Nurse said something strange about breastfed babies

I’ve known bottlefeeding parents to not even be in the same room as the baby. If the poor son was lucky another relative or child’s sibling was doing it but not always. I’ve walked in where the propped up kid has been left completely unattended
That simply cannot happen in the breastfeeding scenario.

One of my reasons for using formula was so DH and grandparents could give bottles. One of my favourite photos is of DFil giving DS one of his first bottles. In laws lived a long haul flight away and that bottle feed was a very special moment. Helped develop an amazing bond which continues to this day.

Yes. And another thing with breastfeeding it’s always the mother who does the feed. With bottle feeding that’s not often the case. Dad does some feeds, granny does some, aunt carol does some.

Again this reduction in focused contact time with the primary carer affects synapse development. Plus random relatives may not be as good at maintaining focus on the baby in the way the mum (possibly dad too) would.

and bottle feeds tend to be of a shorter duration compared to a breastfeed.

unless you control all the variables which to my knowledge has never been done you can’t be confident what makes the difference.

Personally I think, and I believe the evidence supports this, what makes the most difference is how parents interact with their child and engage them in conversations, play, reading, different experiences. That may or may not be affected by parents IQ but again it’s hard to say if it’s the actual parents IQ which makes a difference.

We know that babies born to parents where the mum has severe post natal depression (but a high IQ) where the mum has struggled to interact with the baby are less likely to have a high IQ compared to babies where mum has a similar IQ and had a very focused relationship with her baby. But such studies have been very small so may not be overly trustworthy.

Would add that if you emotionally can't cope with breastfeeding, then nobody should expect you to do it or criticise you for not doing it. Looking after babies is hard enough!

Just because you didn’t do this doesn’t mean it doesn’t happy. Often see small babies on social media with bottles on cushion ‘feeding themselves’ and I have also often heard ‘I can’t wait until they hold it themselves’

That being said I spent a lot of night feeds breastfeeding on my phone/ watching tv to keep myself awake

But you will acknowledge that bottle propping happens and isn't unusual, even if you yourself never did it?

If we're sharing anecdotes - I exclusively breastfed all three of my children for long periods of time. I used to read a book or watch TV when I was feeding. I think that's pretty normal. Now people would be looking at their phones!

What rubbish. It is true. I have twins and a singleton and did both breast feeding and formula. The eye contact was the same with both methods. Impossible to bottle prop and no need to. I was waaaay more relaxed and happier formula feeding, we all were. Much better interaction.I loathed every minute of breast feeding and they knew it- alongside being hungry. They were so much happier and healthier on formula.

Bonding and attachment are pretty robust, so I wouldn't expect feeding method to have significant impact on that.

My point was that people who are exclusively breastfeeding for long periods of time are more likely to engage in baby-led and responsive feeding practices, for example feeding little and often if that's what a baby is requesting. Bottle feeding doesn't really lend itself to this type of feeding, except maybe at the beginning. In other words, parents are watching babies and responding more to their cues, and maybe it's this that's having an impact on brain development rather than the milk. It's also absolutely true that once babies get to the age where they can hold their own bottles that parents who bottle-fed are more likely to be at an arm's length during feeding, also that bottle propping and getting people with less of an emotionally intense relationship with a baby involved in feeding is common practice.

But the supposed benefits as regards IQ and point difference is negligible -0.02 points which maternal anxiety and stress from breast feeding got tjose that loath it would surely wipe out.

