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.

So we currently live in a country where terminally sick people are being told they are fit to work, people can not afford their rent because if the bedroom tax, the disabled are going to be housebound because they are losing DLA, people can not afford to eat and heat their homes, etc. The list is endless, but we can afford to pay women to breastfeed? It is wrong on so many levels.

I breast fed both my children, the support in hospital was dire. If there is money available put it in to breast feeding support.

Most women want to bf. the most common reasons for giving up that I've heard as a bf supporter are pain, baby never seeming full, feeding too often, not having enough milk and not being able to leave the baby/wanting other people to do a feed.
The first two are usually poor latch or tongue tie/lip tie which can be sorted. The next two are down to comparison with ff babies around them who can go 3-4 hours and not being aware that new babies do feed really frequently and that it's normal nothing to do with their lack of milk.
The last one is simply down to culture/not wanting to wait until baby is a bit older before leaving them.
I fail to see how giving someone money will solve any of the above except for the last one. What is needed is more bf supporters who aren't hcps and who have the time to sit and properly support the woman, more consistent advice from hcps. Hcps being able to spot tongue tie (and spot clues that indicate it might be a problem) more regular visits from midwives and earlier intervention so babies don't end up losing masses of weight and end up hospitalised.
Finally, ent consultants who are able to spot posterior ties and who accept that lip tie can cause issues

Dr Hilary is an arse though.

Sorry I've got to agree with BellsaRinging, in my area bf isn't promoted at all and this is an area with a high proportion of unemployed etc (not sure if relevant but someone mentioned needs based re vouchers above). I was asked in one mw apt if I was planning to bf or ff to which I replied I would try bf but it wasn't mentioned again following that. I did assume that it would be covered in antenatal classes but they didn't mention any sort of feeding which surprised me.

Afaic they should be using spare funds educating new mums both ways through antenatal classes as I still need to know how to make a bottle up for when I go back to work. As it stands I've no idea how to do that and although there are bf groups and support for postnatal I feel more should be done to provide us with both sets of knowledge pre birth, especially if they want to encourage bf - those first couple of bf days I didn't know what I was doing and I imagine it would be very easy to move onto ff at that point (not that I would know what I'm doing there either!!)

YANBU.

It is incredibly patronising and completely pointless anyway. The authorities should not be hassling women who may not want to breastfeed, what they should be doing, is supporting the majority of mothers who do want to breastfeed and give up because they simply don't get the support they need, either from their families, wider society and most shockingly of all the NHS, to succeed.

If the NHS could train their health visitors and midwives properly so that they actually knew the bloody basics about how to support a woman who wants to breastfeed, that would be a much better use of money. If they could actually pay breastfeeding counsellors instead of relying on volunteers so that new mothers had access to breastfeeding advice every day, that would be a better use of money.

The reason most women give up breastfeeding when they want to carry on, is purely and simply because they do not get the support they need to succeed in continuing with it. Shopping vouchers isn't support, it doesn't make up for the fact that your health visitor hasn't got the faintest idea how to solve basic breastfeeding problems, it doesn't make up for the fact that the nearest breastfeeding counselling clinic is 2 bus rides away and not for 5 days, in which time your baby is going to starve - it's just yet another pretence that the state is doing something to support women to breastfeed while doing sweet FA.

I agree the money should be spent on better bfeeding support but an incentive for some may work, really we need to change culture amd attitudes as someone has already said.

Its about education and support but for those on low incomes vouchers for food etc make sense along with vouchers for formula milk for those that need them.

As an extremely poor student I would have welcomed them tho a voucher entittlign me to a couple of decent bfeeding bras wpoudl have been good!

Yanbu the money should be spent on providing more midwives so they can spend more time helping mums to breastfeed.

How on earth would they know, anyway?

Come into your house and check for evidence of bottle feeding. Look in the cupboard for time of formula.

Surely anyone could say they were breastfeeding and get given 160 vouchers.

Sounds unworkable anyway, as well as being discriminatory and divisive.

Mothers on very low incomes already get vouchers don't they? But so do bottle feeding mums. Isn't this the same thing as that? A means of support for mums on a low income as opposed to an incentive for bleeding mums?

