Breastfeeding and attachment parenting - your thoughts

[awfulpersonme]

I've not posted on this board before but have lurked a lot.

I'm interested to see what you think about two things I have thought about a lot in recent weeks - breastfeeding and attachment parenting.

I breastfeed my 5 month old and as such was on a few Facebook groups for support. On these groups I have seen comments stating that women who ff should not have children, that formula should only be available on prescription for babies who need it medically, and asking for tips on how to persuade their female friends and relatives to breastfeed their babies. These groups are largely AP based.

So:

1. Is pressurising women to breastfeed essentially anti feminist? Isn't it just another way of telling us what we should and shouldn't do with our bodies, another way of making female bodies public property?

2. aren't a lot of the attachment parenting principles essentially quite anti-woman? Every AP group I've seen seems to place a mother's need for outside stimulation, sleep, and good mental health as far, far below the needs of her children (at all ages, not just newborns and young babies). The idea that you must be around your baby 24/7 just seems to me to be another way of keeping women firmly "in their place".

What do you all think??

the judgement I got on a parenting FB page was astounding. Apparently a few bottles of formula was akin to feeding him puréed McDonald's mixed with crack.

I had the exact same thing. On three separate Facebook groups which all claimed to be non judgmental.

EllieQ "But I still responded to her every need," that is the very essence of attachment parenting. Slings/prams/breastfed/expressfed/formulafed/nanny/homeschool/BLW/purees what ever million choices there are the essence of attachment parenting is responding to the needs of the child in order to have an "easier" and less restricted life as the adult because successful attachments help keep kids calm and happy.

I'm still waiting for someone to tell me that doing the full gamut of AP - extended BF till the toddler wants to stop, extended co sleeping, baby wearing, no sleep training etc - actually does for the child that non-AP doesn't.

What have individual dickheads mothers who say that formula is evil have to do with breastfeeding and AP as a whole?

Isn't that a bit like saying "I read online a feminist saying she wanted to kill of the entire male population therefore feminism is evil"

Also, these women judging other women about their parenting choices are likely to have had their own parenting choices judged as well.

I was told I should put my baby on a bottle when she was 3 days old and it happened often. I was told that she would 'never' sleep through the night if I didn't force her to stay alone in her cot all night.

Not saying it's right but it may be a factor.

allmy

My point is I don't think this is a small minority of AP advocates. I think it's a lot of them.

Btw, I was on a thread not too long ago where a mother of a toddler was in abject despair cos her child just wasn't weaning. She was worn out and was in that hole where she didn't know when the child would choose to stop! She was close to breaking point cos the kid was nowhere near interested in stopping and was pulling at her top all day long.

I suggested she dry up her milk using Sudafed. No milk = no interest from the toddler. It went down like a wet turd in church. Nope, she needed to basically try all sorts of "gentle" distraction techniques (cos that works so well with a toddler) and there was plenty of "Oh they only feed for 5 mins at that age anyway - this too shall pass" head patting.

Apparently, no matter how close you are to losing your god damned mind, the child should always be the one in control of your breasts, not you.

WTF???

It doesn't do anything extra. The key, truly important things for a child are physical and emotional safety and security. Are they loved? Can they trust the parent? Is the parent responding to physical and emotional needs (not all the wants, mind you, but the needs.) are they safe? Are they secure? Are they fed, watered, warm, clothes and nurtured?

If so, the rest is largely window dressing. A sling, a pram, being carried around on a hip, it's largely irrelevant. Bottle or breast or bit of both? Largely irrelevant. Sleep in cot or bed? As long as the child feels safe and secure again, irrelevant. A child with nightmares who is not responded to in the night is not having their needs met. A child who wakes once for milk but sleeps fine in their own room at twelve weeks is having their needs met.

Safety, security, love and the basics of physical needs. The rest is tiresome labelling.

it that situation I'd talk about the risks of mix feeding and the ways around them ( correctly making up bottles). I might try to talk to her about her longer term feeding goals, for example she may want to try mix feeding for a week or so and then see about getting back to breastfeeding. I'd also try to give the mother some support in terms of grieving the breastfeeding relationship. The research suggest that failing to meet your own breastfeeding goals is a risk with PND where as breastfeeding to your goals is protective*.

I also try my best to stamp down shitty discussion of formula. To try to met mothers where they are. But it's hard because breastfeeding supporters aren't given the leanecy that formula manufactors are given in terms of promotion.

*althought given I've breastfed for over 5 years I know that PND can strike even when feeding is going well.

I'm in Australia and our breastfeeding initiate rate is very high at 96% but the rates drop fast and from my experience with women it doesn't drop because they actively chose formula from a positive and liberate place but rather out of fear, desperation and misinformation.

I agree completely flashman

My childless but rather wise uncle visited recently and saw how tired I was. His opinion was that 'you're a great mum, but you know there's a line that's as much as you can give.' I think he's right.
Martyr ing yourself to the point your health suffers when there's no benefit to the baby isn't wise.

