Do you really care how another baby is fed? (Ff/bf)

[justonesherryformedicinalpurpo]

I breastfed my first and I am now breastfeeding my second.

I have never been made to feel uncomfortable while feeding in public. And I have NEVER looked at a woman ff her baby and given a shit. I just think "aw another baby". But I must admit that if I am talking about bf or if I am bf around a ff mother I fear that I may make her feel like I think I am better than her. And that's just crap. I just can't believe, still, that there is judgement on how a baby is fed.

I would just love to know, honestly, if you actually care how other babies are fed.

There is so much judgement and a lot of publicity on it now that some of it must come from other mothers.

If you think you are better for bf be honest. If you think you are being judged for ff be honest.

My friend recently commented on how another mother quit breastfeeding very early on and she was shocked and disappointed etc. And I said "there is enough judgement without needing to add to it. There is also someone there to judge you. You could be judged for combination feeding from a few weeks old. I could be judged for not bf my first past 10 months, what has it got to do with anyone else".

I don't mean to start a war here. I just want people to be honest if they do judge and why. Afterall we don't know one another and we may become less judgy after this.

@TheDowagerDuchessofDenver Excellent post! I wish that post could be a sticky post. I am certainly going to copy it to keep.

@TheDowagerDuchessofDenver I meant the post before the above one :)

Should add, my husband has depression and is an utterly brilliant dad. So am not suggesting for a moment that mental illness means you can't be a great parent. Just that it's a complicated issue, and you should decide what's best for your family, and that yes, sometimes FFing is best for the child as well as you.

I've experienced tutting for bf my older baby (11mo). My parents in particular think it's all for me now.

doing something you don't particularly enjoy or find difficult for the sake of your child's well-being doesn't usually result in depression

Can you actually think of any other parts of parenting that can cause significant physical pain? Or have to be done everyday at regular intervals? Or take up as much time as BF does in the newborn phase?

Yes there are bits of parenting that aren't enjoyable - no one actually likes changing a soiled nappy - but there is nothing comparable to BF that isn't going well.

I don't care how other people feed their babies, everyone has to make the choice to suit them. My first was FF from two weeks after I couldn't get the support to make breastfeeding work, and my second has been breastfed for six months so far. I have never had negative comments however I've been feeding my baby, but I did feel more worried about being judged when using formula.

What happens in developing countries / happened in the old days when breastfeeding doesn't / didn't go well? Anyone know? Given there isn't / wasn't the option of formula?

My dd is a teenager now, but way back when I always assumed I would bf her. It just didn't work, no latch, no milk, no help from any HCP. My sister was the only one who tried with me. I gave up and ff and never felt one shred of guilt about it til many years later when I joined MN and realised that apparently I had failed! Fuck that. I am 100% behind new mothers actually being HELPED to bf and think there should be more resources for this. Otherwise, fuck off and mind your own business.

Nope. People can feed how they like as long as they're fed.

Before I was a parent I definitely felt that bf was best and mums should try as hard as possible. So I guess I was judgemental.
But now I've bf and experienced how challenging it can be (I stopped after a few weeks) I am much less concerned about people's choices.

What happens in developing countries / happened in the old days when breastfeeding doesn't / didn't go well? Anyone know? Given there isn't / wasn't the option of formula?

Formula's been around for a surprising amount of time. It's called formula because originally it actually was a formula - you were supposed to mix cow's milk and water and sugar together. My great-uncle, who was born just after WW1, was given this. He survived, but was always a sickly child - don't know whether this was because of the formula or not.

Before that, babies died. Lots of them.

And wet nurses, of course.

I don't care how a baby is fed but a lot of FF'ers loved making passive agreedive comments about my decision to BF. They were trying to make me feel bad and it wasn't nice.

"Can you actually think of any other parts of parenting that can cause significant physical pain?"

Breastfeeding problems can usually be resolved with the right help. As evidenced by breastfeeding rates in countries like Norway where almost everyone breastfeeds at birth and 80% are still breastfeeding at four months. Can't imagine Norwegian women are a load of tortured martyrs or that they have breasts which are fundamentally more functional than ours.

The bottom line is that women in the U.K. On the whole don't breastfeed for more than a few weeks because they live in a culture which a) doesn't understand breastfeeding and b) is unfamiliar with it.

You can personalise the argument as much as you like but in the end babies in the UK largely get suboptimal feeding for cultural reasons, and that's a shame.

I'll admit I was a little bit judgy before having dd of formula feeding. But that was before I knew how difficult bf-ing can be. The pain (dd had tongue tie), the utter fucking relentlessness of it and feeling totally touched out, the difficulties with latch, the occasional bouts of irrational fury towards my sleeping partner who was unable to help with night feeds (tried expressing but dd refused bottles!). I completely understood why so many women switch to ff! I was very very lucky though and had loads of support from bf specialists, my midwife, a really good health visitor too, so continued to bf. Definitely don't judge ff anymore though! Especially after a couple of good mates desperately wanted to bf but just physically couldn't, and seeing the awful pain they went through

Another bf mum here who doesn't judge FFing mums. There are 101 reasons why we choose what we do in regards to feeding.

However I do feel sad and disappointed for others when they say they couldn't BF and then list reasons which were fixable if they were just given the correct support.

I also remember a woman at my antenatal classes who really wanted to BF but said that her DM and DGM were putting her under a lot of pressure to FF. I wonder if she managed to BF or not.

