to be absolutely freaking fuming about breastfeeding vouchers! !!!

[harriet247]

Cannot put into words how annoyed I am,have just switched on the news to be told that the government are considering offering breastfeeding vouchers to new mums.
160 quid in shopping vouchers for the first 6 weeks of the babys life and 200 if you go up to 6 months.
Im a ftm and I had crippling horrible guilt that I couldn't breastfeed. I really wanted to but my milk didnt turn up until 9 days after my baby was born. I think was something to do with 44 hour labour which ended in an emc a few weeks before my due date.
I am just furious, furious that women are being treated like foolish little ladies who need a cash incentive to feed their babies in the way the powers that be say is best.

No to formula on prescription - doctors are not in a position to decide who 'needs' formula. Just unbranded, unadvertised, permanently low price formula, produced according to regs, and available to all.

Healthy Start vouchers for formula should be scrapped. If you choose to ff & can't afford it, then tough. I you chose to bf but can't, you should be able to get formula on prescription at cost price.

Ban all advertising of formula. Give all new mums a nursing bra & boxes of breast pads. Healthy Start vouchers for mum to buy herself food.

The powers that be should focus on educating children on breastfeeding in school. More understanding, more exposure & bfing might just have a chance of becoming (re) normalised.
Formula should also come with a health warning on the tin.

Who is going to decide if a mother 'can't' breastfeed, MyMIL?

Doctor?

HV?

Midwife?

Aaaargh.....recipe for disaster.

they dont even have unbranded and plain packaging for cigarettes yet because the government it a bitch to big business

no chance that it would be done for formula imo

Oooh, I've just had a rant about this very subject too!
It's a stupid idea. A bit of cash isn't going to suddenly make you breastfeed.
Breastfeeding makes your baby fly, and bottlefeeding makes your kid a bit fick, innit'r something. castawaywithdreams.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/breastfeeding-vouchers-a-ridiculous-idea/

Hate hate HATE these terms 'breastfeeding mafia' and, even more offensive 'breastfeeding gestapo'. The bottle feeding extremists are far more vocal and far more influential.

I know this is off-topic, but last Thursday I got slagged off in public by 2 colleagues for admitting that I am still bf 20 month old DD. I'd class both these women as friends as well as colleagues, both of them bf their own children until 6-8 months, and before DD was born they were very supportive and gave me heaps of good advice. Another colleague is pregnant with her first baby, the subject of breastfeeding came up and I volunteered the information that I was still bf. Table of about 12 people, roughly half men, half women.

The women with no children didn't comment.

The men didn't comment.

The pregnant colleague said things like 'really? Are you?' before the storm broke.
The two women who had actually bf broke into loud exclamations of 'you're not! Uuuurgh! That's disgusting! How can you carry on when they've got teeth?' and so on and so forth.

I was accused of just doing it for my own comfort, and one of them said that there was no nutritional call for it as babies start on solids after a few months anyway. I said did she think that breastmilk magically lost all of its benefits as soon as the baby started on solids? I was shouted down, literally. The other people at the table changed the subject as quickly as possible because it was descending into a dialogue of 'it's weird!' 'it's not!' 'it is!' 'it's not!'

If women who bf themselves feel this strongly about breastfeeding past approximately a year, tops, then it's no surprise that in some parts of the UK public opinion is equally strongly against the whole idea of breastfeeding, full stop. If giving women a grant helps some of them to stand out against such comments, then great!

Ban all advertising of formula. Give all new mums a nursing bra & boxes of breast pads. Healthy Start vouchers for mum to buy herself food.

Really? What the hell kind of good is that going to do? Take away knowledge of alternatives to breastmilk, and force everyone into doing what you want them to do.
Not all mums CAN breastfeed, Or you seriously suggesting they should have to b/f anyway and screw the consequences?

Landofmakebelieve, how is banning advertising going to take away all knowledge of alternatives to breastmilk? Everyone over the age of about 5 knows about formula. They don't need to be told again and again. If it was banned for 20 years then family/friends would know what it was. MWs and HVs would advise people. Honestly, what an ingenuous statement.

The ban would be to stop them from making claims in a way that makes people think formula is as good as or better than breast milk.

It should be that breast milk is the norm and formula is there on prescription for free for those who need it.

Actually I agree TikTok. It shouldn't be on prescription.

TooExtraImmatureCheddar I am still feeding an almost 3 year old and ALL the men I have lunch with regularly make 'bitty' comments, or tell me that my son will be gay (!!! - one of these friends IS gay!!) or that he will always be dependent on me.

