New Moms get a raw deal from not-so-new-moms ....

Julz for me it was not only about him getting breastmilk or the bonding. Quite honestly, I have nothing against formula at all!
However, I got a sudden need to BF in the last 2 weeks as I realised it would be so much easier to travel without formula and bottles. So convenient to just take my boob with me where ever I go.

Oh well...formula and bottles it will be! But now I am going to work at getting him to drink from something other than Tommee Tippee because I have about 20 bottles and only 4 are TT...and I refuse to buy MORE bottles!

Meags good for you! Do yourself and other moms a favour though. Email your lll a copy of this thread. It may give her something to think about and she may be more careful when trying to help the next mommy.

I guess it depends on how important things are to you. The moms that struggle for months like Meags and J hopefully did so because it was important to them as it was to me. I guess we have to ask ourselves why it is important though.

For me it was important because everything else had gone so utterly pear shaped that come hell or hight water I was going to succeed at breastfeeding if it was the last thing I did. I was lucky though, I didn't have issues with it at all. Not so sure how I would have managed to battle for months on edge to bf when I was already an exhausted wreck though so I can't and shouldn't comment on what another mom is going through.

I seriously don't see why a mother and child have to have months of hell just for the sake of breastfeeding. We know it is good etc but I think our emotional well being is far more important.

oh yes, The LLL lady called me to see how I am doing. And yes I lied to her because honestly I dont feel like being judged today. She can judge me on Monday rather. Today I want to be left alone in peace and enjoy my baby. So I told her everything is going great, he's feeding well. I did throw in that I am getting frustrated and since his feed takes 90 minutes, I am not getting any time of him being awake and happy as by then he is tired and grumpy and wants to sleep. Of course she told me things will get better, he will take shorter to feed, everything he's doing is a positive sign etc etc etc....and yes, he is doing fantastically well that he feeds and then sleeps 4 hours. But I am not doing fantastically well...and now it is about me.

RM i'd be happy to chat with your friend over email if she wants to know she's not alone in "giving up the BF fight". Honestly I feel no guilt. I have done my bit. I could keep going - but what will that achieve? That I can BF Matt for say 6-9 months (I dont want to BF longer than 1 years old). And that for the next 1 month while my Matt is really learning to smile, recognise me and develop a little personality, I am spending all that time frustrated, angry and annoyed at him that he wont BF properly? No...no more. Enough is really enough.
I have already cut down on the pumping today. I am so looking forward to the milk drying up, no more pumping and no more hard lumpy boobs.

Meags well done on trying for so long! I would have given up ages ago. Enjoy those extra smiles and coos - you deserve them.

Well here is my update:

Matthieu will no longer be put to the breast. At 4am this morning after sitting strapped with a friggin tube to my boob I was tired, he was seriously pissing me off that his arms were flying around, pulling the tube and he wouldnt flippin stay on the breast. I ended up shouting at him (yes...like a 7 week old baby responds to that...)

I then sat there holding him and crying and crying and crying that I had gotten so mad with him and promised him no more.
So no more fighting. No more spending hours trying to get him to BF when he just doesnt want to and no more me wondering why the hell I am trying to BF in those horrible moments of him at the breast. And yes, every moment of him on the breast was a horrible one.
Whether it was because he was incorrectly latched and my nipples were killing me, whether it was because I was too scared to move incase he came off the breast or whether it was because I was just waiting for him to pop off and the whole horrible cycle would start again.

I went downstairs, filled a bottle and gave it to him - ironically he was no longer hungry and had fed enough at the boob.

This morning for the next feed he got the bottle immediately - and didnt like it. Well too bad - he will learn to like the bottle again a lot quicker than he will learn to like the boob!

So RM - your friend J will not be hearing about a girl named Meags who managed to BF after 2 long months of pumping and trying. She will instead hear of a Meags who did try for 2 months, as did she and eventually decided instead of spending 90 minutes forcing him to drink from the boob, I can rather spend 30 minutes feeding from a bottle and have 60 minutes of smiles and coo's all for me

On a slightly separate note, it reeeeeaaaally p1sses me off that woman are instructed to breastfeed for 6m but then the govt only offers 4m leave - UNPAID! You know why SA has a low breastfeed ratio? It's because we have massive poverty where women simply can't afford to stay home and nurse for 6 months and don't have access to a place to express at work. I am very pro breastfeeding (if you can) but doubt o would ha e breastfed this long if I wasn't a stay at home mom. And I have a lovely electric pump and (had) my own office. So yah. It's very easy to condemn women who don't bf for atleast 6m when you have a flexible job and can go home tp feed I think Claudia.

Re your friend J RM, she needs to show a finger to everyone else. Sadly, throughout her career as a mom there are going to be people telling her she should do X and that she should be a better mom and do Y etc. The breastfeeding topic is particuolarly sticky. Because it's hard! And it hurts. And NO ONE tells you it won't be all rays of sunshine and bonding and misty eyes. And on top of dealing with trying to get this new wriggling screaming baby to latch you inevitably have pnd and have just realised that your life as you know it is completely over. Personally I was completely unprepared and hated the first few weeks. I was lucky that la leche provided a quick fix. If they hadn't james would have been on formula a looooooong time ago!

Please new moms, a happy mom creates a happy baby. And if your friends don't support you and your decisions then they clearly aren't very good friends!

For the record I just gave me 22 month old a bowl of Cheese Curls and two Lemon Creams for dinner this evening, my 5 year old ate three slices of really oily pizza dripping in what I can only describe as cancer-causing cheddar.

And notice how I am not excusing it by telling you that I puree fresh food, and she only eats organic barley, and it was just this one time ....

Not so much .....