Do people really judge you for formula feeding?

[solbunny]

I have a beautiful seven week old baby. We had a really hard time in the first six weeks with breastfeeding. I went in assuming that it was just a given that I would breastfeed, I never considered formula purely because I guess I just assumed breastfeeding was kind of the default!

However, we did have an incredibly rough time of it. There was a combination of loads of things including a missed tongue tie, allergies, big boobs and flat nipples, and a baby who just generally did not want to latch properly and was losing weight. In the end my mental health was so incredibly bad and the poor state of my nipples genuinely shocked my health visitor who said they were some of the worst she'd seen. One of them got infected, too, which was a treat. Anyway, at six weeks after spending hundreds on a tongue tie division and seeing three different lactation consultants, I decided to move to formula. I looked into sibling studies and antibody studies and although I did so want to breastfeed, I felt happy with my choice. My mental health improved so much and my baby immediately began to become alert and smiley now that he wasn't having to exhaust himself all day every day just to get enough milk to barely sustain his weight.

I had never had any negative feelings towards formula feeding. My extended family all have done a mixture of breast and bottle, some with one child bottle fed and the next breastfed etc. so I have never really come across the idea of judgement for formula feeding. It didn't even cross my mind!

However, I've seen over the last few days, on places like TikTok, people sharing experiences where mums at playgroups haven't wanted to be friends with them because they formula feed. I've also seen people say they've had negative comments in public. My mind is blown by this and I feel pretty rubbish about the idea that someone will judge the way I feed my baby.

So I want honest answers - have you experienced negatively or judgement from other mums or random members of the public for bottle feeding? What happened?

I'd rather know the reality so that I can prepare myself for it. I'm too fragile to experience this sort of thing right now. It will be better for my mental health to ensure I always feed him in private than get bad comments from people

FF both mine due to my nipples just not being up to it (flat/inverted). Bloody tried but they just couldn't get it out. I ended up in therapy to bond with DD as I felt so terrible.
DS and I were in hospital for a week so I could express on their medical grade pump but otherwise, left to nature...neither of my children would make it. And that's the honesty of it.
I'd never judge anyone for their choices, knowing that I have fuck all idea how they got to them.
As others say, super grateful for how advanced formula is now and that we have options!
Fed is Best 💪

I wouldn't want to be friends with someone with that attitude.

One comment I read on MN a few months ago made me feel immensely better, can't remember it exactly now but it was something like - go to a year 5 play and while they are on stage pick out the kids that were breastfed....ohhhh that's right you can't.....haha.

Every single midwife said to me - fed is best. During my stay in hospital I realised why they kept repeating that after a woman refused to give her newborn a bottle because she was so hung up on breastfeeding but she wasn't producing anything and her baby was basically starving. Thats the danger of breastfeeding pressure and then I understood why they kept saying 'fed is best'.

I don't think that anybody I know would look down on a formula feeding parent at all. I know I wouldn't. All that matters is a healthy baby and mother. You are doing a great job it sounds.

It depends on where you live I think. The baby groups I attended were in my village or a nearby market town and I was usually the only FF mum there, unless a friend of mine came who stopped BF at 12 weeks. I did get ‘helpful’ comments about medication and donated breastmilk a lot.

My sister lives elsewhere, and in her village and nearby town it’s the opposite. She’s very much in the majority for FF. They had a milk cupboard in the hospital in which she gave birth.

Honestly, you need to just prep a stock response in case anyone does make a comment. With DD2 my midwife said to me that she was surprised that as a teacher I was choosing to FF. I replied with ‘yes I know, it’s SO obvious in a class of nine year olds who wasn’t breastfed, poor souls’.

You get beady little squinty eyes from everybody for one thing for another when it comes to parenting. I put my son to bed the other night and he goes to sleep on his own, my dad said we must have left him to cry for hours on his own for him to be comfortable with that what the actual fuck, mad head

Give everyone a break though, parenting is hard, especially breastfeeding so if a breastfeeding mother is rehashing benefits over and over and you sit there ff, just smile and agree because that’s what is getting THEM through. It’s not really about you.

