Women who don’t be believed for their reasons not to BF - a feminist issue?

[Bluedoglead]

Bear with me, I’ve posted this here because I don’t think it’s a feminist issue and I want to unpick my thoughts.

I struggle with my reasons for not BF one of my children.

I was put in a position where the decision was out of my hands.

I do think the comments around “did you try could have tried different should have tried that” are almost victim blaming and they make me very very angry and feel disbelieved.

I attempted suicide due to the horrendous time I had feeding that child. There was eons of support. I did the absolute best I could.

So why am I not just believed?

Please bear with me.My thoughts in this I find distressing and I’m trying to understand and unpick how I feel.

I think that a lot more, but certainly not all mothers and babies, would be capable of breast feeding if there was qualified, professional, in-person, support available 24-7 for the first four to six weeks.
My experience was that instead of the HSE (Irish) funding lactation consultancy their policy is to emotionally manipulate women at their most vulnerable, display posters and press leaflets on us, tell outright lies about how easy it is, and deny access to information about ff. HVs, MWs and GPs all pushed this agenda but actual practical help was almost non existent.

I seriously question the motives behind the breast is best movement because if it were genuine there would be better support, encouragement of alternatives like milk donation and wet-nursing. Instead the focus is on demonizing already vulnerable women for feeding their infants.

I had horrendous problems with my first and the highly qualified and brilliant lactation consultant supported me whole heartedly in moving to ff, but everyone else gave me a terrible time (before during and after) and the cost to my mh was profound.

In recent years i would have jumped at the opportunity to wet nurse or donate milk but neither are acceptable now. I have experience of the full spectrum of feeding, I even have time on my hands. It wouldn’t take a huge amount to organize volunteers in the community if the objective was to actually support women and babies.

JJ I think everyone on the his thread has agreed that they wouldn’t talk to someone in RL about something that personal, unless they’re close to you. This is a thread discussing breastfeeding. People will post things they wouldn’t say in RL.As Rosen said even if someone did offer advice after the ship had sailed it could be helpful for if they ever try again. I totally agree you’d judge the situation, how open the woman seemed about it etc. I might offer advice to a friend who had ‘failed’ 1st time around if they were expecting again and expressed an interest in b/f. I probably wouldn’t launch into the subject at a baby group with acquaintances. However the crux of it is if you DONT talk about it poor info continues to spread, wisdom isn’t passed from women to women (advice and suggestions from others, not hp’s, is something that enabled me to b/f and several friends of mine too), and rates would probably fall even lower.

"you have saying I should have had more bf support or been prepared for the difficulties or tried differently to succeed"

I'm really not. I am saying that there are women who, with more support or with the information to enable them to "try differently" might have been able to feed. I am not saying that to you personally. How could I? I don't know anything about your life. I am saying that there are women who weren't able to make a proper choice because of circumstances completely outside their control. That's what I want-for women to make a properly free properly informed choice how to feed. And I think many women have that choice taken out of their hands for no good reason.

Where have I said it shouldn't be talked about? I've said it certainly should be at the right time when it can be helpful not once it's too late.

Just because someone doesn't bleed in public doesn't mean they aren't wounded. I was suicidal, also, during pnd. If I had had support from other women talking to me about breastfeeding, what helped them, empathising and helping me see that I wasn't the only woman to struggle with it, I may have struggled less with both the feeding and the pnd and suicidal feelings. Women should be consciousness raising around this issue, not telling each other not to talk at all in case someone else feels judged by ua discussing our own experiences or decisions being different to theirs. I wouldn't tell anyone who doesn't breastfeed to leave a baby group! Not all discussions at baby group are about breastfeeding. Join in where you like and don't where you don't. I don't participate in every conversation going at baby groups etc. When women around me talk about something important to them but which I cant relate to or find uncomfortable then I usually say nothing and listen quietly, or I wander away for a bit, or I think about something else until they've finished. I don't expect them to be silent for my sake and I don't accuse them of having sinister motivations as has been done here.

Im talking about face to face interactions with a HCP. A HCP should be able to see when a woman doesnt want to try anything else, when she's at rock bottom and actually support to move on for her own well being, the importance of which is often forgotten in the BF debate. Offer that support but no when to stop.

I would expect you to have a little more empathy then Rosenberg

A properly free and informed choice about how to feed for me would have included accurate information about the realities of formula feeding, e.g. you can still bond with your baby while feeding, it's not just for council estate mums, there's likely to be zero difference at an individual level and it doesn't make you an inferior mother if that's the way you end up feeding. But no one said any of that to me. Now I know that, I will make the informed choice with future children to express colostrum but not to breastfeed because I won't put my family through that again, especially with another child already. But I fear the chances of my informed choice being just accepted and respected by the current NHS is slim.

Rosenberg, you've managed to both miss the point of the thread and demonstrate exactly what it's about.
Good for you that you WERE ABLE to power through and be such an amazing martyr though.

