breastfeeeding

madhouseof4

As a breastfeeding peer supporter, I do advocate breastfeeding, but not in a militant "Breast is Best and you MUST do it or else" kind of way. We are as much about offering practical and emotional support to new mothers whether they are successful at breastfeeding or not. We do not like to see a mother upset, frustrated and angry at herself for not being able to breastfeed succesfully and sometimes, to keep pushing at something that isn't working can actually be detrimantal to the relationship between mother & child. Babies are very intuative and will pick up on a mothers mood very easily. It is much better for the baby to have a happy bottle feeding mother, than an unhappy, stressed breastfeeding mother and it is about time that people stopped trying to put down bottle feeding mothers, all they are doing, like the rest of us, is what they think is right for them and THEIR baby. It is the most that anyone can do.

Kondormid I am very sorry to hear about your friend, but have to agree that the benefits of breastfeeding far outweigh the risk in my opinion. In my case, my son is more likely to die from his heart condition, multiple food allergies, or complications that arise from either of these than from the fact that I breastfeed him. I live with the prospect of losing him everyday and if it does happen, I will have this rewarding experience of breastfeeding my special little guy for the rest of my life. For me, it is something to be super proud of.

yellowlabellady

Hi there, Ive never posted before but really felt I had to on this one. I would just like to say that I agree with the OP that said this is not really the right place for this kind of discussion because there are people who may want to avoid this kind of discussion due to issues they have and wouldnt expect it to be on Freebies board etc. However, when I saw it I had to read it to see what the consensus of opinion was as it is something I feel very strongly about and therefore wanted to put across my story.

I have a 10 month old little girl who I desperately wanted to Breastfeed. All through my pregnancy (and before I was pregnant even) I knew that was what I wanted to do, there was nothing I wanted more than to feel the closeness to my baby and to know that I was nourishing it from my own body. I also thought that people who said they couldnt breastfeed didnt really try - the arrogance of being ignorant eh?

However, things dont always turn out how you expect them to. My labour was normal but it progressed very fast in the end for a first birth and I managed to tear terribly and in the process ruptured a blood vessel. This wasnt apparent for some time and in the meantime I was slowly bleeding to death. My womb then stopped contracting properly and I lost alot more blood from this aswell. In the end I suffered a Post Partum Heamorrhage and had 3 pints of blood transfused, which should have been more but I convinced them I was ok! Why I dont know now!

My Iron levels were below 7 and any lower and I would have been critical. I have never felt or been so ill in my life.I didnt move for 3 days solid and then I nearly collapsed when I did.

Even so, I tried to Breastfeed my little girl for 5 days and she would just scream and pull off. I was ill, sore and desperate to do the best thing for my baby but once I was allowed home (after threatening to discharge myself and being allowed home too early after what had happened I think in hindsight) the Midwife came to weigh my baby. When I told her she had had no dirty nappies since we had left the hospital and had urates in her nappy aswell which is a sign of dehydration, she weighed her and saw that she had lost well over the 10% allowance they give new babies in the first week and she was very dehydrated. She had to phone the SCBU in case we needed to admit her which frightened the life out of me. She then asked me a series of questions and it was clear that I wasnt producing any milk. She had had the Colostrum the first cuople of days and then nothing so she was slowly starving. The MW said that because of what my body had been through it had kind of shut down and was incapable of producing any milk. I so wanted to carry on trying but then it was ascertained that on top of everything else I was suffering from a bad infection in my womb which neccesitated very strong drugs to clear it so I was not able to breastfeed with these anyway.

I was so unwell and I just wanted to carry on feeding her myself but I couldnt and no one can understand the feeling of devastation that has on you when that is what you wanted for your baby and is what you had expected to do. I felt so devastated we couldnt share that experience and also felt that I had let her down and I have spent the past 10 months feeling so upset and depressed about the whole thing and its only now that I am starting to feel a little better about it. It really was like grieving for something to start with and I wasted alot of time in those first precious months beating myself up for it. I realise now that I was in no position to feed her even if I had the milk, I was too unwell myself, but I would have done it if it was there even if it had killed me.

The irony is that while I was lying bleeding on my hospital bed I was breastfeeding my daughter for the first time and this is what caused the delay to finding out that I was bleeding so much.

I now realise that I did what was best for my daughter because she would have starved and also that its not as simple as I thought it was going to be. I wholeheartedly support anyone who Breastfeeds but I also now see there are very good reasons to bottlefeed aswell and my opinion of that has changed alot due to my own experiences so I wholeheartedly support if someone chooses to bottlefeed aswell.

