Hello!

I breastfed my baby for 21 months, and it was a wonderful experience that I would recommand to anybody. I was lucky enough to have flexible work schedule, so I managed 5 feedings a day for that long.

In Switzerland, when you're working, half the time it takes you to leave the office and breastfed your baby is not taken on your working hours, you only have to compensate the other half. It's worth knowing!

A couple of weeks...?!?!

My daughter breast feed till 25 months before her mother finally repossessed her breasts. Today she's a healthy (and slender) young lady soon to turn 19. Don't know if the breast feeding takes credit for this but I do believe it didn't hurt..

I am pro-breastfeeding too. I didn't think I would be but getting downstairs to make up to make a bottle in the early hours (and hearing him screaming) was far more difficult than bringing him in bed with me. I continued until my son was around 2 years and stopped only to try to get pregnant again.

I took as long as I needed to express milk at work, but legally you can take twice your normal lunch break.

Breast is best, undoubtedly. It is the people who ram it down your throat that are the problem. I couldn't feed our girl and was stigmatised on the ward by the nurses. I was a double failure because I'd delivered by caesarian and then couldn't feed her. Mr Bound had to have a letter from the hospital to enable him to buy bottles as they were not culturally acceptable. This was in the middle east and women had no other option due to the lack of clean water etc. I think the road show may be in Zug today, there was something going on at Metalli this morning to do with health.

This is so true! I was kicking myself when I stopped breastfeeding and entered the world of having to stand over a bottle of boiling water waiting for it to cool to sodding 40C before measuring out scoops of powder at 3.00 in the morning...

I did this too - a round trip to the little fella's nursery to feed him would have taken more than two hours each time so I was the office dairy cow hiding in the ladies loos expressing milk three times a day.

Whoa ...too much information here!!!

And even longer... I was at an NCT baby and toddler coffee morning once, when (as usual) the subject of breastfeeding came up. We were talking about how food tastes are passed on in the milk, and one woman piped up with: "Oh yes, it's definitely true! There was one time when Jemima was feeding, and she stopped to say 'Mummy, you've eaten pineapple this morning, haven't you?' And she was round a friend's house so she hadn't seen me, it was just the taste."

The rest of us - all supposedly enlightened, educated pro-breastfeeding NCTers - all gaped at her, all thinking exactly the same thing: "You're breastfeeding a child old enough to produce a sentence like that?!!'

The roadshow sounds a good initiative. I was fortunate enough to have excellent family support and nothing but positive feedback for discreet public feeding when in the UK, and hopefully it's the same here, or heading that way.

kodokan

After I found it so easy when others in the hospital either couldn't breastfeed or had difficulties I thought I should stick with it as long as I could.

I needed to buy bottles and formula too when my son was 10 days old after an operation. The people in the Pharmacy looked at me a little stange and asked if I was sure I wanted to buy the formula.

not that i have any experience to add about breast feeding but did anyone watch the documentary on Channel 4 the other week called 'Other Peoples Breast Milk' it was certainly an eye opener - showed a mother feeding her 5 & 7 year old kids - showed women in a group breast feeding each others babies, interviewed a mother and her childs wet nurse in the states and also interview an old guy who drank breast milk every day (he ordered it off the internet) and he claimed it cured him of his prostate cancer.

I found the programme quite shocking in parts and I certainly found mothers feeding other peoples babies while the babies mother watched quite unusual - I think if I had a baby I wouldn't want another person to breast feed

did anyone else see it?

Nicky

More illustrative material in this thread:

Breast feeding at 8 !!

I've been taught that your baby benifits from nursing for up to a year. After that, its no longer benifitting exept that it is cheaper then buying formula, or milk.... I dont know if thats true, but thats what ive been taugh.

I think there is one question missing on that poll. Sure, we should be allowed to breastfead in public, its needed, but i think the option missing is -breastfeeding in public is natural, but stripping isnt... cover the darned tit up.

Some people dont have much choice. Its difficult to live on one income. If you saw our flat, everything in it is old, or a hand me down. We have a cheep rent but thats due to it being in my mom-in-laws name for 25 yrs, so they havent raised the rent. We have to be choosy on what we spend real money on. Otherwise, i dont know if i would be able to be a stay at home wife/mom.

That would be sooooo hard. I know a lot of women get depressed when they cant nurse right away, but to not be able to do it at all... Im sorry. It must have been hard too to live in a culture of women who just didnt bottle feed. i cant imagine what you must have gone through.