The author of the newspaper article looked at many studies and found them similar to the example below:-

“The authors also found, however, that women who breastfed were better educated and richer than those who did not. To separate out the impacts of breastfeeding from these other factors, their first step was to control for these factors, using a statistical method called regression analysis. In effect, they asked whether IQ scores for breastfed children were still higher among mothers with the same levels of education and income.They found that they were, although the effects were much smaller – more like 1.6 points higher rather than four. But they also observed that, even among mothers with the same level of education, the IQ scores of the mothers differed. Once the authors controlled for the mother’s IQ score, the effect of breastfeeding was even smaller, at 0.5 points.
But even this may not be fully sufficient. It would be useful to compare children with the same mother, with and without breastfeeding. This study was able to do that, by looking at a sample of siblings where one sibling was breastfed and one was not. This analysis – sometimes called a “sibling fixed effects” analysis – is able to fully control for all characteristics of the mother and is a more convincing way to isolate the impacts of breastfeeding. When the authors did this, they found that the effect of breastfeeding on IQ was 0.02 points – basically, zero.
This is by no means the only study on the relationship between breastfeeding and IQ, and it is not the only study that uses this method. Looking across all the available studies, I find that the best data on the relationship between breastfeeding and IQ doesn’t support a link. A huge number of papers show a correlation between breastfeeding and IQ, but those that are able to adjust for differences across mothers – by comparing siblings or, in one case, with a randomised trial – do not show evidence for causal effects.”

I have DT’s - they were never propped up on a cushion with a bottle. Always held. Although have seen plenty breastfeeding and bottle feeding paying little attention to their baby because they were on their phone all the time.

I don’t think that’s true. I’ve seen many or three month four month old baby propped up on a cushion with a bottle in its mouth.
Often Twins, But sometimes Singleton’s

Not heard of the eye contact point before. When you give your baby a bottle, easy to maintain eye contact, talk to them, cuddle. Bonding is no different bf v formula.

@NigelPonsonbySmallpiece

"Is it the breastmilk itself which might cause those higher cognitive scores or is it the fact that mothers who breastfeed are likely to focus on their babies more than mothers who bottle feed maintain more eye contact, all of which promotes synapse development."

We cross posted - we're both thinking along the same lines!

The research is really complicated and contradictory. There is evidence on breastfeeding and intelligence that controls for mothers education and social class. But it's complicated - it's not just about social class and level of education. Even within a specific social class and education brackets, women with higher IQ's are more likely to choose to breastfeed, and to breastfeed for longer. There is also research which controlled for parenting skill - and found that parents who chose to breastfeed were also the group most likely to have good parenting skills, and once parenting skills were controlled for, the impact of breastfeeding on IQ disappeared.

It's also worth considering that most of the significant differences in IQ associated with breastfeeding were observed only in infants fed for longer than 2 months, and most obviously in exclusively breastfed babies. As prolonged, exclusive breastfeeding is really rare in the communities being studied, it might be that the small number of mothers who continue with this way of feeding their babies are different in some way that is hard to control for, and that it's this quality that is responsible for the impact on IQ rather than the breastmilk.

The study I find really interesting is this one: https://engineering.brown.edu/news/2013-06-06/breastfeeding-benefits-babies-brains by a group of researchers at Brown University (link is to article about study, not the abstract itself).

The study involved doing MRIs on the brain growth of a group of children under four. It found "by age 2, babies who had been breastfed exclusively for at least three months had enhanced development in key parts of the brain compared to children who were fed formula exclusively or who were fed a combination of formula and breastmilk. The extra growth was most pronounced in parts of the brain associated with language, emotional function, and cognition, the research showed." It's the first imagining study that looked for differences by feeding method in brain development in young, healthy children and babies.

I'd still be asking the question re the study above, whether the differences in brain structure observed on MRI were the result of breastmilk, or were the result of responsive feeding practices, which I suspect are far more likely among parents who are exclusively breastfeeding (responsive breastfeeding practices are the most physiologically supportive of functional and prolonged exclusive breastfeeding). In other words, is it highly cued care (perhaps more common in women who are exclusively breastfeeding) that is good for babies' brain development.

Sure but I still don’t think it’s very clear cut and there is conflicting studies.
even in the study using the millennium cohort data one thing which stands out to me is

Longer breastfeeding durations were associated with higher verbal and spatial cognitive scores up to ages 14 and 11, respectively.

