To be shocked at the price of formula milk?

[Souredstones]

It's been 9 years since I was last pregnant and this time round I'm not going to attempt breast feeding because for my previous pregnancies I produced no milk and wasn't able to feed them. So I'm not stressing out I'm going straight in for the formula. I have medical reasons for doing so.

I get that they've put the price up to deter formula feeding. I know why. I agree breast is best. But from what I saw today it's now a sneeze under £10 a tin.

I'm lucky we can afford it, but what if you're on the threshold of not receiving help and find yourself, as I did, unable to bf even with the full intentions of bfing and being unable to afford this price.

Is there a reason it's doubled in price in the last decade? Have production techniques changed that much?

This is why they should make it prescription only and provide more support for breastfeeding mothers, then people like theop who have a genuine medical reason for to breastfeeding will be provided for and everyone else can breastfeed without problems.

But they do advertise. Ok, they call it 'follow-on milk' but come on every parent knows what's behind it. And I can't remember seeing any adverts for Sainsbury's or Tesco's or Aldi's etc nappies but people still buy them. So why are parents en masse trusting their babies' newborn skin to such johnny-come-latelys? Surely if there was some kind of major gouging to be done with formula, other massive players like them would be jumping onto it?

Also, you mention the scandals overseas. Isn't that all the more reason for an ethical-thinking parent in the UK not to go for one of the main formula companies and maybe try out a smaller competitor instead? To my mind it makes even more sense for parents to choose a company without a history of criminal exploitation of babies in the developing world hanging over its head.

I get free prescriptions. So if I wanted to formula feed then I could potentially get free milk? How would the NHS bear that cost?

How do you define "medically unable" would you have to prove it?

That's just not tenable in my opinion.

I know someone who is a doctor and she gave cows milk from a few months old. Seemed odd at the time but was before I had kids and obv never said anything. £10 a week isn't much compared to cost of feeding a child - school lunch alone costs that.

I'm intrigued by the definition of 'medically unable' too. I breastfed for 2 weeks before switching to formula. I'm autistic and have problems with hypersensitivity but I wanted to try and breastfeed. Being in Sweden I got lots of support to do it but ultimately it proved too much for me. I was reaching the point where I was dreading the baby waking up and was on the path to resenting him because of it. I agonised over the decision to stop but once I'd made it I could relax, enjoy being a mum and bond better with my baby. Would I fit the definition of 'medically unable'?

No - 'medically unable to breastfeed' only refers to physical issues.

I would like doctors and psychiatrists to take emotional trauma around breastfeeding as seriously as they would if it was disrupting any other normal physiological function, like sex, eating or going to the toilet. It won't happen though as babies getting their mothers milk isn't seen by society as something important.

I think the "scandals overseas" mentioned was referring to the formula contamination scares. Many Chinese families are now buying imported Western formula rather than chinese stuff and this has probably contributed to price rises here.

I don't think 'more support' will cut it on the breastfeeding front. It hasn't made much difference yet has it? Women in the UK still abandon breastfeeding in droves after the first few weeks.

Water will always flow downhill. Most women will do what they find easiest in relation to parenting choices, and ff babies FEED LESS, and their feeds are more easily controlled by the mother.

All the formula companies have to do is saturate the media with advertising, to create a climate where bottle feeding feels ubiquitous so it seems like the natural choice for parents.

And babies have no voice when it comes to decisions about their nutrition. Where else is there a model of success where the rights of those with no voice are up against the vested commercial interests of large multinationals, especially when those who would advocate for babies in this matter (parents) are themselves quite conflicted over the whole issue?

No miaow - talk about the inadequacies of formula should be forbidden in any discussion of how babies are fed, and the massively profitable and huge industries selling human milk substitutes.

Please give over with the emotive 'devils juice' or references to people believing formula is 'evil'. T'is a childish and manipulative way to try to suppress reasonable comment on the issue.

If someone had to be prescribed formula then that would be wasting the time of health professionals. The biggest cost of a prescription is the GP's time in assessing the right medication. Many GPs would be quite happy to prescribe formula on pychological grounds. ie. Happy mother = happy baby.

A GP prescribing formula would cost £30 for ten minutes of GP time as well as the cost of formula. Frankly I think that a child with a perforated ear drum or an elderly person with bad shingles needs the GP more than a mother who needs "permission" to give up breastfeeding. (Unless ofcourse the mother needs anti depressants because she has had such a wretched time with breastfeeding!)

As I have said previously, using formula is a legitamate parenting decision. I see no point in judging someone's reasons for using formula.

The fact that formula is completely over priced is not a breastfeeding issue. I would like our governant to take action on this matter just as the Chinese govenant has.

"I see no point in judging someone's reasons for using formula."

If it is legal - it is - then parents have a right to make this choice without interference from health professionals.

Parents will continue to make suboptimal choices for their babies and children. You can't legislate against these, even those which put children at real risk of harm, like smoking in pregnancy. Not unless you want to live in a police state that is.

I agree with Minifingers for the most part.

It is the aim of formula companies is indeed to make formula ubiquitous. That's obvious. The fact that it's so commonly used and it so inferior to mother's milk is a victory of marketing; I must admit I find it strange when people agonize over things like when they should turn their baby's car seat around to be forward facing and also give their baby formula (electively). Where is the consistency in that?

There's only a small percentage of women who are physically unable to breastfeed; it's obviously over-reported, which quite likely leads to the animosity you see on threads like this from women who are frustrated by being accused of just not trying hard enough. Likewise, there are women who have ultimately breastfed successfully through great pain, strife and inconvenience and quite possibly resent the implication that they're just lucky.

Making formula available by prescription only is madness, IMO.

