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.

The stats for bf are hugely out of date.

Scientific / medical understanding of lactation is woeful.

The feminist issue is that people talk in certainties about such a vague and uncertain subject.

No one knows anymore what proportion of babies are ebf to 6m.

I could come up with all sorts of theories off the top of my head why woman in western countries with western diets and medical care might have more trouble breastfeeding that women in Bangladesh (which is were I think the ‘only 1-2% of women can’t produce enough milk’ stat comes from).

We all sit around criticising women because it’s so much easier than challenging the medical and scientific establishment and saying this is important!! Study it!

Mygast - I wasn't paraphrasing, I've had multiple women say that to me, usually while I was actually breastfeeding, and sometimes while it was actually hurting. What I was trying to say is that there is this assumption floating around in these conversations that women who do breastfeed haven't experienced pain, exhaustion, infection, problems with latching, sick babies, etc. And that's not fair or true. Many breastfeeders experience some or all of the above and could do with the space to talk about that and offer their experiences and advice of what helped to other women without being called tyrants and victim blamers.

“We all sit around criticising women because it’s so much easier than challenging the medical and scientific establishment and saying this is important!! Study it!”

I have consistent said that the problem is the medical establishment

Rosenberg. At what point are you offering advice?

I’ve fed other children. I’ve had mastitis and pain and latch issues and the bone crushing tiredness.

But someone telling me when I already felt terrible and was on the verge of suicide that maybe had I tried oatmeal and glacatgues (sp?) when the paediatrician tending to my child had told me I must stop and I had no choice made me feel a million times worse.

I tended to say I had to stop. The most basic thing is to feed your child. It is a total failure in me as a mother that I could not feed my child. And some half arsed comment with no thought from a random who didn’t know me was enough to have me in a pickle for days and days. Squeezing my breasts to try to get a drop out and trying to force it into my baby with a spoon because breast is best and the doctors must be wrong and if I just tried harder or tried something different. And god forbid if they did come up with something I should try differently. That I hadn’t done. That was horrific.

In my first few weeks of bf, which were very difficult (long long birth, cascade of intervention, 'early term' baby who, judging by the lengths of my later pregnancies, came a little earlier than would have been ideal, sleepy baby, jaundice, breast refusal, expressing, formula top-ups), pretty much everyone wanted me to give up. My PP midwife wanted me to give up. The hospital wanted me to give up (and made me go to a 'pumping room' to express and had me test weighing my son before and after every breastfeed. This was 13 years ago!). It was implied that I would damage my son by continuing to bf. I was told I was making life difficult for myself on purpose.
I kept going, we eventually overcame the breast refusal, he had his last formula top-up aged 4 weeks and we went on for 4.5 years. My middle ds bf for 3 years and my dd has been going for 2.4 years and counting. In that time I've been told (categorically) I would need to stop bf if I wanted ADs (I didn't, meaning I didn't get them); told (by an obstetrician!) that if I kept feeding ds1 up to the birth, ds2 would get no colostrum; had all sorts of hassle with 'slow' weight gain that had everything to do with having small, light (and perfectly healthy) children in general and nothing to do with bf, but had my milk accused of being 'inadequate' and all sorts.

And all this in a society with significantly higher bf rates and a more bf-friendly culture than the UK.

Some of this thread touches a nerve because had it not been for some great online support (notably including MN), I would probably have been someone who believed she 'couldn't' bf. I might have blamed the tiny size of my breasts or my 'inadequate' milk or goodness knows what imagined inadequacy. It would have devastated me to give up. I was lucky, but I've experienced how skewed the conversation can be against bf, and I think this is part of what Bertrand is trying to say, and being quite unfairly treated. She doesn't seem to me to be saying anyone is lying, but rather that they have been persuaded into thinking a certain way about their bf experience and/or bf in general - and the cumulative effect of these persuasions is a continuing sense at a societal level of bf being some horrifically high bar most women will inevitably fail to clear and be vilified for it. Bf can be bloody difficult. Sometimes a decision to stop will be the right or only possible thing, and really it's nobody else's business when that point comes. But sometimes not making that decision can be just as lonely a course of action.

I mean fgs - whethr we breastfed or formula fed or some combonation, had babies, together we have a wealth of experience on this topic to share with each other. Consciousness raising discussion is feminist. It is totally antithetical to a feminist and woman supporting atmosphere to tell women that they are victim blamers, mafia, martyrs etc when they raise their voices about their own experiences of breastfeeding. We live in a culture of silence around breastfeeding, not a culture that supports it. For every NHS representative that claims breast is best I guarantee you there is another who is frowning and negative about breastfeeding. And overall the NHS is far from supportive of it. So individualising this to 'horrible women who are being judgmental' just for talking about it makes no sense, it's just another way to have a go at women rather than listen to them.

