Fed is Best!!!!!!

[HotDawg123]

If you choose to breast feed - good for you
If you choose to bottle feed - good for you
But if you choose to be a breast feeding warrior and look at those who choose to bottle feed as scum then I hope you slip in dog shit tomorrow.

The amount of horrible women I've come across who are like this is too many now. And as I am heavily pregnant and have hormone rage it is really pissing me off.

Thank you for listening.

I received support and advice on mumsnet re: my son's TT. We never got it snipped (probably should have) but preserved and exclusively breast feeding my TTed, refluxy baby is one of the things I'm most proud of.
I read the best comment on breast feeding the other day. "Even when it's hard it's easy." And I completely agree with that. Even when it's hard at night i don't have to leave the bedroom, usually not even the bed. Even when his latch isn't great and he bites, I can still grab the baby and go out to a cafe or to the pub or whatever without worrying about bottles and his long I'll be. We've stayed extra nights in hotels on the spur of the moment and popped in on friends to stay 5 hours longer than anticipated without any worry I might run out of bottles or milk.

I don't judge FF mothers and have never ever said anything negative to one. That doesn't mean I'm not happy with my own choice to breastfeed and would make the same one a million times over knowing I'm doing the best for my family. Sorry, that doesn't make me breastapo.
Obviously fed isn't best. Fed is necessary. Formula feed if you want.

And yep I feel that way! Nothing is ever good enough but if truth be told we're all fumbling around in the dark.

One day it's ok to do one thing, the next new advice comes out and we can't eat bacon anymore!

So much conflicting information it's confusing!

YY with the smell- ds managed to squirrel a bottle behind our sofa. I realised one was missing and was very 🤔 As to where it was gone. I pulled the sofa out to vacuum behind and found it, the smell that came out was vile. It was a bin job. 😷

No passing how you have articulated it is certainly not breastapo. Can I ask, (if it's not too personal) how tongue tie can affect breast feeding? (A pp said it can make it painful?)

It makes it really difficult to latch the baby on as the tongue can't come as far forward in the mouth to create an adequate seal around the nipple. This then makes them slip off the nipple causing grazes on the skin. They swallow air and are really really windy!
My daughter would be blue with wind, had to stop and wind 3-4 times during each feed.

The only breastfeeding warrior I have ever met hadn't actually had any children dsis I'm looking at you. She even told me that it's possible to make your own formula rather than use shop bought stuff that's got added sugar etc etc. I found bf incredibly difficult with 2 huge hungry boys with tongue ties (not twins, 2 separate pregnancies) and I never once with all 3 of my babies ever got to the 'it's so easy and convenient' stage because I needed to prop up on pillows and rugby hold and lie down to feed due to blockages and mastitis and all the joys. I see a lot of my friends who did bf now struggling especially at night with huge toddlers who want only mummy to get to sleep and throughout the night.

Now my dsis is pregnant with her first, I hope she realises that those comments she made to me when I was hormonal, exhausted, with mastitis, and three children to look after, were probably some of the cruelest words ever spoken to me. I laugh about it now with dh, but at the time her flippant comments about 'breast is best' really hurt me.

Oh crikey. That must be really hard in the early days when you're still recovering/getting to grips with a newborn

It didn't make it particularly painful for me (sometimes very painful at the beginning of a feed but I would count to 10 and always always always he'd adjusted the latch within that time himself and the pain went). It just mean hd got gassy and was on off on off the whole time so breast feeding was never the most modest thing to do in public! (I don't tend to feed in public now just because baby is bigger and finds it too distracting to be able to do it for more than a few seconds and can afford to wait). I don't know how gassy and refluxy he would have been without the TT, I assume less but it's hard to know if that's just him, if it's just the TT or both.

I have a TT and I was the same as a baby apparently. Very colicky.

You learn positions that work best. Lying down makes them less gassy. Also feed while they're asleep I've found and they suckle by reflux much better.

I found tongue tie made them suck badly. Imagine sucking a drink through a squashed straw, how hard you have to 'pull'. I felt like the milk was being scratched out of me and it left blockages where they couldn't draw the milk, which turn to mastitis. I would have to move him around during feeding, so he could draw from positions using the strong side of his mouth. It was 8 weeks of pain and stress. I couldn't have gone out because there's no way I could have fed discreetly.

I think tongue tie and redux do go hand in hand as well, once ds2 had his snipped he was a lot less refluxy. Ds1 never had his snipped and now at age 4 it is really prominent and, I think, is affecting his speech.

It was! I couldn't bare latching her on, I have to hold my breath, shot through the roof so many times! Now though you could hang your washing off my nipples haha!

I understand why so many mums give up or don't try. It is so anxiety inducing in the early days. You don't know what's going in, weight gain is the only indication with bf babies.

I'll never say bf is best. Chemically yes it is made specifically for your baby, but the baby needs feeding in either case so yeh it's down to the preference of the mother.

