Strange baby feeding stories - am I the only one?

I could never do baby groups, or playground chit chats. Couldn't care less when Johnny started talking or walking. Boring and pointless.

They really were horrible. Made me feel like a complete failure. Being a mum was difficult to adjust to anyway, I had set ideas and nothing turned out how I expected. Second baby, everything was great, I stopped there.

I think it is possible but in my experience as a breastfeeder it is pretty common to hear about babies not latching and needing to be cup fed to supplement. Especially these days as most people take folic acid during pregnancy and it is believed to be link with higher likelihood of having a tongue tie, which can be hard to spot if it is a deep tie. I have a tongue tie but they often loosen up a bit over time if not snipped.

Can't see a reply below, so this might be out of sequence...

Thank you. It's so refreshing to hear another mum say that.

I'm not fond of babies and didn't intend on having any. When my lad came along though, love just took over. He's all grown up now and fab, but I so did not want to participate in the mummy networks as advocated by midwives. All that Jonny's first tooth and price if nappies stuff was just BORING. I was always inwardly screaming 'I was a person, before I was a mum, you know. I like Star Trek and read and have views on politics.'

The interest here, of course, in knowing whether my own mamoth childhood food problems, and emotional distance from my mother, could have started that young and reveal anything about ASD.

I think we expect these things to come naturally when in fact it takes practice. A baby has grown for 9 months in the womb without needing to suckle. It has to grow familiar with the technique to retrieve the milk from any vessel. 

I've never used a forum that censors body parts before. I find it very odd to see breastfeeding censored in this way. 

I very much struggled with breastfeeding my first daughter and had postnatal depression as a result. With my next baby I was so terrified of postnatal depression that I actually developed PREnatal depression. Fortunately when my youngest daughter arrived I was far more relaxed, presumably because that time around I knew what to expect even if it was still difficult. Looking back it makes sense through the lenses of being autistic, but before I knew this I thought I was just a horrible mother. Now I see that the huge lifestyle change and sensory overload would be a challenge for any autistic person becoming a parent for the first time. Nothing prepares you for that huge change in your life no matter how much you read/watch.

I've never enjoyed conversations about motherhood though. People get very wrapped up in how everyone else is raising their children like it is some sort of competition. I have zero interest in anyone else's children and I really hate trying to feign it. I just find it more tedious than talking about the weather. My own children don't even really interest me that much as children aren't particularly interesting... although I will admit that when they are young and they don't understand things fully they can say funny things by misusing words or concepts that they have heard. 

In hindsight I probably never really wanted children that much, I just liked the idea of meeting the usual life milestones that other people aim for - career, house, pets, marriage, family etc. 

I wouldn't change it now, and the children have helped me commit to work and study that I'd probably not have bothered with if I didn't have them to think about paying for.  They do also overwhelm me and add to my anxieties though. 

That's interesting.

My mother says she was told she couldn't *** feed because she had inverted nipples. Tried and it didn't work.

Still odd for a baby to refuse a bottle or indeed milk. She struggled my whole child hood to get the stuff into me.

Oddly I also bottle fed my lad. The idea of *** feeding was just too distressing for me. I figured any baby would rather have a relaxed mum offering a bottle, than a distressed one trying to do what distressed her.

That's awful!

I know they say *** is best, but there are all sorts of reasons why it's not suitable for some people.  They've no business making a new mum feel bad about it.

They were very much anti bottle feeding. When I used the bottle at home, the visiting midwife shouted at me.

Wow!

Nice to hear, I'm not the only one.  My mother bought a sippy cup in the end way before babies are supposed to use them.  I wonder why the hospital staff allowed that but not a bottle.  That's unusual, isn't it?  If, for whatever reason, mother/babies can't *** feed, a bottle is usually the solution of choice.

My eldest was cup fed in the hospital after he was born, he wouldn't latch onto me and the staff would not allow him to be bottle fed, though they happily fed him via a cup. At home though he was happy with a bottle.

I still remember the sound the bottle tests made and it puts my teeth on edge. Hated cleaning them, the sound was awful.

They still recommend feeding babies from spoons or a cup now when you are having difficulty breastfeeding. Teats tend to flow too fast to replicate the *** so sips from a cup or a spoon help to regulate that slow and reduce the risk of baby never accepting milk from mum completely.

I breastfed both my daughters for 2 years each.

No, apparently not. Puzzeler, isn't it? 

Maybe you had a tongue tie. It affects the baby's ability to latch onto teats, whether from mother or artificial.