Breastfeeding & Peer pressure?!

xjustme01x

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Hi all I'm new to this and was just looking for some info I'm a student midwife in my final year and have been looking at breastfeeding influences and in particular I'm looking at peer pressure.

As I haven't been through this I just wanted to ask some people their views/stories about breast feeding & peer pressure really to gauge the impact and the effect of this.

Really appreciate any help :)

Michala
 
I've never felt pressured into breastfeeding, it's just something I had always wanted to do. :shrug: My OH supported me 100% as well. The midwives gave me some leaflets on breastfeeding before they knew I was so set on it anyway, and they brought it up once, maybe twice. Maybe it hasn't felt like I've been peer pressured because I've always been set on breastfeeding.. I adored BF my little girl, I did so for 7 months, exclusively, and I'm looking forward to doing it with my son as well.

xoxox
 
Hello, I hope my experience of this can be useful.

I am a mother of 2 who breastfed my first child for 1 year, and my second child for 8 months. Like the above poster, I have always known that breastfeeding was going to be the way for me when I had children. There was no question - just how I was brought up I suppose.
I am also a trained (La Leche League) breastfeeding peer counsellor. Having volunteered as such for some time when my children were smaller, I have to say that I believe there is often immense peer pressure NOT to breastfeed. We found some heavy barriers to BF success, but the influence of friends and families, particularly large extended families and more so within certain cultures (this was in a very multicultural area) was depressingly anti-breast and pro-bottle. In particular we found that since bottle-fed babies often put on more weight faster, new mothers were being pressured to 'fatten them up' using formula. I do believe everyone should have choice but educated choice is key and there is still so much misinformation around despite campaigns.
 
i was never pressured, its just something i always wanted to do.
midwife only brought it up once, but she could see i knew the benefits so didnt lecture me.
i struggled and could have used more help in hospital, but i sorted it myself (with the help of bnb :flower:)
i love breastfeeding!
 
I was 100% positive that breastfeeding was not for me even before i fell pregnant. None of my family members have ever breastfed so maybe thats why? Anyway...

Midwives did not stop going on about it. After i had her they were still asking me why arent you breastfeeding? Telling me i wasnt doing the best by my child. Saying they would help me try. Trying to shove more leaflets my way. They literally did not stop and basically implied i was bad parent for not giving it a go. In the end i had to bluntly say to them (Please no one take any offence from this..) It makes me feel physically sick. And even then they argued it was the most natural thing in the world! Drove me absoloutly insane!
And even this time at my 12wk appointment she questioned whether i breastfed my daughter, asked why i didnt and tryed to persuade me to breastfeed this time. And even threw the comment in that it was "common of teens just to use bottles.." RUDE!!!! xxx

Just to clear up as i really dont want to offend anyone, another woman breastfeeding her child in my presence i have absoloulty no feelings upon or objections to. My own child feeding from my breast, i just cannot handle the idea! xxx
 
Like some of the other ladies who have replied I always knew that I wanted to breastfeed my baby - I never even considered going down the formula / bottle route. The women in my family have all breastfed, I didn't consider not breastfeeding as an option.

My midwife asked if I had given any thought to it, at about 16 weeks, and I told her I wanted to breastfeed. She said 'thats what we like to hear' and gave me some information, at a later appointment we discussed the support that I would receive.

I have to say that the support after my baby was born was fantastic. I was very lucky and didnt stay overnight in hospital after he was born, so the next day a lady from a local breastfeeding support group came to my home to see how I was getting on. She was fantastic and made me feel so good about what I was doing. She called me every week to see how I was doing and I always knew that support was there if I needed it.

I've been breastfeeding for 8 months and I absolutely love it, I am very proud that I've done the best for my baby and I'm very grateful for the support I received.
 
Breastfeeding is something that I wanted to do, to give my babies the best start in life. Also helped with bonding. I fed my first for 7 months & second for 13 months.

I did struggle with my first baby, up for hours one night, not being able to settle him, very sore nipples etc. Was on the verge of sending partner out to get some formula. Mother-in-law came round as I was so desperate, she suggested expressing off & giving it to him in a bottle. Well it worked & he slept for 4 hours. Without this suggestion think I would have gone down the bottle route out of desperation.

So, so glad that I persevered, partner was very keen for me to continue with breastfeeding. After the first few weeks, things got alot easier with BF.

Health Visitor Assistant asked me when daughter was about 5 months old, how many bottles was she on per day. So it was assumed that I had stopped Breast feeding.... She seemed shocked that I was still feeding.....
 
