Antibreastfeeding?

[Redebs]

Having just browsed some of the 'Help articles' on here, I'm shocked at how Mumsnet is discouraging breastfeeding.

There's one on how normal it is to wean off the breast at two months because of all the 'problems you will have'.

There's one on 'combi feeding', which is about giving formula feeds to breastfed babies - the surest way to reduce your milk supply in reality.

There's another one about packing dummies and bottles in your hospital labour bag. This is definitely going to interfere with newborns getting colostrum and learning to latch. If a baby needs anything, the hospital will provide it in reality.

I know some women choose to formula feed, but these are insidious, supposedly helpful, undermining tactics aimed at new mothers trying to breastfeed. Most of these are sponsored by the baby bottle manufacturer MAM.

If formula companies were promoting this, they would be, rightly, in contravention of advertising rules.

All medical and scientific advice is to give exclusively breastmilk for the first six months and to continue to at least twelve months or longer.

What do you think ´intergenerational’ means?
My mum and my grandma told me that the frequency of my babies feeding was similar to what they had experienced one and two generations prior. That’s sharing intergenerational knowledge. The fact that the similar knowledge (that it common for breastfed babies to feed often) gets shared in other ways does not mean my experience was not one of intergenerational knowledge sharing.

If none of your family or friends have breastfed they might not know what normal breastfeeding looks like. They might never have heard of cluster feeding.

If baby is unsettled and crying at 8pm on a Sunday you're more likely to speak to others who've had babies. You're not likely to wait until the HVs are back on Monday.

If they don't know about cluster feeding they'll likely tell you baby is starving and to give a bottle.

I have a totally unsupported pet theory that one of the best ways to increase breast feeding would be to up the non birth parent’s leave. Lots of people I know don’t have much support from family or friends after their partner goes back to work so they struggle to breast feed and function in those early weeks.

I wouldn’t say there discouraging it more about giving info allowing them to make an informed choice

Just because you don’t agree with it doesn’t mean it should be silenced

It's not a bad idea. Especially if you only breastfeeding support group requires a car drive and you've had a c section. First 2 weeks are fine as dad can drive, after that mum can be quite stuck at home for at least a month if not more.

Honestly I just don't get the involvement in other peoples choices. Mum decided to BF or FF. either is ok snd equally valid. People need to mind their beeswax

100%. Babies will thrive with bf or ff. unfortunately some posters feel that they can criticise others (including me) for being selfish in wanting to use formula. Thankfully Mn wasn’t around when I had my DC’s. I’m also robust enough to be positive about my choices and don’t suffer any guilt (why would I?).

Well yes but it’s a fancy term for something that is well known about among breastfeeding women in general (you only need to look on here to know that!). If you posted on here for advice people would tell you the same thing.

Maternity leave in the US is low and paternity leave is rare, but it has higher breastfeeding rates than the UK.

What is your point?
Someone mentioned that one current barrier in the Uk to improving breastfeeding rates is the loss of intergenerational knowledge. All that means is that many new mums don’t have mums, MILs or grandmas that breastfed their children and who would be able to act as one source of knowledge about what is normal for a breastfed baby.
You decided that intergenerational knowledge only happens in poor countries.
I pointed out it doesn’t. It was a factor in my successfully breastfeeding my baby for the time I wanted to.
Then you decided I must be talking about clusterfeeding (I wasn’t) therefore intergenerational knowledge is a meaningless factor because mumsnet has threads on cluster feeding.
Your logic is crap.
As pp have pointed out, if you ask the older women in your family if they think your child’s breastfeeding behaviour is normal and they only have experience of formula feeding, then they will be more likely to suggest you switch than if they had knowledge of breastfeeding. Obviously women can and do get help from other sources and many will pay more attention to those others sources but that doesn’t mean that intergenerational knowledge is irrelevant when you’re trying to understand why many women want to breastfeed but stop before they feel ready to stop. Or when you’re trying to improve breastfeeding rates in a region, you might find you need to replace some of that lost intergenerational knowledge with peer support — so new mums asking other mums who recently breastfed/are currently breastfeeding for help and advice or just a feeling of solidarity.

@LittleLegoWoman my point is simply that that information doesn’t need to come from elderly women in your family, that’s all.

Which doesn’t mean that the information/support new mums get or don’t get from the older women (not necessary ´elderly’ women) in their family is not a factor in breastfeeding rates.

I agree both choices are equally as valid and no one should feel an ounce of guilt/shame or whatever else for their choice. For me it's when women feel like they don't have a choice for various reasons, and I believe that leads to defensiveness and what we often see which is discussions becoming heated, people feeling offended and ultimately it shuts down discussion doesn't it. You can't talk about the benefits of breastfeeding without some being offended, and it's hard to talk about formula without some making ridiculous comments. If everyone could access support if they needed it and therefore everyone fed according to their choice then I don't think there would be as much of this.

