It's an intractable situation, the way I see it. Whilst, yes, formula and wet-nursing should be for when breastfeeding really does not work out (not for want of trying), it's hard then to, simultaneously, remove the stigma from those feeding methods so that mothers who CAN'T BF don't feel like failures. Again, education can help with this one. It is not helpful to have a 'breastfeed or die' attitude, and neither is it helpful to espouse 'if it's too hard, just use formula'. There IS an inbetween, but we get caught up with the extremes instead.
I knew I COULD bf, and yes, perseverance is a huge part of it. But, why do we persevere? Because we know the substantial benefits of it. Those who persevere do it because they KNOW what they're working towards.
It is too simplistic to say that the problem is that people don't persevere. Perseverance has an aim - those who don't know the aims, i.e. those who don't have that education, are far less likely to persevere when they hit the speed humps. The education (knowledge, experience, exposure) has to be there for perseverance to happen.
Lack of family support, to me, points to lack of education of the family and support systems. I really do think it comes back to education and knowledge.
ETA:
Katiepie - there SHOULD be facilities for you to express or bf at uni - get yourself in contact with your Women's Contact Officer person, facilities manager or student association and look into this. Please don't take it for granted that you have to wean. If you start making noises now, by the time you go back there should be something set up, if nothing is now. Find out if staff have expressing facilities. If they don't, get them on board, too! I've started to make noises at my uni about this. QUT has got excellent facilities for families and bfing students. It is not good enough to have students assume they have to wean! Please don't take this one lying down. It's your child's human right to have access to breastmilk and your right to keep feeding your child. I am only studying part time, but I also do volunteering, and I have to palm DS off to MIL to get some study in. It's heart-wrenching for me, but I express when he's not here and that provides milk for him for when MIL has him. I freeze it into cubes and grab a few, pop them into a sippy cup along with some food and off he goes. If he's going for more than a few hours then he gets a container of frozen EBM. It CAN be done. During a recent weekend school, when I wasn't able to use the psychology dept's sleep labs, I expressed in my car and brought an insulated lunch bag with frozen packs to store the milk till I got home. If your BFing means a lot to you, you'll find a way...I did
This is part of making BFing normal in our society. If it were normalised, there would be far more facilities available for expressing and BFing, because more workplaces, uni spaces, social spaces etc would be aware of what lactating women need access to. It's definitely a bee in my bonnet!
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