What’s the most unhinged/blatantly untrue thing you’ve been told by a health visitor?

[claudiawinklemansfringetrimmer]

Inspired by the health visitor who confidently told me yesterday that “Pom bears have more saturated fat than a Big Mac” and the ones on a birth preparation course who stated “breast fed babies are 70% more intelligent” and “they didn’t have formula in dinosaur times!” (The latter is technically true I suppose…)

I had a great deal of support from a number of professionals, the infant feeding team, midwives and health visitors, all of whom stressed the benefits of breast-feeding over formula. This message was loud and clear through every channel, official and unofficial, which I encountered both during my pregnancy and post birth. Whether you believe it or not, I can guarantee you that I have only ever heard formula milk referred to in grudging, apologetic terms as a poor substitute for breast milk, a last resort really.
Believe me, if it had been physically possible for me to breast-feed my baby I would have done so. However, when weeks have gone by when, despite attempting everything teams of professionals can suggest and finally having a doctor explain a physiological defect which would make it impossible for me to ever breast-feed, I'm afraid formula milk really was my only viable option. Don't worry though, I'm very aware that, due to my bodily limitations, I've severely let my baby down. It's good of you to spend time on this thread berating already guilt-stricken mums for just not trying hard enough though, that'll really stick it to the formula milk industry!

Persist with breast feeding despite body not producing enough milk to sustain a baby. Resulting in starving a baby, apparently they can’t tell you to stop bf, but felt relief once you’d had enough of trying.

That my baby would become obese because I breastfed on demand. He was five days old and luckily was my second.

Not true. My baby nearly died when EBF, as my milk didn’t come in until she was eight weeks old. Nothing to do with formula advertising. Throughout history there have been women and babies who couldn’t BF for a variety of reasons. And in the past those babies often died.

Thankfully we live in an age when an amazing lifesaving substance called formula is available.

The real problem is the amount of lies told about BFing - I encountered similar attitudes to yours during pregnancy and was told that formula is unnecessary as all women can BF.

I once mentioned to my health visitor that I thought my baby was left handed.

She immediately told me I could 'cure' this by refusing to allow my daughter to use her left hand to reach for a toy, eat food, hold a fork etc.

She then went on to explain how I should take things out of her left hand and put them in her right, tell her 'no' when she picked things up with her left hand and put them in her right hand etc, etc.

I was a first time Mum, so didn't say anything but I told my own Mother and she was furious!

On the phone during covid, "it will be baby ache just put e45 cream on", no my baby had chicken pox and I was so run down I had shingles.

I had decided for very well thought out and valid reasons not to breastfeed my second baby, and the HV told me completely aghast ‘oh do please pick up baby and hold them close when bottle feeding’…. I told her I was planning to throw the bottle in the Moses basket and hope for the best… she instantly knew what she’d said was ridiculous. And at a home visit after giving birth on spotting a packet of wipes, the HV said to my baby ‘you poor thing is mummy using wipes on your precious bottom’. Do one! I would love to read the notes from these 2 exchanges.

That is actually sort of true. It reduces symptoms of one of the bowel diseases, Crohns I think. I worked with someone who was researching why.

Still mad advice to give though.

A lot of people seem to be missing the point. It's not about whether formula advertising directly caused your specific breastfeeding issues (though indirectly there may well have been an impact in some way, even if it's impossibly complex to trace it all back and point to the cause).

It's the wider impact on society (tied in with other forms of sexism) that affects everyone (including care of pregnant and birthing women); if there was no formula industry making money from feeding babies formula, all babies would be getting breastmilk, in some form or other.

Whether direct from the mother, expressed or donated milk, or some kind of powdered breastmilk if required (which it rarely would be).

E.g. for babies with phenylketonuria, breastmilk could be treated to make it suitable, instead of using the low PKU formula they are given now (which is obviously already processed in numerous ways anyway).

People should be angry that this isn't already available, instead of getting defensive towards someone who thinks it should be.

I had a horrible experience when I had DD1. Was criticised for having been discharged two days after a C Section. Was criticised for having too many people in the house - two friends visiting from the USA, my mother who was cooking, cleaning, laundering etc and exDH. Was criticised for having a cover on DD that wasn’t 💯 natural - Cotton or wool. It was 💯 silk. Criticised for mixed feeding even though DD was happy being breast fed and bottle/formula fed. Then to top it all off DH was sellotaping an ‘It’s a Girl’ notice to the front door - all the neighbours had wanted to know … she said as she was leaving ‘that isn’t straight’ 🤦🏼‍♀️
I complained and told her office she wasn’t welcome to come back.

Reading all of these I’m so glad of my midwives at hospital and the forst HV I had - when I said ‘where’s my baby’ when I was taken to the ward (I’d had an awful birth and was v poorly) they said not to worry they’d bottle feed him and to try and get some sleep. Next day I asked if I could feed him and they said it wasn’t a good idea as I was so ill, and I needed to concentrate on getting better. Mind you I was in a side room as I was very ill. Within another few days they thought I had bacterial meningitis and I wasn’t allowed to see my baby until the tests came back clear.

