me whilst breastfeeding.

Sometimes I was jealous of women who had an excuse not to breastfeed.