Babies: 3 - 6 Months
johnstonnic
member
Why Did You Quit BF'ing?
johnstonnic
member
....DD is just shy of 4mo, and I am contemplating stopping and going to formula....but I feel totally guilty. Just wondering why some of you other mom's decided to quit?.....thanks.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Why Did You Quit BF'ing?
I quit because DD was a horribly lazy eater, it would take cold cloths to wake her up enough to eat. We fought through for 5 weeks, I had supply issues and took every suppliment under the sun to bring it up. Then one morning DD scratched her face so hard she bled while I was trying to BF her and that was it for me.
I felt guilty for a while, but looking back on it I know that was what was best for DD and my sanity.
I am on the verge of quitting due to supply issues. I was able to sort of keep up with lots of pumping and some supplementing, but now that I am back at work my supply has tanked.
LO is mostly on formula now and no matter how hard I try I get about 4-6 oz per day pumping. My goal was to make it to Labor day, so at this point any day extra is just added bonus.
I felt very guilty for a long time, but I see how happy LO is on formula and that he is actually satified for more then 60 minutes and it makes it all worth it.
A kiss he will never forget- Disney World 2014
Mikaela is going to have a little brother!
I did it for 10 weeks. I was able to do it when I went back to work at my old job b/c we were in an office and it was easy to get away for 20 minutes to pump. However, at my new job I work retail and there was no way I would be able to go to my car and pump and get back with the lousy couple of breaks I get during a day. Plus, even just training for this job would have been impossible to get away.
I felt VERY guilty but in the beginning when she was only eating 4oz at a time I would be able to pump a days worth of formula+ more. However, now she was taking 6oz there was no way I was able to produce that much. If I got one serving I was lucky. So I just stopped. And in all honestly I feel better about it now. I feel "freer" if that makes sense. I felt such a need to rush home to pump or find a place to nurse, etc and I couldn't deal. Now I have more time to just spend with her! I rather take that 20 min that I had to pump and clean to spend with her.
I have thyriod disease and the meds aren't safe for BFing moms. I had to choose to continue to BF or take meds. I wasn't producing much milk anyway, so I opted for the meds.
This for me. My goal was to keep BFing until I was back to school, and I made it until then plus a couple weeks, so I'm happy. She's just over four months old, and I'm happy that I was able to do it this long. I was pumping, but never had enough to really build a stash - and now that I'm back to work AND school, my supply has pretty much vanished because I don't have the time to pump. From 7:30 in the morning until 4:30, I'm non-stop back and forth from work to school and vice versa with no time in between to pump to keep my supply up.
Reason #1: I got Mastitis for the second time in a 2-week period. It was the most pain I've ever been in and I really, honestly couldn't take care of my kids. When I got the second antibiotic, I told my doc I was done BF, so they also gave me some Vicodin to help with the pain of the mastitis combined with the pain of drying up.
Reason #2: My toddler was acting up everytime I BF the baby and it was really challenging.
Stopping was a great decision for my family, and unless you count the cost of formula, I don't regret it at all.
This exactly. I had thrush almost constantly no matter what I did to get rid of it. DD had a bad reaction to the thrush drops the doc gave her, I would get clogged ducts every time I wore a bra, I had a painful let down (on top of the pain from the thrush), DD was a lazy eater (like, over an hour to eat) and had a bad latch no matter how many LCs I saw.
I toughed it out for two and a half months and then I decided to pump and bottle feed to try to get rid of the thrush and as soon as I did that my supply tanked to almost nothing so I just switched to formula.
We're ALL much happier!
However, I totally plan to try breastfeeding again with my next LO.!!
Eleanor Noelle - 18/05/12 Claire Elisabeth - 16/-5/10
I wouldn't give my baby formula.Formula fed babies suffer from poor vagal nerve tone because of the formula and their autonomic nervous systems are measurably disordered. That makes them sleepier and less alert than breastfed newborns. Poor vagal nerve tone in a newborn is related to inferior motor and mental development for at least two years after birth. While formula is commonly perceived to be the medically recommended second-choice infant food after breastfeeding, the World Health Organization (WHO) actually states: "The second choice is the mother's own milk expressed and given to the infant in some way. The third choice is the milk of another human mother. The fourth and last choice is artificial baby milk."
With so many American babies -- and particularly those at socioeconomic risk -- relying on this single food source for their growth and nutritional well-being, it is incumbent upon those concerned with infant-maternal health issues to examine breastmilk substitutes carefully and critically. Unfortunately, many health-care professionals and public-health officials avoid scrutinizing the production and marketing of commercial infant formula in the United States under the mistaken assumption that providing consumers with all the facts on artificial breastmilk substitutes willcausebottle-feeding mothers to feel guilty for not breastfeeding. In fact, this unwillingness to explore the safety and nutritional competency of infant formulas only succeeds in retarding consumer pressure for better quality. As Marsha Walker, RN, IBCLC, and a recognized expert on infant nutrition writes: "This paternalistic view seeks to protect women from making 'poor' choices for themselves and their infant, and robs parents of the right to informed decision making. Withholding information generates more anger than guilt in parents..."("A Fresh Look At The Risks of Artificial Infant Feeding", J Hum Lact 9(3), 1993).
One of the least publicized risks of infant formula is inescapably inherent in the consumption of any commercially prepared and mass-marketed food product: between 1982 and 1994 alone, there were twenty-two signifigant recalls of infant formula in the United States due to health and safety problems. At least seven of these recalls were classified by the FDA as "Class I", meaning the problem could be life threatening. In several instances, random lots of lab-tested infant formula have been found to contain bacterial and elemental contaminants that, while a risk to infant health, do not rise to the level of threat considered appropriate for a widespread recall by the FDA. In February of 1995, FDA special agents uncovered a successful criminal scheme in California in which
thousands of cans of substandard infant formula had been improperly labeled for resale. No one knows how many infants received this counterfeit product in their bottles.
Physicians and other health-care providers in the developing world were
bribed by formula manufacturers to steer patients away from breastfeeding and toward a particular brand of synthetic infant nutrition. Age-old cultural norms of exclusive and extended breastfeeding were disrupted as huge advertising campaigns convinced women that commercial infant formula was the "modern, sterile, western" way to feed babies. New mothers were lured into giving birth in hospitals funded by infant formula manufacturers. There, these women were encouraged to offer bottles of artificial breastmilk substitutes -- a practice proven to disrupt breastfeeding.
Mothers and babies were then sent home with a small "free" supply
of infant formula. By the time the supply ran out, baby was refusing the breast, mother's own milk supply was diminished, and the typical, impoverished family was unable to pay for any more infant formula. These practices, combined with an unsanitary water supply, lack of sterilization and refrigeration facilities, and poor access to medical care, conspired to kill millions of third-world babies each year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Mikaela is going to have a little brother!
Oh, geeze! Sorry for what you attracted here....
I quit BFing at 3 months because DS refused to latch, and have been exclusively pumping since then. My supply is dramatically tanking right now, and I have tried everything short of prescription drugs to improve it. I'm having to supplement with stash and formula to keep up with his demands, and it's getting to the point where I am feeling angry at my supply and wondering why I'm even bothering! So I'll likely wait another week before doing anything differently, but I suspect we'll have a formula fed baby within the next month because it's just getting to be impossible to keep the milk supply up despite pumping 8 times a day.
Like others said, sometimes you have to do what's right for you and other times your hand is forced. But there's nothing bad about formula other than it's not breastmilk....this formula-fed adult turned out just fine.
Wrangling babies since 2010