Encouraging breast feeding

Combust?

Easy tiger…seems like you’re the one most likely to combust.

I just can’t be bothered with the “it’s ok if it’s discreet” brigade. Worst kind of fence sitters.

tomd, I completely agree with you!

Mine are 9 and 11 now! Neither would take a bottle and fortunately took to the breast fairly straightforwardly. They are both awesome!

I’ll tell you what I think is best; what works for your family – that’s what. To state the obvious a new baby in the house is just the most intensely exciting, bewilderingly headmashingly wonderful experience which was kinda like you think it would be. Except about a 1000 times more intense. Do what ever you can reasonably do. Reasonably being the key word. That’s going to massively vary from day to day and family to family. If you are thoughtful and doing what you think is best then that’s good enough.

All the best.

Why is it fence sitting? It’s not a black and white matter, and I suspect militant ‘I’ll get them out wherever I please’ types actually cause more harm than they succeed in changing attitudes. I absolutely defend the right to breastfeed in public, but I also value other people’s opinions and feelings.

militant ‘I’ll get them out wherever I please’

What are you on about?

When has a breast feeding mother thought “It will please me to get my bleeding, cracked, chafing, agonising nipples out in public for my own gratification”. It’s not a lifestyle choice. The mother is feeding her baby. The baby wants fed, it gets fed. You’re starting from the stand point that it’s a lifestyle choice, which I don’t believe it is.

If you can’t spot the difference between a mother who needs to feed a baby but who has sufficient empathy that there may be people who are less comfortable with that and therefore find a suitable way to take those sensitivities into account, vs one who feels it’s her right and will get them out wherever she is and **** anyone who doesnt like it – there’s little point me trying to explain. But I’ll try anyway (sucker for punishment 😉 )

My wife breastfed our second. If she felt she was getting hungry, we’d go off for a coffee somewhere and find a table where she could sit with her back to the cafe. Or sit near some other mothers with kids who are less likely to be embarrassed by it. She’d try to avoid sitting next to the elderly gent for whom it might be a bit more disconcerting. Is she one of your fencesitters – because I dare you to tell her that be being courteous and thoughtful of others, she should go get ****.

we’d go off for a coffee somewhere and find a table where she could sit with her back to the cafe

You don’t think that’s odd?

FWIW my wife isn’t British so I had to explain the Victorians to her and why she should find a cupboard to feed in. She just doesn’t get it so continues to flash the odd bit of side book in Costa coffee with juniors throws the muslin away and goes for the good stuff.

No. I don’t find being conscious of others feelings odd at all.

And trust me, there were times when a heck of a load more got flashed than side boob, and there were times when people tutted and made comments, and I defended my wife’s right to discretely nurse in public and if they don’t like it, look in the other direction.

Cuts both ways. Not black and white. Opinions.

OP, my hubby showed me your post (ernie) and I’m commenting from his account as yor situation resonated with us. Our first was delivered by planned C section, under general anaesthetic. Luckily for all concerned there was no trauma, but I was alseep for the first 8 hours of her life and due to some medication I wasn’t allowed to attemp to bf until she was 36 hours hold. She was exclusively bottle fed during that time, with no skin to skin as I was too unwell. She had a 100% tongue tie and struggle to bottle feed too. It wasn’t cut until day 10. However, we went on to exclusively breast feed until she was a year old. I put our success down to the following:
1) I had amazing support from the feeding consultant in the hosptial and also the healthcare assistants. I basically made a pain of myself and insisted someone stay with me until I could get D latching properly. Without that support I’m sure I would have struggled to establish feeding.
2) i was told to express every three hours for the first two weeks, so I would feed D, and hour and a half later pump, and hour and a half later feed and so on. This really helped establish my supply. It is harder to establish supply after a C section, especially if it was elective as your body doesn’t receive the same hormonlal signals as it would during a natural delivery, so pumping is key. If your wife is really poorly she may be deficient in iron (especially if she needed a transfusion), ask about iron supplements as iron deficiency will impact supply.
3) when pumping try and relax (I used hypnobirthing techniques) and think about your baby/look at a photo of baby to stimulate the right hormones. Don’t panic if you produce very little, especially in the early days. Her milk won’t come in for a good 3-4 days.
4) if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. It’s food after all and feeding your baby is the most important thing. As for nipple confusion I’m very dubious about this, but Medela Calma bottles are dsigned to mimic a breast and a baby needs to suck the same way as they would at a boob so these are the best bottles to use if your wife wants to try combi feeding. If you are anywhere near Reading we have some that you can have (they aren’t cheap and ours have barely been used).
5) luck and determination. I am pretty sure that it was sheer bloodymindedness that meant we succeeeded at breastfeeding, that and absolute luck. My nipples didn’t crack, bleed, blister etc even during 10 days of feeding through a severe tongue tie. I know that I am bloody lucky, even so I did have times where the latching reduced me to tears.
6) i found the babycentre forum was amazing at offering support. There are birth boards where everyone has a baby the same age, so are all up in the middle of the night for support and there is a specific breast feeding support forum to help trouble shoot technique etc.
7) a decent breast feeding pillow was a god send. I had a really firm one that offered me lots of support.
8) remember the first few days are the hardest. Everything in your wifes world has changed, hirmones are surging round her body, feeding is painful to her nipples and painful to her uterous (bf causes it to contract), it gets easier after a few days, but significantly easier after the first 6 weeks, then again after 8 weeks. Setting short and achievable goals might help eg I’ll do one more day, then two more days, if I can get past this bit I can manage another week etc. once bf is established it is so much easier than faffing about with bottles (that’s what I kept telling myself anyway!).

