to wonder which formula company sponsored this article?

[nittynittynora]

yano.co.uk/2013/03/breast-is-best-or-is-it/

It just seems so anti-breastfeeding! Surely the health benefits of BFing are proven - there's nothing political about saying that it protects against disease, for example.I agree that of course you can form a close bond with your baby when FFing but the rest of the article seems determined to bat away all the 'supposed' benefits of BFing and focus on any perceived 'cons'.

I keep wondering why it is that anecdotal evidence ('I was formula fed and I'm perfectly healthy') is seen as absolutely valid in these debates when it comes to judging the safety of ff, but large scale trials showing breastfeeding to reduce illness in babies, involving 1000's of children, which are peer reviewed by panels of doctors and epidemiologists and considered important enough to form the basis of advice to parents disseminated by the NHS, aren't even just doubted, but are dismissed as being completely false ('there's NO evidence that breastfeeding is better for babies').

I mean really, why? It is a form of mass insanity. I read these posts on this board and stand by my earlier comment about the amount of brain fuckery and general weirdness there is in relation to this subject. It's the ONLY time that parents seem to dismiss completely out of hand NHS information and advice about something that relates to the health and development of their children, and treat it with utter contempt.

It just shows to me how deep rooted our bottle feeding culture is. It's a sort or national neurosis. There really is an entrenched view that breastfeeding is primarily unreliable, often dreadful, and really of very little value. And when you point out that in other country the vast majority of women manage to breastfeed successfully without masses of physical and emotional trauma, everyone resolutely ignores you.

I think formula companies do use marketing to stop people from breastfeeding. I'm not talking about teddies on cans or whatever. I'm talking about spreading subtle memes to make bfing seem like the non-mainstream thing to do.
Their current favourite meme to spread is about "a mother's diet being important to breastfeeding". I have seen this written on weaning advice from hipp. I wish I had it still so I could quote directly but it went along the lines of "breastfeeding is the best way to feed your baby" (i guess they had to have that as they were advertising follow on milk on the back page). But then, completely unnecessarily as it was a weaning leaflet not a bfing leaflet there was a sentence about how important mother's diet is to bfing, and critically, that PRENATAL diet was important.

WTF has that got to do with weaning?!? It's all about undermining bfing and making it out to be something that I'd for healthy, hippy "supermums" not "normal" people.

Tbh I wish they'd drop the breast is best label requirement as it gives the companies an excuse to say other things about breastfeeding, which are not necessarily true.

tarka YY to the sudden proliferation of nonsense aimed at undermining people's confidence in the quality of milk. When I first joined MN a year ago no one was even thinking about diet and BM quality, now it pops up all over the place...I wonder why...oh yes formula companies going for more market share, what a fucking surprise.

"Breast is best but for those occasions when you haven't been eating well, or your milk level is low, or your feeling run down, or your baby gets more hungry then why not line our pockets instead?"

Somehow failing to mention that none of the above are actually a problem once BF is established. Once BF is established your milk is high quality regardless of the cake you stuff in your face, both milk level and baby hunger are dealt with through feeding on demand and feeding while under the weather is an excellent opportunity to pass on your antibodies and help baby not get/ get over the cold/flu you have.

If I ruled the world, FM would be available free on prescription for anyone not wanting to BF/ not able to BF.

This would
a) focus the NHS on actually supporting people to BF
b) eliminate the gimicky addition of untested additives to formula
c) vastly reduce the cost of formula feeding to parents.

Icbineg, that makes perfect sense

chunderella I think there is some causal information in some cases. For instance studies on the state of the gut flora in FF and BF babies shows directly that FM can damage the gut which has been directly linked to NEC deaths in prem babies.

Similarly there is data that links directly the sleep patterns of FF and BF babies to diet hence making a strong causal link to SIDS via the fact that other factors known to increase SIDS risk make identical changes to sleep patterns.

In countries such as Norway where advertising of formula milk is banned and there is only one brand to choose from, BFing rates have soared and the majority of women now BF.

Eh surely if you don't know what the safe limit for alcohol during pregnancy is saying there is no known safe limit is sensible?

chund I think most FM given to prems is given in hospital by professionals. I'm not sure that making it up wrong is a big issue under those circumstances.