The most judgy people ive ever met have been breast feeding mums (in my circle not saying all breastfeeding mums are judgy) i have 3 children and 2 were formula fed and 1 was mixed fed and honestly the comments i got for formula feeding at groups was ridiculous. One mum said to me "why an earth would you chose to ff when bf is free and convenient and best for baby" i didnt feel the need to explain my choices to her so just raised my eyebrow at her and turned away....... i dont care what anyone thinks of my parenting choices my children are healthy and loved the best thing you can do is learn to let others judgement go over your head because as a mother everyone will have an opinion on how you parent.

Formula is amazing - it gives babies a brilliant start in life. I used formula from day one - never bothered trying to breast feed.
DC’s are as healthy and happy as I could wish for - breast feeding wouldn’t have changed that.

I didn't give a damn what others said....l wanted to bottle feed so that's what l did.
Nobody else's business.
Dd is 10 now and still alive so 🤷‍♀️

Only a few who were very lucky to have breastfeeding work for them and can't seem to accept it doesn't work out for all women and babies.

I'd hate to see any mother struggling with breastfeeding hen it isn't working for them when there's a viable alternative.
I breastfed my son into toddlerhood, but my dd just wouldnt take to it. Our hospital was fantastic and I had my own lactation nurse to help but for whatever reason My milk didn't even come in until a week later and had dried up within a day, So I did what worked for me to make sure my babies had full tummies....both options were fine. Thank God it was before the internet so I wouldn't have had any of this faux judgement to contend with.

Definitely agree with posters talking about the lack of support for breastfeeding. My midwives and health visitor are all very keen to tell me how important it is to breastfeed. But when I ran into problems they were utterly useless, uninterested and also surprisingly unknowledgeable. Sometimes they'd tell me things about breastfeeding that I, a layperson who'd spent all of a few days googling about breastfeeding, could immediately tell was utter rubbish. I ended up spending a lot of money that I don't really have to see private lactation consultants. The more I learnt about breastfeeding the more I realised that if only I'd had better support and advice from the beginning, we might have been able to overcome at least some of our problems before they got to the point of no return.

Oh well. It's just frustrating to be pressured so strongly to breastfeed and then at the same time the people doing the pressuring seemingly cannot and will not help you!

When I had my baby I decided to give BF a go. Out of all of my friends who had kids before me...maybe 12 babies in total. None of them BF and I assumed I was in the minority wanting to!

@FindingMeno

Only a few who were very lucky to have breastfeeding work for them and can't seem to accept it doesn't work out for all women and babies.

It’s not luck though and describing it as such means setting women up for unrealistic expectations. Breastfeeding requires a lot of support. I had an amazing health visitor who used to be a mw in Pari who knew about lactation consultancy and suggested it to me, a private lactation consultant was a big name in the medical name & who pushed for a tongue tie referral even when the pediatrician refused, and above all else a DH who did everything (housework, nappy changes, cooking, shopping, you name it) AND worked in a high profile f/t job so I could focus 100% on breastfeeding, sleeping, expressing and eating. It’s impossible to breastfeed past the first few weeks without that support.

I combi fed one and EBF the other. I never had a bad experience from either from anyone else. No one commented on the bottle, no one commented on the boobs. I do know women who've had comments from family about how they feed and tbh it sounds like some can't win. Formula feed and you didn't try hard enough, breastfeed and you're spoiling them and should let someone else do it / do it in private.

I used to run a baby group and have met lots of mums who do both or a combination. From my experience I'll say that for many women, pregnancy and birth is the first time in their lives they have very little control of a situation. For a lot of us, we've lived lives where we have been able to steer our course and make decisions that lead towards goals we set for ourselves.

When we have babies some of us have lots of ideas about how we will give birth or feed them. So when something does happen how we plan, it can be quite a new sensation for us. Something we couldn't control and therefore we feel we've failed.

No one has failed, no one else thinks you have failed, no one judges you (or if they do it doesn't matter)

Do the best for you and your child. It is the strongest most positive self-care choice you can make. Anyone who judges you is probably not the best person to be in your social circle. As someone said above, once they are at school, nobody cares. So sorry to hear about your poor boobs. I went through similar and ended up bottlefeeding my first. Saved my mental health.

I remember getting judgement from midwives and various because I took a break from breastfeeding my second in order for my nipples to heal. A week later started again and ended up breastfeeding until he was nearly school age so please listen to your body.

