Am I the only person in the world who didn’t breastfeed because baby didn’t want to?

[Cafeaulait27]

Hi everyone!

Had my first baby last year and the birth was fine (c section). Baby tried to latch immediately after birth but after that he wasn’t interested. Every time I tried he would close his mouth. I tried for over 24 hours on the ward every 2 hours, but he just didn’t want to despite skin to skin and different midwives coming in to help and doing things to try to wake him up like changing his nappy etc. The thing was he was perfectly awake, he just didn’t want to breastfeed!

As a result I was syringing colostrum I’d hand expressed into his mouth every 2 hours, and had an extremely traumatic night/next day on the boiling hot ward pressing the buzzer for help and midwives not really knowing what to say. It seems like if the latch is incorrect they know how to help but if baby isn’t latching at all they don’t know what to do? I was really upset by the next day after not sleeping at all due to worry about his feeding. Every time I buzzed for help a different midwife would come in and just say ‘skin to skin, rub his nose on your nipple’ and I would do it and he would just get upset but still not latch and they would always leave me while I was trying so when it didn’t work I wouldn’t have anyone to ask what I could do instead. One midwife on rounds said he looked like he was starting to shake and as it had been over 24 hours I needed to give him formula, and did a diabetes test. It was really scary and I remember thinking he was going to die and sobbing. I said I’d tried to ask what to do but midwives kept just telling me to try again and disappearing. I remember waiting for the nurse coming with the formula and just feeling terrified, willing her to hurry up because I thought I was killing my baby by not being able to feed him.

It soon got to the end of the next day and he still wasn’t breastfeeding, I wasn’t getting answers out of anyone on what to do so I eventually said I wanted to formula feed so we could be discharged. I hadn’t slept at all in two days and was so hot and traumatised, I just wanted my baby to be fed.

We’ve done formula feeding ever since and haven’t looked back, but it was met with some family members saying I should maybe ‘try’. I said I have tried but he won’t open his mouth for my boob! He took a bottle fine and has done really well.

I feel like I have some unresolved trauma from what happened to me, I’ve always felt that others think I’m a failure even though I know and my husband knows we did what was best for our baby. Should i follow this up with the hospital for a debrief on what happened? Will that help me get closure on it? I’ve never really understood why it all happened - both him not latching and midwives not suggesting formula earlier or any sort of plan.

However I am very aware they were very short staffed, some midwives had tears in their eyes they were so stressed and wished they could spend more time with each patient.

All of my friends have breastfed, if only for a little while. Am I the only one?!

I do have very small boobs (a-b cup) and never was able to grab a handful and shove it into babies mouth as there just wasn’t enough flesh to grab.

Anyway just wondering if anyone else went through similar, and if I ought to ask the hospital about it? Thanks.

The policy about not offering formula unless there is a medical emergency or mum asks for it - I think that is a baby friendly initiative thing and it is supposed to prevent staff from jumping in with formula too early when support could help instead, and because a lot of the time in that situation you feel vulnerable and see the staff as having so much more knowledge that you ask them what to do - so being offered formula could be undermining to someone's confidence in themselves or make them think that it is the "best" solution when that might not be the full picture.

And all of that is great IF the staff have the training and expertise and crucially, time, to sit with you and try other things and help you instead. Dropping a load of soundbites and leaving you to it is not adequate support and it's not baby friendly. It would have been more helpful for them to offer formula, even though it would have presented a further challenge/hurdle to BF.

I think what bothered me is that formula was only offered when it was a medical emergency and baby was literally shaking.

This isn't right. My baby had troubles latching, and midwifes offered to bring me formula straight away, just to be able to feed him something while we were working on establishing breastfeeding.
I can't imagine how traumatic it must have been for you.

Ds1 is now 24. He had no interest in feeding when he was born. Midwives suggested similar to yours but did say at one stage if he didn't start feeding he would need a bottle. I was kept in a bit longer than normal until feeding was established.

He was born around 5.30am, refused to feed all that day and most of the second day. Eventually started feeding late at night on day 2. One of the midwives told me that they can sometimes be slow to start feeding if they are very tired after the birth. He was flying it after he finally started.

Next problem was getting him to take a bottle. He flat out refused until he started on solids, about a week before I went back to work when he was 4 months old (solids were introduced much earlier then).

There are obviously issues with staffing, but even when staffing is good my experience is that midwives do not have enough experience in supporting new mothers with breastfeeding. They have done the training, so can say things like 'nipple to nose, skin to skin' etc, but the hands-on experience of hours sitting with mothers is not there. So when the soundbites don't work, they don't know what to do.

I had the same issue with my son. He had a severe tongue tie and wasn’t able to latch well, it was in the very beginning of first lockdown so absolutely no support. Two midwives said he would be unable to latch so I needed to use a bottle. I expressed for 4 weeks and then milk supply got less and less. It was a nightmare to find somebody to snip the tongue tie before he was 3 months. We eventually found a private GP who was almost the only person still offering the service during COVID. She said he would not be able to wean properly as the tongue tie was so severe and we were seen the next day. Long story short, when we did try to resume breast feeding I was met with absolute refusal from my son. There was no way he was going to breast feed.

