How to get over failing to breastfeed

[Stacey19912]

Hi,

I really need some advice as my DD is 3 now and very healthy, I am now 38 weeks with our second baby and and still full of guilt for only breastfeeding my first for a short period of time (whilst I was in hosp) I was really concerned she wasn't getting enough milk. I feel so guilty even now and like I have failed her.

Please can somebody help me get past this as it's ruining my happiness x

I keep seeing this coming up time and time again. It’s so sad. After the birth of DD1 I had PTSD symptoms and was riddled with guilt over my failure to breast feed. I saw a clinical psychologist who worked exclusively with pregnant and women with babies, she believed it was linked with trauma around birth and subsequent illness. In retrospect I’m not sure it was. It was only having DD2 that I remembered how hard it was and how much I was let down by the system. I’m finally forgiven myself.

What are your plans for feeding this time?

I was in exactly the same position as you. What really helped me was getting as much info/education on BF as possible. I learned that I had actually done really well feeding my first baby and with the right info and support I could have carried on longer. Then when my second was born I was determined to exclusively BF and was not afraid to call the contacts I had already made to ask for help and advice.

I was so pleased the second time to find that it actually worked it really helped in to heal my sadness about not continuing.

I don't know if it is the same now but I talked to an NCT counsellor and she made all the difference, just telling me I was getting it right and what to look for.

As far as long term effects go there is nothing. I am as close to my oldest as I am to all the others. The only effect it had was on my mental health.

Get help and support lined up now and enjoy your baby.

I tried, unsuccessfully, for 12 weeks to breastfeed, it just wouldn’t work - my baby couldn’t latch and I couldn’t make him, I was permanently tied up to a pump and wrecked.
I wasn’t getting much sleep and the baby wasn’t getting much milk, neither of us were thriving, for my mental well being and his overall health I went formula all the way (it was really hard when my older sister had been banging on about how she’d breastfeed all three of her kids and how great it was - blah, blah, blah).
It was all fine, his brain developed normally, he can read and write (just waiting for GCSE results) and he’s a strapping six foot.
I did what was best for the two of us, breast might be best for some, but it’s not best for everyone!
Be kinder to yourself, you children will thank you for it 😉

OP, I didn’t manage to breast feed my two DDs either. And like you, I beat myself up about it, and fretted that it would harm them, etc etc.
They are now 29 and 30 years old. Both successful graduates, home owners, intelligent, healthy, active.
One of them has climbed six Munros in a day, does aerial yoga, mentors troubled teens, and runs a marketing team. The other has an IQ of 160, does krav maga martial art, makes political speeches campaigning as a gender critical feminist, runs an autistic support group and works as a risk analyst for a major bank’s head office.

I really don’t think the lack of breast milk has held either of them back at all, do you?!
When your DC start school, look at their classmates - I bet you can’t tell which were breast or formula fed. It matters so little, it’s SO not worth getting upset about.
My generation (the baby boomers) was majority bottle fed. We are the healthiest and longest lived generation in history! Go figure, as the Americans say.

I cant offer advice but I understand how you feel. My daughter is almost 5 weeks old. I breast fed her until 3.5 weeks then started to add a top up formula bottle. Since then she's gradually had more and more formula and less breast milk, now it's probably half and half. I think in a few weeks may end up just formula feeding. She just wasnt getting enough milk from breast feeding and would just cry and cry. I read all about increasing milk supply etc and tried this but it just wasn't working for us. Since she's had formula she is so much happier, and so are we. Although for some reason I still feel guilty, even though I know we made the right decision for us.

This sounds so hard.
It is a genuinely traumatic experience for mothers who don't meet the goals they set for breastfeeding, and the grief that goes with it is so real.

But here's the thing. You did not fail at breastfeeding. We as a society failed you - we told you how important it was, while withholding the tools to make it happen. You didn't grow up with BF being the norm, your healthcare professionals probably had three days training at best, and our culture is not supportive.
It's like complaining that kids from backgrounds where no-one has ever gone to uni "failed" - if you've never seen it done, don't have anyone to help you navigate it, and people around you don't value it, you have no chance.

