General Chat

What about Men??? Come on guys......whats your take on the whole breat feeding issue? Do you think that boobs can be lent out to your children for a set amont of time and then returned to you.....did you try and help ?? are you against it? did you or do you feel isolated and uninvolved because your partner breastfed? tell me your thoughts

Well done Annie......you sound like you where really determined to do it! I have come accross mothers who have fed from one breast only before. The body is a wonderful thing and if only one breast is being suckled then it produces enough milk to satify the need and only in that breast. Amazing really. I have always wondered if you end up with one big one and one small one??? lol would that mean you end up walking around in circles? Tandem feeding(two at the same time) is not unusual in some cultures but in this country its not common. In my experience i have found that most of the time the older child complains that it just doesnt taste right and wean themseves off as seems to be what happened to you. There are cases when mother continue to feed newborns and an older child for some time. both seem to be adequatly supplied with milk. There is very little written about this situation as it so rarley occurs.

Christine: I confess to being a little lopsided! But the only time I go round in circles is when I'm chasing elusive ancestors!!!!!!!!! lol

you did well dawn, the first few days are of great benefit to both you and your babies......as it helps your womb go back to its normal shape much more quickly,

Annie....lol Me too....although i must confess im a little lopsided naturally!

I was breast fed and I fed my daughters. The first one for 3 months....had to stop as I was actually bleeding and she had colic very bad....the second one I fed for about 10 months, she was very contented and refused any solids until then. The clinic doctor told me to ween her off when she was 4 months but I carried on and never went back to the clinic!!! It is the most satisfying feeling in the world when all is well and would recommend it to any and every mother. It is also the easiest and cheapest method. Jacquie

christine my son was born with group B strep meningitus he wasnt expected to live (in fact this time 20 yrs ago i was with him almost constantly while he started to improve) i was positively encouraged to express my milk, store it in there freezer in special care so that as soon as he cud hav tube feeds he cud hav my milk :-) this was so encouraging for me and made me feel i was actually helping him ! the only problem i had was that the nurses on the ward were not helpful wen i needed hlep with the pumps etc as soon as his tube came out i started feeding him it was dificult as he was on medication which supressed his sucking instinct (much needed medication though) the staff were wonderful and helped such a lot i didnt feed him fot long once he was home as the medication made it hard for him and he found a bottle so much easier but for a while i still expressed my milk for him then put it in a bottle wen i had my daughter 2 yrs later in the hospital i was left to get on with it as she was my second baby so i just fed her how i wanted ........... demand feeding etc ........... but i had never had a baby by my bedside and hadnt relaised that the protocol then was to start at 5 mins each side and gradulally increase it each day and to fill out a form showing this my sister saw the form and filled it in how they wanted it but told me to carry on as i was as it took nearly 5 mins for the milk to start flowing unfortunately i got mastitus very badly and stopped feeding her as my doc told me i had to cus of the tabs i had to take the midwife was furious with him !!!!!

I have 2 daughters and I wanted to breastfeed them both. I tried desperately with no 1 and was in hospital for 4 days trying hard. It wasn't until day 3 that a wonderful student midwife showed me that she wasn't latching on properly. The other midwives had kept saying that the baby knows how to do it and that i was hurting because it was new to me. Once i was latching her on right there was hardly any pain! I only carried on with it for 5 weeks as she was projectile vomiting at every feed and was much better on a bottle No 2 was a different story. i ignored all the 'advice' of my health visitor regarding her slow weight gain and stuck to my guns about not giving her bottles exclusively but supplementing the breastfeeding with 1 bottle a day. She was content and slept well and was alert so I knew she was Ok. I carried on breastfeding for 10 months and even now (aged 2) she is still slow to put on weight, even though she eats like a horse.

a great deal of importance is placed on weight gain......according to centile charts in those little red books they give you. In some areas you have the cholice of two diff charts...one for bottle one for breast. breast and bottle fed babies put on weight in a very different way ..... bottle fed babies tend to put on lots at each weigh in and its not unusual for them to put on more that half a pound a week for the first couple of months. Breast fed babies tend to do it a lot slower. they do this because they lay down different sort of fat cells and therefor convert more of the nutritional value in breast milk to nutrition and not to fat. (this is why breast fed babies are less likley to become obese in later life)thats not to say that bottle fed babies will!!!! My third child started off on the 50th cetile and over the next four months gradually dropped off to the 25th centile and then to the 9th centile. My health visitor kept telling me that i shold top her up but i was adamant that i was doing it right(with my job, if i hadnt i would have been sacked) isobel is three going on 21 and just fine, shes dainty(unlike her mother) she does everything she is meant to do and some that she not! i have no worries about her feeding, she eats a good mixed diet and was breast fed untill she was two. If i had listened to those that aledgedly knew best i would have stopped. We also as mothers have a problem with 'not knowing'.....we want to be reassured how much our children are getting, wouldnt it be easier if we had a guage on the side of our breasts telling us how much was in there and how much our babies had eaten? newborn babies have a stomach the size of a medium walnut......they will not and cannot drink more than a couple of ounces at birth!!! those that throw up a lot generally do so because they have taken in too much(not alway, there are some other medical reason why babies throw up) Not enough credit is given to mothers for'knowing thier babies' we call it mothers instinct but we so often ignore it. i think with first children we are so unsure of what we are doing we tend to err on the side of caution, second children stand a much higher chance of success in breast feeding as mothers are much more in tune with this instinct and tend to dismiss advice that doesent fit with what they see. my baby is growing, sleeping, smiling and doing all that it should be......so i must be doing it right! most of the time you are! theres a lot to be said for mothers instinct!