People judge every decision, it is your choice to pay attention or not. I had to formula feed, I tried so hard to breastfeed with our 1st 3 but admitted defeat from day 1 with our twins and latest singleton.

Just wait for the potty training stage, that is by far the worst for judgemental comments.

@Chely

People judge every decision, it is your choice to pay attention or not. I had to formula feed, I tried so hard to breastfeed with our 1st 3 but admitted defeat from day 1 with our twins and latest singleton.

Just wait for the potty training stage, that is by far the worst for judgemental comments.

Or weaning.

I found some of the BLW fans were terrible. We weaned DS at 4 months due to a variety of medical issues. Some of the comments from those mums who thought they knew better than a paediatrician .... the worst was a mum telling me I'd poisoned him by giving him baby rice 🤦‍♀️

I judge our society for not giving women the support they need to breastfeed. There are far too many stories like yours OP where women clearly weren't given enough early support, tongue ties missed etc.

But I feel nothing but compassion for the women that wanted to breastfeed but couldn't.

I bf and got loads of judgy comments - it's disgusting, unnatural, I was only doing it for me not thinking about what was best for my baby, etc. I found it a great way of weeding out the people I would never want to be friends with!

As others have said, you will get all kinds of judgement and crazy comments from people about your parenting choices, but the important thing to remember is that it's all about them and their issues.

I actually got a lot of judgement for bfeeding from my family but everyone should really butt out and leave the parents to make the decisions that are right for them.

At the end of the day it's your child not everyone else's

If you go on TikTok or Instagram I’d say you are almost looking for judgemental/controversy stuff to feed your angst because there’s so much of that content on there.

I’m not sure how often you’ll actually get confronted with judgments in real life. Sometimes people are just talking about their own experience and it’s not about you, as PP said. And some people are just mouthy and you have to ignore them.

I’m sorry BF didn’t work out for you. I could have been you but I had a really good BF support team where I live, it’s just luck. Enjoy the baby, don’t give the feeding method too much thought because the time flies and you don’t want to waste it thinking about something like this.

I'm currently pregnant and thinking I will ff, for a number of reasons including my history of breast cancer. But I am overwhelmed by all the literature I have been given so far which ONLY focuses on breastfeeding, and has made me feel like I absolutely have to try even if it's not what I want to do. I've found very little information on formula feeding (like how to actually make a bloody bottle, what temperature things should be at etc) but have pages and pages and pages of info on how to breastfeed. I haven't even started yet and I feel judged/pressured just by the stupid books.

I'm also really worried about how/when/if my milk will come in on my non-cancer boob and dealing with drying it all up, which sounds absolutely horrendous and painful. I'm going to ask my midwife at my 25 week appointment because that's probably the part I"m dreading most at the moment and not sure if that stress is justified or how best to manage it.

The only person who openly criticised me for bottle feeding was a midwife. I had tried for a couple of months to breastfeed but found it unbearably painful and it made me upset every time. I was very depressed about it. The midwife came to visit and she already knew all this. I explained I'd bought some formula and asked if maybe she could watch me make up a bottle as I'd never done it before. She got angry and said no way, she was here to encourage breast feeding. She said I would probably feel so guilty after the first bottle that I would go straight back to breastfeeding anyway. She left in disgust and I was so upset. Meanwhile my baby was hungry and crying too. Luckily my OH came home at that moment and helped me to make up a bottle, as I was so upset I couldn't think straight. Things improved all round after that as I was no longer in pain, my baby put on weight and also started sleeping through the night.

I tried and failed, ds had formula in hospital went home and tried to feed after a stressful emcs and several days on post natal ward from hell. He just wouldn't settle one off comment from 1 midwife about whatever suited me. And a bit of my own dm who couldn't seem to comprehend that I found it hard, kept saying how easy it was.

Only on Mumsnet! I'm sure the really judgey people do exist in real life, but they keep their nasty views to themselves, because they know they would get crucified if they aired them irl.

So don't worry unnecessarily. I've done both- ff one from about 9 weeks. Breastfed my other one past a year. Both were fine and both dcs are fine health wise. If anything the formula fed one is doing better at school and hitting milestones.