Teen/young moms breastfeeding

[natural_mama89]

I have seen a lot of people mention "being young" as a reason to have not breastfed, or have not succeeded in breastfeeding for very long. It is very hard for me to wrap my mind around this as I had my son at the age of 16. I had NO family support and wasn"t used to seeing breastfeeding, but still did my own research and decided to, and was successful in breastfeeding. I even had some issues in the beginning with my baby loosing too much weight and needing to supplement a bit, but managed to wean him off the supplement and fully nurse. I also had some thrush issues. So, it wasn't a perfect, no issues nursing realtionship either. I know many people who woulfd have given up with just those obstacles, but I didn't. I also chose to have an out of hospital birth and use cloth diapers. How am I different? I'm just wondering what it is that prevents young moms from seeking out their own information to still do what they discover is best for their children? Is it wrong of me to assume that generally a teenager should have critical thinking skills and be able to research things? I also know a girl who had a baby at 16 whose child never had one drop of formula. Is age really the issue, or do the same societal roadblocks happen at any age? Does it just depend on how that specific person views the world and life? I'm not trying to attack anyone for being misinformed, just trying to get to the bottom of the issue, I would like to do all I can to make it so that merely "being young" is not an added obstacle to parenting any moreso than it needs to be. I also want to debunk the assumption that teen moms are just generally misinformed/uneducated and just do what they are used to seeing, and don't think about their parenting decisions on a personal level. Any thoughts welcome to help me understand this apparent issue and/or "fix it"?

[MadameXCupcake]

I honestly do not get it either I am not a teenager but only 20 and I look MUCH younger probably closer to 14. I breast feed my daughter; she is supplemented too because she lost more than a pound and was still down at one month. She has gotten so much better at nursing though[I think because her mouth is bigger now]!

I think young moms get too much advice from ill informed people. The information people gave me was horrible!! People think oh she is young and stupid I need to give her advice!! I'm not sure why young people aren't more pro active you can find ANYTHING online if they want just by googling.

Maybe it is just BAD advice from everyone and then NO support for alternative decisions. I imagine a young mom who lives at home can not take a hostile environment with a newborn and gives up. Whether it is a young mothers mom saying formula is just as good, or I could watch her if you did bottles, or possible a dad picking on her for nursing[I bet a lot of young moms encounter this], I imagine none of that would be easy when you have no where else to go.

[kijip]

It's great that you made it work for you.

Statistics tend to bear out that younger mothers are likely to not initiate breast-feeding after birth and more likely to nurse for a shorter time. I agree with you that it is not at all a matter of not being able to. However many factors that correlate with breast-feeding success may work against many younger mothers:

-Younger moms tend to have fewer financial resources. Money can and does help with breast-feeding (pumps, ability to stay home with baby for extended time, professional support, supplies etc).

-Younger moms are less likely to have a supportive partner helping them out 24-7.

-Younger moms generally have less high school and college education (at least when they first become moms, by default unless they finished college very early) and statistics indicate that breast feeding initiation rates are higher among women with college educations.

Now this is not to say that no younger moms have financial resources or supportive partners or educations, just that in general many have a disadvantage in this area which can complicate or be a barrier to nursing success. These same barriers exist at all ages for some, but are very common in younger mothers. I was not a teenager, but I was not done with college and I was just 22 when my son was born. There is no denying that my life has become more comfortable in ways that will aid me in nursing this time around. Also consider that younger moms may not have the best resources in the community or feel supported enough at certain parenting groups that do help a lot of older moms out with nursing. The parenting groups that specifically support nursing around here IME (at least 5 years ago) were mostly women in their 30s and early 40s who are married and mostly middle class. And while I am quite sure many in those groups would have tried to be supportive of younger moms, it is not easy for everyone to bridge a huge age gap or a large economic gap. I work in family support and previously led parenting support groups. Very few of the moms on our teen programs opted to nurse. Those that started often faced challenges and frankly, many just had cultural bias against nursing altogether. Since we were a support group with many other issues besides feeding to support, we did not judge or try to lecture about making a different choice, only offer support and information.

