Great advice. I too could not breastfeed due to my son's many medical issues. I pumped like crazy and literally almost went nuts trying to do it. the stress of his issues combined with the stress of just dealing with an unhealthy child cause me to dry up.

In the end he needed a higly specialized formula anyways due to his GERD.

Thanks for putting this out there for those of us who could not breast feed even though we despartely wanted to!!

Jessica

 I am in the middle of this story hehe My first was a chomper and I developed mastitis and when you go thru 3 days of pain while feeding your baby and when you look at them all you think of is pain, its not good.

I was lucky enough to pump for a few weeks but then dryed up. I am hoping to breastfeed my 2nd but im not going to force it, as last time the doctors and lectation consultents basicly forced it down my throte I dont think they actualy cared that I was in so much pain that I was crying and couldent bond with my bub!

I thing its sad when you dont get enough infomation but its just as bad when you have 10 people trying to do things 10 different ways and not caring about you!

I think aslong as you give it your best shot, you should beable to feel good with your choises :)

its just too sad that you let your bad experience from a jaundiced child (when a baby is jaundiced they are often too tired to suck, it has nothing to do with breastfeeding) influence you not to really try with your second, i feel for you that you were mistreated , misinformed, and not supported in your efforts.. in short, you and your baby got short changed.

i am very proud of you, and my sons could not have a better mother.

love you! xXx

Hi!  I so agree with you - mothers have enough guilt about their choices as it is that we don't need other people condemning us.  We need support - and it sounds to me like you didn't have a whole lot of support.  Sadly that is often the case - we get told to breastfeed but it does not come naturally to many of us and often there is not the help we need to make it work.  There are plenty of people willing to "help" but so few of them actually help.  And, let's face it, breastfeeding is just one part of being a mum - and just one part of your relationship - there is so much more. 

I struggled for weeks (& expressed for weeks) and went to see person after person for help - when I found the right one, finally it worked - but I was very lucky!  I know for many mums it is so hard.  If the help is out there, go after it, as it can make so much difference, but if it doesn't work and you tried your best, please don't feel guilty - yes, there may be a bit of sorrow that you didn't really get a choice, or there may be regret that something you wanted to do didn't work out, but don't feel guilty...

i had twins and i had NO milk! couldnt breastfeed. my milk only started coming out about a month after the girls were born. also not enough. they are 8 months old now & i just have to wash & milk streams out!

I was very lucky to be able to breast feed both my boys and am currently breastfeeding my little girl.  However I experienced the same sort of condemnation from the fact that I have had three c-sections.

The way you feed your child, the sort of labour you have, the way you choose to raise your child are all very personal choices.

I applaud you for such a wonderful post.

Beautifully written.  There are a billion and one reasons why a mother may 'choose' to not breast-feed.  I use the word loosely as the more people share their stories the less choice has been available and the welfare of their baby has overruled their maternal instinct.   As many will know I didn't get to breast-feed and it devastated me for a long time, but I had to get over myself and do what was best for my baby.  She is now a healthy school - girl. 

Peace
EF.x

I had a very similar experience with my first as you did with yours. I find it downright disrespectful the way we are treated by doctors etc. I also couldnt feed my second child, as even though breastmilk adapts for childrens needs, it cant adjust for lactose intolerance, and even worse, breastmilk has about 2% more lactose than cows milk does.... it just wasnt meant to happen I guess!

Excellent article thanks for sharing with us.

 What a roller coaster  ride of emotions you went through trying to do right by your children and you did...both your children are healthy.....and thankfully you had support from your husband and family.

 Your story touched me....this is an excellent article.

Cheers Janice

WOW what a story you poor thing to have to go through such trouble when you were only trying to do what everyone said was best...

with my first he was on a bottle within a week breast feeding was just to painful and I didnt have enough milk to feed him full time.

with the 2nd I have enough milk to feed the whole of Australia!!

great advice thanks for sharing...

Anita xxx

i agree with you, its no ones business but yours.  my son was born 6 pounds 14 ounces, underweight and suffered loss of oxygen whilst i was in labour. he was on a drip and wouldn't eat. i tried so hard to breast feed my son when he was born but i couldnt, it broke my heart when they said he had to go on formula as he was losing weight.  as soon as he went on formula he put on weight quickly.

now hes 7 months and thriving fully i still get looked down at when i tell them i dont BF or im told that bottle feeding is wrong for a baby and they didnt have it when they where young. well its the 21st century and if someone want to bottle feed then they should.

I wanted to breastfeed my son, just like you did. I went to an extra antenatal class devoted to breastfeeding and didn't bother to read about bottle-feeding because I was sure that I was going to breastfeed. That class didn't mention that there are babies who refuse the breast.

My son was born slighty premature via caesarean and had a low body temperature and low blood sugar level. So he was whisked away to the special care nursery and I didn't see him for about 6 hours. I have type 2 diabetes, and it's not unusual for babies of diabetic mothers to have problems like those, but according to what I'd heard, he should have been brought to me within the first hour to two hours for a breastfeed. I probably wouldn't have seen him at all that day if it hadn't been for a change of shift, when the new nurse assigned to me asked me what I thought of my baby. I said I didn't know as I hadn't seen him all day. She arranged for him to be brought to me for a visit.

