Aibu? to be pissed off at this: "The cost and social implications of using an infant milk should be considered when deciding how to feed your baby."

[Selyna]

WTF do Hipp mean by social implications?

Both methods of feeding a baby are acceptable so fuck off with the whole acting like ff is poison! my dd is perfectly fine but i hate this constant making me feel like a failure because i failed to bf although i tried so so hard!

I no longer take part in these threads as they get nowhere - but I do want to contribute some facts :)

• NCT has not used the slogan 'breast is best' for decades, maybe not ever. The current change of emphasis to protection and promoting the conditions that enable women to breastfeed is not really new, just a clarification of what breastfeeding counsellors and the wider organisation have always done

(for whatmeworry*) the Belarus study on infant feeding is only one of several studies confirming the health differences, but as all studies do, has individual characteristics reflecting the population studied. The incidence of gastric infection was low compared to other studies in developed countries among bf and ff babies 'probably related to the fact that all of the study infants were breastfed initially and that most, even in the control group, were breastfed for more than 3 months' (jama.ama-assn.org/content/285/4/413.full) so the study is less transferrable to populations (like ours) where very few babies are bf for 3 mths, and where the incidence of gastric infection in ff babies is rather higher (see Dundee cohort study) and in studies which reveal very much shorter durations of bf (like the UK Millennium cohort study)

• ....having said that, in any individual baby, in the developed world, it would be impossible to say ff=more infection, and it is only with large studies that differences emerge, and these do have significant public health implications, but less certain individual ones

I spend time with women from areas where there is so little breastfeeding they feel criticised, undermined and judged every day. They have a thick skin, and don't let it affect them - but many of their thinner-skinned peers who started off bf stop, purely because of these attitudes. Those of you who say you are 'made to feel guilty' because of ff are speaking as if you spoke for the whole country. No one should be criticised or undermined or judged because of the way they feed their babies - ever*. But ff mothers absolutely do not have the monopoly on being hurt by this

• Hipp is a German formula manufacturer but their product is available all over the world. All manufacturers have to have an advisory message on their packs, but there is nothing in the UK law that says they need to have 'social implications' as part of this. My guess is that for some reason, German law requires it and this is a translation, but whatever, it's prob not something calculated to be insensitive or insulting to ff mothers - who after all are buying the product! There are 'social implications' to using formula - it may affect ease of getting out and about, and the need for cleanliness might be a problem for women in countries without access to clean water. Becoming outraged about this phrase seems an over-reaction to me

I'm sure many of the most ardent and passionate supporters of BF would not be sorry to see it banned if they were completely honest

Hilly, I think other than a very small few misguided people, even the most ardent of BF advocates realise and appreciate that there is a place for formula milks and that they are necessary, so I believe you are wrong when you say that.

As for it being preferable for the Mother. Well, a huge proportion of women (around 90% IIRC) say they stopped BF before they wanted to, so what about them? Personally, I was in agony for weeks with cracked and bleeding nipples and cried through feeds, but for me stopping BF certainly wouldn't have been the best thing. Obviously I am not alone in that because plenty of other women do choose to BF through all sorts of difficulties. Aren't these women important to?

I've looked at your article. It's nothing I was not already aware of.

If any HCP, or any maternity unit, tells a mother that helping her ff safely is not 'permitted', then this is clearly mad.

I have heard a couple of instances where some highly unprofessional midwife or HV has said something like 'I can't really help you with formula feeding, sorry' but I have never heard of a maternity unit saying this - pickles, where has this happened?

There are good leaflets, freely available from the NHS, which have clear instructions on how to ff safely, and it's in the Birth to 5 book. All hcps and maternity units should be echoing the instructions for anyone who needs help and information, and I'd like to see all HCPs who care for ff mothers outside hospital routinely offering to demo/teach safe preparation - this is done in some areas.

I have been a breastfeeding counsellor for quite a long time, and I have never come across any bf supporter, ardent or not, who wants to ban formula.

If you look hard enough on the internet, I'm sure you will find someone with these views, so I am not saying no one has them, but breastfeeding supporters actually do care a lot about all mothers and babies and would not want to advocate anything that made life more difficult for them.