People accusing me of being a martyr and talking about how it is child abuse to keep feeding through mental health problems are proving my point. Silencing women through passive aggressive attacks which completely invalidate and attack some women under the guise of supporting others. That isn't feminist, at all.

If you're referring to me here @Rosenberg how it is child abuse to keep feeding through mental health problems then that is absolutely not either what I said or meant.

I think choosing to continue trying to breastfeed to the point where a woman can't properly care for her child or herself would be the wrong decision. This does not mean I think all women with mental health issues can't properly care for their children or themselves.

"I actually think I'd be a terrible mother if I'd opted to continue trying to bf at the expense of my mental health and ability to care for my baby for the sake of bf"

@Rosenberg Yes. If I prioritised bf over ability to care for my baby that would make me a terrible mother.

That doesn't equate to you having mental health issues therefore being unable to care for your baby.

If you're saying that you were left unable to care for your baby and that was as a result of your determination to breastfeed then yes l, I don't then that makes you a good mother. As far as I can see from your posts, that's not what you're saying.

But if it is and I've hit a nerve then I apologise.

I have bipolar, I was recovering from c section and general anaesthetic, and I had breast abscesses and pnd. I was unable to most of what is expected of new mothers. Breastfeeding was actually one of the only ways I felt like I could do anything as a mother, tbh. I wasn't 'being a martyr'. I was a woman struggling through in the best way that I could, in my way.

That's an interesting point, accruel.
Many years ago when I breastfed my first baby as a young mother, I persevered even though it was literally breathtakingly painful, I had mastitis which was verging on sepsis, I was being prodded and pulled with no top on by health visitors turning up every morning to 'help', I was certainly not sleeping and what I really needed was permission, almost, to stop. When I finally got the permission, the fog lifted.
Looking back, I do believe there is a direct link to PND and breastfeeding. Not breastfeeding itself, but the feeling like there is no option, the pressure and the being made to feel shit by others, not feeling good enough, fretting about your screams of pain traumatising your baby, being indoctrinated that your suffering is for the best and that you're merely a means of nutrition, the lies that it only hurts if you're doing it 'wrong', the sleep deprivation.

Well of course it would be pointless for a hcp to try and push b/feeding when the mother has already switched to formula. I got the impression this was more about other women/acquaintances that had made comments to the OP in R.L. In which case I think it’s purely practical advice to suggest that the op extracts herself from theses conversations rather than suggesting people shouldn’t talk about it. Where I live hpc fully expect you to ff or switch very early on so it seems very much like some women feel pressure from them whilst others don’t. My gp had to check that I knew what I meant when I answered that I was ebf at 8 week check she was so surprised.

I can't believe how spiteful some of the comments are on here. BF is a very emotive issue and I read individual stories with great sympathy. I can't believe what some people have been through.

The fact that some (not all, by no mean all, definitely not all and not speaking about any individuals) women could be encouraged to BF or BF longer with a bit more support is something that cannot be argued with. How that is ever going to happen when women are being so unkind to each other?

I despair. Breastfeeding rates will never improve when people think this approach is helpful. Its shameful.

@Rosenberg So it was really important for your mental health to continue bf. It was really important for mine for me to stop bf. But only one of us is considered by the NHS et al to have done the "right" thing, and only one of us is considered a failure in the statistics.

Blue I get that you're upset but you're taking what Bertand says about feeding in general personally and twisting her words.

And we have a clear winner in the competitive suffering now @RosenbergW
My first born was hospitalised at 5 days old because he wasn't gaining any weight and had severe jaundice. Because he wasn't getting enough milk. End of story. I'd have given anything to have breastfed him but my body was having none of it. I'd pump for hours only to produce a measly 15ml, if that. In the end seeing my beautiful baby having light therapy with a cannula in and an NG tube trying to get his weight up resulted in me having such severe PND that I was heavily medicated and unable to BF. My eldest is 8 now and I see nothing has really changed with the pro-BF army.

It was hcp who said it to me. Midwives and HV and lactation consultants Rumple.

Accrual - statistics are cold and do not take into account the variety of different factors in our individual lives. I dont think you failed, but I do feel that I succeeded in my own route, I don't think that these should be treated as conflicting (failure vs success) because ultimately we trod different paths and no doubt both had a number of successes and failures. The NHS never treated me as doing the right thing at all, at best they ignored me or treated me like a piece of baggage on a production line. At worst their treatment during pregnancy, labour, birth and post natally caused me enormous traumas that it took me years to recover from. We shouldn't be setting up as opposites, we need to make space for all our stories. And that means when a woman's story makes some of us, personally, uncomfortable, we should be quiet or withdraw as best fits, to give that story space. We shouldnt assume that women who did differently and talk about that had it easy or are up themselves martyrs or have sinister motivations.

Rosenberg I'd be much more willing to accept your take on this if you hadn't passed judgement on other people who stopped BF 'because it hurt' If I've misread your post and you didn't mean it like that then I apologise (been up all night with a vomiting 5 year old)