I'm angry

[pinkyprincess]

The longer I've been in the B&T forum I've noticed the same bf questions keep coming up, about constant feeding when milk comes in, alcohol, feed times etc.

WHY THE HELL ARE THE NHS NOT OFFERING SUPPORT?

When I was at hospital I had no help bfing (luckily I have a greedy Grumpkin) then I had a wobbly latch day (luckily the midwife came over and fixed it) but why did I not get a follow up call to check all was still ok?

Why are lady's being sent home from hospital without being warned about feeding to build supply, dealing with sore nips, if you can or can't drink etc

The NHS say 'breast is best' but why spend the money supporting this without continuing this after babies born.

Sorry rant there!

 

[x_larlybelle_x]

well said.

I agree pinky.

 

[benjis mum]

Totally agree! You are left very unsupported, full of strange hormones and emotions, with a little baby that doesn't have an instruction booklet. No wonder so many people give up bf and feel like failures which must effect their early weeks with Lo

 

[Maria1977]

Totally agree hun, I had all the same questions when I left hospital, the only thing that kept me going was sheer determination and the guilt I felt at the thought of offering formula lol

Each of the booking in appts I have had with both pregnancies I've been asked if I will be BF or FF and I really think if a mum wants to BF that they should be offered a bit of advice then if they feel the need then a BFing class, like ante-natal.

It would've been so helfpul to have given birth ready with the facts, rather than the assumptions I had!

xxxxx

 

[Esoames]

In Rotherham you get a bf midwife to help you they come every day for ten days and are on phone support for 6 weeks x


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[Maria1977]

In Rotherham you get a bf midwife to help you they come every day for ten days and are on phone support for 6 weeks x


Sent from my beautiful iPhone 4S using Tapatalk

It's such a same this isn't mandatory, considering the governments pro-BFing/anti-formula stance it seems completely crazy that they don't offer education for everybody!

 

[l_maclean]

It's quite shocking really.

Although - I woulda thought I was quite prepared tbh, had 2 bf ante natal classes (at diff places) very helpful nurses at MLU with expressing, and a great mw.

But the longer I do it the more questions pop up.

Xxx

 

[x_larlybelle_x]

I had someone from the bf support network speak to me on my second day in hospital. All she dd was give me a leaflet with all the support groups. No hints or tips or any advice. I only had a student mw tell me he had a good latch on his very first feed. No other support from anyone else.

Gonna go to the bf support group this week as its over the road from me so will be a good place to meet other bf mums and make some new friends

 

[Hunnie]

I agree. If I'd have had more support I would have stuck with it and not ff tbh xx

 

[l_maclean]

One of our mw's said the idea that you "can't" bf is virtually unheard of in other countries (she'd spent time in Norway,) it's all about working through the different problems. If that's really the case why are there so many people in the uk who end up feeling like, or being told, they have no option but to ff. xxx

 

[BevG]

in hospital there were very few really supportive midwives. mostly cos they were so busy and i didnt have any major complaints i felt left alone and pushed aside for the women who were really struggling. some were helpful enough but had to rush off before i could talk to them properly and i had 2 diff ones check the latching of lo. one looked at me daft but the one earlier had said to buzz when i fed her to get it checked. i got a cursory glance and a 'seems to be fine'
an earlier mw had looked at me getting her to latch and when lo was messing around and spitting out the nipple then taking it again she said she would go ask someone else if they had any ideas what to suggest.....hours later i never saw her again or got an answer.
we have a local support grp with peer counsellors and a lactation consultant kinda mw so ive gone there as soon as i could and they were 10 times more helpful than anyone else apart from this forum. id advise anyone to look up their local support grps and join asap.

 

[Verity2011]

Very well said pinky! I agree with all of you and my experience of the NHS is even worse. Ariel and I were in hospital for 5 days after birth on antibiotics, during this time I had them try to take him off me for formula top ups his first night (I refused and did skin to skin feeding which got his glucose up), then was told he had jaundice (he didn't) and if I didn't flush it with breast milk they would give him formula and finally told he was too big to exclusively breastfeed and my boobs were to small to support him!

I fought against them repeatedly but I think only managed to do it because of sheer determination, support from my sisters and mum, an iPhone and having a baby who knew what he was doing. Thankfully I had absolutely no problems and it came easily, he also had put on over 100g on his 5th day weigh in - I think if he had lost any weight even though they expect it in breastfed babies they would have tried to bully me more. I agree that even though the nhs is meant to be supporting breastfeeding, I think you often feel unsupported and even sometimes like a bad mummy for it - it's absolutely insane!