I couldn't care less how my friends etc feed their babies. Most of my friends ff, I bf and it rarely comes up. I certainly wouldn't give any thought to how an individual stranger's baby was fed or why. Who knows any individuals circumstances and who has time to do all that judging? Your knickers would never be untwisted.
I had one negative comment from a stranger in all my time feeding 2 children.
At a population level I do wish the breastfeeding rate was higher as I think some women who want to bf are missing out due to lack of support etc.

Can I just say a huge thank you for this thread and the majority of responses. Speaking from experience, when you're wrapped up in the trauma of not being able to breastfeed, especially if you've received a snide comment or two, it's easy to feel that everyone is judging you. Nice to hear most of your answers from both ff and bf mothers. I agree that support needs to be hugely improved, information given needs to be far more open and honest, and we should all choose what is best for our own babies (something that only we may know ourselves).

minifingerz - you are missing my point. You said that doing other bits of parenting you don't enjoy or find difficult isn't linked to depression, but people do make that link for BF. I have suggested that BF not going well is unlike any other parenting challenges, so it makes sense that people perceive it differently. And I suspect that many people have known at least one other mother who found feeding issues a contributing factor to PND - it does seem a rather common experience.

Yes of course there are some fundamental reasons for our low BF rate compared to somewhere like Norway. But at the point when my DD seemed to be getting more blood than milk from my nipples and every time she woke for a feed I ended up sobbing, I probably would have told you where you could shove the breastfeeding statistics for Norway.

I have formula fed and proud of it, didn't like breast feeding at all. Never had any adverse comments, luckily for the person who would have made them!

I couldn't give a shiny shit. My DD is BF & now 20 months and I'm getting people "telling me off" as apparently she's now too old 🙄

People should just get over how any child is fed. Is the child healthy? Yep! Fabulous now crack on!

And jackbooting about insisting "fed is best", persuading women that it doesn't matter if breastfeeding doesn't work out for them, that it makes no difference to babies etc etc provides a good argument in this time of austerity for the NHS not to continue to fund breastfeeding clinics or to increase training opportunities for specialist midwives to help.

After all, if it's so unimportant why put resources into supporting it?

People seem to think it's perfectly ok for a mother who wanted to breastfeed not to be able to do it because she didn't get help to identify and treat her baby's tongue tie, or she was told to supplement with formula and not given help to address supply issues. They'll just say 'don't beat yourself up over not being able to breastfeed, in the long run it doesn't matter'. Well fuck that. Imagine telling a mother who strongly wanted to formula feed that it was fine - she could just breastfeed instead, if formula made her baby constipated or her baby wasn't good at taking a bottle.

People think it's hugely important that people should achieve their feeding choices - but only if that feeding choice is formula feeding. If it's breastfeeding then obviously it doesn't matter if it doesn't happen...

I feel the same as lots of other posters - it doesn't bother me, but I feel for any mum's who feel guilt in any form, who really wanted to bf but weren't able to/didn't get appropriate support or equally mum's that feel bullied into bf when they're not comfortable doing it.

it's also really refreshing to see a conversation about bf/ff that hasn't descended into a bunfight.

I always work on the basis that mum's have chosen the option that works best for them & their baby.

People think it's hugely important that people should achieve their feeding choices - but only if that feeding choice is formula feeding. If it's breastfeeding then obviously it doesn't matter if it doesn't happen...

Go back and read this thread. Count how many times someone on it has said 'I care when people who struggle to breastfeed don't get support' or 'I wish there was more breastfeeding support available' or 'I care when people who wanted to breastfeed aren't able to'.

Just count them. I'm really sorry if that's been your experience IRL. But it's absolutely not the case on this thread.

I planned to BF (though with formula top-ups so I could have a break, as I'd seen friends & family doing) and, if I'm honest, I judged the person on our ante-natal course who was planning to FF.

Then I couldn't get BF established when my DD was born (couldn't get her to latch and it really hurt when she did), where I was expressing and cup feeding and having to top-up with formula. After five days I decided to stop trying to BF and FF her from them.

Since then I've felt ashamed of how judgy I was. I did feel self-conscious about it at baby groups, as I live in an area where a lot of mums BF, but didn't get any comments from HV etc. And I noticed that as the babies got older, fewer people were BF. She's two now, and it's not so much of an issue anymore.

My theory is that the BF/FF debate is caused by a kind of cognitive dissonance about the issue. Everyone knows that breast is best, but culturally in the UK the majority of babies are FF. So if you FF, you know that BF is best but you see most mums FF so you feel like you're doing the normal thing. If you BF, you know you're doing the 'right thing', but the culture around you says you're doing the 'wrong thing' compared to the norm.

Of course, according to the usual suspects, if you're FF you're not doing the best for your baby, can't comfort them or bond if you've been apart, and your parenting is adult-centred not child-centred. Even if you FF on demand, respond to everything your baby wants, and do all the attachment-type parenting. Thanks for the reminder, minifingerz!

I do think BF support is limited and it would be good to have more - I felt as though I was seeing a different midwife everyday in hospital who suggested something else to try. Would having one dedicated person who I could see every day have helped? Maybe.

Mini I don't think I've read that opinion at all. It's fine to ff. It's fine to bf. It's not fine if you want to bf and don't get the correct support. It would be reeally nice to keep this positive.