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.

mini it isn't anyone else's business though really is it? Anyone could tell a bottle feeder day in day out that 'Breast is best', why should it change their minds?

Mama you got those comments a baby group? Jesus

At a*

Oh yes. I wanted to EBF but my milk didn't come in for six weeks(!) so DD ended up with severe dehydration and weight loss, being fed formula through a tube in SCBU. I combination fed her for six months and still breastfeeding now at almost 15mo.

I have had lots of support from FF Mums and some from BFs but also encountered some really nasty judgmental BFers, usually at Breastfeeding cafe type places. I think a lot of the problem is with breastfeeding education - the message is that it's natural and if you only try hard enough it'll work. Well, I know an awful lot of people who drove themselves to PND trying their utmost and it just didn't work for them. I was quite angry about it, but I've tried to channel the anger into improving things for new Mums so feedback to the hospital about ways they could improve their breastfeeding classes and support and I took part in academic studies about breastfeeding trauma and improving breastfeeding education.

I'm always intrigued by people who say bf support is poor

Really?

You can't imagine that not everyone had one to one support in hospital, that not everyone saw a lactation specialist or has the money to pay for private consultations?

I'd also be interested to know the true stats for women who have no or poor supply or other problems so can't breastfeed (or do it exclusively). When pregnant I was given to understand that this was vanishingly rare.

Once I was in SCBU with dehydrated DD being fed formula whilst I fed and expressed in an attempt to coax some milk out I looked at the stats around me - hospital averaged ten births a day, but two or three Mums/babies a day were being admitted to SCBU problems of dehydration, too much weight loss etc. That doesn't include any that went into NICU. So it looks like a problem rate of more like 20-30%...

Diana yep. We have some lovely women around here. Luckily I've got a much stronger back bone than the first time. My very first outing to a baby group with my first when she was 3 months old, I'd just moved out of my parents house so was still finding my feet, I'd managed to find a maisonette in a quite nice area of town and as I was a teenage mum (only just, I was 19) the lovely clique of bitches mums there said...'I'm assuming that was an accident' that being my child. Who was absolutely a flipping accident as I was told I couldn't have kids! But seriously, bitch central around here!

In the nicer area, I was judged for bottle feeding. In the less nice area I live now, I'm judged for breast feeding.

Fuck em all.

Bloody hell thats awful? They actually used the word accident?! What is wrong with people.

Daisies - I don't know any women in my NCT who were unable to BF due to supply issues (some chose to FF, some combi for their own individual reasons but all started BF and supply was not the issue) so that seems like a high percentage. I do know one baby that lost an incredible amount of weight and her mother was following a strict dangerous Gina Ford feeding every three hours regime. But of course there are genuinely women who have no or low supply or who can't breastfeed. For those people breast simply is not best, formula or donor milk is best (I still wouldn't say "fed is best" as it's nonsensical).
Prior to breastfeeding I'd heard so many horror stories and also thought the chance of me actually being able to do it was 50/50. I think that's partially the issue here with terrible breastfeeding rates, people go into it with a "back up" prefect prep and formula stash and say "I'll try" and expect to fail. I had major issues (NICU and TT) and still never needed to top up and I feel quite sad now that people go into it with such low expectations. Next time I'll know better and go into breastfeeding knowing I have a very very high chance of succeeding again.

Fully agree with Karmakit it goes both ways.

I've been told a million times though that the reason my DD is a shit sleeper is because she was breastfed and had I just gone on formula I would have had her sleeping through by 6 weeks...

I mean it's not bloody rocket science is it? Breast milk is the most suitable food if you take only some physical factors relating to the baby into account and ignore others, plus anything to do with mum and any social factors.

Duh.

@skerrywind That 6 hours you provide to medical students is 6 hours more than I had in my entire time at med school. Apart from vague "breast is best" mentions we barely touched on infant feeding at all. Before having DS and gaining personal knowledge and experience, plus learning how to access support, I was completely clueless about how to support a breastfeeding mother - fortunately not something I have to do much in my specialty, but overall training for doctors on this matter is abysmal.

I've signed up to volunteer at our local breastfeeding cafe, which was invaluable to me in my first few weeks (DS is now 5 months and EBF) but it's had its funding cut so will have to close in the next few months unless they can find a new source. I think it will really have an impact on BF rates in my city - unless you can afford a private lactation consultant or brave the somewhat-evangelical nature of the local LLL group, there's very little support.

