feeling frustrated again at pepoles attitudes to bf

In the under ones group I go to there is a woman who often makes little comments about how her baby who is 2 weeks younger than Natasha sleeps thru and is more alert since she stope bfing him ( think she stopped at about 6 weeks) and asks questions about how often Natasha feeds ect. It always comes across in a very anti bf way but I think its to try and justfy her stopping feeding him. she said something yesterday about sleeping thru which lead to a few of us who bf talking about feeding as the converstaion finished I noticed 2 of the forumla feeding mums saying they hadn't wanted to try bfing, that midwives and tried to make them and that forumla had been good enogh for them and was as good maybe even better. I wanted to correct them but knew I would been seen as a trouble maker and seen as critersising their choice where as its ok for people to make anti bf comments.
I know that dosn't sound bad and reading it back I wonder why I didn't say anything but I feelt it would cause more harm than good and reinforce their views that people tried to force bfing on them, so I felt it would be better to just try and show them how normal bfing is by carrying on doing it.

I think I would of said something, they chose not to breastfeed but it doesn't give them the right to say what they did about breastfeeding.

Again it sounds like some sort of guilt, why would they say those things which they know to be untrue (formula being better than breastmilk)

I agree it sounds like guilt, particular on the part of the mum with the LO a bit younger than Natasha. IKWYM about not wanting to cause trouble or feeling like your forcing BFing on them. Sadly one of my BFing mummy friends was telling me the other day that someone had told her this is the reason they don't BF, because she talks about it all the time and also because her DS who is 17 months doesn't sleep well. I do think it's important to defend BF over formula though. How dare someone say formula might even be better That's the thing the winds me up most.

In my experience babies either sleep well or don't. I have friends who've moved over onto formula hoping for better sleep and in fact get worse sleep because they then have to be preparing bottles in the middle of the night. Who wants to be doing that

I agree the best way you can make it normal is to keep doing it. The more people see more people breastfeeding, the more normal it will become

A lot of people need to justify decisions that they make concerning their parenting. Sadly they can't see the big picture. Far FAR more important things come along in your kid's life...they don't need to justify it to anyone. There is no discussion on this subject. Science has proven that breastfeeding provides everything that a child needs, formula does not. If you choose to move over to inferior products because you want too...why do you need to justify that, but you can't change fact.

I think one of the issues though, is that once they stop BF (or not even start) they can't switch back to BF (at least not without a lot of work and possible drugs). So bestowing the virtues of breastmilk is only going to make them feel worse about themselves as they can't say, ah OK, I will go back to it. I think this is also why they feel so guilty over it.

I had a relatively nice set of comments from my under ones, it started about me saying that when I go back to work, I will be expressing. As long as I am able to get enough off, I will do that, and not bother with formula at all, if I can help it. The nice comments were along the lines of them commenting how much money they would have saved if they had carried on BF and they did sound very much like they would keep it up for longer if they were to have any more.

I do think there is a big element of misery loves company. I swear that some people having given up on BF want to convince you to stop as well so that they don't feel to bad about themselves. All the time they are seeing you succeed at what they feel they have failed at, it makes them feel even more a failure. I definitely got this from my MIL first time around. She kept going on about BF before I had Ellie. Really trying to encourage me (or so it seemed), and saying the best she managed was with her third, where she managed 3 whole weeks! Once it became clear I wasn't giving up after a few days or even 3 weeks, she seemed to be trying to convince me to stop at every opportunity.

One reply to someone saying formula is as good as bmilk is to say its like comparing a properly balanced diet to a bad diet with vitamin tablets. It does the job, but will never be a good substitute. I probably wouldn't have said something either, its different if its a group you dont know, but when you see them regularly, you want to enjoy yourself, not wage a war.