I was paranoid about still birth and I went immediately on to being paranoid about SIDS once my baby was born. For me the information that FM doubles the SIDS risk (once all confounding factors are taken into account) laid next to data that shows that the arousal from deep sleep is changed in FF babies as it is in the babies of smokers and front sleepers was sufficient for me to conclude that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is likely to be an actual duck.

Even thought the rate of SIDS is low at a population level and my baby had none of the other risk factors, this was more than risk enough for me to make the decision to BF if possible. Obviously other people have different paranoia and different acceptances of relative risks. I would never judge someone for drawing the line in a different place to me. I also believe that the risks of FF may be over stated - or at least not usefully stated in many cases.

But I will rant, rave and call people a liar for stating that "FF is perfectly safe and never harmed anyone", because the overwhelming weight of medical evidence indicates that they are indeed wrong and or lying to say that.

chund

The study I found says this:
"Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed by using conditional logistic regression. In the multivariate analysis, we controlled for the following variables: maternal smoking in pregnancy, maternal family status, maternal age at delivery, socioeconomic status of the family (socioeconomic status was calculated using school education, present work position, and income), previous live births, birth weight of the infant, bed sharing in the last night, pillow in the infant's bed, additional heating during the last sleep (a hot water bottle in the infant's bed or the bed in front of a heater), position placed to sleep, and pacifier use during the last sleep.6 As prenatal and postnatal smoking were closely related in our study, we had to exclude 1 variable because of colinearality. We chose to use smoking in pregnancy."

I read that and I can't really understand in what way that have not controlled for economic status?

I happy to learn something more about stats...but I can't really see how you could claim that this study doesn't take account of the fact that economic status of the babies is an issue?

I wonder how strict they are with looking at exclusively breast-fed babies.
Maybe more data could be included from those almost exclusively BF ?
This might be more realistic to look for, though I can see it could be more complex and confusing to interpret ? Does EBF mean never had any FF or solids at all ?(so many will have had a little I imagine)

Cherry the reason bf rates have soared in Norway has more to do with the outstanding postnatal care. Same in NZ, where I am from.

I don't think that's the only reason Zara. In 1970, breastfeeding rates in Norway were as low as those in Britain today. Then Norway banned all advertising of artificial formula milk completely. They offered a year's maternity leave on 80% of pay and, on the mothers' return to work, an hour's breastfeeding break every day. Today 98% of Norwegian women start out breastfeeding, and 90% are still nursing four months later. So the banning of formula advertising has got to have contributed to that, surely.

I think there's a generational issue too, to a certain extent. I was mostly breastfed (I'm 30) and my mam recalls huge pressure to stick to that magical 4 hour interval that people seem obsessed with. Add that to this idea that anyone should be able to feed the baby and life becomes... difficult. Because it trickles down - DD was feeding near constantly as a newborn, as she should, and my mum was terribly worried even in spite of herself.

I maintain that one of the key components in my breastfeeding 'success' (not sure I like that word but can't think of a better one right now) has been my husband. I can imagine it's a hell of a lot harder if you don't have someone in your corner - no, he doesn't give DD a bottle often but there are many other things she needs that he can do. And now she's weaning, he is much more involved and in particular breakfast is daughter-and-daddy time.

I checked with the author of the article... she says it was definitely not sponsored by any formula producing company (check on Twitter - @UHirschkorn). So now that's all cleared up, cup of tea anyone?

Milk no sugar, Apple. Ta duck xxx

Thanks Apple, we're sorted now I think!

Mmmmm

apple hmmm I'm not sure that is a good thing...after all that means that the real reason for writing such ill informed twaddle is still at large, and may therefore strike again.

I couldn't breastfeed and was made to feel inadequate as a mum and was publicly tutted at when bottle feeding my child.

It is nice for once to read an article that doesn't make you feel rotten for not having bf your child.

YABU.

So the purpose of the article was to make non BFing mothers 'better' about themselves? What a ridiculous notion. Good journalism is what any article should be based on. This one wasn't.