Why are breastfeeding rates so low in this country??

[PasstheBucket89]

This is not a judgment thread, im not evangelical about either ive done both through necessity, BF/FF,. Im genuinely wondering why in one of the richest countries our levels are so low, sometimes in comparison to poorer countries with less medical care infrastructure. is it purely cultural, is it worse now than 30 years ago, i was and my sister BF until about a year old, so did many of my cousins or is it getting better now? so yeah no bunfight please just curious, i would like to BF this time, hopefully it goes better than the last 2 times x

Such an interesting thread, I’ve always wondered this myself. I definitely think family habits/customs are important, and your social circle - I was breastfed, MIL bf her kids, I breastfed my two until they were 2.5, and all my friends bf theirs as well. I assumed I would do it, and I did, other than mastitis twice and one being quite bitey for a while it was fairly straightforward for me.

One of my friends was the first in her family to do so - she comes from a very traditional working class background where everyone bottle feeds, and she struggled with some of their attitudes towards her for bf and co-sleeping.

Formula is heavily marketed even though it’s officially not meant to be. We all know the brands and the different markets that each brand is aimed at. Aptimil is the middle class choice, Cow and Gate for younger poorer mums etc even though they’re all the same nutritionally. i thought tbh SMA was more considered chav milk??? cow and gate ive seem a lot of older mums use because its an old, familiar brand.

Usa is much more divided though. Half of people go back to work at 6-12 weeks postpartum (and there are pumping rooms set up as it's so early) and about half become sahm because of the first point.

Figures not exact

Also culturally, you're expected to stop bf at around 6 months. 🙄

And the horrible old Gina Ford methods of putting baby into a feeding routine, which is obviously dry up your milk. Argh! Mum and baby suffers.

My support came from my mum and my sister who had breastfed 4 children between them. Their advice was invaluable. It wasn't "official" advice such as during my pre-natal class when they said there's no pain... My mum said of course it hurts - she set my expectations and was very encouraging when it was hard. Without this support I think I would have really struggled.

i'm curious about countries that have a similar way of life to us, what do they do differently?

For me it was the total lack of support. I had no idea what I was doing and neither did DD.

There was no one available on the maternity ward to help. I was promised someone would come every 4 hours to help. Didn't happen.

Then my milk just didn't come in... I had zero milk, so had to bottle feed.

I do wonder if I'd have had help whether my milk would have come in? Who knows?! But I can see why people give up.

I know my mum fed me until I was about 15 months old in 1985/6 and she said that was very unusual back then. She said once they’d gone out to the seaside with me and she had to trek all the way back to the car to feed me as no one fed in public then at all - I think even now some people find it strange, although in the time I breastfed my two out of the home I only encountered one tutting lady.

I’m a lazy trout by nature and a huge part of the appeal for me was the convenience - not having to get up and make a bottle was hugely appealing. I also love how bf babies self-regulate their intake so I didn’t have to think ‘have they had enough?’ which I would have definitely worried about if I was bottle feeding.

Both mine had severe TT, which was picked up and within 2 weeks snipped then my nipples recovered but was awful!

Poor mums know haven’t even got access to TY specialists because of covid

Also hasn't ruined my breasts at all. The only people I personally know who blamed breastfeeding for 'ruining their breasts' were the ones who put on lots of weight during the pregnancy. Maybe that's what happened to you?

Reading this thread with interest as I hope to BF my first baby in March.

I'm really shocked at the lack of education and support that mums get.
Sometimes it seems there's so much stigma by health professionals that we must BF...how can they expect that if the support is non-existent?

It sounds like it could be really hard.

Usa is much more divided though. Half of people go back to work at 6-12 weeks postpartum (and there are pumping rooms set up as it's so early) and about half become sahm because of the first point

Umm...that definitely doesn’t sound right.

There’s more of an emphasis on pumping, Iirc breast pumps are covered by insurance companies and nursing rooms are everywhere. Nothing like this in the U.K. and WIC (a support program for low-income families) have done a lot of good work to promote breastfeeding to low-income women, where it will actually have the most benefit.

Here breastfeeding seems more of a middle-class thing but not all that knowledgeable

SMA was more considered chav milk??? cow and gate ive seem a lot of older mums use because its an old, familiar brand.

I’d consider SMA a middle of the road choice. It’s the brand I remember seeing most in my childhood (I was actually breastfed but everyone had the tins lying around for storage of something or other). Cow and Gate is the cheapest.

I never saw the same midwife twice and all of them gave me different advice on positioning - if at all, most of them just latched the baby on for me. By the time I'd had to take her to A&E because she was so dehydrated at 8 days old I was utterly beyond myself and gave up.

We are lucky enough to live in a country where we can decide between bf and ff. I never tried bf - there was plenty of support if I’d wanted to but I preferred to ff.

