How do you feel if you stop breastfeeding, especially if you stop sooner than you'd planned to?
Relief? regret? disappointment? guilt? liberation? anger? grief?
If you've stopped breastfeeding, and then felt any or even all of those emotions, then you share them with many other mothers - as the UKparents Breasfeeding forum shows only too well.
Breastfeeding is more than just a way of getting milk into babies. It's a relationship - with your baby, of course, but also with your own body. If breastfeeding hasn't gone well, you can feel let down by your body - angry with it, frustrated by it, and puzzled and confused.
If you feel you haven't had the right support and information about how to make breastfeeding suit you and your baby, or if you've been given conflicting advice that leaves you wondering which way to turn, you may feel angry with yourself, and those you relied on for the right sort of care.
Yet if things have gone badly, or painfully, or you have lost confidence in the whole thing for whatever reason, switching to the bottle may be a relief - at least that's one thing you don't have to struggle with anymore.
Then, to top it all, you might end up feeling guilty, and resent any mention of 'breast is best' . Women who do manage to breastfeed longer than you do seem smug and self-satisfied, and you might even think they're being critical of you for not 'sticking with it'.
Here's how to feel more positive about the situation:
- Accept that there are many things we plan for our children that don't work out...and that feeding intention is just one of them
- Look forward, not back, to a time when your biggest food-related worry will be how to get mashed potato and gravy stains out of your best blouse!
- Try to understand what went wrong - there's almost always an explanation for breastfeeding problems
- Stop blaming yourself. You tried, it didn't work, you didn't get the right help...it wasn't your fault feel good about the breastfeeding you did do
- Accept that while formula milk is not the same as breast milk, and breast milk is undoubtedly superior in many ways, formula has made several steps forward from the substitutes given to babies even 20 years ago, don't apologise for bottle feeding. People are nothing like as critical as you imagine they are when your feelings are raw...and after all, it's none of their business if you don't want to tell them the details remind yourself that feeding is not the be-all and end-all of mothering, but only one part of it...and only you can judge when and if the negatives of breastfeeding outweigh the positives
- Allow yourself to grieve, if you feel sad about it all. People who say 'it doesn't matter' can be forgiven - as they really don't understand.
Breastfeeding counsellors from NCT and the other organisations are skilled in helping mothers talk through their feeding decisions, including ones which lead them to make a switch to the bottle. They won't ...
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