Is it the breastmilk itself which might cause those higher cognitive scores or is it the fact that mothers who breastfeed are likely to focus on their babies more than mothers who bottle feed maintain more eye contact, all of which promotes synapse development. The fact that the longer the feed duration the higher the score ties in with this?

though in fairness to the nurse sounds like she didn’t actually say breastmilk increases IQ but breastfeeding 😁.

I think it’s an interesting topic which isn’t black and white.

one thing though is the nurse was promoting breastfeeding which obviously aligns with current advice. She was being nice and supportive, taking a holistic approach and overall interest to the OP. And yet the OP is thinking of complaining. 🤷‍♀️. It does sound like the OP has issues over her feeding choices, she mentions guilt, etc…..I think maybe she just needs to work through that rather than try and trip HCPs up over something which isn’t very clear cut. I agree it does sound like it was maybe clumsily worded, didn’t go into detail…..but that wasn’t what the appointment was for!

Not one piece of research on the relationship between intelligence and breastfeeding asserts that only babies who are breastfed can be intelligent. In fact not one piece of research suggests that the possible impact of breastfeeding on IQ might be discernible to individual parents. I'm not sure what point you're making here?

Not sure if this is a genuine misunderstanding - the limited evidence on this suggests there is a few IQ points difference on average between breastfed and ff babies. That is not the same thing as saying that ff babies are “not intelligent”.

Also:

• your IQ is mainly determined by numerous other factors
• IQ points are a quite meaningless indicator of intelligence anyway
• the only way of really testing this would be to get identical twins, raise them in identical conditions keeping everything the same except that one is bf and the other ff - obviously impossible
• anecdata about how smart or dumb your child is by ref to how they were fed is totally irrelevant and not “evidence”

The fact remains that studies have shown an IQ difference, but honestly who cares. Literally nobody is breastfeeding their child because they think it will make them smarter. Not breastfeeding your child does not mean they won’t have a high IQ.

😂😂😂

It's because well educated mothers are more likely to breastfeed so not the actual milk.

I breastfed for nine months, and am very happy to share the evidence around breastfeeding, which is that by the time a child is 1yr, there are no discernible benefits left. I would be wary of assuming that just because people are engaging with the evidence and pushing back against the breast is best ideology they haven't breastfed.

But your comment about 'tell them their efforts were pointless' is quite telling. I get that it's hard to realise breastfeeding makes no different to your child in the long run, if you had a particularly difficult time with it. Obviously it's going to sting when you look back and realise you did it all for no real benefits. Makes it all the more important to advise people the true evidence around infant feeding so they're not forcing themselves and beating themselves up to feed their baby a certain way based on myths and misinformation.

If you wanted to bf your baby and did, that's not for nothing. That isn't pointless. You kept them fed! And you might have enjoyed bonding from it, the closeness, maybe it was more convenient for you once you got into the swing of things. Nobody is putting down mums that breastfeed. Thankfully we're moving towards a more balanced discussion around infant feeding so people can make the right choice for them and their baby.

They do IQ testing on babies?! I don't even see how that's possible.

@NigelPonsonbySmallpiece @Parker231 Except that the more recent studies actually do show a correlation even after other aspects have been controlled for? I’ve linked to at least four large studies upthread from four different countries. You could have a look at these if you want to keep up with more recent research. It looks like recent and better designed studies are actually tending to show more effect from bf rather than less.

Like I said you can do it without lodging a formal complaint 🤷🏻‍♀️. Crazy idea but an email to the practice manager stating something like “this isn’t a personal complaint about the nurse as I understood she may have previously been taught this to be true, however I would like to flag that I believe xyz may no longer be considered up to date advice and is misleading “.

rather than being “I want to complain about what nurse x told me”

she wasn’t being rude, she wasn’t being lazy all of which I think definitely warrants complaints. She wasn’t even saying something she’s made up off the top of her head. Like I said earlier there’s every chance she has been taught this.

If the OP doesn’t complain how will the training materials get changed nationally?