'Breast is Best'

[OddSocksandRainbowDocs]

It's National Breastfeeding Week and I've seen the phrase 'Breast is Best' banded about quite a few times.

Whilst I agree breastfeeding is scientifically better, some mothers (myself included) physically could not breastfeed so chose to formula feed instead. I was made to feel like a failure by a midwife for choosing to do so.

My little one is now one and a half. She is happy, she is healthy.

I don't know who needs to hear this but 'Breast is Best' isn't always the case. 'Fed is Best' is most definitely the case. It doesn't matter how you feed your baby, as long as the baby is fed, that is all that matters

@Pumperthepumper My post was fully supportive of all women - breastfeed if you can, FF id you cannot. There is nothing wrong with that.

You on the other hand, come on here with some sort of rage, demanding that your way of thinking is best, how dare somebody else disagree with you, complain I am looking for an argument and then proceed to argue anyway.

You do you

Can you answer the question? What do you want the campaign to be instead?

It may have been easy for you but this is not everyone's experience! I'd established feeding and did so for 6 months but at no point did I find it 'easy'. (Before anyone suggests this was down to a lack of support, I can assure you in my case it was not.) When I introduced formula, despite the cleaning and sterilising, I found this far easier. Not everyone is able to get to this elusive easy/ painless/ beautiful stage.

As someone who both bf and ff, I find the generalisation by those who ebf, that if you just keep persevering, it will all be sunshine and rainbows really frustrating.

@Derbee The only people I see picking fights are the BFing mothers.

Oh also can everyone on here stop saying "no allergies". There is a tiny tiny almost statistically irrelevant slightly higher risk of allergies if you formula feed - but both mine were/will be breastfed past 2 and they both have severe food allergies. One also has asthma and eczema. It's generic: both parents also have atopic illness. Breastfeeding wasn't going to reverse that risk. It also makes parents who ff whose kids have allergies feel like they've done something to cause it - and they are already having a tough enough time without carrying that kind of bullshit risk

A properly feminist approach to infant feeding would include:

-properly funded maternal healthcare
-more extensive infant feeding support boat pre and post birth
-better maternity and paternity leave and pay

Yes it is good and necessary that the choices exist to use formula but I don’t see women’s unique ability to nurture infants as something akin to laundry that we need to be “liberated” from.

@Pumperthepumper As you clearly cannot/cannot be bothered to read the many comments I have posted before, here goes...

I want the campaign to be 'Fed is Best'. Here is why:

1. Breastfeeding is scientifically better. I stated that in my post. 'Breastfeeding' is classified under being 'fed', is it not?
2. Some mothers cannot/choose not to breastfeed. That is fine. That is there choice. They do not and should not be made to justify why.
3. Those mothers then move onto formula feeding. That is because without formula, those babies would become very ill and God forbid, they would die.
4. Formula Feeding is also classed as being 'fed'.
5. There should be no bias with regards to information being given. That way, if a woman chooses to fornula feed, they would know to use formula, not cow's milk as was suggested before.
6. If the Government was to fund formula for those who struggle financially, that would also mean that the 'poverty stricken women' a posted upthread would also have access to formula.

Breastfeeding = Fed.
Formula Feeding = Fed.

Hopefully that is made it easier for you to understand

@YukoandHiro I'm sorry to hear of your children(s) food allergies. Do you have any statistics on those babies who were FF and then developed allergies? I think its good if people knew how minimal the risk is?

This is a circular argument and where you repeatedly deny that you want to shut down any promotion of breastfeeding and discussion of its benefits but now you’ve said it in black and white:

There should be no bias with regards to information being given.

@karmakameleon Welcome back! Please read the comment I have just posted upthread.

And nor should they change it

women really need to stop this undermining and criticising of public health messages around the importance of breastfeeding not just for the baby but the mother because they chose not to or couldn’t. It’s extraordinary self sabotage for women as a group because it results in this sort of ridiculous almost comedic tit for tat. It’s almost verging on gaslighting some of the shit on here to honest

I support women regardless of their feeding choices and I absolutely don’t consider it my place to tell someone else what to do: that is madness. I won’t sit back though and overlook something as vitally important as breastfeeding being ignorantly diminished because people who chose not to do it or sadly couldn’t do it , feel it necessary to do so in order to protect their own personal feelings or validate their choice.

I'm old enough to remember National Dried milk, you got it from the baby clinics. I think it was free if you were on benefits but cheap to buy. All primary schools seemed to have an endless supply of the tins it came in, usually full of crayons.

I think it stopped because demand went down, maybe in the 1960s. I think it started in the 1940s but was certainly very common in the 1950s.

I found it hard at the start because it hurt and because I was engorged. Once that settled it was easy and most of my friends seemed to find the same so I thought it was like that generally and once you got to a certain point it was the lazy way to do it. With each baby the hard bit got shorter except for the EMCS when it was much harder to establish.