My daughter is very advanced for her age and is no more sickly than any other child I know, breastfed or bottlefed so from my experience there has been very little detriment to her health by being bottlefed - only to my purse and my mental state from the guilt I feel.

I dont think anyone can judge on another persons choice without having lived their life - whether it is a calculated choice or one that is forced upon us no one else really knows why they made that choice and therefore it is not really anyone elses business. I was convinced people looked at me when I bottlefed my baby when we were out and were thinking why was I doing that and not breastfeeding instead. I felt so guilty but its not always as cut and dried as it seems.

I think at the end of the day as long as the baby and mum are healthy and happy then that is the most important thing - how we feed them is not the issue, being a good parent is.

genegenie

"Yes you friends children may be at risk but what about the 150,00 children that die every year as a result of being bottlefed?" (sorry i dont know how to quote)

Id be very interested to know where you acquired this statistic from.........
?????!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????:eek:

wickywocky

I've been reading this thread whilst feeding my 10 month old. daughter. There are some very moving stories and it's great to read such a wide range of opinions.

As I said, I'm sitting here feeding my daughter, but I'm breastfeeding her formula. She's my third child and each time I've not made enough milk to exclusivly breastfeed. Luckily I found the La Leche League and an excellent leader (LLL term for a b/f supporter/counseller) who told me about a nursing supplimentor, a device consisting of a bottle that hangs round my neck with tubes that I tape to each breast. The baby takes the tube at the same time as the breast and therefore gets breastmilk and formula at the same time, and continues to stimulate the breasts to produce milk while taking the formula. We call it a booby bottle. This transformed my life and I'm sure that without it I wouldn't have continued to breastfeed for anywhere near as long as I have.

My eldest child weaned last year aged 4 and something. He's tandem nursed with both his sisters, creating a very special bond. Continuing to nurse him helped enormously when my first daughter died suddenly at 6 weeks.

For the poster asking for advice on weaning, I can recommend the La Leche League book "How weaning happens". They also publish one called "Mothering your nursing toddler" which I've found useful too. If you contact your local group (details on https://www.laleche.org.uk) they may have them in their library.

TKPeters

Tesco's currently have Packs of 50 Tommee Tippee Disposable Breast Pads, 3 for £10 (6.6p each) on offer till 27/3

http://www.tesco.com/superstore/product/promo.aspx?prodId=51115568
Boxes are now sliver, Tesco's haven't updated the image

yorkshirepudding_4

genegenie wrote:

"Yes you friends children may be at risk but what about the 150,00 children that die every year as a result of being bottlefed?" (sorry i dont know how to quote)

Id be very interested to know where you acquired this statistic from.........
?????!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????:eek:

an article that was handed to me by a la leche league tutor, i dont have it to hand but it does have a legitimate source and if i find it i will quote it.

cheddar

yorkshirepudding wrote:

Yes you friends children may be at risk but what about the 150,00 children that die every year as a result of being bottlefed?

Typical breastfeeding mafia scare tactics. Why are people like this? Do you hound parents who take their kids to macdonalds telling them of the children who eat too much hydrogenated fats die earlier as a result as well or is it just breastfeeding you are militant about? Fod goodness sake this is a FREEBIES forum get over it love.

And don't bother replying i have seen your sort time and time again on the bounty forums. I won't even look back at this thread.

NB: I agree that breast is best but also the choice is there too, we shouldn't be forced/scared/bullied into ANYTHING in this world.

cheddar

OH and take into account the number of mothers who end up severly depressed and suicidal after being treated like dirt for not being able or not wanting to bf too....there are deaths there as well, leaving orphans. It swings both ways.

Maysie

Well i would like to say thank you to the woman who donated breast milk when i had my son. After a c-section and few days i was exausted and stuck in hospital and just couldn't face feeding him again i was so sore. I was offered donated breast milk for him which he had no problem. Gave me that extra chance to catch up was great.

With both mine my milk was slow to come in. First one is was 7 days 2nd one was -5-6 days. Most womans milk comes in much faster i believe. Both mine lost over 10% in the first week. Its fiddly the first few weeks and very tiring but once u settle baby settles and its just lovely. The let down is just full of happy hormones. I could never get really cross or angry about anything while i was breastfeeding.

A tip do not eat loads of liquoirce while bf my baby refused food for over 24hrs once because i had disrupted the taste :O

One hv told me my daughter would be overweight by the time she was one if i didn't give up bf her she was around 7 months at the time. I didnt' listen and carried on till she was 18months. She wasn't and is underweight if anything now at 9.