It's because they see breasts only as sexual. It really annoys me.

"The 1-2% of mothers who can't breastfeed statistic doesn't include the number of babies who can't breastfeed, like my DS4. So a physical reason for not being able to breastfeed isn't that rare at all"

could your son have had breast milk? Some other way than direct from the breast?

Yes, I got 'bitty' yesterday (separate conversation, about this initiative) from a 50 yo male colleague. I snarled at him. He backed down.

I have never seen an ad for coat hangers, or pegs, or hooks. It's amazing - I know I have several options about how to hang up my clothes without being advertised to!

The mother who is pondering how to feed - 'hmmmm...I know there is such a thing as breastfeeding, but what on earth can I do if I decide it's not for me? Why does no one advertise a product that I can use instead of my breasts? I have no clue...'

????

90 per cent of women use formula at some stage.

What planet does a mother have to be on, what rock does she have to live under, not to know about infant formula??

how is banning advertising going to take away all knowledge of alternatives to breastmilk?

I didn't literally mean it would take away all knowledge, I meant it would be taking away the choice of informed knowledge.
Why SHOULDN'T mothers know what choices there are out there, instead of being denied the chance to make her own informed decision?
Hiding away all formula adverts as if they're dirty secrets isn't going to help anyone, least of all vulnerable mothers.

landofmakebelieve - no a bit of cash is highly unlikely to make someone suddenly want to breastfeed.

These women probably chose to do it because they were interested in the research, they wanted their voice to be heard, and the access to a medical research team has a lot of benefits (having done research with my youngest), the cash is an additional extra that can make their lives breastfeeding easier. Those vouchers can be used on a breast pump and yes, on things that might make them feel a bit better about themselves and maybe that would improve the breastfeeding rates. Poverty is a barrier and treating it seriously as such rather than thinking all poor women are thick and just need to be reeducated on the benefits (rarely the practical side) and actually getting their perspective on the issue will do far more than throwing our hands and shouting 'choice' without acknowledging the unlevel playing field ever will.

land - "the choice of informed knowledge"

Please explain which advertisement you have seen gives people 'informed knowledge', by which I take it you mean a full picture to enable informed decision -making.

And please explain why I feel fully informed about coat hangers, hooks and pegs without ever seeing an ad for them.

Many things, actually, are not advertised, for all sorts of reasons. It doesn't mean they are dirty little secrets :)

YABU. Ok you didn't/couldn't breastfeed but that's no reason why others shouldn't be encouraged.
I BF one of mine and not the other as I just had too many problems, I really didn't beat myself up over it

Advertising doesn't give informed knowledge, it gives biased information - that's kinda the point of it, to bias you to one product. An NHS spreadsheet with the information on formulas and their differences would be a lot more informative (and helpful, finding a good breastmilk alternative should have a lot more information than is readily available currently).

In each of the birth groups I've been in (four of them), the first few weeks and even months are people going from brand to brand trying to understand and find a fit, more information on that could be helpful as well, and people struggling with their infants having bad reactions and struggling with it. A proper breakdown outside of the advertisers would be far more useful for them as would better breastfeeding support and information on practical help would be for those wanting to breastfeed.

thefabulousidiot he does. I pump and give it to him in a special squeezy bottle (he has a severe cleft lip and palate and can't suck at all). I have to supplement with high calorie prescription formula for 2 feeds a day and all the pumping is hard work with 3 other children to look after as well. I wish I could just breastfeed him normally.

£160 would not have made a difference to my decision to bf dd.

But it could have trained a HV in recognising her hypotonia before she became malnourished through inefficient suckling.

Without somebody to recognise what was going wrong dd did not in effect have access to other methods of obtaining breastmilk, even though my breasts were there, I was eager and the pump could easily have been acquired.

I wouldn't even say formula adverts give you biased information: all they tend to provide is a glow of feel-good fluff and a brand name. Which you would easily find by looking at the supermarket shelf anyway.

cory - It might make a difference in letting extra medical professionals in your life for months and getting access to equipment that makes breastfeeding easier, particularly if they have to work, and could prevent a decision to stop sooner than one would like to.

It would cost a lot more to train HVs for those kind of things and that funding won't be found unless someone can prove that quick options like this don't actually work. We have to use this research to strong-arm the funding that is really needed to get the real support that needs to be in place. Recognizing that poverty affects options, choices, and is a serious barrier to people making the decisions they would like to is the first step, showing that the vouchers aren't enough and getting these women's perspectives on the flaws in the system so they can be properly challenged and changes funded is what is really needed and what work like this - while foolish on the surface - can provide.