I always new from the word go that I wanted to at least try to breastfeed. It just seems like the most natural thing to me - plus all the benefits!

Now I have been feeding for 6 months it seems the negative comments from friends are coming out - "just give her a bottle so you can have a drink" I don't want a drink.........."She'll sleep through if you give her formula" Not for sure and besides I don't mind getting up to feed my baby - it's not like you're in the room too and get woken!......."why are you still feeding?" ........why not!?

It seems that once you get to 6 months or so people think you should stop and introduce a bottle :shrug: why i don't know!

Peer pressure I think can have alot to do with whether a woman succesfully feeds or not. You do need support - at all stages of the breastfeeding journey!
 
Hiya, hope my experience will be of use to you.
I was brought up in a very large close Italian family, where not only was breastfeeding normal, but everybody supported the new Mum, there was no awkwardness about it, it was just what you did when you had a baby. I never really thought about that until recently!
When I had my son at 18, I didnt even consider anything other than breastfeeding him, I remember being so excited when I first started gushing milk at about 22 weeks pregnant, and proud of myself that I would be able to feed my baby.
When I gave birth to him, the midwives were totally surprised that I'd chosen to feed him, making some ridiculous comments about how I'd give up soon because I was so young. I did stop when he was 4/5 months old, but only because I'd had to go back to work when he was 3 months old part time and had to go full time a month or so later and I just didnt know how to express.
When I had my daughter a year later, she was also breastfed, again I never thought twice about doing it, despite all my friends being totally disgusted by the idea, my ex thinking I was getting some kind of bizarre sexual gratification out of it (hmmm, yeah, mastitus is sooo sexy) and basically getting no support from anyone outwith my family.

When I had Emily however, things have really changed. When I had my first 2, nobody asked how I intended to feed, but at my booking in appointment, I was bombarded with breastfeeding leaflets and the midwife spent more time talking about that than anything else. I couldnt even get a word in edgeways to tell her I was going to breastfeed anyway, to save her breath and a few trees in the process!!
It genuinely hadnt occured to me that there were people (other than my silly teenage friends all those years ago) who didnt find breastfeeding normal until I came home from hospital with Emily. My father in law would walk out the room any time i said I needed to feed the baby, my mother in law would stand there glaring at me, huffing and puffing and making snide rude comments, and the rest of my husband's family were just as unsupportive. They constantly made remarks about how nhs formula was good enough for their babies so why wasn't it for mine, and made me feel awful about myself and what I was doing, counting down the months saying it was high time I stopped feeding her myself and gave her what she really needed. It got to the point where we would only go to visit them, I'd sit at the end of the road and feed her in the car, pretend to take her to the toilet to change her nappy and give her a top up in there, then drive to the end of the street and feed her again when it was home time. It was horrendous. And so different to how it is with my family. I've sat around the dinner table with my Grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins siblings, bf a baby with one hand and eating my dinner with the other without anyone batting an eyelid!
My husband's family genuinely have NO idea, Emily still has the occasional BF, usually in the mornings though. I'm so cross they made me feel so ashamed about what I'm doing. When i got my surprise bfp in October, I said to my hubby that there is no way in hell I am going through all that negativity and spitefullness again and this baby would be bottle fed from day one, and he got really angry with me, and said that all the kids deserved "equal opportunities" and that if I did it for 3 I could do it for 4. So I suppose at least I've got his support!

ETA: I am on my second marriage now, this hubby is supportive of bf, and I now live 500 odd miles away from my family.
 
for the whole of my pregnancy any midwife i saw always dragged on and on about how breastfeeding was the best and giving me leaflets and dvds on it. I was really undecided about how to feed my baby. I knew breast was best but the idea of breastfeeding didnt sit right with me, i would of felt uncomfortable doing it when out and about and infront of anyone than my oh. Anyway between me and my OH we decided to bottle feed because he has a disability and at the time we wernt sure how much he would be able to do with the baby but we were sure he would be able to feed. After i had my baby and said i was going to bottle fed the midwives were great and didnt treat me different to any body else on the ward. People who stopped me in the street to coo over my baby then thought it was their right to ask me how i fed him, that i have to say pissed me off even tho i never got a negative comment. But as my mum says, how you feed your baby is your personal choice, dont be pushed into anything that you dont want to do
 
I am very much like May.Baby in that the idea of BF makes me feel physically sick. I am extremely supportive of friends who want to BF and don't generally discuss just how the idea of a baby sucking on my breasts makes my stomach heave, for fear of them feeling that I am disapproving of their choices - which I am certainly not.

