Don't want to breastfeed

[WelshManx]

My baby's due at the end of the year and I really don't want to breastfeed. My Mum struggled with me and tried for a couple of days before giving up and DH doesn't particularly want me to as he will be very hands on and wants to share the feeds and getting up during the night. I'm also going on holiday for a few days when the baby will be 3 months old (without the baby) so it would be unfair on her if I try to breastfeed only to change at 3 months. Apart from that, I just don't want to do it! I'm a bit of a wimp and not very good at standing my ground in certain situations and my midwife and hospital and GP are all ridiculously pro breastfeeding. I feel that they are going to 'bully' me into it and I don't know what to say to them?

From speaking to other mums it seems that if you are a firm no they accept it and move on but if you are unsure they try to convince you. I don't agree with people who say try for the first few days, if you don't want to do it don't! Good luck and do what is best for you and your baby.

I totally agree with Mummyp83 If you want to FF, you don't need a dramatic stand off if that's what you are worried will happen. Just speak in a firm voice and they'll back off. I got awful advice when DTs were born and I did this. It worked!

Relevance in that, as I said above, my speculation about what breastfeeding would be like didn't match my experience of what it was like. (As with so much about parenting!... but that's another issue.)

So if you're coming from a place of speculating about what it would be like in the abstract, rather than directly experiencing it, you too may not be as well informed as you imagine yourself to be (and as I, in the past, imagined myself to be) about it.

It's true bottle makes a huge difference in labour. That's one of the big reasons I'll FF my next one

Yes, Pearlman, I have indeed spoken to several breastfeeding mothers myself from time to time

If you'd rather look at the broader experience of a wider group of women than hearing someone on here telling you about her own experience, maybe this paper would be of interest to you? I'm travelling and away from my library access at present, but the brief summary is interesting in itself:

"Analyses examined the associations among fathers’ perceived skill and child care involvement related to a number of factors including breastfeeding, maternal gate-keeping, mothers’ work hours, fathers’ depressive symptoms, and fathers’ beliefs about responding to a crying child. The researchers found that breastfeeding at one month was not related to involvement or perceived skill."

"The authors suggest that invoking breastfeeding as an impediment to father involvement could in fact be more of a pretext than a significant reason for decreased involvement."

I don't "have a problem with that"

This seems to be a rather sensitive topic for you? I apologise if anything I said made you feel worse - I know breastfeeding can be an emotional topic for all sorts of reasons. I find discussing things like the sociology of breastfeeding and the interaction between parenting and feminism to be fascinating topics I could discuss all day, and sometimes forget that people aren't always coming to the discussion with that same perspective!

Having done both formula is a PITA, faffy and requires a lot more organisation than breastfeeding - in the newborn sleep deprived fog there's a lot to be said for just needing to be there rather than have "stuff".

It's a constant round of sterilising, boiling kettles, feeding and washing up.

I genuinely thought you might be interested in the paper, Pearlman. Obviously I was wrong, and I apologise if you see me as somehow attacking you(?) - genuinely, that wasn't and isn't intended. I find this an interesting subject and have no wish to mud-sling or hurl around insults.

For those who say that using formula is a faff, does that also extend to the pre mixed stuff? Sorry if that's a stupid question!

BINGO! The word faff was brought up in BFing vs FFing.

Yeah I think it's still a faff with the pre mixed stuff (although not as much) as there's still the cleaning and sterilising of bottles. And the pre mixed stuff would get pretty pricey if using it all the time.

But others may disagree with me, it's a personal thing really.

Per mixed you literally dump into a bottle. The bottles have to be sterilised but a microwave steriliser takes 6 bottles so realistically you just do it once a day, before you go to bed. You just leave the bottles in it till you need them.

I never bothered with powder. If I gave formula it was premix. Room temperature and no fuss. You can get those perfect prep machines too.

I think I'm the beginning, ff can be easier as bf can be quite hard to get going. By four months, it was easy peasy and formula would have been a faff.

But really, it's what's best for you. Bf, ff or mixed. Whatever works.

I mix feed and have done since birth I hate breast feeding but do it twice a day. I never bf to sleep. My baby sleeps all night. I get up at 4am to express when I get the biggest volume. I express 4 times a day. And I give my baby formula. Sterilising takes about 2 mins to wash the bottles then put it on. Hardly a faff but my hv advised making up bottles and keeping for up to 12 hours in the fridge so I don't do the whole thermos thing.

Ive done both, and found that BF is only easier if there's nothing else going on.

If you have a parent/other child who is unwell, FF can be just downright necessary.

I had a dying parent about 2 weeks after I had quit BFing. To this day I thank God I was FF at the time, as for a couple of weeks my DH was practically a single parent to the baby.

I honestly don't know what I'd have done if I was BFing a bottle refuser. Spent a hell of a lot less time with my dying parent, I imagine.

I didn't accuse you of mud-slinging or hurling insults, Pearlman. You do seem rather combative about this, for someone who isn't at all emotionally invested.

Personally, as one of the women you're suggesting that we should be listening to, I think research is brilliant! It can help us challenge our own assumptions and put our own individual experience in context, and help us look at things as part of a bigger picture. But you're free to be totally uninterested in it - we don't all find the same things interesting, just like we don't all have the same experiences of breastfeeding, or indeed any part of parenting.

Oh and after a couple of months I didn't bother sterilising. Stuff went in the dishwasher at 70 degrees.

The concept of faff is interesting. Leaky boobs to the point you have to change the sheets at 3am could legitimately be described as faffy. I never found the bottles I gave to be a faff. Admittedly it was one a day but it seemed pretty easy to me. The only bother I had was that he was quite messy drinking from a bottle and sometimes I had to change him before bed after a feed.

Anyway, keep an open mind, do whatever suits you and enjoy your baby.

Elspeth - In my experience (of emergency hospital admission), BF bottle-refusers will take bottles eventually. It wasn't much fun for anybody involved, though If I have another, I'm planning to stick to giving one bottle every day or so, just to avoid going through that again.

Yeah my friend had to go back to work at 3 months. Mistakenly thought it was early enough to introduce bottles.

She eventually "broke" him, but she described it as 3 days of Hell. He was literally hysterical with hunger for 3 whole days, day and night. She had no choice though.