I wish that we did a better job of supporting women of all ages who face barriers in making nursing work for them and their children.

[evermore82]

I was 19 when my oldest was born, and I do not consider my age to be a barrier at all. I researched all the facts and information I could find. I had a natural (hospital) birth and exclusively nursed my baby until she was almost one year old, and she self-weaned at 3 1/2 years. My family was supportive, to a certain extent, so I was lucky in that aspect (though they are much more supportive of extended breastfeeding now that they see that Eva has turned out "fine." ;-)) I can understand the argument and statistics that show young mothers are more likely not to BF, but I know just as many young mamas who do/did BF as who supplement.

[~Boudicca~]

I really think it depends on the type of culture and environment you are brought up in. I was not a teen/young mom (I had my first at 23 so not that young) but I can tell you right now that natural birth choices, cloth diapering, and breast feeding were not even on my radar. My mom was the only person that breast fed in my family and she only did it behind closed doors so I never even knew she nursed my siblings until a couple years ago. I never knew anyone who breast fed, it was ridiculed in my family as gross and old-fashioned and unnecessary. In my world, babies=bottles and that is the only thing I knew. No one in my family or my peer group had a natural birth, hospital birth with interventions were the norm (and still are).

I did my homework and still ended up having a hospital birth with interventions and had a miserable experience breastfeeding so I gave up (pretty easily by my current standards now that I look back on it). It wasn't until I came in contact with a different set of people (pretty much MDC people and a few LLL counselors) that I realized that there were different, and for the most part better, ways of going about birth and nursing. And it opened a whole new world of crunchiness for me .

I am positive that if I had my daughter younger it wouldn't have even occurred to me to research anything else. I would have simply gone and done what I was accustomed to, which in my mini-society there was a cultural bias towards all things not measured and managed by a doctor and a can of formula.

[1littlebit]

i was 20 when I had ds. I had every intention of bfing and i did for awhile but i am also ADHD and thought i needed to go back on my medication. The medicine i was on had no real information but is generally not recommended.

I agonized for weeks about it and decided that i needed my medicine to be able to clean and go back to school and what not. i wish someone had told me that cleaning and all that are just not that important especially at first. I also wish i had realized that i wouldnt have the slightest interest in putting ds in daycare and going back to school.

It was only after I stopped bfing and went back on my meds that i found out they didnt even work anymore. I did not know this would happen but when i told my doc she said that is really common (why wouldnt she have just told me that my meds probably wouldnt work for awhile and to keep bfing until then? she knew how much i agonized over it)

I think a big problem for me was that everyone wanted to be so supportive ... as in oh wow your struggling with bfing dont pressure yourself you can give him a bottle etc. the other thing i noticed was that DS nursed constantly and i was exhausted. Instead of encouragement my family laughed and said yup thats about it you'll be nursing all the time it doesnt get any easier. and other things like that. if they had told me that it will get better and that it wont hurt as much eventually (my nipples were all cracked and bloody) it would have been better.

I also thing younger moms get a raw deal with the doctors. i got bullied into a c section (as in if you dont you son could have brain damage, and if you dont we will have to find a new practice for you) 2 weeks before i was due. and that was the midwife. and we all know c sections make breast feeding harder.

