Anonymous wrote:I wanted to breastfeed but my supply tanked because of missteps at the hospital and formula being thrust upon me. Thanks to a hugely supportive DH and an experienced and sympathetic lactation consultant, I was able to recover and reestablish my supply and went on the breastfeed my two kids successfully for three years each.

I think the reason I succeeded was due to the fact that I really wanted to breastfeed and I had a super supportive DH who picked up the slack in all spheres of our life while I solely focussed on getting breastfeeding right. Breastfeeding has to be learned and there is a learning curve to it. Combine that with rollercoaster hormones and recovery from childbirth and it is not a walk in the park.

Seems like the wife has the will to nurse but is not getting the unconditional support that she needs.

I cannot stress enough how insane you sound to everyone who’s not already an indoctrinated breastfeeding cult member.

Pp here. Btw I EBF’d both of my kids til they were 2. With my first I would get up often to feed because I just didn’t realize about the pumping/sleep. My health suffered and the less like myself I felt, the less I could see a way to get out of the situation. Please get support to make this intervention. She does not need to stop breastfeeding but she needs a reality check on this from as many people she knows and trusts. 4 months is not a newborn anymore.

In my culture, lactaction practices involve having the mother rest a lot. I feel nowadays women are told to breastfeed without sufficient community support and guidance. It’s so hard. Your wife is trying to be the best mother she can be and I so appreciate that you love and support her.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If she is pumping every 2-3 hours, she is not getting REM sleep. One needs 4 hours (or so) in a stint to do that. That would concern me. If she is getting at least one 4 hour stint, then I would not be as worried.

OP here. She pumps everyday at 7, 10, 1, 4, 7, 10, 1, and 4. Sometimes she will do every 2 hours between 1 and 7 because she said she gets the most milk then. I am not the only one that as noticed a change in her. Her mom, my MIL, and her sister have all said the same thing and have tried to talk to her about it. I had suggested introducing more formula multiples times to lessen the stress on her, but she rejected the idea. I'm not controlling and this has nothing to do with it. This has to do with wanting a wife and mother ( for my son) who is present, happy, and in a good mental state. She is none of those things. She rarely spends time with our son because she is in the bedroom pumping.

She very likely has PPD/PPA. This is not about the breast feeding, it’s about the pumping. She has gotten into a state of anxiety about not producing enough and is putting herself through a lot of stress. At 4 months the prolactin receptors are already laid down. She would produce more milk if she slept. She needs at least one 4-5 hour cycle to protect her mental health. I slept 8 hrs a night with my second and pumped enough when I woke up for baby to have a bottle at night. Yours isn’t even waking, which by the way is a great sign that he is getting enough nourishment.

I think you need to speak to her dr or midwife about your concerns. This is a lot for you to carry alone. I’m sorry things have been so hard for you and your wife. If I were her I would drop one pump, like the 1 AM one, and see if it did not just make the next one double. That’s what happened to me — sleep was essential to my overall production. Then I would, after two weeks or so, drop the 4 AM one. I hope the dr can talk with her. It is now an important time to protect her health and immunity with sleep given our current situation.

I also want to reassure you both that in two months baby will be on solids and I hope this will aid in recovery. It may take your wife some months to get back to herself. The first year is hard. Good luck.

So for all the moms in here telling the husband to offer their support and then shut up: if you saw someone YOU loved going through this -- for example, your own daughter -- you would say you support her decision to keep going or stop and then you would back off and shut up, even if your daughter wasn't acting like herself anymore?

I think this is crazy talk. I realize the husband needs to be careful because of ways men have domineered over the lives of their wives in the past. But that doesn't mean that if you care you should just throw your hands up in the air and hope for the best. I hope not, anyway.

Anonymous wrote:Tell her yoyou support her decision, to keep going or stop, whatever she decides.

+2
And after you tell her the above, shut your mouth. Only open it to repeat yourself.

Yeah, I think this husband is great. I think he's in a tough position because I think his wife is too tired to realize how tired she is and how it's affecting her judgment. I think the mom needs to go see her own doctor and have a straight talk about how little she is sleeping because of the pumping. That is not good for her!

Anonymous wrote:Never change DCUM. This man sees his wife struggling and is trying to find a way to help her and instead you make him into a monster.

+1.

You can see why women feel so much pressure to breastfeed, to the point of it seriously damaging their mental health. Pumping is ruining this woman’s first year with her baby, which she can never get back. Husband sees this, wants to help, and so many pile on with how breastfeeding is so beneficial and is worth all manner of maternal sacrifices.

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Anonymous wrote:There was a study that came out of Ohio State a few years ago that showed that most of the benefits of breastfeeding were actually benefits of being born into the kind of family/mother that would choose to breastfeed. When they restricted the data to 600+ sibling pairs where one was breastfed and one was formula fed, there were no advantages to breastfeeding on all 11 outcomes measures.

So, tell your wife, OP, that she is already the kind of mother she wants to be, and she doesn’t have to prove it to anyone by keeping up with this ridiculous schedule.

So shouldn't then the wife continue to choose to breastfeed and be supported to make it happen? I think the wife is trying to be the kind of mother she wants to be. It seems that she erred in choosing the right father for her child who would support her. A new mom chances of breastfeeding drops in the face of opposition to her providing her milk to her infant. She is actually quite without options. I don't think this is a good marriage or good partnership. These people should not have more kids.