Breastfeeding supporters recognise that feeding, however it is done, is part of the relationship between the mother and the baby and the wider family, in fact. It's not about 'the milk'. Anyone in distress with a new baby who finds that bf is increasing her distress and distancing her from her baby as a result may well find the best option for her and her baby is to use formula - and anyone offering criticism of this is unkind and ignorant, IMO.

Actually, I don't make any distinction between 'justified' and 'non-justified' decisions about infant feeding - not for anyone else to judge!

To be fair I had a particularly bad experience with some very poor staff. I hope to god its not the norm. If you look at my previous posts I think I am making a point about women generally on here getting bullied regarding their feeding choice and it's just as wrong when levied against those who breast feed. My friend has since trained to be a bf counsellor and she will be helping me next time, hopefully without the medical complications I got before. It's really not helping increasing bf in the uk that people are made to feel bullied like this, if you look through the thread I don't think it's that uncommon.

I think we should feel lucky to live in a country where there is a safe and healthy alternative to breast milk. Whilst it may not be as nutritionally beneficial or 'liquid gold' as BM, FM offers a 'good enough' second option for those who cannot BF.

To have theat option to stop BFing if it is causing us disress, or to supplement or offer instead of milk in situations where BM is simply not enough to fill a baby (lack of supply etc) makes us rather lucky.

I really don't think we should dismiss something which women in developing countries may actually be suffering due to the fact that they have no option BUT to BF.

Hilly, I find your phrase " a miserable, unhappy mother is no good to any baby, no matter how well fed he is" is unthinkingly insensitive.

Many women are or were 'miserable and unhappy' in the early days, weeks and months (sometimes years) after having a baby.

They may not like to read they were 'no good'. Yes, a mother who is unhappy and miserable needs help, for her sake as well as her baby's....we know this is important.

But I have come across many miserable and unhappy mothers whose babies were beautifully cared for; the mothers did their very best to minimise the effects of their own distress on their babies; the babies were happy and emotionally healthy. Reading that they were 'no good' is hurtful.

Please don't make sweeping statements that could make people feel worse.

Pickles, except for one poster making a silly comment re FF being tantamount to child abuse (which is an outrageous thing to say) where has anyone been 'bullied' on this thread? No one at any time as far as I have seen has said that women shouldn't FF or don't have the right to choose how they feed their baby. What they have done is point out facts regarding BF, only to be told that these are nonsense.

its not uncommon these threads pop up on here regularly and descend quickly in to a free for all which is a bit mad i think. i really cant believe there is a woman i here that doesnt go to a baby group because she ff.
that is so very sad, that is because of reactions like the ones she has received on here as well as how she feels she is being judged there. it is ultimately her decision how to take the reaction she gets but its not made easy by some people. and subsequently she is missing out on some very valuable support and a vulnerable time all because "breast is best".

I didn't think there were any actual risks involved in ff?

There aren't.

So its as good as bf then?

Yes. Or more accurately, the advantages of BF are statistically irrelevant once other factors have been removed. All you can say with certainty is that its very probably not worse than FF

See, people don't even know there are risks, how can any mother make a properly informed decision

That link is to a typical pro BF propaganda site, it starts off in paragraph one by combing WHO recommendations for developing countries (with poor sanitation and food hygiene) and applying it to Canadian conditions, which are totally different. The rest of it makes claims for which there is no statistical proof from any study. All these sites play that game of deliberate, scare mongering misinformation.

The only way you will get any truth in this game is in reading the neutral reviews of the actual studies themselves.

NCT has not used the slogan 'breast is best' for decades, maybe not ever. The current change of emphasis to protection and promoting the conditions that enable women to breastfeed is not really new

Oh come off it, as the article I quoted says, "The NCT change of approach amounts to a significant departure for a charity which reported OK magazine to the Advertising Standards Authority in 2007 for featuring a photograph of model Katie Price bottle-feeding her baby". I went to the NCT when mine were young, they were banging the "breast is best" drum as hard as they could (so hard in fact that's when I started to get suspicious about it all and did my own research) - this is a huuge change of emphasis for the NCT.