Can I suggest a call to the National Breastfeeding Helpline (0300 100 0212)?
The counsellors can help you debrief, unpick your feelings and perhaps identify the hurdles that were put in front of you previously. It really helps to go through it with someone who understands that it was both important and impossible for you.

OP, I made the opposite choice: I insisted on carrying on with the breastfeeding though dd wasn't getting enough milk (hypotonia so not related to supply or latch). She ended up in hospital with malnutrition. It took weeks and weeks to turn her round and get feeding established. You really, really don't want to have been in that position.

Excellent post @Babdoc!

@Lockdownseperation would you mind sharing the details of the clinical psychologist? I think it would be beneficial for me to talk to her.

OP, I feel very guilty but I also can see with hindsight that the system failed me. Remember to treat yourself with kindness, I spoke to myself the way I'd never speak to a friend.

Also keep positive, it could be completely different and straightforward this time.

Why Breastfeeding Grief and Trauma Matter by Amy Brown is a good read.

Try to persevere with dc2. My DC is 13 weeks with a tongue tie and initially lost weight after birth meaning he had to be reweighed. I could have easily given him formula but I kept going and didn't have to in the end. He still has a tongue tie (that couldn't be cut due to Covid) but is now massive and feeding just fine. And yes I was concerned he wasn't getting enough milk at first but your body will produce the right amount of milk for your baby.

Look at it as you breastfeed UK your dd1 for X time. You did it, that's a positive whether it was hours, days or weeks.

If you want to try again this time try not to pressure yourself, have a look on la leche league and the breastfeeding network, find a support group (even a fb one).

I felt the same with my dd1, combi fed from quite early because I was worried she wasn't getting enough but it was actually totally normal feeding. She preferred bottles so was formula fed in the end and felt guilty for a long time. When dc2 came along he had exactly the same feeding patterns but I'd researched and read up a lot, was more relaxed because I had the info and also utilised bf support groups and we're still going at 8 months. Some of the best advice I got was that as long as they are having wet and dirty nappies and gaining weight they are feeding enough. Cluster feeding is a killer and is what makes so many say they had supply issues but it's totally normal in newborns.

Occasionally I feel guilt that dd didn't get bf, but when I look at her I know she had the best start whatever she was fed.

It was my local NHS not a private one. My smallish NHS trust has two clinical psychologists. Ask your midwife or GP for a referral to your local perinatal mental health team.

Please don't beat yourself up about this.
I have 2 DC - dc1 bottle fed from the get go (traumatic birth, blood transfusion etc), dc2 breastfeed for 2 months before moving to the bottle (perfect water birth).

Dc1 is top stream in all subjects, plays football at a top 4 premier league academy and is a throughly decent young man.
Dc2 is a competition dancer and an average-across-the-board student and a throughly decent young woman.

I know it feels important now but in 10 years time, no one will ask (or even care) whether any of their happiness or achievements are down to what kind of milk they drank as a baby. Enjoy your new baby and toddler - they are so small for such a short time.

I spent about four months trying to BF my first. He lost weight. I was exhausted and tearful. It was shit. I never produced enough milk. And I tried EVERYTHING!!!
I wish I hadn’t
He’s now nearly 6 foot and couldn’t care less how I fed him.
My youngest was on formula from about 48 hours.
She’s going to be tall too. She’s fit and healthy.
And she doesn’t care how she was fed either.
Your kids don’t care how they were fed as babies. BF if you can. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t. (For whatever reason.)
And

It's hard, isn't it? Rationally, I know that DC1 isn't massively disadvantaged. But (for me, anyway) it was about the personal sense of failure and the responsibility, not the nutrition.

Breast is best only on a population wide level, not an individual one.

So a child gets one more cold per year if they are formula fed. No big deal for the parent/child, but that adds up to a lot of money saved for the NHS.

The studies vastly overstate the importance of breast milk because they don't take education, income, class and so on into account.

"My child needs a sane mother more than they need breasmilk" is something that helped me.

Also, having a dog reduces allergies. That is shown in many studies. But no one sits there making non dog owning mums feel guilty, right? No one sets up "world dog owning for parents" weeks.