Dont know how to tag sorry! Welshwannabe... I had zero problems in my first five months of breast feeding DD. Wasn't as clued up on everything that could go wrong because I simply assumed thats what nature intended and we'd give it a go. Watched youtube tutorial on what correct latch should look like and that was it. No supply issues. No latch issues. No weight gain issues. No hours and hours on stuck during cluster feeding. No more broken nights than any other new born. Nothing to indicate everything wouldn't be fine. Hope thats some reassurance for the scared first time mums! Expecting DD2 now, my biggest hope after a safe delivery is that BF will be that easy again!

I am interested in where this 1% comes from, in that it is often quoted as only 1% of women are physically unable to breastfeed.

Please can someone link me up? Medical journal or source would be really helpful...

TIA

That's really interesting as I found the opposite - breastfeeding was promoted as natural and straightforward as long as you kept trying so I never even considered FF whilst pregnant. I really wish now I'd been warned that there might be problems so I could have done my research in advance of which formula and bottles to use. We ended up with Aptamil as that's what the hospital had and used a Lansinoh sample bottle I'd been sent in the post!

I had a really difficult labour and delivery but feel very positive about it because I felt well informed beforehand (didn't do NCT but did read a lot). I feel like the BF education I received (morning class at hospital) just promoted BF without giving any practical information that would have been so helpful.

My concerns about DD not doing wet nappies were pooh poohed by the midwife who visited us at home, who patronisingly said that new Mums didn't recognise wet nappies. I did have childcare experience so knew what a wet nappy feels like but was ignored = poor starving DD ended up in SCBU!

The issue is with a lot of this is that people only understand what they have experienced. If you BF with no issues the. Of course you won't believe the stories of women who have struggled, babies who have suffered or adverse effects on mental health. This is the main issue with the breast feeding advocacy. Many of the people offering help/support/opinions don't seem to have struggled and therefore find it hard to understand the feelings involved and that a lot of the time the wording of 'breast is best' posts are insulting, demeaning and trigger feelings of inadequacy and guilt in people who have done nothing wrong.

What I would ask people to remember is that there are real women, especially new mothers reading this and b img made to feel like crap. Is your opinion of infant feeding more important than someone's mental health? Is it worth pushing BF, for only minor benefits, over a new mother's mental state?

I really don't know how some of the people on this thread can justify their extreme opinions in that light. The semantics of 'fed is best' are not academic. For some people it is the difference between losing their minds and coping.

Ovaries - "you're a shit mum for ff" is exactly what I was told. And to quite verbatim - "you clearly don't love your baby enough to try harder."

It's really sad that the help I got isn't consistent across the board. I do think it's a case of that in some areas/with some people you have to be assertive and ask when the help you're given isn't helpful, but it sounds like you did that and still weren't given the help you needed.

However, I do think your struggle to get good help is slightly different to the situation I was in - I got good help, the best that was available, and plenty of it - and it still didn't work. What do people who think breast is best expect me to do next exactly? I'm not in the magical 1% that passionate breastfeeders are happy to excuse so in their eyes I'm not good enough.

So overall I do think that blaming support (not saying you did but others on this thread have) is a bit of a cop out. Sometimes even with amazing and ongoing support and no medical issues, it just doesn't work.

Also, as a cost/benefit analysis, do the benefits of BF outweigh the mental and physical health of mother and child?

Oh and the 1% thing - what a load of claptrap. Perhaps only 1% of mothers physically can't produce milk, but there is a host of factors that means to BF would be so hard as to make it practically impossible. The analogy would be that I CAN get to the moon - there is nothing stopping me! All I need is a rocket, $1 billion dollars, extensive training as an astronaut and a bit of old-fashioned gumption, damn it! Nothing stopping me

The analogy would be that I CAN get to the moon - there is nothing stopping me! All I need is a rocket, $1 billion dollars, extensive training as an astronaut and a bit of old-fashioned gumption, damn it! Nothing stopping me

That made me laugh

@lunalovepud

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/bfmed.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/how-often-does-breastfeeding-just-not-work/amp/

This thread has once again gone round in circles to blame those who breastfeed as the ones dishing out the judgement.

What reasons do FF mums who judge BF mums give? What about the affect on the mental health of those BF mums who are constantly got at because they don't FF? What about the physical health of the baby who is FF? I'm not trying to be antagonistic - these are all Nanny's points about BF.

Like I've said previously, I couldn't care less how anybody else feeds but why must it always descend into those shouting loudest and us vs them?

I breastfed one child and formula fed the other. Never found anyone who outwardly gave a shiny shit. Not sure where these people are but they're not in my city.