after all of this i dont know if age has anything to do with it. I wish i had known i was going to be a SAHM, i wish i had known how much i would regret weaning, i wish i had known my house was going to be a disaster with or without my medicine, i wish i had known what a PITA bottle feeding is. but these are not age specific things. support wise yeah i think people assume bfing is hard and ff would be easier. i heard a lot of "being a young mom is so hard w/o bfing you dont need that kind of pressure" yeah like washing bottles everyday and bringing enough formula with me when i go out to account for a natural disaster. did i mention the relactating and the pumping? sheez lol oh how i wish i had known. i dont think i was much help. i do think age is harder b/c of school and such

but i researched all the time... still do... and i hold every mother accountable for their lack of information b/ i dont think their is an excuse for that. i know a few other mothers my age and i can't even talk to them b/c i think they are so uneducated on things i think are very important. and because one laughed at me and said it would never work when i said i would discipline non violently and respectfully. and then told me CIO was good for the lungs. (as in i told her CIO was not reccomended as she said "yeh by the same doctors who tell you not to discipline your kids) i think that kind of young mothering gives all of us a bad rap! ok i think im done

[marrymeflyfree]

Kudos to you! I must say, too, that there's a young mom in my expecting club on another site who is also exclusively breastfeeding, co-sleeping, doing her homework on vaxes, etc. Honestly, she gives more sound advice and seems to have a better head on her shoulders than a lot of the older moms there. So kudos to her, too!

I think young moms are probably more likely to just do as they're told, less likely to question the authority of their own mothers, grandmothers, or doctors and nurses, etc. They may not have any idea that there's anything to research, that there's any other way. Unfortunately I think a lot of older moms fall into this trap as well, but it may be more likely with a younger mama. But now it's so easy to read up on different ideas in parenting and whatnot due to the internet. I wonder as well if being comfortable with one's body contributes to being open to breastfeeding and becoming comfortable with it. A lot of teens and young women simply haven't matured enough to be comfortable in their own skin.

[PiesandAbrosmama]

I was 19 when I had my oldest daughter.
I gave birth at home
Breastfeed
Cloth diapered
Non vax
Co-sleeping.
I think it has to do with how I was raised and born at home. Who I had in my community, and what I thought I would do when I became a mother when I was in high school. By and large I know I'm not a majority but I know I've been passed down a legacy and I'm passing it on to my own children

[SheepNumber97245]

I agree. I've heard people say the same thing and i don't get it. I was 21 when i had my son, not a teenager but still young, and all of the other moms i've met my age say they gave up on breastfeeding, they've never heard of EC, don't know what a sling is.... i don't get it. I researched as much as i could when i was pregnant. I was excited to find new and different information than the mainstream.

I have my theories about why this is but it just makes me sad.

[crystallynn]

I would think that youth would be a great REASON to breastfeed. Most times, you're not established yet in life and may not have the financial means that you may have at an older age. Breastmilk is free. I just don't understand that statistics that more lower income mothers use formula. I think it comes down to support programs investing in more breastfeeding education.

[3pink1blue]

nak

I had my baby young and the resources just weren't there to help facilitate breastfeeding. The internet was new enough that most people in my circle (and geographical area) didn't have access to it, so that couldn't be used as a parenting resource. I didn't know there was such a thing as parenting books or I'd have looked.

Also, and I think this is most important, I had a far lower maturity level, and it was faster to bottlefeed. And I could go out and party and leave the baby for days if I wanted to (and I did.)

If a young mom is on here, she already is far more mature than many teen moms are. So the moms on MDC are not a large enough example of teen mothers. Many teen moms are still very immature, hardly more than children, with other, more selfish priorities. And it isn't a slam to teens - its just the way the psyche develops and grows. SOme people are done being selfish at 16 or 17 - my SIL is a good example. She has 2 kids - her first at 16, her second at 18. She and my brother are now 19 and 21 years old, respectively, and in a stable loving relationship. She breastfed both her boys past infancy, and the first had a cleft lip at that. Moms like that are the exception to the rule, I think.

Then too you have moms (like me) whose only experience with reproduction comes from the sad public education system. I honest to God thought that you could get pregnant anytime in your cycle. So when I had unprotected sex and didn't get pregnant, I honest to God thought I was infertile. (The next month I got pregnant!) I also didn't know there was such thing as an ultrasound. I had never heard of prenatal appointments. I had no idea that you were "supposed to" go to the doctor when you got pregnant. I DID know not to smoke or drink, from what I saw on tv and cigarette packs.