I don’t think that’s going to change - people are having children later and by your late 30s your grandparents and very usually deceased.

It would just take longer to see positive change this way if the generations are more spaced out.

Anyway my real point here is that breastfeeding rates could be improved by educating society in how to support new mums and making society level changes that make the first year or so postpartum easier, with a particular emphasis on the first few months. It’s not all about putting pressure on mums to breastfeed because it has health benefits. That’s been done. It’s partly helped but the lack of support with actually breastfeeding once baby is here is causing huge anxiety and stress and guilt.

Some things I think might help.

• Take the stigma out of formula and bottles in antenatal education. Midwives and NCT should be teaching women all about breastfeeding (including health benefits in an accurate, proportional way) plus explaining how to safely make up and feed formula (including info on relative safety of practices that might not be 100% ideal but which are much easier to actually manage that making from scratch on demand with no perfect prep type machine), plus explaining the mechanics of switching from breast to formula and supplementing/combi-feeding, and expressing and feeding expressed milk. All the info. For everyone. And none of the judgement.
• The UK should ban all advertising for formula properly. The industry needs more regulation. I absolutely don’t think that it should be prescription only - there should not be that barrier in place for mums who want to formula feed at whatever point. But maybe plain packaging and no health claims or things that sound like health claims. - it might stop all the ´hungry baby’ type milks. Stuff that actually serves a purpose could be simply labeled and anything that’s for a diagnosed health issue should be available on prescription but not necessarily off the shelf (neocate etc etc).
• better funding for midwives, health visitors and gps so they have time to help with questions and problems.
• public health campaign about the range of normal for sleep, feeding habits for breast+formula fed babies, weight gain and growth. This is stuff that Dads and grandmas and childminders and babysitters and well-meaning friends should know too.
• Improve access to childcare so women have more choice about how to feed if/when they go back to work while their child still needs milk during the day.

I think clusterfeeding needs to be talked more. Cause honestly if hadn't known about it I would of thought my son was starving and not getting enough. I think that's half the problem.

I think talking about the problems as well rather than just singing its virtues e.g. D Mer that never gets talked about.

@LittleLegoWoman I agree with your points. I'd just question on the first point the balance between useful info and info overload.

Agree women should be taught all about the mechanics of breastfeeding and normal newborn behaviour.

I think they should include information on why you need to sterilise, use hot water, discard unused formula etc rather than relative risks of doing it not by the instructions. Not least because I'm not sure those risks have been measured.

Id like to see women leave antenatal education with all the details of local and national breastfeeding support. Also with the details or 2 or 3 trusted websites for further information. General google can easily lead mothers to sponsored sites that don't give evidence based information. This would be for both breast and bottle feeding.

With combi feeding, present as an option, but say that it does require you having some breastmilk so you do need to get through some of the milk establishment phase to make it work.

I think for info on safely stopping milk supply that would be these support services and trusted websites. I feel like if you give how to stop info before they've started you might undermine some confidence. Though the info needs to be there and easily accessed.

@LittleLegoWoman not the point of the thread but ohhh how I wish this was a thing.

public health campaign about the range of normal for sleep

At one stage I think I was ready to punch the next person who asked how DS was sleeping 🥴

Actually it’s fairly easy to got some idea of risk from different formula preparation methods because you can try them out in a lab and measure microbial growth. It’s harder to know how big a risk different level of microbe growth pose to babies though.
I kind of just meant giving info on methods in a more general way rather than giving the stats, things like you can put freshly made and rapidly cooled formula in the fridge in a sealed bottle for x number of hours or you can get machines to make up the formula for you but you need to stay on top of changing the filters BUT these methods are slightly less safe than making fresh with boiling water then rapidly cooling so not recommended for premature babies or babies with compromised immune systems.

OMG the number of people who tried to give me advice assuming my crap sleeper wasn’t sleeping because I hadn’t tried a teddy, or waiting a couple of minutes before going into the room. I did eventually work out it was just my baby and not my parenting.

I went to a couple of ante natal classes but the programme only covered breast feeding and I was going to use formula and they only covered their view of a ‘natural’ birth when I’d already planned on an early epidural. They assumed you would be a SAHM and not that you had a career to return to after six months.

I think there’s cluster feeding and cluster feeding. It’s 🙄 when you read posts on here about babies literally feeding for 6 hours straight, they’re clearly not getting enough milk and expending an enormous amount of energy in trying to get it.

Yep, even now I have to take a deep breath before replying when someone starts to say 'have you tried...?' and remember they they're only trying to help (🙄🙄🙄).

Yeah I understand that but there's probably times when it isn't