Why choose not to breastfeed?

[MissBax]

I work in healthcare and have just been on a breastfeeding workshop as part of my training. I knew the benefits of breastfeeding for mother and baby anyway, but couldn't believe just how incredible it really was!
I was just wondering what people's reasons were for not breastfeeding? I'm not asking about health reasons or those who have suffered abuse etc. But just wondering why some women simply choose not to?
I'm not being a GF either before anyone offers me a biscuit 😉 just genuinely curious why someone would choose to bottle feed?

I have only ever FF both my children...i had no intention to BF. I knew the 'benefits' and still had no desire to BF....also i have inverted nipples and was not prepared to struggle to feed my children

So many women on this thread actually seem to WANT breastfeeding to not work out for the OP, with all of their "you just wait and see!" comments. It's silly - it's not a competition to see who had the worst experience and you don't win anything if other people end up on the same path as you.

I always intended to do it for the first few weeks alongside formula and then stop, which I did with both. My reasons were:

-I have huge boobs and didn't want to be lobbing them out all the time
-I wanted to stop leaking from all my orifices
-Making up formula is easy
-Not attached to baby constantly
-DP shared the load
-It hurt
-huge boobs basically suffocated his little nose
-wanted to see how much he was drinking
-wanted to be totally free to spend equal time with my toddler without baby

Sometimes you have to do things that enable you to be the happiest, most comfortable mum you can be. I think that's more of a benefit than doing things you feel you should and end up feeling stressed and shit.

Just pointing out that sometimes "not enough milk" will not be seen as a valid reason, and thus a "choice", like many other struggles just being too much. For some it is a legitimate choice. For others it isn't, even if its assumed to be so by HCPs or wider society.

As I said. If you are pregnant and want to breastfeed, ignore Mumsnet. Chances are that with a bit of effort you'll be able to. Unless the horror anectdotage has made you so tense and worried that you are too scared to try.

If it was so incredibly difficult for most people then the human race would have died out.

Most people can. Some people can't, Some people don't want to. And it is fantastic that we have good safe formula for the can'ts and the don't want tos.

Owh I'm sure no one wants OP to struggle, who would want a woman to struggle to feed her baby and for her baby to suffer as a result :(

I think perhaps the tone of the OP, and as a PP said, the confrontational nature (or perceived nature) of a "why" question came across as perhaps naive, perhaps judgemental, when it's something that so many women have huge emotional turmoil over.

So I'm sure that although some have not taken well to OP''s post, I reckon everyone wants women to be happy with their feeding choices, be it formula or breast feeding. Because it's not even the woman who suffers the consequence of poor feeding the most, it's the little baby she's looking after!

@Ginger782 I've found that to be quite a common thing in real life too tbh. Filling people with horror stories and then, when the person in question gives up, taking them under their wing and being like "oh it's ok". This is just based upon my own experience though. It's almost like a collective "ahh it's not just me" guilt deference (when there shouldn't be any guilt at all in the first place )

Bertrand I wouldn't say that's a fair comparison and it feeds into the inaccurate idea that lots of midwives through about about the "2%".

Breastfeeding is often difficult. And many many infants would have died when there were no alternative feeds! It would be like the animal kingdom or even the situation not very long ago where people had many many children and only a few would survive. That is not a justification to say thathat breastfeeding will almost always work out. Humans have invented alternatives to mothers own milk for centuries for this very reason.

I would love to have breastfed my DD.

Unfortunately she was almost three months premature and spent the first three months of her life in SCBU.

I tried expressing but was unable to produce enough milk. Apparently, as a PP said, the stress of having a seriously ill premature baby affects the ability to produce milk.

I hated expressing. I felt awful each time I looked in the container and saw that I had hardly produced any. It was even worse when I went to put it in the hospital fridge and saw all the full containers!

It was a vicious circle really, the less I produced the more upset I got resulting in me being unable to produce more.

It was a truly depressing experience, added to which I was living abroad at the time so was dealing with all this in a language which was not my native language.

My sanity was saved by lovely mum who was also in the same position as me (in fact her DS had been born at 24 weeks). She said that we were so lucky that our babies were still with us and that even the tiny amount of milk produced had helped them.

I now have a gorgeous DD (9) who although she has some ongoing developmental issues is thriving in mainstream school.

I had no experience of babies before having DS. Everything pointed towards bf being so easy, convenient and natural (prenatal classes also peddled this view indiscriminately). I also come from Scandinavia so took it as granted that I would be able to. I was shocked when I couldn't and felt like I must be just a faulty human being and a substandard mother. If I had known about potential problems to do with e.g. section and milk supply, I would have been more prepared and sanguine about it all. Not even hospital staff were able to tell me I shouldn't worry and tell me that this can happen. Instead they pumped my breasts and were astonished to see virtually nothing come out despite several painful tries.

That's a valid point Ginger but equally I feEl that the realities of BF are not well portrayed by our supposed support systems like the NHS

I was never once fed horror stories about BF. I was told by friends, family, the internet, the NHS about how natural and easy it is, how so very few women actually can't manage it.