When my mom found out I was prgnant, around 26 weeks, she took me to her doctor who did an ultrasound. I was absolutely shocked to see my baby in there, and she was a girl! I had no clue that kind of thing existed.

All I did to prepare for her birth was buy some bottles, a blanket, some gerber prefolds
(1 pack) and four one piece pajamas. My mom kept asking if I was ready for the baby and I said yes. Then about a month before DD was born, my mom came over and asked to see the things I bought for the baby. She was so shocked to see what little I had! So she put together an impromptu shower, and I got the things DD needed.

Anyway, I could go on and on and on, but the point is, a lot of it is immaturity, and also pure ignorance - they don't know any different, and they think FF is just as good. (because no one dares make a FF mom feel guilty, so the real info isn't as readily available as the FF "info" on commercials.)

[MyBoysBlue]

I was 24 when I had my first son. I had access to the internet and I could have easily sought out help. I didn't. I feel it was because I was young. Not young chronologically. But in life experience. The person I was then has done a lot of changing since then to become the person I am now.

[1littlebit]

oo this is kind of interesting too - I wear DS all the time usually in a wrap, cloth diaper, co sleep, and pump as much as i can... every single person in my family including the ones with babies around DSs age say "oh you can do that your so young"

[amy9798]

I was 17 when my first child was born and I breastfed her successfully but I think it was due in large part to the fact that everyone in my family breastfed their babies and it was just what I saw as normal. This was in 1998 though and we didn't have the internet. Looking back I wish so much that we had because I know I would've done a few things differently. I did do research by taking stacks of books out of the library on babies, breastfeeding, and birth, but there are still so many ideas and sources I wish I'd been able to access.

[honeybunch2k8]

I was 20 when I found out i was pregnant. I wanted to breastfeed and clw, babywear, you name it. I've just always been a little crunchy I don't know where that came from.

I don't live in a supportive environment, but I've always kinda done my own thing.

I do think a lot of it has to do with outside pressures b/c people do believe that young parent=stupid or/and don't know what you are talking about. Even at the age of 21 people still think I would have been a lousy parent, and anything non mainstream would have been seen as hurting and coddling my child. I still get told that I had no idea what it took to raise a child and would have been a lousy mom b/c I didn't meet someone's age criteria, so I don't want to think about what teens are going thru. (OK the last sentence was a bit ventish but it felt good!)

As far as money, I've know low income women who didn't breastfeed at all not even on maternity leave and will break the bank buying formula. I suppose maybe that would change if there was more education about the benefits to both mother and baby.

I think part of it is an extension of how society in general views bf'ing.

Btw I would love to be a parenting consultant to teens, young women someday after I have my own kids.

[kijip]

Originally Posted by crystallynn

I would think that youth would be a great REASON to breastfeed. Most times, you're not established yet in life and may not have the financial means that you may have at an older age. Breastmilk is free. I just don't understand that statistics that more lower income mothers use formula. I think it comes down to support programs investing in more breastfeeding education.

It does not make sense at all but working where I do I observe it over and over again in many very low income women of all ages (15-45) with new babies. No initiation of breast-feeding or bf for a very short time. Part of it is cultural, part seems to be lack of support and information, some of them are working low wage jobs after mere days or weeks of "maternity leave" without pumping access and then some are impacted because of welfare to work requirements, in many states women getting public assistance are required to spend a certain amount of the day in a job training or similar program, away from their baby. The low income parents I work with that do bf tend to have more education, either graduating from high school or college or come from families where they were nursed or they observed relatives nursing or are those that are in our college grant/scholarship program. I know one woman (19 years old) whose family members actually ridiculed her and told her she was spoiling her son and she ended up stopping nursing at 6 days. They told her she was spoiling a 6 day old baby. By the time she got support and information, she had to face the challenges of re-lactating.