Hi again,Christine, With regards to weight gain my son was 9lb at birth and 17lb 2oz at 3months! I may only have one working but it produces gold top!

good job you didnt top him up you would have had to do it with steak and chips to keep him going at that rate......well done you

I wanted to breast feed my twins found it very difficult as there was so little milk , it ended with babies screaming and me crying so gave up after 3days. Like many others have always felt guilty I didnt try longer. I have two thin fit 30 year olds, one who has a MBA and the other who has a MSC. I think intelligence is in the genes rather than whether you are breast fed. Win

I was a prem so my mum fed me and expressed milk(she had/has huge bonokas,lol)to feed the whole of S.C.B.U . I Breast fed all three of mine,my last only til he was 7weeks but wasnt producing enough milk unfortunately.with my first i was 19 and breastfeeding to my generation was unheard of..all my friends bottled fed their children. my children are all quick at things,very intelligent(daughter just done maths/reading aged 9 she has reading capabilities of a 13 yr old)and all skinny, any relevance??

cheri, BANOKAS......what a great word! all of the info i get from this thread will be useful, i may contact several people by email once i have sorted through it. I didnt expect to get quite so many replies as i have found it hard going getting women talking about this subject. Over the last 18 months i have spoken to about 300 women and some are very reluctant to talk about thier experiences . in one day i have had replies from about 30 women who all seem to be happy to share what they went through....good or bad Thank you all

I breasfed all 4 of my children from between 6 and 13 months. When I had my first baby in hospital (1986) I was lucky to have the help of a nursery nurse, at least I think that was what she was (wore a brown and white gingham uniform) who helped me to get him latched on. I don't know if I would have persevered without her support as it was painful and he didn't seem to want to know. By the time I had my second (1987) I was only in for 48 hours and didn't even see a nursery nurse to help me get started and I don't think I would have done it if I had not had the past experience. When I was home from hospital my HV advised me to use the breathing exercises they give you to control labour pains when getting them latched on and I did find this helped me get through the intitial pain. I started introducing solids to all mine at 4 months and in those days was advised cows milk was suitable from 6 months so started introducing that with cereals etc and eventually to a bottle aswell. I think the convenience of breast feeding far outweighs the initial discomfort, not to mention the financial saving, my friend who bottle fed her 3 children reckons it cost her over a thousand pounds to feed them all for a year, whereas apart from a few packets of breast pads it didn't cost me anything until i started introducing solids. Carolyn

First son I breastfed from day one [but I had to use the electric pump in the hospital for a while as he was in special care for a few days] until he was just one. I gradually stopped the feeds until he was only getting one at night. Exactly a week after I stopped my periods returned! No problems at all and I really enjoyed it. Second son I had mastitis when he was a week old, but carried on feeding while taking antibiotics. I stopped when he was about 10 months as my periods had come back, I was knackered, I wanted my boobs back for me, and he had got top and bottom teeth and bit me a lot! nell

Nell: OW! My girls didn't have top and bottem set until they were abt 8mths, so only ever bit me by accident, usually when dozing off. My son on the other hand had 8 teeth by 4 months and seemed to find it amusing! Stopped doing it at abt 6months and hasn't bitten me since,thank goodness. [He'll probably bite me really hard tonight now I've said that! lol]

One thing I have found is the lack of support for breastfeeding mothers. I think that is probably why so many people stop. I was talking to 2 breastfeeding councellors the other day and they said out of 18 HVs in our area only 3 of them were fully trained in breastfeeding and yet most of them could help you if you had a bad back! Also, it does annoy me to hear so many people give up and say 'the baby is always hungry so I'm going to give him/her formula'. So many people seem to think that formula is like a magic potion that will make their baby sleep through the night - and it doesn't work like that! I could go on as I feel so strongly about it but I won't..not today anyway! Estelle

Hi Christine...Ive just been reading our Local evening paper The Sunderland Echo... and there's a big article in there about breast feeding and how our area is one of the worst areas for this method of feeding our babies......you can read it on line if you go to there site...makes very interesting reading.... Anita x

I was fed my mums breast milk from a bottle for the first 6 weeks of my life, as I was in an incubator, but as soon as I was home, mum stopped. Both my children were fed for 22 months -I loved it! My daughter fed my grand daughter for about the same time. I have a friend who breast fed both her sets of twins until they were about 3. She even wrote a book about how to do it! I have to admit, when I breast fed - 22 and 24 years ago it wasn't particularly enouraged, and the position the hospital expected me to use with my first child (sat bolt upright on the edge of the bed with the baby on a pillow) was excrutiatingly painful on the back. I used to close the curtains and sit in bed properly, leaning on the pillow!! maggie