Regardless of whether you choose bf or ff, you are giving your baby an excellent start in life and you aren’t a better or worse parent either way.

Also all my friends and family successfully breastfed. So for me it absolutely wasn't cultural. I felt awful for not doing it - still do.

I think the pain of it has a lot to do with it, and that faced with unrelenting pain versus perfectly safe and nutritious formula, it can be really hard to keep going.

I combination fed till six months and it was excruciating until the very last feed. The pain never settled down. DD was checked for tongue tie several times by various experts and I was told loads of times her latch was fine, tried every different hold, etc etc. Nothing made an improvement.

We subsequently found out Dd is very hyper mobile and I wonder if that impacted her ability to maintain a correct latch. For us, despite chasing all help available there was no fix. I look back and wonder why I soldiered on for so long. Tbh I wouldn’t bother next time. From my POV, bf is a bit of an evolutionary fuck-up. You wouldn’t design it to be as hard, painful and time consuming as it is.

I agree it's cultural, my mum set me straight on the issues I would have eg pain, milk may be slow to come in, sometimes baby would be stuck to the breast so I just accepted it for what it was. My milk was slow to come in with dc1 & they developed jaundice & it did hurt initially but I got some nipple shields & it worked out fine. I introduced formula at 6 months to combine but used HIPP but that seems a more unknown brand.

I wanted to breast feed DD but wasn’t able to. At least five different midwifes tried to help over 2 days but baby wouldn’t latch on in any hold despite many attempts.

Eventually the midwife said DD was getting jaundice and needed to be fed so I gave formula. I think I would have needed lots of extra support to breastfeed as I have the same problem as my own mother had - quite ‘flat’ nipples (I tried nipple guards but that didn’t fix it).

In the end I think it worked out well as DH could do feeds as well. In an ideal world I would have breastfed but just couldn’t make it happen so am glad there was an alternative and take the positives from what I was able to do.

@PasstheBucket89

Formula is heavily marketed even though it’s officially not meant to be. We all know the brands and the different markets that each brand is aimed at. Aptimil is the middle class choice, Cow and Gate for younger poorer mums etc even though they’re all the same nutritionally. i thought tbh SMA was more considered chav milk??? cow and gate ive seem a lot of older mums use because its an old, familiar brand.

I've never heard any of those stereotypes. But I don't know many people who FF either.

A friend told me to choose the formula which your local supermarket stocked the most of so there would be no difficulty in getting your favourite brand.

Good grief, do people really judge on which brand of formula someone feeds? Seems like there really isn’t any aspect of motherhood that you won’t get judged on 🤨

Re: low breastfeeding rates, I suspect a lot of it is to do with lack of support due to budget cuts. I had a miserable 7 months long breastfeeding journey with DS. We struggled so much an no matter where we turned (HV, midwives, breastfeeding drop ins, telephone helplines), no one could give me any answers about why we were having so many problems. I remember walking out of a breastfeeding drop in, which my baby screaming in hunger, and me in floods of tears because he wouldn’t suck and I got about 2 minutes of attention which resolved nothing. I just sat there, struggled, failed and ended up leaving. I walked into a supermarket to buy formula after that, but they didn’t have any ready made starter packs and I didn’t have a sterile bottle, otherwise I think I’d have given up entirely right them. I think if I could have got a bit of consistent 1:1 support, we might have got on better. If I do it again, I’m going to pay for a private consultant, however it had such an impact on my mental health last time, I’m struggling to contemplate trying again with the next baby.

Lack of support - it's a postcode lottery here. If you live in some local authorities you get help, others you don't, despite everyone in the city delivering in the same hospital. Every midwife I spoke with couldn't have cared less that baby wouldn't latch. There's peer support but not every day of the week, so what do you do? I did a tonne of research but if there's literally no help when you need it, there's not much you can do.

I think there should be more help available, more advice round expressing and mixed feeding.

There was a total lack of support when I had my dd 12 years ago. I’d done the NCT course, read the books and talked with friends who’d successfully breastfed. Nothing prepared me for a newborn that I couldn’t get to latch on and screamed for hours non-stop. Where is the breastfeeding support group or health visitor at 1am when you desperately need help? Agree with PP that you need breastfeeding supporters who have struggled with tongue tie and flat or inverted nipples not those who found it easy.

I have already decided I will not be breastfeeding. I am abit of a control freak and I know my anxiety will be through the roof if I dont know exactly how much the baby is getting. I dont feel bad at all about it. Myself and my Sister were never breastfed and we all do very well. My sister never did with her children and they are the happiest and healthiest children I know (my Nephew does work 2 years above his year in school)

I will proudly bottle feed my baby

Just throwing it out there, without saying what happened, for me it was a psychological thing to do with my body and my past that stopped me from breastfeeding. I'm generally not a very tactile person either.