To hope that I can ask about FF without being shot down in flames?

[Darksideofthemoon88]

I'm interested in WHY people choose to FF if not for medical reasons (ie they can't because of medication they have to take, or because their baby was very premature and is unable to suckle) - I've seen a lot of threads where people assert that FF was best for them/their family/their baby or that they chose to FF without trying BF, and I'm curious as to why. Genuinely curious I'm not interested in fighting with anyone about what's best or right; I'd just like to read about why people FF because I honestly don't know. In the interests of full disclosure though (I know how MNs feel about this! ), I am a breastfeeding mother.

These discussions get heated but everyone should express their feelings. TheReal I am sorry to read you are left feeling the way you feel. My posts on any board unless the person is clearly goading or worse racist are never intended to upset another MNer.

I understand peapod
I know it stirs lots of feelings.

Fairylea, you expressed great astonishment that I would post on a thread which I had not read in its entirety, and for you, this demonstrated that I have no interest in other people's opinions....a bit of an assumption to conclude that :)

Truth was, I have read most of it and skimmed it all, but I was away when the thread began and when I joined it was 500 posts-strong. I am interested, just time-poor :)

I do usually RTFT before posting - it's better to do so. On this occasion, I was mainly responding to recent posts.

Someone complained that bf mothers should not post on a ff thread. This makes no sense. Most mothers do both bf and ff, anyway, so the division is false. Just as important, if an OP asks why women ff (as this one did), out of interest, I don't think there should be a ban on people with other personal experiences contributing....and others may have some information outside their own experience to share, or read something misleading they feel they want to correct - like the 'statistic' that '80 per cent of bf women' have stopped before six weeks. Misinfo like that doesn't add to the discussion, IMO.

But Tiktok a lot of what minifingers posted wasn't her experience which as you say might have been interesting. It was her normal spiel, which is judgmental, to all who don't bf their children. Yippering on about culture isn't talking about personal experiences.

And if you read welshwabbit's post you will see that bf at 6-8 weeks in England & Wales was less than 50%.

Tiktok I apologise if I seemed rude. I think what annoyed me was that as a ff mum we are so often reduced to statistics which as others have said mean very little to the reality which lies behind them. So on this thread people have shared their personal stories and reasons and it has been a very open and friendly thread based largely on personal experience.

And then on the last few pages pro breastfeeders have come on and admitted to not reading the thread and started spouting statistics and surveys and what they consider to be facts about how much better breastfeeding is.

It's like the way the nhs treats ffing mums all over again, ie we are not interested in reasons why you're not bfing, just that you should do / have.

LBP, cultural aspects of infant feeding come into my category of 'information outside personal experiences' and to me that's legit. It's part of the discussion to ackowledge that societies other than the UK's - including developed, Western societies, as well as pre-industrial societies - have very different infant feeding stats. What does this indicate? How does living in a different setting influence our feelings about feeding choices? I don't understand why this is 'yippering on' as if it was some sort of irrelevancy.

The infant feeding stats are pretty clear in the UK. The infant feeding survey, UK wide, and internationally-respected ( www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB08694 for a brief summary) shows 55 per cent prevalence of bf at six weeks. 81 per cent of mothers had started breastfeeding at birth. Do the maths :) The majority of those women who started breastfeeding are still breastfeeding at 6 weeks -about a third of the ones who started have stopped, not 80 per cent.

The stats linked to by welsh were, the England individual HA returns. They show 47 per cent bf at 6 weeks.

There is a drop in bf prvalence, for sure, but not an 80 per cent one.

Tiktok. I think the point is most FF parents on this thread just don't care what the stats say (UK or otherwise) or what's driving the numbers. In addition unless we know exactly the original objective, source, have access to raw data and how these stats were collated and analysed we have to be sceptical that what is published is completely unbiased. More to the point, we just don't care about the stats.

Also some of the stats you see on MN are google searches which are clearly posted so the poster can win an argument. People seem to spend alot of time just trying to find the right stats to win an argument.

You can access the raw data through my link and I do think its good practice to post the source so people can check the provenance. If people are not interested in stats because they are not relevant to their own experience then that's fair enough. But I can't accept they are not relevant to the wider discussion.

Also baffled about what's wrong with a google search! That's the starting place these days in accessing information. Do you prefer we all toddle off to a science or medical library and only read the stuff on paper? Maybe I have misunderstood the point you are making here?

It's just their agenda throwing stats about and not really sharing their own personal experiences and I hate hate this excusing formula feeders if they have medical reasons like ff need bloody permission.

Oh double hating

Of course there's no law that says you have to read the full thread. But if you're going to come on a thread and tell people they are not responding correctly, then yes, you should damn well have read the whole thing.

Statistics are not lived experience. They may be of special interest to you and your agenda, but there is a time and a place. FF mums talking about their experiences is not such a place, because those statistics are used solely for the purpose of bemoaning the fact that more women don't BF.