YABU just because you had problems breastfeeding doesn't mean the public health benefits should be ignored. The only person making you feel bad about this is you.

If it was support for mums on low income then it wouldn't be dependant on the method the child is fed

YABU

If it saves the NHS money through reduced hospital admissions for newborns then it's a good thing.

Obviously it's good for babies too. :-)

Yanbu. People should bf because it's what's best for their family as a whole and it's something they want to do. Not because they get vouchers for it. What happens when it doesn't work out bit they carry on for another two weeks just to complete the trial. How's that best for babies health. A few vouchers does not solve the problem of appalling health care and lack of accessible support. Out local hospital used to run a clinic. However it was at like 9:00 in the morning and it was two buses for me to get there. How are people meant to get out the house that early with a new baby when u still feel like you have been run over. And where's the money for the travel for those who can't afford it??? Does vouchers solve the financial issues of getting to whatever support is available? No it doesn't. It's just a gimmick to make them look good while ignoring the real issues.

Red pipe - the stats the NHS bases its recommendations re infant feeding on take into account a very wide range do demographic factors as well as smoking.

Health visitors will be responsible for checking if the mother is still feeding before she gets the final payment.

Haha ye right that would mean the health visitor actually needed to make contact with the family!

All the vouchers in the world wouldnt have made me grow new breast tissue and this would have really upset me. It was bad enough explaining to every new HCP that I saw precisely why I wasnt bf ("because I am not" should have been answer enough, but never was ), without this.

HV? Really?

The same HV who think hot stany rooms and three hourly feeds are the answer to everything and who most people don't see after the first week or two?

Steamy

Has anyone got a link to a sure that explains this? I would be surprised if it was a reward-like scheme for breast feeding mums.

More like vouchers for low income parents that can be spent on formula milk or healthy food got breast feeding mums. If the latter is the case then it already exists, has done for years, isn't discriminatory and YABU

Also it's a just a trial.

New someone would ask for the link www.unicef.org.uk/Latest/News/breastfeeding-report-nhs-savings/ Sorry I was right with millions around £40 million for a moderate increase in breastfeeding rates. although not sure what they mean by moderate increase.

Utterly ridiculous. The demonising of formula and mums who use it is so dull and ignorant and of the moment.

In glad I'm not alone in finding the idea of vouchers for breast feeding pisses me off!

I think most women would like to breastfeed (in my antenatal class of about 10 women only 1 said she wanted to ff from day 1), but a voucher is not going to solve the reasons why most women are unable to bf.

In my opinion it comes down to a huge lack of support. For a starters they want you out of your hospital bed 6 hours after a normal birth, in my experience, I saw a midwife on day 2, and a midwife on day 10 and a HV on day 14 and that was it.

I had read up on all of the nhs leaflets about bf before DS was born, but in reality I needed someone with experience to show me what to do as DS just wouldn't latch. It was horrible having a newborn baby screaming every time I tried to bf him, we gave him a bottle and he was a happy baby. No wonder, I'm not sure how many women can go through their babies screaming with hunger and figure out how the hell to make them latch on. In this sense ff is so much easier and why most women end up using it IMO.

Use the money on bf support for all women, don't just give vouchers to those who would probably bf anyway!

"Yanbu the money should be spent on providing more midwives so they can spend more time helping mums to breastfeed"

^ this ^

I recently had DD (now 9 weeks old)- I was asked post birth about my method of feeding, I said I would like to try and breastfeed but after having two previous children and unsuccessful at my attempts to BF, I was not overly optimistic that i would be able to do it.

Midwife attempted to help me for about 20 mins (she did really try)- by this time it was 2am, I'd just had EMCS, DD was SCREAMING, I started crying. Midwife suggested that I give formula and that I try again tomorrow, in the day- more staff around to help me- etc etc- she said she would handover that I wanted to try again in the morning.

Nobody came to me the next day to offer any help. I mentioned to a HCA at 8am that I would like to try again- she said she would 'find someone' to help. Again, nobody attended and it was quite evident that the ward was too busy to facilitate anyone sitting with me, helping me to feed.