I think every single new mum I’ve spoken to, whether they breast fed successfully or not, has said that they were completely unprepared for breastfeeding. And I mostly talk to middle class mums who took antenatal classes, read books, and listened to their midwife. The problem is that the aim of antenatal breastfeeding advice isn’t to prepare you, it’s to convince you to do it. But really, the benefits of breastfeeding are very persuasive, it’s not necessary to devote so much time to it. If you’re not convinced in the first five minutes you’re not going to be. The 2010 Infant Feeding Survey reported that 81% of UK mums initiated breastfeeding, up from 76% in 2005. Figures for continued breastfeeding aren’t available for 2010 yet, but in 2005 only 35% were still exclusively breastfeeding at 1 week, 21% at six weeks, 7% at 4 months and 3% at 5 months. Less than 1% of mums exclusively breastfed until 6 months, as recommended by the WHO, but that’s another story. So the problem doesn’t seem to be that women don’t want to breastfeed or don’t try, it’s that they don’t continue with it. I suspect that this is largely due to how unprepared women are, which seems to be due to rubbish advice. So here are my top three lies about breastfeeding.
1. “Women worry that they aren’t producing enough milk, but don’t worry, you’re capable of producing all the milk your baby needs.” e.g., this babycentre advice. Not entirely a lie, but completely missing the point. You might be capable of producing enough milk, but for the first few months you need to build up your milk supply. This means feeding often, day and night, sometimes for literally hours at a time. While you’re building up your supply, in the early days and at every growth spurt, your baby is requesting more milk than you produce. This is a miserable experience because your baby is upset and frantically trying to get more milk, and you can’t do anything to help. I had no warning of this antenatally – I only found out just how much feeding is needed to build up a supply once I got started: when I told a breastfeeding advisor that my baby slept well last night (“you must wake them for a feed!”); that I was thinking of giving a bottle (“you must get your milk supply established first!”); and when I was struggling with growth spurts (“it’s your baby increasing your milk supply, you have to keep feeding him”). So while it’s true that you eventually produce enough milk to meet your baby’s needs, in reality for a lot of the first few weeks or months you have a hungry baby desperately trying to get more milk out of you. I didn’t feel like I comfortably had enough milk until my baby was about three months old. Why not just tell women this? Then they’ll know what to expect and worry less. They’ll also spend more time feeding because they won’t be foolish enough to think ‘he can’t be hungry, I just fed him’.
2. “All babies are different, it’s impossible to estimate how long you’ll spend breastfeeding, or how often your baby will feed.” e.g., this La Leche League guidance. Nope, from talking to other mums, it seems there isn’t all that much variation. And advice often focuses on either how often you’ll need to feed, or how long each feed will be, but doesn’t really prepare you for the combination of long, frequent feeds. For me, and for most other mums I spoke to, feeds started at 40 minutes or so, every 1 to 3 hours, and went up to 1 hour every 3 hours, day and night. This is incredibly hard and would definitely be easier if you knew it was coming. After the first month the feeds slowly started to shorten to about half an hour at 2 months, and 10 to 20 minutes after 3 months. Some mums manage to get their babies to feed every 3 hours during the day and less frequently at night. At 6 months I’m still feeding every hour or two during the day and every 3 or 4 hours at night. zzzzz.
3. “If your baby is latched on correctly, it won’t hurt.” e.g., this article from babycentre, although to be fair they actually say, ‘if you’re in pain, this is a sign that your baby isn’t latched on properly’. Lies. If you already have damaged nipples it’s going to hurt like hell, no matter how good the latch is now, and it’s going to take a while for them to heal. My baby was pretty good and only latched on badly now and again, but it was 3 months before it didn’t hurt at all to feed. I spent the first 8 weeks or so using lansinoh, taking paracetamol, and digging my nails into my palms to stop from flinching when he latched on. And I worried a lot, and got a lot of professionals to check the latch, because I assumed it must be wrong if it hurt so much. I also did a lot of unlatching and latching back on whenever I suspected there might be a problem with the latch. Not so much fun for my hungry baby.
I’m not being this bleak because I want to put women off breastfeeding. Really it’s the reverse, I think it’s only by being fully prepared that women will be able to continue breastfeeding for as long as they choose. I wish I’d known more. I would have worried a lot less, spent more time feeding my hungry baby, and tried harder to appreciate the hours I spent on the sofa watching TV and being waited on by my lovely husband. Now that my baby feeds in 10 minutes flat I don’t get to watch anything any more.
Evidence-based rants 