Because of the problems he was having, he had been given a nasogastric tube to be fed formula through. On day 2, he seemed to want to suck, so they asked if they could give him a dummy. We said yes and then they decided that meant he could have a bottle. Meanwhile, never having even tried to breastfeed, I was instructed to start expressing. Of course, I had no idea how to do this and had a midwife who helped. We only got a few mLs, but it was a start. Then I was told by some nurses to express every 4 hours and some that I should sleep through the night while I had the chance.

On day 3, they decided it would be ok for me to try to breastfeed. In the meantime, my son had already got used to the bottle. To the best of my knowledge, he latched on ok, but found he wasn't getting much of a result after the first couple of sucks and then screamed for 15 minutes until someone took him away from me. This happened every 4 hours for the next two days - when they didn't change the time on me so that they blamed me for coming to the nursery late (his feeding times were regimented so his blood sugar could be tested). We tried a feeding tube taped to my breast and all the other tricks the nurses could think of. Nothing worked. He would latch on, take a couple of unproductive sucks and scream until someone took him away to give him a bottle. Mostly he was given to my husband, and I was told to go away and express and try again in 4 hours. Because my son was in the special care nursery, and I obviously couldn't express there, I was given a Polaroid of him to help me focus on him and get the milk flowing. But expressing didn't achieve much - I think the best I did was about 20mL over 24 hours, and my son was already needing feeds of about 60mL at a time.

By day 5, I was desperate and depressed. I still have memories of sitting in the private room they took us into, trying to breastfeed again without success. I was being looked after by an agency nurse instead of one of the hospital staff nurses, and I suspect that made the difference to how she handled it. She saw the tears streaming down my face (which are threatening again now, less than a month from my son's 6th birthday) and said "You don't have to keep doing this if you don't want to. Today's formulas are very good and you know he's thriving on it." Well! I felt like I had been given permission to spend time with my son doing something that DIDN'T make him scream for the first time in 5 days.

I had a new nurse looking after me sometime in the next couple of days and she asked me about me suppressing my milk (not that much had ever really come down). I got so upset that my blood pressure skyrocketed (even though I take medication for it) and I had to lie down and talk about other things. Meanwhile, I was anxious to get back to my son, so it took ages for my blood pressure to settle again.

Even after it was known that I wouldn't be breastfeeding, the hospital were so weird about bottle feeding that they didn't tell us how to prepare the formula, recommend a brand or let us be involved when they made the formala. So when we were able to take our son home at 10 days old, we were pretty well clueless, except for one video they'd grudgingly shown us before we left. We bought formula from the chemist on the way home. We boiled the kettle and had to wait for the water to cool. It was 36 degrees that day (Christmas Eve), so it took a long while, even though we put water into one of our sterilised bottles and put the bottle into a jug filled with ice. Meanwhile, the baby was screaming away, starving.

Of course, we got the hang of it pretty quickly, and I don't regret bottle feeding at all. Our son did well on the formula, and we were both able to share the job of feeding him. For a long time, though, I was still wracked with guilt, and a close family member continually went on about how she loved breastfeeding, without ever mentioning to me that she herself had not been breastfed. I suffered from PND, and the whole breastfeeding issue contributed to it in a big way. I felt that my son didn't need me at all since anyone could prepare formula and feed him. Thankfully, time healed that wound and we developed a healthy bond.

It still irks me when I remember all the people who asked in the first few weeks and months, "Are you feeding him?" It wasn't a reference to his size, which was quite normal, but simply a way of being nosey about breastfeeding without mentioning the word "breast". Such a stupid question, I think once or twice I did actually snap, "No, I'm starving him."

Breast versus bottle is such a huge issue for so many mothers, and it's time that society stop making us feel guilty for the choices we make, and the choices that are made for us.

i have 4 kiddies and only fed 3 of them for first mth or 2 but my 4th who is now 20mths old was fed till she was 17mths and it was great, there were alot of hard times tho, was trying the bottle with her a few times but she wouldnt take it.....no one should judge mums who dont breast feed.....its up to the individual....great article, thanks for sharing

naomi xx

I am all for breastfeeding. I breastfed my son for 12 months, and breastfed my twins for 14 months. With my first, it was a struggle. I had to do a whole lot of tricks like dropping droplets of milk onto my nipple to get my son to suck (my milk didn't come until 10 days after giving birth). And struggled with a baby that woke up as much as 5 times a night up until he was 9 months old. With the twins, I had trouble too. It is essential to get a lot of help and resources when it comes to breastfeeding. But there is a point at which guilt, pain and frustration changes the tone of motherhood and it's the same point I think that others shouldn't contribute to the mother's feeling of guilt in deciding that breastfeeding is not for her.

Excellent article.