At its worst (like my ds1) a tt baby can't latch at all. If they can latch it can cause them to be very inefficient and not transfer enough milk. It causes a shallow latch that can cause pain and damage to the nipple.

Thenewavengedbear I agree. My daughter had severe reflux, misdiagnosed as an allergy for 6 months! She would throw up everywhere. When she was eventually treated I had endless milk supplies from her making up for her lost feeds. I could express off 9 ounces of milk from each breast after a feed! It was definitely to do with the tongue tie.

I wish there were more anecdotes of how pleasant, easy and lovely breastfeeding can be. If I was a pregnant woman who had no first hand experience of seeing women routinely breastfeed, and all I heard about was pain, tt, "mummy wars" "breastapo" etc etc I would be put right off.

Here goes: I have breastfed two children for a combined total of 35 months so far. It has been easy. By far, one of the easiest aspects of parenting. This is not me being smug - this is my honest experience. Breastfeeding can be and often is easy. It is not a battleground. There is no breastapo.

However you feed your baby someone will always have something to say.

I had so much grief from family members because I breastfed. I was stopping them from having a go at feeding the baby, I couldn't ever complain about being tired as if I just gave them a bottle the baby would sleep like a dream, I made the men feel awkward etc.

I also had other mums feel the need to give me long stories about why they were bottle feeding completely unprompted, as if they automatically assumed I thought I was superior to them. But I don't have an opinion on how they feed their children! It's none of my business! I got really fed up of feeling like I was making some kind of grand political statement when all I was doing is feeding the baby

welshgirl Opinions and experiences like yours are important, but we are already given plenty of "Breastfeeding is easy", "breastfeeding is calm and serene" marketing, and shown images of lovely, calm breastfeeding sessions with serene, well-groomed mum and baby.

What we need is more honesty about the tough bits to become mainstream, so that mums don't struggle and assume it means they need to give up because breastfeeding isn't for them.

We need to promote breastfeeding as a skill that needs to be mastered and supported, not as a perfect, easy feeding choice OR a nightmarish road paved with obstacles. I say this as someone who couldn't breastfeed due to lack of support.

welshgirl- same here.
I have breastfed for a total of 7 years, with no problems whatsoever- I found it very very easy.

I breast fed my son for 2.5 years. The first 8 weeks were unbearably hard, I was in a very bad place, but once we'd cracked it, I loved it.

My choice to BF my baby was belittled a lot by people who chose to FF their baby. Passive aggressive comments used to make me feel embarrassed about saying I was breast feeding as I'd feel ostracised for being 'smug' when in reality I was just feeding my baby. How shameful is it that as a BF'ing mother I felt like I couldn't admit to it because I felt the FF parents would instantly judge me.

Negative comments go both ways.

I'm currently pregnant with DC2 and am already apprehensive about what a 'smug' breast feeding mother I'm obviously going to be viewed as...

Birth stories are similar. I had fairly easy births as well and I always feel weird about talking about them because talking about giving birth can quickly turn to horror stories.

Funnily enough, it was my anxiety that made me more determined to BF. I couldn't handle being in charge of knowing how much she'd had, getting the formula right and so on. As it turned out she was a little and often feeder, which may have been more difficult had we been FF. We were struggling with money at the time as well so I worried about that side of it too. I am also very disorganised.

I did actually laugh out loud at making your own formula though. I'm pretty tight frugal but even I draw the line at that!

I'm not anti-formula by any means - I did breast feed both my kids, it wasn't always easy and I did have to supplement at times.

However ... I think knowing all the benefits of breastfeeding for both mother and baby, I think it's wrong not to at least TRY. If it doesn't work out for whatever reason (and there are many many reasons that are equally valid as each other), then so be it, I'd move onto formula, guilt free. But I do find it difficult to understand why a pregnant woman would rule it out 100% before even having their baby ... not taking into account a difficult birth, surgery etc.

Skerry I found it easy after the initial pain of the tongue tie with dd2.

Ovaries I agree with you. The real picture needs to be given to mums to be and support from hcp and breastfeeding councillors.

Luckily for me I had a brilliant hv and bf councillor. My hv would visit every week and help me out with dd slipping off me. I know I would have given up if it wasn't for their support

Is anyone getting the feeling that we get shit no matter what we do?

^^ This. I FF my first, and bf my second, and have been judged for both. As the old saying goes, a mother's place is in the wrong.

Tip agree 100%

If people want to use formula that is up to them but to say 'fed is best' is factually incorrect

I didn't WANT to ff. I pumped for 6 months but by 4 months couldn't produce enough so we combi fed. By 6 months I was dry and we'd used all my surplus. It was ff or starve.

So yeah clearly it's factually incorrect because it should be book or starve???

Love that Tip, so true!

I had an elective section the second time round and was told I was wasting NHS funding.

There's another force at work. Because it's not us... Who could it be? Where is this pressure/always feeling wrong coming from?