Also, since families can only get about 3/4 of the formula they need from WIC...it often results in stretching out the formula a bit if they can't get the other 1/4 from churches, charities or food-banks or afford to buy it at the store.

[annettemarie]

I think it's always dangerous to assume that just because you (general you) had the resources and wherewithal to do something, everyone else should be able to do the same. There are some very real obstacles to younger mothers nursing. I really admire that so many of the PP recognize that and want to effect change rather than claiming the challenges must not really exist just because a subset of people were the exception to the rule.

I think it's absolutely fabulous when someone's story is outside the norm. I wish more mamas who were able to overcome obstacles would become mentors to other young mamas and help them.

Here are some articles I found, both on the stats for younger mothers nursing (unfortunately a lot are just abstracts) and some more practical articles

Teenage Mothers as Breastfeeders (just an abstract)

Counseling the Nursing Mother

Characteristics of Teenage Mothers and Predictors in Breastfeeding (another abstract)

Helping Teen Mothers (from LLLI)

Helping Adolescent Mothers Breastfeed (Also LLLI)

[kijip]

Originally Posted by annettemarie

I think it's always dangerous to assume that just because you (general you) had the resources and wherewithal to do something, everyone else should be able to do the same. There are some very real obstacles to younger mothers nursing. I really admire that so many of the PP recognize that and want to effect change rather than claiming the challenges must not really exist just because a subset of people were the exception to the rule.

Exactly this. And the subset posting here on MDC are likely already out of the typical.

I was 22, married and we were financially fine when my son was born but it was still hard to give nursing a try- short leave, less privacy at work, more hectic life in general etc. Now that I have a paid maternity leave and a private office and a place I can bring baby to work if needed, it's a whole new ball game. I have a higher income and way more power at work than I did then. Very few teens have the same access to support and resources that older, partnered, middle class mothers do.

[honeybunch2k8]

Originally Posted by kijip

It does not make sense at all but working where I do I observe it over and over again in many very low income women of all ages (15-45) with new babies. No initiation of breast-feeding or bf for a very short time. Part of it is cultural, part seems to be lack of support and information, some of them are working low wage jobs after mere days or weeks of "maternity leave" without pumping access and then some are impacted because of welfare to work requirements, in many states women getting public assistance are required to spend a certain amount of the day in a job training or similar program, away from their baby. The low income parents I work with that do bf tend to have more education, either graduating from high school or college or come from families where they were nursed or they observed relatives nursing or are those that are in our college grant/scholarship program. I know one woman (19 years old) whose family members actually ridiculed her and told her she was spoiling her son and she ended up stopping nursing at 6 days. They told her she was spoiling a 6 day old baby. By the time she got support and information, she had to face the challenges of re-lactating.

Also, since families can only get about 3/4 of the formula they need from WIC...it often results in stretching out the formula a bit if they can't get the other 1/4 from churches, charities or food-banks or afford to buy it at the store.

IA. I'm not even sure if my employer is pump friendly esp. if you work at the tables (I work at a casino). I know my boss weaned as soon as she went back to work.

And welfare to work? Ugh :

As far as work goes, I also think that is another point in which family can be unsupporting. I know in my case I hinted that I wanted to SAHM/WAHM and I was told not to even bother and to just drop off my kids at daycare. I figured it would be a lot less complicated to WAHM than to potentially fight with an employer over my rights to pump. I guess they didn't think so???

[honeybunch2k8]

Originally Posted by annettemarie

I think it's always dangerous to assume that just because you (general you) had the resources and wherewithal to do something, everyone else should be able to do the same. There are some very real obstacles to younger mothers nursing. I really admire that so many of the PP recognize that and want to effect change rather than claiming the challenges must not really exist just because a subset of people were the exception to the rule.



)

IA. Sometimes I need to remind myself of that.