"Which for a start, would mean honesty about the difference between association and causation, and would also require admittance that inequality affects health in a myriad of ways. We are certain that ff babies do less well than bf babies generally, we are not remotely certain why."

I think Chunderella it's a bit unfair to imply that current medical views on the risks associated with using non-human milk for babies are by and large unreliable because research doesn't control for social disadvantage (which at least in the UK tends to go hand in hand with formula feeding from birth). All the studies NHS recommendations on infant feeding are based on control for parental income/education/social class and smoking.

I also don't think it's rocket science to work out why babies who get no breast milk on the whole do worse than babies who get breast milk. Babies are born with immature immune systems, and human milk is 'designed' to help ameliorate the risks of this by providing the baby with additional immunity. It's not a 'boost' - it's what babies are intended by nature to have. Young babies who don't have access to the anti-infective properties of breast milk are more likely to contract infections.

But I will agree that there are some problems in much of the research done in the last two decades, the main one being the failure of most of it to rigorously control for formula use in breastfeeding mothers. I suspect that the categorisation of mainly formula fed babies as breastfed in so much of the literature is part of what accounts for these studies not finding more striking differences between health outcomes for breast and formula fed babies.

And do we really need complex research to explain why exclusively ff babies suffer massively more from constipation, vomiting, thrush and stomach upsets than exclusively breastfed babies? Unlike health problems like chest infections and ear infections (also significantly higher in ff babies) poor housing and parental smoking are not really significant factors in these illnesses are they?

Reducing it to formula on prescription only for those physically unable to breastfeed is anti-feminist, surely? Removing a woman's choice over what to do with her body at a basic level, and potentially harming her emotional and mental health. No one would argue that breastmilk isn't better. It is, fundamentally, better for the baby. I've read all the arguments about why it is better, and I do believe it offers many many things that formula doesn't. But that is just one part of a bigger picture surely? I know, from a personal point of view, that when weighed up against the damage breastfeeding was doing to my relationship with my son and with my own body, breastmilk might have been better for my son, but it wasn't so good as to out weigh the negatives. Combined with a happier less unstable me, formula was good enough. And that's what is comes down to. Are the benefits to the baby > than the damage to the mother? Unless you happen to be the mother in that situation, then your opinion means jack shit.

Wow we are already talking about 'suboptimal' and 'inferior' way to make women like me feel good about our decisions!

The fact remains that these companies have cornered the market and have a 'name your price' over us. That is the issue that isn't right. Not the issue of more support (that won't make me produce milk, trust me) that's a red herring

Crowler I agree with your post in the main but having decided to use formula which could be for a myriad of reasons I don't agree it's odd that you should take the usual care over other decisions.

Especially car safety. You don't hear many people saying well I decided to use formula so I thought fuck it just as well put the baby on the roof rack.

So you need formula today as for whatever genuine reason breastfeeding isn't working out. Ring the doctor for an appointment. "You can come in 2 weeks, we're busy until then". Completely unworkable.

I think its pointless talking about bottlefeeding being sub optimal or inferior. A baby lives in a family and everyone's needs to be taken into consideration. If breastfeeding issues are causing postnatal depression then it may well better to switch to formula as severe depression affects the quality of parenting.

I don't want a GP deciding who has a geniune reason for using formula as it would damage the GP relationship.

This is interesting as I'm currently trying to make a choice about continuing to breast feed, DD is 5 weeks old and while it's not hurting anymore, I am far from enjoying breast feeding. I've introduced a couple of bottles of formula and already the relief is clear, I have a couple of 'breaks' a day. Honestly I think I'll stop completely at some point in the next month, but perhaps using formula for a couple of feeds will be enough to help me keep going. I breast fed DS for 5 months so know I can do it, but for some reason, I found it nicer feeding him - perhaps it was that he fed for longer with larger gaps in between than DD does, or that as he was my first born I didn't have another DC to worry about and could just feed when it suited him(and yes, if i go onto formula, DH will do some night feeds, so even if it takes more time than breast feeding, it's not me who'll have to do it all).

However if I had to go to the doctor and had to say I couldn't breast feed, the temptation would be to give up all together sooner, rather than just do top ups. Having to get a prescription forces it to be an 'all or nothing' discussion - and so many woman I know had to start their DCs on formula and then get BFing established, but currently those combination feeders are a private issue, you don't have to announce your feeding choices to a medical professional and make it official.

And this is all rather assuming that all woman can be and want to be SAHMs for a full year until their DC is old enough to go on cows milk. A lot of woman who are perfectly capable of breast feeding stop and move to formula when they return to work. You only get SMP for 8 months, assume you take a few weeks off before your baby's born then it's perfectly normal to be returning to work when your baby is 7 months old, far too young to go the whole day without either breast milk or formula. I know many woman who've returned to work at 4-5 months, and that trend may increase now fathers can take some of the maternity leave. What about those babies?

I know that this is slightly off topic OP, but I just wanted to point out that it IS 9 years since you were last pregnant and you may find that breastfeeding is actually a viable option for you this time round. Your body may well react differently this time round. That doesn't mean that you SHOULD try it again, just that you COULD.
With regards to the cost of formula milk, I just think that it's a cost that would be parents need to factor into their equations, along with everything else that their DCs are going to need over the next 18 years.

HaroldLloyd, I thought it was obvious I wasn't talking about strapping a baby to the roof of a car.

I think it's strange when new parents (as most do) agonize over every baby protocol imaginable such as when can a baby sleep on its stomach, when can the carseat be turned facing forward, can the baby have a bumper on its crib, etc - whilst feeding this same baby formula. This strikes me as a marketing triumph.