What do you think is the biggest barrier to breastfeeding In Australia?

[karenmc]

This is a hard decision. Definitely think lack of education, lack of continuity of care and conflicting advice after birth are the main ones and they definitely overlap. The continutity of care got my vote - though I would add that the continuity should be with a known midwife/LC who is educated & skilled at breastfeeding support....not someone who didn't have the training! As a naturopath, I have definitely seen the benefits of women who I have referred to private LCs....providing that wonderful ongoing care and advice over the first few difficult weeks with feeding. I have also seen too many who have stopped breastfeeding due to all sorts of reasons (not enough milk, poor weight gain, pain etc) that I firmly believe more came down to poor education and lack of support from both family/friends and health professionals. The ones who perservere despite enormous difficulties (I can include myself here) are the ones who are educated and passionate about the benefits of breastfeeding for their baby. We need more women in the antenatal setting to get the education because in the postnatal setting it is often too late.
Good luck with the government inquiry! Karen x

[MantaRay]

Reading some of the other experiences makes me really sad. When I was having the problems with Jack attaching due to his tongue-tie, I was asked if I was ready to go home after 4 nights. At that stage he wouldn't attach (but I was told my nipples were the problem not the tongue-tie) so I was expressing. Then at each feed, with a mw or lc helping, I would try to attach a starving, screaming baby causing him to become more and more distressed. Then I would feed him the EBM in a bottle and express again. I was exhausted and I told them I wanted to stay an extra night to try and get the feeding working. I was obviously very lucky as I was told I could stay, and at midnight on that last night, the mw that delivered Jack finally got him to attach with nipple shields. So at least by the time I went home I was able to bf. As I mentioned in my pp, it was 3 weeks later that I discovered that the tongue-tie was the real problem, got it snipped and went on to successfully feed without nipple shields for 14 months (then he self weaned ). The point of this post is that I can't imagine how I could have managed if I'd been sent home before the feeding with nipple shields was established. I can only imagine that despite my determination to bf, I too would quite likely have ended up ffing. It's so easy to see how it happens.

[Liz]

I think all new mums should have a woman who has successfully BFed and knows how to stand up to those evil midwives who seem to want us to all get PND on hand all day! Or maybe a team of us LOL. That would have helped me a lot.

Do you know who has supportived me the whole way through my bf experience with Vy???? All the wonderful girls on Belly belly, thats who.

Maybe we need BB visiting rosters LOL. A few b/f mums go and visit the new BB mums at hossy and help sort through all the nonsense from the midwives, and LC's for that matter too.. they all gave me different advice too.

I agree with the uniformity of advice too. Chopping and changing feeding positions each feed etc coz of different advice doesn't help anyone. At least give one method a good try before trying the next iykwim. Everything needs practice. There's not usually some magic position that will suddenly work.