I gave up suddenly at 9 months with my son and i had so much milk it was painfull then. Someone suggested epsom salts in orange juice to dry up my milk. Yes it works but omg do not try it unless you like sitting on the loo for ages lol

Mice_Elf

I had a C-Section as well with my daughter. She was my first and my labour was not a nice, easy one as I had hoped. I got to 9cm and then stopped progressing so after a few more hours we decided upon an emergency c-section.

After daughter was born she was tagged and whisked up to the SCBU for antibiotics as it had been over 24 hours from my water's breaking to her being born. (My labour ended up being 37 and a half hours....oooh the pain.... )

There was never any question in my mind that I should breastfeed. Daughter was born at 22:40 on a Sunday night and was latched on (amidst all the tubes) at 10 past midnight, after the surgeon seemed to have spent MONTHS sewing me back up. She "fed" for about an hour, both sides and then I went to the ward, she went to the SCBU. She woke for a feed at 3:10am Monday morning and I had to ask the nurse to pick her up for me, but she latched on fine and fed happily.

Stubborn moo that I am, I needed to know that I could pick up and put down my baby when I wanted to, so from then on, I made the effort to see to my daughter without calling the nurses. Fortunately, I didn't seem to have too much difficulty with that.

However, towards the end of my 3 day stay in hospital, my nipples were beginning to become sore. No one bothered to see if my daughter had latched correctly and I'm assuming that she wasn't. When I got home the pain gradually became worse and one feed in particular frightened me when I saw blood dripping out of my baby's mouth!

I figured that she probably wouldn't like drinking blood instead of milk so after much use of creams, air-drying, rubbing in breast milk and trying different positions, I eventually resorted to nipple shields - something frowned upon as it can cause nipple confusion in babies.

The shields helped enormously and I had to use them for night on 4 weeks until my nipples healed enough to use without severe pain. After that though she fed without any problems and I could relax enough to enjoy the snuggly closeness of my warm, clean baby as she gazed up at me so trustingly.

She finally self-weaned at just over a year old, which was quite sad as I really missed the closeness, but it was interrupting her mobility and she wasn't having any of that!

Despite the pain and soreness that I experienced, I won't hesitate to breastfeed my next child, if and when I ever have one. I had lots of people telling me to formula feed her to give me a break, but as it was still in the early stages I needed her demands to allow my boobs to meet her requirements and my HV was very supportive and kept showing me how to latch to see if I could get it.

Interestingly I had more trouble latching to the left than to the right.

A friend of mine tried to b/f her baby but also had difficulties latching on, so instead switched to expressing and feeding her baby that way. She fed her daughter until 4 months old and then switched.

Have to say that in comparison with just these 2 little girls, my daughter is more active, healthier, more sociable, more talkative and more intelligent than my friend's. And I know that could sound like proud mummy syndrome but it's not just me that's noticed it.

Now at age 21 months, my daughter can count to 10, hold conversations (albeit limited), has over 250 words in her repetoire, can say 8 word sentences, has learnt plurals and can recite the alphabet. My friend's daughter just about says hello.

Health wise my daughter has had just 3 colds in her life, 1 fairly heavy and 2 medium colds. My friend's daughter seems to be ill every time we go round whether that be with a tummy upset, ear infection, diarrohoea , vomiting or a cold.

On the other hand though their upbringings have been quite different. I don't allow my daughter to spend hours in front of the television like my friend's daughter for example. One thing she definitely does better than my daughter is recognise television programmes! Although my friend's daughter eats organically, she is vegetarian as well and is also allowed to constantly trough her way through lots of junk foods, whereas my daughter is not fed completely organically (although where I can and when expenses allow....) and is not allowed to snack on anything other than fruit and not allowed to constantly trough, despite being much more active than her counterpart.

Friend's daughter is in size 4 - 5 year old clothes whereas my little one is just about growing into her 12 - 18 months clothes and they are the same height.

So to precis my long rambling post, breast or formula fed probably does make a difference, but so does the food we eat, what we do with our children, the upbringing they have, the lifestyle they are allowed to lead.

As a C-Section baby, my daughter is supposed to be more sickly as she has not been exposed to the bacteria that vaginal births have but she is in rude health.

Of course, there will always be exceptions to the rule, but while breastfeeding may work for some, it won't for all and no one should feel guilty about not being physically able to, for whatever reason. All babies will thrive better when in a happy relationship with their mummy.