Breastfeeding
Allie30
member
Quit it with the proselytizing!
Allie30
member
Is it me, or is every so-called breastfeeding resource out there about 80% "this is why breastfeeding is good for you and your baby" and only 20% actual advice on breastfeeding?
I would love to come across just ONE that already took it as given that I'd decided to breastfeed and skipped pages and pages and hours and hours of talk about what a great choice I was making (alternately, "but seriously, don't feel guilty if you can't and must formula feed") and just went for the nitty gritty.
/rant
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Re: Quit it with the proselytizing!
This was a huge frustration for me when I encountered some BFing challenges at the beginning. I even went to a LLL meeting focusing on BFing newborns and it was the same deal - all about WHY to BF, but not HOW, or how to overcome difficulties.
It seems like pro-BFing sources are afraid to admit that it can be difficult, or really talk about how to deal with difficulties, probably because our BFing rate is so low they just want to get more people on board. But it does no good to just get people BFing, you have to help them maintain it, otherwise everyone just quits right away.
ETA: Kellymom.com is a great resource.
Thank you, ibis. I will check out kellymom.
Honestly, until I got pregnant, I had no idea that breastfeeding rates were so low. My mom and my husband's mom both BF, and we're one of the first of our "group" to have kids (and my friend's kid was born with a deformity that made it impossible to breastfeed, but her mom pumped and fed her breastmilk out of a special bottle) so I really thought that was what everyone did. Which is silly, I know, since I'm aware that formula exists. I guess I just thought it was like baby food -- something that older kids drank. But it never occurred to me *not* to breastfeed.
And reading the resources is kind of like reading a book called "Teach Your Baby to Walk!" and finding that half of it is devoted to talk about how beneficial walking is for your baby and how YOU TOO can have a baby who walks, when really all you want is talk about balance and scraped knees.
I completely, 100% know exactly what you mean. One the largest disappointments for me was my BFing class that I took before I had DS. It was all about how wonderful BFing was and how easy & pain free it should be - which made you believe that if you had pain (which you will in the beginning, esp if this is your first) you're a horrible mother that's doing something wrong & failing at BFing.
I was very lucky to have incredible support around me - my mom EBF both my sister & I until 16+ months & MIL EBFed DH until 12 months. But be prepared for everyone to be all up in your business about how you feed your child. Complete strangers will inquire as to the status of your boobs & everyone will have an opinion about whether you're doing the right thing or not.
I think I read somewhere (and I have no idea where) that close to 70% of mothers start off BFing in the hospital, but only 17% are sill BFing at 6 mo. If nothing else, that should tell the "powers that be" that their tactics are a bit amiss - they've gotten out the message but failed on the follow through.
I completely agree. Some pro-BFing sources try to blame hospitals, epidurals, etc., but this doesn't ring true when you look at the numbers. Around 70% of women breastfeed for the first week, starting in the hospital, but the number is cut in half by 6 mo. How can you blame that on an epidural (and I didn't have an epi, just saying I'm not buying it!) or the way the birth went? It's about a lack of support after you leave the hospital, if you ask me.
Kellymom has a chart on this:
https://www.kellymom.com/writings/bf-numbers.html
I agree - lack of support and lack of accurate, realistic, detailed information about BFing. I found that you either hear how hard, terrible, painful BFing is or you hear how wonderful, easy, painless it is. As usual, the truth falls in the middle.