(for whatmeworry) the Belarus study on infant feeding is only one of several studies confirming the health differences, but as all studies do, has individual characteristics reflecting the population studied....

...and when you look at each study individually, and the impact of class, education, wealth etc etc are stripped out - guess what - the results are as statistically irrelevant as the Belarus one. (And that's not me saying that, its what every major research review has found since the 1st one in 1984)

Once you strip out all the conflating class/wealth/developing world stuff, what remians true in the Western studies is that BF has a strong correlation with the babies of (wealthier, more educated, middle class) caring parents - and it's the wealthy, educated caring parents bit that make for the well cared for babies, and the middle class bit that drives access to publicity and forms pressure groups.

Not nonsense but it's rude to keep giving facts to ff women who already KNOW the facts.

It's almost like an assumption we must be ignorant stupid or misinformed.

I think in my case ff was better for my baby as she didn't end up with me resenting her, sobbing all over her, frightening her and with me shaking her.

I was in a VERY bad place so no. I don't always accept that bf is best for every baby. From a nutrition and Health angle? Maybe slightly yes... From a mental heath angle.... No way

Bad wording - the are women on here who have been bullied - I didn't mean on this actual thread. Although I have been accused of making an ill informed choice, but that's just rude and not bullying. My point is that there seem to be a lot of people on here that feel they have been bullied in hospitals by medical staff etc and it's not helping promote bf, a cause which I am not at all opposed to. Hope this clarifies my pov.

whatmeworry - what can I say? NCT has never used the 'breast is best' slogan that I know of.....you might have heard individual people use it, but that's because no organisation can actually police the words coming out of every individual's mouth! The quote you use is from the journalist - and the NCT reported OK to the ASA not because of a photo of KP bottle feeding, but because the feature (5 years ago, now) was advertising a specific brand of formula, which is illegal.

You are determined to believe that studies which control for class, education etc end up with results that are statistically irrelevant. This is just not the case and you can follow up the studies I mentioned in my post to see this. I don't know where you get your info about 'every major research review' from, but it's wrong.

It's a bit tiresome.

Anyway....many people want to bf not because of research reviews, but because it is something enjoyable and nice to do with their baby (when it's working well) and that's fine, too. All cultural and social barriers to them doing this for this reason only are unjustified!

Down the woman not trying hard enough.

Really Stealth?

Your patronising and condescending comments on here just highlight your lack of understanding/sensitivity towards new mothers who end up choosing to FF their babies.

How dare you assume that decisions to FF are made lightly or rashly...or selfishly?

And why do you hate that one of the reasons women FF is because (in their vulnerability) they find reassurance that they can see just how much milk their baby is getting?

Attitudes like yours do nothing to encourage people to BF. They are completely counterproductive!

No-one doubts the benefits of BF'ing....but people want the right/option to choose whether to FF. Rightly so!

Just because you (from your very lofty perch/high horse) found that BF'ing worked for you...it doesn't make it the right choice for everyone!

Coming from the daughter of one of Britains leading consultant pediatricians, whose siblings (shock horror) were all bottle fed....and for very good reason...and who all seemingly suffered no ill effects (of the types described)

Tis thankless though
I've done it for years and years and the thankless teen with an uber high iq and low cholesterol is none the wiser
Makes me wonder why I bothered!

To be fair, you did say you weren't aware of any risks of FF, although you did then later say you were aware of those risks. People can only go by what you post though. I do agree though that women being made to feel bad by medical staff is not right at all and shouldn't happen. If anything, I often hear the oppsite, women 'bullied' to give formula by health professionals.

Whatmeworry, why do you think organisations such as the NHS, AAP, etc promote breastfeeding? Do you think they've interpreted the research wrongly? Do you think they have some secret, hidden agenda that isn't to improve public health?