Or some combination when we had babies

That should have said.

Ok Rosenberg. Taking your point about women raising their voices with their exoerience of bf.

When I do it, I’m not believed.

Do women actually say to you, I don't believe you and you're making it up, or do you just assume they mean that because they continue to talk about their own experiences?

They say did you try this. Have you done this and that. That’s the midwives at the clinic.

The HV told me I should have been able to feed because I’d fed the rest there was no reason she could see why i hadn’t fed this one myself.

I couldn't breastfeed.

It nearly broke me, PND, suicidal thoughts, feeling like a failure. And the people that made me feel the worst were woman.

The men in my life DF, DG, friends, colleagues etc did not care and were just happy that there was a lovely healthy baby in the family and couldn't care less how the baby was fed.

If you ever have judged or applied pressure on a new mother to continue to breastfeed shame on you. You have no idea what she is going through, unless she asks you (or you are a qualified lactation professional) please shut up.

If you say to someone "I couldn't breastfeed" and they say "but did you try lactation cookies / la leche league / rugby ball hold" it means they don't believe you. A more appropriate response might be, "I'm sorry to hear that, do you want to talk about it?" I've never had the latter.

Exactly that accrual.

The midwives are probably running through a list off things that may help, they should be doing that! Some other women will find them doing that valuable, I would have, and you are free to tell them you don't require their advice as it is not useful to you, or just switch off while they are talking about it if you aren't feeling up to saying that.

The health visitor sounds like a dismissive dickhead. Apologies to any of you who are HVs, but I've encountered several who are like this, tbh. If she makes you feel uncomfortable or that she is treating you poorly, you can refuse to see her. I have done this with HVs - ask your GP if you can be referred to someone else and put in a complaint. What she said was insensitive at best.

In my experience women being treated like we don't know our own minds or bodies, and we aren't honest about them either, is pretty much the norm when we encounter the medical establishment. That is very much a feminist issue, yes.

Nobody should ever offer unsolicited advice or comment to individuals.

Rosenberg why aren’t they reading my notes? My notes were there, they could read them. Why just blindly horse on without taking 2 mins to read where I was at eith bf ?

And that’s not even counting the peersupporters who trawled the room looking for anyone with a bottle in their baby’s gub to berate them soundly and send them home with a flea in their ear.

Is the baby BF?

No I couldn’t BF.

and thus it would begin.

Did you try.

Why not.

Did you this.

Did you that.

Did you consider using or trying to do this

And I went home and decided a packet or two of paracetamol was the best option because I was so fucking useless.

Accrual - "If you say to someone "I couldn't breastfeed" and they say "but did you try lactation cookies / la leche league / rugby ball hold" it means they don't believe you"

I don't think that's right. Are you overlooking the way that we use questions not just to give advice, but also to gather knowledge? Like if you said you struggled with mastitis, and I said did you try cabbage leaves - I wouldnt be implying I don't believe you about the mastitis, I would be saying a) I've heard cabbage leaves can be helpful in those circumstances and b) if you've tried that and didn't work, please let me know so I can store that info in my own brain information bank. Does that make sense?

cabbage leaves don’t work. And you stink like an overboiled Christmas dinner.
HTH.

@Rosenberg I just don't think it's appropriate. If someone says "I couldn't breastfeed" surely it means they tried everything they were aware of that they wanted to try. If I'd never heard of lactation cookies, what would be the point of me hearing about them now, two months down the line? Even if they would have been guaranteed to work (they're not, they're bloody biscuits not magic) I'd then be left feeling crap that maybe I could have done it if only I'd tried them.

Cabbage leaves didn't work for me, no, but it's one of the only pieces of advice I was given! Ive breastfed now for nearly eight years (in total) and I've never heard of lactation cookies, either.

I don't think questions like that are inappropriate in general because I do think we use questions not just to give advice but also to gather info, and we may think that in the future remembering the conversation may have value to everyone involved. Unfortunately they may be inappropriate in individual circumstances where women have difficulty talking about the topic, but we can't know that unless you say 'I don't want to discuss this'. And for every woman who doesn't want to discuss it, there may be another who does - so what to do? The answer can't be that women stop talking about breastfeeding, or midwives give even less advice/support about it?

What the hell is a lactation cookie ?

Oat biscuits to help boost your supply. And hailed as salvation to all bf woes round my way.

I mean in the specific circumstances bluedog is talking about it seems to me she has good reason to raise a complaint about the health visitor, and possibly about the midwives too. But that doesn't mean that in general when a woman says "have you tried x" that she is actually saying "I don't believe you".

bit this isn’t about I struggled with mastitis. It’s not even about I struggled with BF.

It’s about. I couldn’t BF. And then getting launched at about the whys and wherefores and the did you try’s.