Those midwives were bloody brilliant - all so kind and supportive. First HV was lovely about it and gave me tips on helping the mastitis I had which was v painful, but she supported the bottle feeding and he was a happy healthy baby.

The thing is (and it doesn't excuse her bedside manner) is that if they have a contact with you ie. a new birth visit or 6 week check, they HAVE to fill in the "jobs worth" paperwork as that's the health trust's policy and they HAVE to ask all the seemingly stupid and irrelevant questions because they can't just assume anything.

You could just have refused to have them come at all - it's a completely opt out service. Then no paperwork required.

And yes, sometimes us community workers do turn up late - we can't control the previous visit running over or the traffic I'm afraid!

Don’t know as avoided them like the plague. They’re bloody useless!

Love your response to the first ons! Legend. ;)

Yes! This times a million, and I've said the same thing to friends.

It was the first time in my life where I felt clueless and unable to easily distinguish genuine help from well-meaning bullshit.

So much unevidenced advice given as fact, which I clung on to from "authority" until I started to look into things myself.

Dd is 23 now but when she was a baby she really struggled to feed, she swallowed lots of meconium. when she was born and didn’t feed properly, I bottle fed after a few days (no judgment please, I did my best) but she was fussy wouldn’t drink more than few ounces at a time and was quite sicky. She lost weight and was very slow to gain weight. I took advice, did all the right things, engaged with the gp, midwife, health visitor and do you know what she said.. if your baby doesn’t gain start gaining weight then I’m reporting you to social services and she will be removed, it’s my belief you aren’t looking after her properly.

i Went home in tears and I think that was the start of my post natal depression tbh. She did gain weight in the end, she settled down but she’s always been very small and petite, still is to this day. Eats like a horse now.

I got a new health visitor after that.
never forgot it

Baby 1 - mainly bottle fed, weight at 5 mths was 90th percentile "you need to stop feeding on demand, if he's obese as a baby he'll be obese as a child, bottles should never be given on demand it's too easy for them"
Baby 2 - exclusively breastfed, weight at 5 mths 94th percentile "well done you, aren't you doing so well, look how they're thriving and it's all from you"
Both kids now a very average weight, I just make fat babies (and I love that!)

You need to get a life and let people feed THEIR children how they want to

Is your life so empty that you have to occupy yourself ranting and denigrating how other women feed their babies? It is, quite literally, none of your business.

You might have successfully breast fed your baby, so well done you. But you've also condemned your baby to living with a mother who is so bigoted and unsupportive of other women.

It's formula FFS not weedkiller.

The water memory thing sounds like confusion over the story behind homeopathy - which personally I don't believe in anyway and is not considered a valid concept in mainstream science. The perceived effects of highly diluted substances are better explained by the placebo effect and other psychological factors.

@rosiejaune people are not angry because they realise that in a safe country with clean water bf or ff makes no difference to the vast majority in the longer term 🤷‍♀️

I can't honestly say that I've ever had any good advice from a Health Visitor, I just found them intrusive and in some cases ignorant. I suppose that they are useful in that they can tell you when vaccinations are due, but you can find that information elsewhere.

I am fed up with Health Visitors being trashed. Both of mine were fabulous. Very supportive.

Please don’t feel like this. I have 3 bio children - 2 of sh had no formula at all. My partner had a baby in November, night in nicu, cos section, then she had pneumonia, baby had a tongue tie and got jaundice and was in light therapy. No amount of positioning, pumping etc got the milk flowing. When we finally got him back to birthweight - it took him 3 weeks, we decided we could spend Christmas triple feeding and trying to sort it and not go any where and have constant weigh ins - or just use formula. Which we have done. I don’t feel we have let him down one bit. She waited a long time for him and I wanted her to enjoy him. And yes, at 6 months he went on follow in milk so we could claim offers and get out boots points.

You sound like you absolutely tried everything you could before you found there was an issue. You haven’t let your baby down or failed at all.

I thought my health visitor was wonderful, always kind and saying how I had took to parenting like a duck to water and commenting on how I always dressed her so well and how happy she was.
Then I left her dad, rented a lovely house just the 2 of us. I was 22 years old.
Her visit to my new house she asked how i was coping doing it alone, answered all was well. Then she asked if I wanted to have the play therapist service they have available. This being my 1st (and only) I thought that was a lovely service they offered everyone so said yes please.

Play therapist arrives and said it is like an early learning center in here. Does her session, which my DD loved, and then told me that my DD doesn't need this service as she speaks at a level double her age (she was 1.5 years old) and is thiving but can give me a couple more sessions if I wish. It was only then I realised that even though my health visitor had saw how well I was doing, the young single mum prejudice had come out as she now thought I had needed this service whic was for disadvantaged children, even though I had done nothing to suggest this was the case with me aside from deciding to leave an unhappy relationship. Due to my DD age I never saw the health visitor again to clarify how this had happened

Maybe she thought I would just like it. Or maybe I am right in thinking that sadly young single mums are just labelled as shit and a risk to child development, despite 1.5 years of saying how well she was doing