Risks of mix feeding?

What are these risks? Assuming the bottle is made up in a hygienic manner there are no risks to mix feeding that I'm aware of...

The "risks" are presumably that milk supply is likely to reduce, making it harder to continue to bf fully or partly.

Which is only an issue if the mother wishes to continue to bf.

Oh, and the increased risk of pregnancy of course!

Also here's a novel idea...how about maybe thinking those who have decided to move to mix feeding are adults and capable of making their own informed decisions?

The risks of ff in a clean and developed country like the UK are minimal. Obviously people trot out the WHO recommendations and the whole "formula costs the NHS £X per year in X diseases" (which it doesn't - the statistics have been wilfully misinterpreted). The WHO recommendations are there because they cover the entire world and clearly there are way more risks associated with ff in the third world than there are here.

Also I'm EBF and my periods came back 3 months after baby was born...so I don't even get that advantage!!

Martyr ing yourself to the point your health suffers when there's no benefit to the baby isn't wise.

I totally agree and to be honest martyrdom when there is negligible benefit is not worth it either which is why I have made the parenting choices I have. I wish I could be confident enough in my own parenting to do "just what feels right" but I need guidance and the groups and forums I use provide that.

Below somebody challenged the idea that breastfeeding could be the easier choice, for me it genuinely was for most of my children. I have had to formula feed earlier than I would have liked and I found it hugely stressful. I had bottles all over the house, I lost hundreds of the lids. I worried endlessly about making the bottled up wrong, were they sterile? Had I put in five or six scoops? I got stressed when the baby cried when I was frantically trying to cool boiling water. I found going out a nightmare and ended up spending a fortune on those little bottles of ready milk which I then needed to find a way of warming. We go on holiday a lot and that just added a whole new layer of stress in. I once bought the wrong formula when abroad which was a strange colour and had something added to it. My baby puked everywhere and was quite ill. My decision to breastfeed as long as possible wasn't because I thought formula was evil or that mothers who formula feed are in the wrong but because I personally lack the resources to do any different.

My choices are a reflection of my strengths and weaknesses and not a judgement of anybody else.

This really isn't breast vs formula anyway. This is asking is it anti woman to say to a woman she has to breastfeed? Yes, it is.

I mean the risks for the infant primarily. Things like gastro, middle ear stuff. Which you can help minimse by not prop feeding and making formula correctly. I might spend some time explaining how to chose a formula, and the need to sterlise formula equipment, I might even talk about cup or spoon feeding.

Rainbow how do people make informed decisions? Don;t they seek advice from trained people ? that's what breastfeeding counsellors are. It's what HCP should be too.

I don't see that they need to. Making formula safely really isn't complicated - the instructions are on the tub

With the ready made stuff it's a piece of piss - pour into sterilised bottle, job done.

Of course forcing women to breastfeed is anti feminsit. So is forcing women to formula feed.

We force women to formula feed when we undermind their confidence,m when we don;t demand our HCP are well trained in breastfeeding, when we think breastfeeding supports should remain quite on risks or issues because it might offend but we allow continued advertising and under handed marketing practices.

I was told from birth I would be unlikely to provide enough milk for my son. There was no evidence for this, he didn't even lose weight after birth, I was told I'd probably need to give him food early because he was big and my milk wouldn't be enough. That sort of stuff underminds women and thier bodies, that sort of shit takes away from empowering women of being in charge of thier reproductive systems

This is getting really frustrating.

It had been said multiple times on this thread that getting shit bfeeding advice and being forced into formula (happened to me!!) is horrendous. But that isn't what this thread is referring to.

But people don;t make it correctly. For example people think that cold boiled water is the same as cooled boiled water when they are different things. Once kills bateria the other doesn't

"I think it's a lot of them."

Based on what? There are AP parents here who are saying that we don't feel that way, or is it just a lot of them in some facebook groups specifically set up for AP and breastfeeding, possibly full of people who feel insecure enough about their parenting to seek support online?

There are not instructions on how to make feeds up in advance if you want to leave the house. The advice on how you do so seemed to me to be very contradictory.

where is the line then?

where is the line that breastfeeding support is feminist and that breastfeeding is an act of feminism and when does it stop being that?

the increased risk of pregnancy of course!

This is essentially how I was conceived. Watch out, kids.

It was different in the eighties, apparently . (As in, less was known about the connection between breastfeeding and fertility. This may or may not be the case. I wouldn't know. I was not there. Until I was.)

My point is that statements about parenting need to be taken in the context of the society into which the child is born. Given the surrendering of bodily autonomy that mothering involves, the very least a feminist can do is allow the mother all the autonomy that she and her baby need in order to keep the baby and the mother safe.

The evidence-base mantra really fucks me off, perhaps because my line of work is in the evaluation of evidence of all sorts. I am close to concluding that anything that claims to be "evidence based" very probably is based on some sort of politics or agenda. The term makes me shudder sometimes.