I couldnt breast feed past 6-7 months with my girls. When they kept waking up in the night getting hungry again (and that was after they were sleeping through the night, close to, i think it was 4-5 months), we started giving them a bottle before bed so that they could sleep well. I hadnt realised i was drying up, so i just stopped nursing when they started needing it every 3 hours instead of 4-6 hours.

When will people stop trying to force their views on others. I can understand people wanting to help, and share their views, but to condemn you for yours...

Thanks for this post, Zug bound! I was a double failure, too. The outside pressure to breastfeed was so high that my litte one nearly starved first before I realised that the milk will not "just come, you have to relax (and try harder)" and started bottle feeding. Within one day my non-stop crying baby turned into a happy little fella.

After nearly 7 months breast feeding is currently a habit I'm trying to give up, or at least cut back on... but with little success!! As already mentioned, once you've got going, it's just so much easier than the whole bottle malarky, but as I'm still feeling very new here, and therefore often meeting new people, I find it faintly embarrassing to be constantly introducing myself: 'hi, I'm Carter, and these are my boobs!' Obviously I'm very discreet, but still, I'm sure that nearly everyone in Zurich has met 'my girls' at this point, and they very probably have not yet met me!!

Yep, all three of our children went from breastfeeding (ranging from one to two plus years) straight to solid foods — with breast milk-filled bottles occasionally as needed. We thus avoided much of both the formula and 'baby food' stages. No regrets.

ask mum to introduce you to one of those baby formulas ...

by the way... you're doing rather well to be using an online forum at your age

The first statement -- absolutely not true. Formula is only an attempt to emulate breastmilk but breastmilk is a moving target, so formula can and will never be its 100% equivalent. The only fact here is that most formula-fed children in the West are well-nourished and develop normally.

I will not go into any discussion on the potential adverse long-term effects of its use. Let us just say that formula-fed children are 'doing fine' -- but this presumes that an accident such as recent formula contamination in China can not happen. Actually, formula is quite often recalled from shops even in the West, for various reasons and this is also a risk one needs to take into account.

In my view, you can not be pro-breastfeeding without being contra-bottlefeeding at the same time. I think that most women breastfeed because they believe that formula is not good for their children. Otherwise, why would they bother? But if 'contra-bottlefeeding' means 'forcing others to breastfeed', then I agree, no one should be made to feel guilty for not breastfeeding as long as they made an informed choice. Which, I may add, is sadly often not the case.

Sorry to butt in again, but just to dispel this breastfeeding myth: breastmilk always has benefits. It is often assumed that after 12 months the baby does not need breastmilk because its digestive system is mature enough to be able to process cow's milk. While it is certainly true that a toddler does not need breastmilk to survive and indeed would become malnourished if sustained on breastmilk alone, this does not mean that breastmilk is useless.

Cow's milk is originally meant for calves and human milk is made for humans. This is why, as long as it is produced, it has enzymes and anti-bodies that benefit the child. Also, breastfeeding can provide comfort to sick or distressed toddlers so it has a psychological benefit as well.

I have to disagree with you personally. I'm sorry. I do both. I breastfed both of my girls, and am breastfeeding my third girl right now. After a few months i started using formula as well to be sure they had enough to eat before bed. Also, the breast pumps hurt me too much to use, so we used formulas every time my husband and i went on a date. We found it practical and they got the best of both worlds.

I just read the article - breastfeeding rates in switzerland are about as low here as in Australia...80-90% leave hospital breastfeeding, drops rapidly from then and by 4 months it's definitely less than half, and by 6 months only 20% are being breastfed...that would make the breastfeeding mums the 'minority group' - wouldn't it...

I definitely feel like a 'minority group' when I am out and about with my bubs...that and the 'dummies' 'pacifiers' (we call them 'dummies' in Australia) - I think it's about 80% of kids who seem to have them...and they seem to have them all the time...much more than Australia...definitely a cultural thing...

I was one of those people who said "No child of mine will have one of those things permanently sticking out of his mouth"...

...until I had a child. Suddenly they became the best invention since sliced bread. I have to say that we quickly established a rule that he was allowed to have it at bedtime and if he is sick (and on occasion if he is in danger of kicking off with a Level 10 tantrum in the middle of Migros) but in those early days it was brilliant. It even became known in our house as "the plug".

That's the other option that some of us forget about. That you can express your milk, keep it for about 12hrs in the proper temperature. I know of a few mothers who did that and it worked pretty well until their babies were weaned properly.

I did this too - a round trip to the little fella's nursery to feed him would have taken more than two hours each time so I was the office dairy cow hiding in the ladies loos expressing milk three times a day.[/quote]

I'm sorry though to hear that you had to do it in the loo. This is still a reality all around the world. The pantry in any office is still out of our bounds. =(