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!

just out of interest wtf are yous two on about?

An alleged misquote duffers.

sausages misquoting me to make it seem as though I said something fairly nasty that I didn't

She ommitted an "I don't think..." from the front

But fully my fault for making a typo. Despite the fact everyone else understood it fine.

Oh blimey. I am NOT saying that anyone wants formula banned full-stop. Although I do think that a certain type of BFing advocate would really welcome seeing formula completely removed from supermarket shelves etc, and made perhaps prescription only, or available through health visitors only, so that women have to jump through hoops and justify their decision to FF in the first year. I suspect they would very much like to see it as a last resort, and that is it only availble when women can prove that all efforts to BF have been exhausted, BF counselling sought, etc, etc, so that the default assumption is that all babies will be breast fed unless there is a concrete reason why they cannot be.

Let's change it then. Let's forget I said the 'banned' word. Let's pretend I am talking about a scenario where FF never existed; was never invented. My arguments still stand.

so am I wrong? Tell me if I am and I will apologise - I can do that!

Dear me. I never get the furore with this ridiculous 'debate' get your nose out of people's breasts and concentrate on bringing your own kids up.

OK, pickles, sorry I missed the compliment - it was a bit hidden :) You were assuming I would agree that there is 'screaming' about banning formula, I think, I don't think there is anyone calling for that.

Hilly, more bf would save taxpayers money, yes, for sure.

This has been worked out in several studies.

You say: "we fail to factor in all the things I said earlier about a hypothetical situation where FF was banned or if you can imgine a scenario where it just never existed at all. " Well, of course we fail to factor in those situations. There is no need to factor them in. All you need to do is to factor in a hypothetical situation where more babies are breastfed for longer and use less formula milk. You can do this pretty easily with stats from the cohort studies.

"I imagine there would still be costs to the taxpayer, they would just be different costs, forgotten about and unanticipated, because it's so long since we've had a society where the vast majority of babies were BF that we cannot imagine what those costs might be."

???????? It's not a question of 'imagining' anything! To take just one example: You know the cost of treating a baby for gastroenteritis in hospital. You work out that treating XXXXX babies in hospital for gastro, and then work out what this would be if fewer than XXXXX babies were treated in hospital for gastro, as we know what the lower number would be, if more babies were bf for longer. This does not have to mean breastfeeding until mothers go back to work.

If there are extra costs associated with continuing to bf, then you would need to add these on, but if you were more familiar with the research (not a barbed criticism) you would know that working would not be one - working is not really significant in the length of time women bf for. In individual cases it may well be, of course, but once you start to research 1000s and 10s of 10000s of women, this becomes insignificant.

That would be insane hilly. But what would I know I'm obviously a rampant fantasist.

Ok.

I've chilled the f out and I'm sorry

hilly i have seen all of those thing suggested here on mn more than once. so for some people to say only a small fringe of people want ff to be less available is a little bit of a misrepresentation. i think a large amount of people would be happy for all of those things to be in place.

I haven;t chilled the f out :o

But sausages has obviously admitted she was talking bollocks and gone as she can't apologise, for that I am glad.

No one sensible wants ff only available on prescription - that's a mad idea and I have convinced the occasional advocate of this notion that it is mad by reminding them how very little GPs know about everyday infant feeding.

No one sensible wants it taken off supermarket shelves - another mad idea, easily refuted by asking people what purpose it would serve to make families who need this product have to go somewhere without long opening hours to buy it.

All people like me want is ethical marketing of this needed and necessary product, support for women who use it so they are aware of how to prepare it safely, and the selling price to be permanently lower so no one ever pays an inflated price for it.

"You were assuming I would agree that there is 'screaming' about banning formula, I think, I don't think there is anyone calling for that."

I'm so, so sick of discussions about breastfeeding and formula feeding turning into witch hunts, where a rare to the point of being bizarre example of lactivist fuck-headedness is held up as being representative of the views of the vast majority of bf advocates, and then roundly booed and lamented on threads like this.

"I never get the furore with this ridiculous 'debate' get your nose out of people's breasts"

Possibly people are interested in this subject in the same way they're interested in childhood nutrition generally: they see it as a public health issue. Which of course it is. Despite the insistence of many people on this thread that there is no proof that how a baby is fed has any bearing whatsoever on health in the short, medium or long term.

Have to say, do find it strange that people are perfectly willing to accept the theory that 'you are what you eat' in relation to every other sector of the population, except babies.

how many babies are admitted to hospital a year by HV because they are under weight and need to be given nutrients to up their weight to a healthier weight? i know of several in only the last couple of months....is this just bad information on the part of the HV as bf gives the baby all it needs and the weight loss will is part of the natural process. or is she doing the right thing in burdening the tax payer by deciding the baby should be given more food because it isnt getting enough from the mum.

Fight! Fight! Fight! Bare breasted? In jelly!? Rah!

Noooooo I don't think you in anyway support the banning of formula. I assumed you had read my previous post. I don't think the message was too hidden. I'm making the point that you I find bf counsellors helpful and that there should be more help like that in a practical way and less of the general lambasting some people have experienced here. All I am saying is that there are a lot of people on here who have had bad experiences and poor help at hospital. Concentrating more on practical help to educate and support breastfeeding is the best way to give women the confidence to do it. Rather than all the silly warnings about social implications it would be more helpful prehaps to refer people to some well presented independent facts and a details of positive breastfeeding support.

I don't think there is any proof it makes a difference long term and I am a health care professional. Shoot me

And if you can't bf for whatever reason that would not make you feel worse than you may do already.

"All people like me want is ethical marketing of this needed and necessary product, support for women who use it so they are aware of how to prepare it safely,"

But that view is WAY too reasonable Tiktok, and leaves people with nothing to feel victimised about.

"and the selling price to be permanently lower so no one ever pays an inflated price for it"

But then where would all the money come from to fund huge advertising campaigns for formula, TV sponsorship, mums clubs, free cuddly cows, seminars for health professionals, 'help' lines, full page ads in national newspapers and 20+ full pages of advertising in every pregnancy and birth magazine currently on the shelves of UK newsagents?

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

"I don't think there is any proof it makes a difference long term and I am a health care professional. Shoot me"

Is there any proof it DOESN'T make a difference?

If not, how can you whole-heartedly support the nutritionally radical and (in evolutionary terms) unprecedented practice of feeding a whole generation of infants on the modified milk of another species?

Just another way of looking at it!

OK, pickles, I get ya :)

But careful not to catastrophise....."all the silly warnings about social implications" ?????? 'All' the 'warnings'? There is one - count 'em, one - very small label on one formula brand which for some reason advises women to consider 'social implications'.....it's not a lot, really, is it??

Ooo slippery! I got jelly in my eye. Darn.

just out of interest you care very much to make sure that women know how to prepare formula safely........why is it hard? trying hard to not find it patronising. all for fromula being cheap though go for it!

Whale, do you, as an HCP, think it makes any difference in the short term?