I’m a big fan of bf. I am intrinsically lazy and forgetful, both personality traits that put me off bottle feeding! However, I really dislike the way that any form of feeding is rammed down parents throats. Food is food. There are a lot of studies that suggest bf is better than formula, but fundamentally the reasons for this are unclear. It isn’t a magic wand. I bf both my children, they both have allergies and they both get every illness going. That is more to do with genetics than how I fed them as babies. Your wife is not a failure, whatever choices she makes and it saddens me that this will be colouring her early days and memories with her baby.

10 month old. Loves the bitty.

Was 100% tongue tied at birth. Not spotted until we left hospital and the health visitor saw him.
The midwifes were foul and insisted that we kept trying before we went home. Poor kid couldn’t latch on.
My wife expressed and fed him off syringes and bottles. The hospital midwifes still insisted that we had failed and said we had chosen to bottle feed him.

Anyways.

Baby has had two tongue tie snips. It came back after the first cut. My wife has successfully fed him on the boob from 3 weeks old. There was no confusion for him over teat vs nipple. He took/takes both happily.

It is worth it. Breast is best. Plus its free.

But I wouldn’t loose sleep over it.

Why should being discreet be the worst kind of fence sitter? There’s a compromise to be had between confining yourself to a corner under a shawl versus making a big show of it. A hungry baby doesn’t have to be fed the very instant it starts crying, it’s not a medical emergency. You can spend 5 minutes finding somewhere to sit that’s not in everyone’s face.

A hungry baby doesn’t have to be fed the very instant it starts crying

If he or she starts crying you’ve already left it too late.

making a big show of it

“It”. Brilliant. A thing so terrible it shan’t be named. A baby sucking a woman’s breast for nourishment. There said it. Boobies. Big swollen engorged boobies. Coming to an ostentatious spot in a CostaNeroBuckSpoons near you.

[nope, edited. No point going further with this one]

I try to encourage breast feeding but my mum said “**** off, you’re 35”.

aaaaaand that’s my entire contribution to the thread.

There’s some massive tits on this thread.

IGMC (although it is true).

I can empathise with your situaiton, we had the same with our boy. The pressure of breast feeding from all angles (NHS in particular), tongue tie, breast pumps, breast feeding coaches all ended up with my wife hospitalised and on a drip with chronic mastitis and feeling like a failure.
For our second kid she tried again but started to see similar issues so told everyone that she would be using a bottle and if they didn’t like it they could **** off.
Lesson – your wife should do what she wants. Both are perfectly viable ways of feeding your baby.

Thanks for all the great advice, support and comments. Really appreciated.

Update: came home Tuesday, on a mix of pumped breast milk and formula. Breast fed for the first time successfully this morning.

Has gained 7 ounces since Sunday morning.

Happy.

Alex

when pumping try and relax (I used hypnobirthing techniques) and think about your baby/look at a photo of baby to stimulate the right hormones.

Now I’m a man, obv, but as an outside observer it seemed to be a little bit like sex in that if you’re stressed and not in the mood it doesn’t work very well. I think (and it is just a casual observation of course) that the thinking of loving babyish thoughts is quite important in success.

Of course, these thoughts are sometimes far away from mothers’ minds.. post natal feelings and responses are a bit of a minefield.