How about Cancer Research? What could their hidden agenda be? They say:

A 4% lowering of risk doesn't sound much. But, as breast cancer is quite a common disease in developed countries, breastfeeding every child for an extra 6 months would mean about 1,000 fewer cases of breast cancer in Britain each year

from here: cancerhelp.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/cancer-questions/how-is-breast-feeding-related-to-breast-cancer

Are they wrong?

midori Well presumably they stopped before they wanted to because they found it difficult or impractical? What does that statistic mean exactly?

So some pro-breast feeding organisation does a survey and women who gave up and switched to FF are asked 'why did you give up?' We live in a world where we are made to feel inferior for choosing FF, so the stock answer would NOT be:

'Because I hated it and I cared more about myself than about the benefits to my baby of BFing.'

The stock answer would be:

'I would have loved it if it had worked out for me better, I would have loved it if I could have carried on for longer but I was in agony/baby was underweight/baby wasn't sleeping through and I was losing my mind (tick all or any, as applicable) so under the circumstances I decided to stop.'

Conclusion: Mother stopped before she wanted to.

Or:

'I would have loved to carry on for a year but I had to go back to work after 6 months and expressing was atime confusing nightmare.'

Conclusion: Mother stopped before she wanted to.

Statistics like '90% of mothers say they stopped before they wanted to' mean nothing whatsoever unless you expand on exactly what they said, and why they stopped.

I would have loved to BF all mine for about 9 months in an ideal world. I stopped because of all the reasons I stated in my previous post, plus raging mastitis with DS3. I didn't want to stop BFing. I wanted to stop all the intolerable crap that (for me) went with it. Unfortunately I did not seem to be able to achieve one without the other. What I wanted was for BFing to be as easy and as effortlessly natural as I had been led to believe it would be. So I suppose I am one of the 90% who stopped before they wanted to.

It doesn't change the fact that I was very relieved to stop.

The implication to that statistic is that there is not enough 'support'. With better 'support' more women would stick with it, and soon it would all be a breeze. But no amount of 'support' can stop it hurting. If it hurts there is really very little anyone can do to help you with that - I know from experience! All they can do is go 'Well done for being so brave and feeding through this pain! It will get better eventually! You are doing a selfless marvellous thing! Keeping going!' and then keep offering pointless bits of advice about changing positions, or whatever. Like you are in labour all over again.

No thanks.

To be fair, you did say you weren't aware of any risks of FF

Who said this? If you are implying it was me...then please don't put words into my mouth.

What I actually said was that I didn't blindly believe research. No...I look at what the sample size is, the demographics, whether it could be biased etc etc, where it's coming from, who's doing it and I look at the people I know around me....because I am all too aware of the flaws of research.

sausagesandmarmelade Fri 04-May-12 11:42:38
Down the woman not trying hard enough.

Really Stealth?

Your patronising and condescending comments on here just highlight your lack of understanding/sensitivity towards new mothers who end up choosing to FF their babies.

Add message | Report | Message poster StealthPolarBear Fri 04-May-12 10:42:11
More women should be breastfeeding, but that's rarely (nevrr?) Down the woman not trying hard enough. Lack of support. Lack of help.

sausages do you see that you have completely misquoted me?

Yes really btw. I never think that low breastfeeding rates are because women "do not try hard enough".
I'd qite like an apology for your absolutely shocking misquote.

I was aware of what was listed on the information posted. But it's really just the benefits of breastfeeding reversed, I though there may be some specific risk I was not aware of so I asked. And it wasn't you stealth who wondered why I was ill informed. I haven't heard of any medical professionals bullying people to formula feed, anyone I can across was scared to mention it at all, or made it sound vile. Anyway I had no choice, I had decided to breast feed and it didn't happen and therefore I had to ff, risks or no.

Yes, of course ticktok I take your point and I apologise. It was a sentiment poorly expressed on my part. As someone who has suffered PND I know you are right. I hope you understand what I was meaning to say though, which is that there comes a point where the mother's wellbeing is just as important as the baby's and if trying and continually failing to BF is distressing her, she is perfectly entitled to stop without being made to feel she has done a Very Bad Thing.

so are reversed benefits not just risks??
Or am i missing sommething?

" there comes a point where the mother's wellbeing is just as important as the baby's"

the mother's wellbeing is equally as important as the baby's!