I feel very let down about the whole experience and completely 100% blame it on COVID but I do try to rationalise it, we didn’t know how severe COVID was, what was going to happen ect so I suppose it couldn’t be helped at the time.

Thank you all for sharing. It really helps!

I do think formula should still be given as an option if baby isn’t latching at all, I could see from the beginning that he just wasn’t interested in latching and no one had any solution on how to get him to latch, so surely formula is the solution so he can be fed. Because formula wasn’t mentioned until he was shaking after 24 hours it made me feel that it was shameful and therefore I didn’t feel i could ask for any. Even after the one formula feed, there was no plan of what to do the next time he needed to be fed. It wasn’t until the second evening when I was really hysterical that I said I want to formula feed - just so I could get the hell out. The last midwife kept saying ‘what do you want to do’ as though she knew formula was the answer but had to wait for me to say it. The only other option she gave was to try lying down to feed him. But after a c section that just wasn’t possible as I wasn’t mobile enough to get up again if I’d laid down.

I found that the first day and early evening they would come within minutes of me buzzing, but by the next day it would take half an hour sometimes, and on a few occasions I even had to get up eventually and go and find someone and say I’d been buzzing and no one had come.

Does make me wonder if they were all avoiding me in the end?

@GladysAndFred that’s what should’ve happened! It was extremely traumatic, if someone had suggested formula I would’ve gone for it as anyone can see a hungry baby just needs to be fed! I was made to feel like a failure by the midwife who said he was shaking and now needed a formula feed, as though it was my fault for not being able to breastfeed even though I’d been asking and asking all night what to do. I was delirious from not sleeping (and I hadn’t slept the night before the c section either as I was nervous) so I hadn’t slept in like 2 and a half days at all. Not even 5 minutes. Thank you xx

My experience was different but I have the same feelings having not been able to breastfeed. I couldn't get past the fact that the formula bottle said "only to be used on the advice of a medical professional" but every time I asked if I should give formula I was told to persevere with BF, and actually did get a lot of support with it. So I didn't give any formula. After 6 weeks of limping along with a malnourished, anemic, jaundiced baby a medical professional finally suggested some formula might help.

I honestly find it shocking that this is the policy. Failure to take formula is obvious. Failure to take breastmilk isn't always obvious but can have dire consequences. Failure to succeed after attempting to breastfeed is strongly associated with PND. And yet this is the position we put our new mothers in.

When people don't get 100% on a maths test we don't just assume they were lazy - maths is hard. We know that a lot of people work incredibly hard at it and still don't get top marks. Yet with breastfeeding there's this culture where a significant number of people, usually women, assume you just didn't put in the effort that they did. If I had a pound for every time I told someone I hadn't managed to EBF and they tried to give me a hint/tip to fix it...

@Mimba1 absolutely this 👏👏👏

I am the only person I know who didn’t breastfeed. People assume I must not have tried hard enough I’m sure. Even those that struggle on in pain and their babies don’t thrive are seen as better for persevering even though it’s making them miserable.

My baby was thrilled when we gave him formula, and so were we. My MIL should maybe I should ‘try’ which I feel like was insinuating I didn’t try. She only said it because it s what she did.

If I had another I don’t think I would bother with breastfeeding to be honest. And I don’t think I’d feel guilty this time.

You’re so right that constantly pushing bf and not sugggesting formula, resulting in unhappy mothers really is so unhelpful. I hope things will change.

I really do feel that it goes back to the rule makers thinking that if they suggest formula, women will all stop breastfeeding which is ridiculous. There is definitely obviously still a culture of treating women like children who can’t mKe an informed choice for themselves. Yes we’re all aware of formula but if its actively avoided by midwives then we’re made to feel like we’re not supposed to do it x

Same here
No idea if/how my babies latched because I never tried
No regrets and no shits given if anyone else has a problem with it

I didn't because I didn't want to , I was incredibly feisty when I had dd and the more they tried to make me the more I pushed back !

Both of mine stopped latching pretty quickly
in the early days. Both ended up in NICU. Dc1 was really poorly.

In the end I did mix feeding with dc1 for 9 weeks. With dc2, I did exclusive pumping which was a bit of a pain in the arse tbh. Although I don't regret it, I know that with a third dc, I wouldn't do exclusive pumping again as it was very restrictive.

There can be many reasons why a newborn baby can't/won't/appears to not want to latch. Sleepiness from the birth and/or drugs, tongue tie, frustration (at being hungry but unable to access the milk) or just plain inexperience (babies have to learn too). It sounds like you were really let down by an overstretched postnatal ward. Supporting and helping you with feeding your baby should be a top priority, but in reality, staff are stretched too thinly and mothers and their babies are often left to fend for themselves. It makes me sad. I'm sorry you had this experience OP. It might be worth following up your idea for a debrief to gain some closure.

It sounds like you have done your absolute best for your baby though, given the circumstances. Go easy on yourself