A mothers shares her experience of bottle feeding, and how she has no regrets switching to formula.
She writes:
Being a naturally big breasted woman it was always going to be a challenge breast feeding. But never thought it wouldn’t happen. When I was in my early 20s I wanted to have a breast reduction but was told by the GP that when I have kids there would only be a 50/50 chance of being able to breast feed. So that was an easy decision, I wouldn’t have one because I wanted to be able to breast feed my babies when they came along.
So in my early 30s along came our beautiful baby boy Riley. My husband and I couldn’t be more excited and somewhat nervous of course. Riley didn’t breastfeed straight away as we couldn’t get him latched despite best efforts. We got to the maternity unit and had some amazing help from some amazing midwives. And we were underway.
When we got home we kept going with what we were taught and had learnt along the way. It got to be when Riley was 2 weeks old when the problems started…he wouldn’t latch easily. And we persevered.
We went to see family at Christmas (Riley 3 weeks old) and they all said try the bottle/formula feeding. And still I was determined this was going to work. And of course my family and husband supported me in my decision.
Shortly after Christmas when we were back home I was readmitted to the maternity unit for help with breastfeeding. My lovely midwife tried to help me at home and she was amazed at how difficult it was. I was in for 24 – 48 hours and the whole time Riley latched beautifully. I thought “YES” now I have my dream of breastfeeding my baby.
After a few days at home and a number of middle of the night attempts at breastfeeding. Riley cried for 3 hours trying to get on. And I cried for 3 hours trying to get him on. Enough was enough. Neither of us were enjoying it…and my baby boy wasn’t getting anything to eat. So my husband and I jointly made the decision to switch to bottle feeding.
We were both scared to tell our midwife that we had made a decision to change to bottle. So much so that we did paper scissors rock to see who would tell her. I lost. So we told her. And she was so supportive. She told us that she wasn’t allowed to tell us that we should bottle feed but that if we came to that decision on our own then that was ok. She supported us in that decision.
We are glad we made that decision. We have a beautiful baby boy (now 14 months old) who gets the usual coughs and colds. But he is pretty healthy.
Although it was a difficult decision to make at the time and heartbreaking for me we don’t regret it at all.
I think it reminded me that as parents this was one decision of many more that we needed to make. We will continue to make decisions for Riley as he gets older.
To be given all the information would be better as how can we make informed decisions without all the information. I know that breast is best but sometimes it just doesn’t happen.
