I’m sorry you had such a difficult time. I do want to press the point though that I don’t think that mums who don’t breastfeed are bad mothers – far from it. You have gone so much further than many women even try, and you should be rightly proud. Most women would have given up long before you did under those circumstances, and understandably so. From a public health perspective, though, I think it’s vital we do all we can to encourage people to breastfeed. I don’t know how to do that without running the risk of other mothers feeling guilty when they can’t. But I hope it will reassure you to know that there is a GP out there who tries her hardest never to judge on a woman’s perceived failings, while still congratulating and encouraging one who’s trying her hardest under difficult curcumstances (whether that be continuing to breastfeed when a baby is struggling to gain weight, or breastfeeding when all around her are unsupportive, or coming to the difficult decision that the right thing to do for her and her child is to use formula milk).

But please read my post again – I don’t think a non breastfeeding mother is a bad one or that one who does is a good one.

I find is sooooo saddening that yet again there is another health professional who feels that a mother who does not exclusively breast-feed is a bad one.

Ask any dairy farmer and they will tell you that some cows are great milkers, others are useless. If we can accept this fact about another species, why can people not accept that the same is true for humans?

I struggled and fought to breast-feed and my husband and I watched our baby lose weight until he was hospitalised. STILL they insisted that I stick to breast-feeding only (despite the fact my nipples were bleeding and uclerated from the constant feeding). Thankfully for me, my husband has good sense and he snuck a bottle of formula into hospital and discreetly fed our son without the hospital’s consent (he is our son, after all). He ‘miraculously’ got better. During our spell in hospital, I had been told that once our son had been given a teat, he would never latch onto the breast again. Foolishly, I believed them. So, after the bottles in hospital I began to constantly express what milk I had and did so for 3 weeks so that he could have it in a bottle (as I believed he would not take the breast again). One calm day, I decided to see what would happen if I tried to latch him on again – and not surprisingly he took the breast fine.

I then co-fed both breast and bottle for many more months, but when a health professional asked me if I was still breast-feeding, I truthfully said yes, but sneakily omited to tell them about the formula too.

Being unable to exclusively breast-feed contributed to quite severe post-natal depression – and that was mainly due to the closed-mindedness of the health professionals who made me feel inadequate and a failure as a mother for not having sufficient milk.

Please bear my tale in mind when you are making judgements about how a woman chooses to feed her baby – it may not actually be choice, but necessity (and done in the interest of their baby’s well-being).

Poor MrI. I have an uncle in the same sort of position.