I wonder when did irish people start using baby formula

amdublin wrote: »

Someone in work tried tell me that in the 70s and 80's it was seen as a status symbol/sign that you were rich if you bottle fed.

As someone who was bottle fed, but without a penny to our name, I begged to differ.

Any thoughts?
Is this true?? Or an urban myth??

Possibly one of the reasons. I'm an 80's child and the only women I ever saw breastfeeding were traveller women. All my mother's friends and neighbours all bottle fed. My mother was bottle fed. All her siblings bottle fed my cousins. Babies went into a big nursery in the hospital and were fed in a strict schedule by nurses. I think the only time breast milk was preferred was with very premature babies. I was premature and while I was given breast milk, it wasn't my mothers milk, it was donor breast milk. And do you know, it wouldn't have even occurred to her to think this was odd.

There was also a religious thing. Breasts were sexualised. It was immodest for them to be bared. It was preached from the pulpit that to even look at your naked body in a mirror out of ordinary curiosity was a Deadly Sin. So that pretty much confined a breastfeeding mother to the home. Tricky if you didn't have a washing machine and used the laundrette, or had to walk your children to school /pick them up, get groceries etc. If you worked, (after the lifting of the marriage ban in the 70's) then maternity leave was a mere 12 weeks, and likely not as strictly protected as it is today. In the 80's it was stretched to 16 weeks. So in order to get back to work, you needed your child to be on a bottle before then. Public Health Nurses here in Ireland advocated baby rice in a bottle at 8 weeks in the mid 70's.

meeeeh wrote: »

I don't think there is any particular lack of help. It's more the general attitude. While here the discussion is framed around sacrificing mothers who breastfeed alone in the dark, in other countries you are just expected to do it and if there are hiccups you can get formula (which tends to be more expensive). Breastfeeding might require some perseverance at the beginning but it's a lot easier later. I hate the expression I support the women who breastfeed. What is there to support. I never heard anyone saying I support people going to the toilet. Breastfeeding is natural thing to do that wast wast majority of women just do without soul searching and endless discussion.

In other countries, especially in third world countries where breastfeeding is commonplace, women form a community to help and support each other. They birth each other's babies, they take each other's babies to wet-nurse when a mother is too ill to manage it. They are expert, and surrounded by older women in their community who show them how to do it. Here, often a woman has no mother or grandmother or aunt with any breastfeeding knowledge or experience. She is given advice in the hospital by a young midwife who did a breastfeeding tutorial. She is discharged to home with nobody to ask because we don't know our neighbours that well any more to pop in and ask them to advise you.

It's like trying to learn to swim when not a single person in your family can swim, are terrified and distrustful of the water, are convinced that you are crazy and that you are hell bent on drowning yourself and the 'expert' in the hospital is someone who has read about swimming but has never gotten into a pool or had so much as a paddle in the sea barefoot.

It worked out for you. That's great. It worked out for me too. I had tender nipples on the second day and absolutely sailed through until the baby self weaned. But it was nothing other than luck and support from women around me who breastfed that made it successful for me. I'd never assume that because I found it easy, that all mothers do. We are all different. Some women have fast easy labours. Some don't. Some have an easy breastfeeding experience, some don't. Some get colicky or non-sleeping babies and some don't. All luck of the draw.

The reason there is discussion about it especially in this country is that its a form of feeding that was nearly wiped out thanks to our health service pushing formula. By the church pushing the fact that even this kind of discreet partial nakedness was perverted. Because we still have the men in our families hastily walk out the room when you prepare to breastfeed your child. Because some women still get comments and abuse in public. Because we get told to feed our child in a public toilet. Because breast milk is compared to semen, piss, sh!t, whenever a discussion online starts. Because we have blokes tutting us for breastfeeding from behind page three of The Sun newspaper. Because we want what is best for our baby, and we get judged if we breastfeed, and get judged if we don't.