OP here. We have a great marriage actually. I love my wife and support her through everything. I was very supportive for the first 4 months of her trying to breastfeed. We have great family support that has helped her too. I would be very supportive still if it were working, but it isn't. She is up pumping every 2-3 hours, rarely sleeping though our baby sleeps 8-7, and we hired a sitter so she can pump. She rarely spends time with the baby because she is pumping and very tired from it. She went from being a happy person to being moody, miserable, and always complaining. If she were happily doing it, fine, but she complains almost every time she has to pump about having to pump. I do as much as I can - cook, clean, take care of baby when I get home, etc.

Anonymous wrote:What does your wife want to do? Does she want to breastfeed?

OP here. I won't disclose my wife's profession, but we are both in healthcare. She wanted to breastfeed but she had latch issues. Nothing worked and baby rarely breastfed. Now he is almost exclusively drinking pumped milk from the bottle because he refuses to nurse. He has only nursed successfully a handful of times when he was younger. We went to see many LC's and nothing worked. She is exclusively pumping.

What does your wife want to do? Does she want to breastfeed?

Anonymous wrote:There was a study that came out of Ohio State a few years ago that showed that most of the benefits of breastfeeding were actually benefits of being born into the kind of family/mother that would choose to breastfeed. When they restricted the data to 600+ sibling pairs where one was breastfed and one was formula fed, there were no advantages to breastfeeding on all 11 outcomes measures.

So, tell your wife, OP, that she is already the kind of mother she wants to be, and she doesn’t have to prove it to anyone by keeping up with this ridiculous schedule.

So shouldn't then the wife continue to choose to breastfeed and be supported to make it happen? I think the wife is trying to be the kind of mother she wants to be. It seems that she erred in choosing the right father for her child who would support her. A new mom chances of breastfeeding drops in the face of opposition to her providing her milk to her infant. She is actually quite without options. I don't think this is a good marriage or good partnership. These people should not have more kids.

I wanted to breastfeed but my supply tanked because of missteps at the hospital and formula being thrust upon me. Thanks to a hugely supportive DH and an experienced and sympathetic lactation consultant, I was able to recover and reestablish my supply and went on the breastfeed my two kids successfully for three years each.

I think the reason I succeeded was due to the fact that I really wanted to breastfeed and I had a super supportive DH who picked up the slack in all spheres of our life while I solely focussed on getting breastfeeding right. Breastfeeding has to be learned and there is a learning curve to it. Combine that with rollercoaster hormones and recovery from childbirth and it is not a walk in the park.

Seems like the wife has the will to nurse but is not getting the unconditional support that she needs.

There was a study that came out of Ohio State a few years ago that showed that most of the benefits of breastfeeding were actually benefits of being born into the kind of family/mother that would choose to breastfeed. When they restricted the data to 600+ sibling pairs where one was breastfed and one was formula fed, there were no advantages to breastfeeding on all 11 outcomes measures.

So, tell your wife, OP, that she is already the kind of mother she wants to be, and she doesn’t have to prove it to anyone by keeping up with this ridiculous schedule.

Anonymous wrote:I pumped and feed exclusively for 6 months. Tried for the first 2 months to get a latch. At 8 months I eventually started adding formula. Would I do it again, or recommend someone else do it - NO.

At the time it seemed a very personal and important thing to me. To be honest I would have despised anyone who tried to convince me to do anything different than what I was doing. Thinking hormones, exhaustion and first time Mom issues messed up my perspective. I was so focused on trying to do everything right, I missed some of the joy of the early months.

I agree with a lot of this. Except that I like to think I would have welcomed my husband talking a little sense into me. Looking back on it, being stressed and exhausted, not being able to respond to my baby’s cues, and being just a little bit angry that he wanted more than I could supply was certainly worse for him than just giving him formula.

I have five children now, and they were all breastfed for varying amounts of time depending on the difficulty. I would never make the mistake of missing a child’s infancy because I was so focused on myself and what I wanted again.

I hope that you find the right words to say to your wife so that she really is doing what she wants to do, and not what someone else (lactation consultant, friend, mom, DCUM) told her to do.

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Anonymous wrote:I think you can open up the topic with her, ask her how she's feeling about it, tell her that you think it would be totally and completely fine for her to stop breastfeeding (and explain your reasons why you think it's fine, not why she should do it), and let her know that you will support her no matter what she decides to do.

OP here. I have talked to her and explained this before months ago. Her mom, my mom, and her sister all have said the same thing. The pediatrician also said the same thing.

There are many benefits to breastmilk. They have been studied. You also dont have to worry about breastmilk being recalled. Formula is recalled a lot. A generation ago, many women didnt breastfeed. 200 years ago women relied onnwet nurses. Many of my friends and I were not offered support from our moms because our moms relied on formula.

I'm the pp who breastfed long term. Your wife does need to back off on the pumping if she isnt sleeping and its interfering with her time. If your kid is sleeping through the night your kid doesnt need milk overnight. You are meant to produce just what your kid needs. Is she trying to just make up for the day? She is just trying to create milk to feed the baby while she works? Sleep and nutrition are important for creating milk. She has to draw the conclusion herself.

OP here. She is on maternity leave. He eats 28-30 ounces a day. She makes 30-32 ounces. We used formula for the first two months because he never wanted to breastfeed, and she had low supply. She went to pumping every 2-3 hours and her supply increased over the last month or two, but he still refuses to nurse. She used the milk for the day and the night before to feed him.

How is her work suffering if she's on maternity leave?

OP here. She was working from home starting at 4 months but she decided to extend maternity leave to 6 months because it was too hard to care for the baby, pump, and work.

Oh no! She must get back to work. You can force her to go back to work and then she will have to give up this breastfeeding nonsense. What's next? Will she want to become a SAHM and want to raise her children herself? Nip it in the bud, OP. Do her thinking for her.