I remember being irate when I got information leaflets through the post with my scan dates, and there were 4 pages relating to breast feeding and half a paragraph related to formula feeding. I felt that it was most certainly not a 'balanced' set of information.

I was 31 when I had my daughter and I am not a typical worried first mum. I very much believe in trusting my own instincts, and that I know what is best for my child rather than others.

I have to say from the professionals I was asked about my decision /choices but not pressured. Pressure came more from a media / social point of view.
 
I only breast fed for a week, i didnt get any support and if anything because of my history of depression i was discouraged. i found it extremely painful and being big breasted i needed my husband to help to feed, it just wasnt easy. the main reason i stopped is that i didnt seen to be producing enough milk, we topped up with formula which he prefered and thats what ended up happening.

I had lots and lots of negative and nasty comments from breast-feeding mums, almost everyone i knew breastfed and they were all horrible to be, my SIL would come over and say stuff like i wasnt feeding him enough (when i was breastfeeding) and it jus made me feel useless.

Im greatful i did stop, my son had pylloric stenosis and i think he would have been even sicker if id insisted on forcing him to breast.

so i felt lots of peer pressure to conform to the norm of breast feeding but i didnt.

to be honest if i get pregnnat again i will want to give the first week or two of milk, but after that i will egarly go to the bottle, im sure ill be slandered for saying it, but i didnt enjoy it and i felt very uncomfortable breastfeeding. i have very big boobs and there is no way to be discret, i wouldnt have liked that at all. i really enjoyed both of us being able to feed. i dont like my breasts being touched at all, i really hate it, if i had to i would express but i dont enjoy the feeling of breastfeeding at all.
 
I was planning to BF them combi before I returned to work then switch onto FF.

I didn't have any peer pressure regarding it from family or friends, I have known people do either. The MW's said their piece but I knew what I wanted to do so wasn't phased by them. I did find that although you were given the 'strap lines' and I had said I was intending to BF there was still an awful lot of information I didn't get like breast care, cluster feeding etc . . . even books I read didn't seem to have this info, maybe that was my fault but it just seems its hard to get the full information until your in a tricky situation.
 
I felt highly pressured to breast feed. Not by family/friends, but by professionals.
I was given leaflet after leaflet, lecture after lecture etc.

When I had my daughter, I was very poorly after an emergency c-section. I was taken to the high dependancy unit where a midwife came over, pulled up the gown and tried to latch my baby onto my breast.
I was too poorly to move. My husband went mad as he could see how upset I was getting and how much pain it was causing me, I was repeatedly asking her to stop but she wouldn't.

As it was, I then had to have a number of medications and the midwife finally left me alone.

We hadn't actually chosen not to breastfeed, we were going to try it and see how we went, I guess our ideal would have been combination feeding really, but with that experience plus all the medications I had, we ended up formula feeding.
I don't regret it one bit, my daughter is healthy and happy.

I am still furious about the way we were treated.
 
Hi There

I had my son at 20 and I always believed 'breast is best' and still do!!
I had post natal depression after the birth and I know without a doubt the bond was made because I breastfed(almost as if we had no choice but to get along)
My friends were great...apart from when I would feed him on the tram!
I went out clubbing when he was 3months old(i had expressed for his daddy to feed him) I remember standing in the toilet expressing a very full breast into a sink,thinking what a waste with 18year old girls mesmerized! One even said she never realised it was so easy and painless and she wanted to when she had kids..she was drunk so maybe she was in the moment but i really hope it stayed with her!
I always made sure I wore a vest under my top so I could position him and no skin was on show.
I was asked to stop feeding once in a small vegan cafe whith puzzled me because I honestly thought the woman was going to ask for some for staring!!
'I said no,I had paid for my food and was going to eat and so would my baby unless they wanted a good scream to drown out their ambiance whale noise music' needless to say,i never went back.
He had his last feed on the night of his 1st birthday. He seemed ready to let go,I wasnt and cried like a baby :)
He remembers feeding and tells me he wishes he still could get 'mummy milk'
I feel so proud that I helped make him strong from my body,we never had him immunised (so wrong) and he's been ill 4times in 5 years :)))...and after all,sharing your body with your child isnt supposed to stop at birth!! xxxxxx
 

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