I just want to say I think you're all doing amazing jobs ladies! Xxxxx

 

[BevG]

i got the big baby needs monitoring to make sure they get enough chat but no specific reason or actual monitoring was done!

 

[NatEvz]

In Rotherham you get a bf midwife to help you they come every day for ten days and are on phone support for 6 weeks x


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I didnt emma, i saw one breastfeeding suppoet worker that came when sam was 14 days old and id made the decision to formul feed!I saw a midwife on day 5 and 10 and that was it xxx

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[Dustbunny]

Very well said Pinky.

What I find bizarre is how varied the support is around the UK. I got a tremendous amount of support right from my very first booking in appointment to even now with the health visitors and can't fault any midwife, HV or consultant. It does seem however that I'm in the minority which is so sad.

The midwife who actually delivered Chloe was truly lovely and loved her job. She was also very pro breastfeeding so spent ages watching Chloe feed,correcting her latch and answering my many questions, even simple things like telling me how fantasticlly well I was doing made me feel I could do it. I think if all midwives were like this there would be many more breastfeeders around.

 

[xxbeckyxx]

Well said!
I went to a breastfeeding class before having Lou and we went through all the positive reasons for bfing. When the midwife asked if anyone could think of 'cons' I brought up the whole 'being aware of what you're consuming'/having to feed without help from partner etc/having to cope in public - these were the cons I could think of before I had a baby...there are many more I can think of now!
Anyway, she COMPLETELY ignored me and said 'well they're all little things, but yes, really there aren't any cons to breastfeeding', then ended the class!
She made it seem like breastfeeding was easy and straightforward and it really made me doubt what I was doing the first few weeks. If Lizzie hadn't have been gaining weight I think I would've stopped sooner than I did. As it was I went on to feed EBM from 3 months(never again!) and stopped completely at 6 months....and I still feel rubbish about that!

My SIL is Slovakian and says that hardly anyone FF there. When we went over for her wedding we thought about buying some formula to have 'just in case' and a tub of Aptamil was £17! Maybe that's why they don't

 

[LaurenMM]

I must admit this is one of the reasons I stopped; lack of support and information. Sorry if TMI but I have one nipple much bigger than the other (god knows why...) but Angel just would not latch onto the smaller one; to be honest she really stuggled to latch on full stop but when she did it was always on the bigger nipple. Anyway, because I had a general as well as an epidural for my section I wasn't allowed to get up and try to walk as soon as the other women and I found it really difficult to get into a comfy position to BF Angel. The night staff were absolutely appalling. I buzzed them once or twice a night because I needed help getting Angel in and out of the cot, to get into a good position and to help her latch on. Knowing my baby was hungry and that I couldn't feed her properly absolutely killed me.

Their idea of help was sighing heavily every time they came in, saying Angel was making all the noise, grabbing/pinching my nipples and shoving it into her mouth or forcing her head onto me which upset us both. I had insomnia in tri3 and I was getting about 4-5 hours sleep a night, the night before my induction I only got an hour, the day of my induction I was in labour for 12 hours so not a wink there, and the next 5-7 days I had no sleep whatsoever as Angel was really struggling to latch on and was constantly hungry I was absolutely exhausted by it all. I feel so let down with the way I treated just like an object.

I know this is going off topic a bit but I'm convinced they were horrible to me because I'm English and I think they kinda guessed my OH is forces. The reason I say this is because I heard the way the night staff all were with other patients and they were absolutely fine with them, apart from one other woman and she was Polish. BFing wasn't really covered much in the antenatal class and there are no local BF classes round here. There were about 10 new mums on my ward, only 2 of us were BF and I'm not surprised at that at all.

I admit it was a bit of a relief when we started FF as I was finally able to get some rest but after a while I really started to miss BF iykim? Not to mention I felt an utter failure and felt I'd let my baby down. Obviously I'm not against FF or anything but I liked knowing I was giving her the very best. I'm just glad I did it for that first week rather than not at all. Looking back and remembering all this now really angers me when I think about the way the staff treated me x

 

[Mrs. KM]

Its the same here in Canada. They really push breastfeeding but when it comes down to it, there isn't much help gettig started. I knew breastfeeding would be hard but had no idea it would be THAT hard. I even took a class! I also think they were too quick to push formula top ups. All I could think was that I was starving my child and so I topped up right away. Looking back I wish I had waited at least a day or two longer before topping up.... I will know next time!