So when the reality hits, women really struggle. Maybe conversely to your point, perhaps anecdotally there would be less horror stories if we all had a realistic perception of breastfeeding and adequate support?

I don't think it's down to a collective guilt thing..

"As I said. If you are pregnant and want to breastfeed, ignore Mumsnet. Chances are that with a bit of effort you'll be able to"

Sorry, but this is total nonsense. I wasn't on MN when I had my baby. I struggled to bf and , to my perception, was treated like a worthless piece of shit and a failure for not being able to.
It was only much much later when I went on MN that I discovered I wasn't the only one.

.Clalpolly- that's why I said "chances are"and "some can't" and how fantastic it is that we have good safe formula for those that can't or don't want to.

I

Makes me wonder at what level of suffering/problems is FF seen a choice and when does it become a necessity, or at least of increased benefit (compared to BF)? What is the threshold? Why is nobody prescribed formula when they suffer from e.g. postnatal mental health problems that formula could alleviate (through lesser sleep deprivation, in some cases less isolation, and less pain)? Why should they feel the guilt and pay for the "pleasure" too? Note that I am categorically not saying all people with postnatal mental health problems should, as some of them would feel BF is more beneficial to them, but I also think that many would sigh in relief to be "legitimately" FF. Just musing here, really!

Stating as a fact 'the benefits to the mother' is judgemental.
Loads have said they didn't want to so by that token what benefit is making someone do something they don't want?
I didn't BF because I didn't want to, the sheer thought made me feel ill, so what benefit would that have been to me?

Yes I think that the op is asking specifically about women who choose to ff from birth - no intention to bf at all rather than those who want to bf but encounter problems and need or want to stop.

Slightly OT but I'll mention it as I'm still agast!!
A few years ago when I had young children I was using another baby forum 😱 ... there was a girl there who gave bf support, and she also, if I correctly recall, didn't have children yet, and part of the training she was told to say, and randomly she didn't question this as being fucking inappropriate would tell people with BF problems that if they stop their body thinks their baby has .... wait for it ...... DIED ! I shit you not!
Quite how that helps someone to bf I'll never know!!!

I understand that, but it relates to what is choice exactly? What are 'legitimate' reasons? This is because HCPs like the OP seem to be wanting everyone to have them. I don't think giving any reason is necessary. But then again, even seemingly "good" reasons are recorded as "choice" in statistics. "This and this many people stopped in the first two months - this needs to change". Fair enough. But the answer to that is not always breastfeeding support. The reasons are often more complex than that!

"You were comparing declining a cup of tea with declining to breastfeed though; in your own words: "Apply this to BF. HTH.""

No, I was demonstrating that "i dont want to" IS an answer to a question, any question.

"That unworkable comparison is what I commented on. Answering a question which has no impact on any other human being, cannot be compared to an answer which will have a significant impact on another human being. "

Demanding justification from a woman answering "I dont want to" in response to a question about what she does with her own body is rather a dangerous road to travel down.

"Why choose not to breastfeed?"
"I dont want to"
^ that is an answer to that question. The woman doesn't need to furnish the inquisitor with any further information.

I think there must be loads of reasons. Personally, with my first I tried BF for six weeks - it didn't work, she lost weight, my nipples bled each feed (as in blood running down my body as she fed) so I gave up and FF. I was made to feel inadequate on several occasions because she was FF - our postnatal group didn't have anywhere to warm a bottle, health visitor asking every visit why I wasn't BF. My other two I BF effortlessly. I think every mother should just do what suits her and her baby .

Right now, if I were to have DC2, I'd FF from the start to try and avoid the problems that made life living hell for me. And I would just be recorded as having simply "refused" to bf in hospital. Not an accurate depiction.

Answering the OP, I didn't intend to BF before I had DD. I didn't think I'd enjoy it or like the further physical demands on me. I thought it would be easier to have DH be able to help with FF and that it would be hard to BF in public. I also thought I would have saggy boobs afterwards.

As it turned out I had DD in an area where lots of people I met BF their babies and I had very supportive midwives. So I gave it a go and ended up BFing both DC for 6 months each.

I didn't have saggy boobs afterwards either.

The midwife told me that blood from my cracked bleeding nipples would turn my baby's poo black.
I felt my milk wouldn't be as good as bottle milk and I couldn't handle my mum criticising me for being different to her as I was bottle fed. She's hugely abusive. I don't see her anymore.
I wanted dh to be able to feed the baby so he could have the same experience as me.

I was SO looking forwards to breastfeeding my DD.

Did it for 7 weeks and quite literally couldn't anymore. Milk dried up.

I was gutted but the preachy, holier than thou looks on health professionals faces when they saw I had been BF and was now FF made me steaming mad. Also my DD shot up weight percentiles and came on loads developmentally once I switched to FF - purely because I wasn't feeding her enough despite almost constantly cluster feeding, doing expressed topups etc. Turns out being full and satisfied is really good for babies and my desire to BF and being so determined to do it, in the end caused her to be quite poorly.

People choose to FF for various reasons - sometimes purely because they would just rather not BF.

Their bodies, their offspring, their choice.