Which one? Because there are quite a few contradictory statements.

@karmakameleon My last one. It's in number form so it should be easier to note the points!

When I had one of mine I had a C-section, he was a big baby and had some breathing issues. They monitored him closely and wouldn’t discharge him until he was drinking a certain ( quite large amount) of milk. My milk hadn’t come in yet.

I had been rushed in and had already been in for 5 days. I had children at home who were struggling without me, and not an infinite amount of childcare ( obviously my husband pulled his weight but only had a set amount of leave)

I had to top up with formula in order to help his weight gain and ensure we could go home. He then did not want to go back to breast.

I think this is a very standard tale but think it’s an example go there being other factors at play.

@Whiskeypowers, I disagree - not because I disagree with the message, but because I think it is used as a lazy bandaid to cover the massive problems with the actual support that mothers need, to enable them to breastfeed.

It is easy to put out posters/social media messages/pamphlets saying Breast Is Best - it is much harder to provide the resources, help, and support that women need, to make breastfeeding successful.

I believe that I could have breastfed my boys, if I had had the proper support - if someone had tried to find out why my milk wasn’t nourishing my babies (their weight gain on my milk was minimal and slow - way too slow). Maybe drugs or alternative therapies could have boosted my supply. Maybe my diet needed to change (though I cooked from scratch, and ate plenty of protein, carbs, fruit and veg). Maybe a lactation consultant could have adjusted their latch, and that would have helped - but we couldn’t have afforded that, and I don’t know how I’d have gone about finding one.

I don’t think this campaign does anything to provide the vital support and resources for women who are struggling to breastfeed - but it does seem to do a good job of making women like me who formula fed, feel inadequate. The message is important, but the practical support is more important.

This ^

There is nothing wrong with formula and I don’t much care how other people feed there babies but I do object to people shutting down a valid public health campaign because of their personal needs.

*women really need to stop this undermining and criticising of public health messages around the importance of breastfeeding not just for the baby but the mother because they chose not to or couldn’t. It’s extraordinary self sabotage for women as a group because it results in this sort of ridiculous almost comedic tit for tat. It’s almost verging on gaslighting some of the shit on here to honest

I support women regardless of their feeding choices and I absolutely don’t consider it my place to tell someone else what to do: that is madness. I won’t sit back though and overlook something as vitally important as breastfeeding being ignorantly diminished because people who chose not to do it or sadly couldn’t do it , feel it necessary to do so in order to protect their own personal feelings or validate their choice.*

Agree with all of this.

Breastfeeding isn't easy, with my first I was struggling to get the latch right and it took a while but then it came good and I fed her til around 20 months, and stopped when I was a few months pregnant with my second. Second baby had a 50% posterior tongue tie- NHS support at the time (8 years ago- no idea if it has now improved) was woeful and had to pay privately for it to be snipped but even then it wasn't fully resolved and feeding him was difficult. He put on weight well though and I persevered and fed him til he was 18 months.

Breastfeeding should be celebrated and supported- I'm glad there is a national breastfeeding week, hopefully it helps to improve breastfeeding support etc. No one should feel guilty for formula feeding- it's a wonderful invention and thank god it exists. But the truth is that breast is best for mums and babies and I'm glad I persevered with it.

I didn’t struggle to breastfeed at all - particularly second time round when he latched on in the ambulance after a speedy car delivery.

Some of us are able to empathise with others who have different experiences and for them it is heartbreaking.

What a ridiculous thing to do to bring Ukraine into it - yes there are lots of awful heartbreaking things happening to people all around the world at any one time. Surely you can understand that these things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Then again I think it’s pointless arguing with someone who believes fed is best is anything better than an excellent marketing campaign set up by formula manufacturers to persuade mothers that formula is just as good as breastfeeding when it obviously is not. They want our money! The whole slogan was invented not on the basis of what’s best for babies, but because they wanted women back at work quickly and they wanted increased sales!! I honestly can’t believe people still fall for this shit and then insult and bully a minority of mothers (those who breastfeed).

In what other area would it be okay to bully a minority of people who are not doing anyone any harm and are in fact, doing their children a whole lot of good.

What a nasty, goady thread OP. Hope you are pleased with yourself.

This is all fair criticism of the campaign but this isn’t what the OP is asking for.

Yes, that’ll be the one I quoted. Possibly you need to read what you write before you post it because there’s a reason why so many people are misunderstanding you.

I do realise this isn’t what the OP said, @karmakameleon - but the discussion has gone in several directions since then, and I was answering a previous poster’s point, to give my opinion. I thought that was how this sort of thing worked?

Absolutely agree with you - more funding and more everything is desperately needed but that doesn’t change the facts behind the message does it !

But it's not a valid public health campaign is it? That's whole the point.