Everyone does what they can. Your child was fed. That is great. Formula is wonderful nowadays.

I think what you need to remember is that you did the best for you and your child. Fed is best. A healthy happy mama means a healthy happy child.

I think with breastfeeding a lot of it is luck - if baby takes to it, if you get the right kind of help at the hospital, but it’s miserable if you try and try and it doesn’t work. I hope you find some closure on this guilt soon as you really shouldn’t feel it at all. Good luck with your second baby - however you chose to feed him/her, I hope you’re happy with your choice and I’m sure your baby will thrive either way!

When you Children are young things that were such a big deal like breast feeding will really fall into proportion.

I cried and struggled so much with my eldest about the breastfeeding but now he's a teenager I know there is so much to bring a parent that whether you breast or bottle feed.

Hi all, just wanted to say thanks for this helpful and lovely thread of messages! I'm not the OP but my story is very similar - only 18 weeks pg with DS2 but already can feel the weight of that first traumatic BFing experience pressing on me :(

We had wet but no dirty nappies from day 3 - 12, so went to GP who referred us to hospital paediatrician. Bub then pooped (alleleuia!) but we went along to the appt anyway like good FT parents. She weighted him (he was day 14 by this point), said he hadn't regained birth weight and was failing to thrive. Tried to persuade me to let her admit him and formula feed via naso-gastric tube - I refused and discharged him to supplement with formula at home. Worked with a private LC, rented hospital grade pump, and we went onto a 3 hour routine: put baby to the breast for 5 mins, then I pumped while dad finger-fed formula from a tube, then baby to the breast again while dad sterilised everything, then we slept for a couple of hours max before the alarm went off again...

Kept that up for 4 days, as well as supplementing with domperidone and eating nothing but oatcakes and fennel! :) Then took him back for another weigh-in which he passed with flying colours. But slowly he began to refuse to latch and just wanted the finger-feeding, and eventually ended up formula fed. (Though I kept pumping miniscule amounts of breast milk for him until 6 months when the pump broke!)

The kicker was the hospital paediatrician writing a letter to my GP, with a copy sent to my home, saying "baby is failing to thrive and mother's obsession with EBF is endangering the life of her child." It was so hurtful to read - like being gut-punched. I had PND and am sure that this was part of it.

I'm looking for resources now and hoping that this time the BFing might work - but I also think that we won't be as generally shell-shocked and fragile this time so am hoping that we'll be more resilient to handle whatever happens.

I realise this doesn't help you much OP but please know that you're not alone and so many mums just want what's best for their kids and feel like such failures when it's not our faults... Sending love

My youngest is nearly 3 years and I've genuinely thought about having another baby (we are completely done at 3 children) just to try and breastfeed again. I'm still so upset that I didn't have the experience I had with my second. I had prenatal depression and anxiety and then post natal depression. It's insane but it's there

Are ypu planning to bf your second baby? You know more now and have more experience, i think you'll do really well. It is very rare that not enough milk is produced. Just trust your body, let you baby feed constantly the first few days. Sit on the sofa, with TV and snacks and just let them feed. I think sometimes people think they don't have enough milk but it's not that, it's just the unrealistic expectation that you'd feed every 3/4 hours and your baby will be happy in between. This is so far from the truth.

Hi,

Yes I am planning on bf second baby, I think I need to put what happened to the back of my mind, I can't beat myself up forever. Millions of women don't even try to breastfeed and their babies are just fine. I think sometimes there are judgemental people on Mumsnet who can often make you feel guilty. I think if it wasn't for Mumsnet I wouldn't feel as bad. I tried my best my DD got the good bits of bf. I just needed to get it out of my mind before new baby came as it's not a nice feeling

Xx

I have been expressing colostrum this time and got about 13mls altogether which is relieving my anxiety slightly, I kept thinking would I feel guilty if it works this time and it didn't last time

Ignore other people and how they make you feel, it's about you and your babies. You fed them (doesn't matter which way) and you love them and give them everything they need

The thing is, making sure you have the right support this time round.