And please don't try to say you were all just trying to correct misinformation, that 80% misquote came wayyyyy into the intrusion.

As for being 'relevant to the wider discussion' -- that's the whole problem, you see every instance of discussion about baby feeding as an opportunity to push your agenda.

The wider discussion on this thread was NOT the public health issues surrounding feeding or why women don't BF enough. You and others turned it into that kind of thread, which is a shame.

I have public policy issues I care very deeply about. I don't go onto every thread that's marginally related to try to convince people of my viewpoint. It's rude and counterproductive.

Tiktok you certainly come across bright enough to understand what my point was. Surely I don't need to expand further? Unless you are trying to slightly goad me

That's the crux of the matter. It was about personal experiences, personal reasons for formula feeding. To have it all reduced to statistics feels like our feelings are being minimised and on an individual level, our experiences count for nothing. Also it just stirs up what was otherwise an interesting thread.

The majority of posters who've quoted statistics don't seem to have done it sanctimoniously or with malice - understandably you're concerned as advocates of breastfeeding that rates aren't as high as they could be. But that's the wonder of personal choice; just because they could be higher, doesn't mean they should be. (Obviously I mean people choosing to ff from birth, more could be done to raise the numbers of people who want to breastfeed but find they can't, getting support to do so).

However there are a few posters (I won't beat around the bush, mini, combust and silver ) who seem to see formula feeding mums as inferior, and like to make thinly-veiled insinuations that we can't breastfeed because err don't love our babies enough/ aren't determined enough. They've successfully gotten our backs up, not hard to understand why, but these threads are like nectar to them. I've had run-ins with mini and combust before over formula feeding, so I want surprised to see them here peddling the same tired clichés.
I'm still pleasantly surprised that this thread is mostly staying very civil and understanding. Tends to get that way when the vitriolic ones have worked themselves up into such a tizzy that they run out of stream and tired old adages to throw around

Look, the only reason Norway has such a high breast feeding rate is because there's fuck all else to do there.

But you said bf mothers were sharing personal experience as ff mothers were on this thread. Then that culture was outside personal experience. So culture isn't relevant to the discussion at hand, but nevertheless it gets shoehorned in.

The stats tell whatever story you want them too. So 81% start and 55% who start continue at 6-8 weeks. Which actually means that the majority of babies aren't bf at 6-8 weeks (46%) - see I did the maths. And being bf at 6-8 weeks is a baby receiving any BM at all, even the 7% my own daughter was getting (on a good day). It's all smoke and mirrors.

Norway also has one of the lowest crime rates in Europe and that is because women are pinned under suckling infants and unable to shoplift.

Actually, when you control for things like education level and income (wealthier, more educated women are more likely to breastfeed and try to stick with it) the difference between children who were breast or bottle fed in things like weight, maths skills, reading ability etc. isn't statistically significant. What exactly are your reasons for being so obsessed with a choice which when down to the nitty gritty of it makes no difference?

I do not have children yet, and when I do I intend to breastfeed, but not because I believe it will make my children healthier in the long run, but because my mum did and enjoyed it, and it made her pregnancy weight fall off really quickly. These are valid reasons. Any reason to choose either option is valid.

See? See this poor beleaguered Norwegian woman about to throw herself into the abyss? She's had it up to her back teeth with breast feeding. Apparently, as she plummets to the depths she was heard howling: "FOOORMULAAAAAAAaaaaa......!"

therealamanda I found your posts rude and they upset me.
I find it upsetting when people try and twist my words around in order to make me look as if I make disablist remarks. It was very clear in my post why I thought you didn't want to debate and there was no mention of IQ. You are the one who immediately jumped to that conclusion. I am upset by that.
I find sarcasm upsetting and you have admitted to being sarcastic.

But I suppose that my feelings are unimportant?
You can say what you like to me, using whatever tone you want?
I am also upset by your 'just because of your son' comment.

It is trivialising my feelings about people using low IQ to deride and belittle.

I joined this thread in good humour and shared by experiences in a non judgemental way.

I am getting a bit fed up with posters who give as good as they get and then get 'upset' when they can't think of anything else to say.

Fortunately an internet forum is not like a conversation in RL. The words do not disappear into the ether. They are left on the page for everyone to read if they need to.

Unless there have been personal attacks. Then they get deleted. But as it is absolutely clear I have made no personal attacks or anything like, all mine are there.

I will leave the thread now. So well done.

Pistol

I do think it's silly though, the constant invocations of Norway

Norway is a very small, very rich country. The whole population of Norway is less than half that of greater London alone. They score much better on every health and quality of life indicator than the UK. They have very generous parental leave and social welfare policies.

Comparing statistics won't explain the differences in BF, or will only lead to a lot of 'the Norwegians can do it so why can't British women do the same, it's just cultural differences'

But actually listening to women share their experiences will tell you so much more about the differences, and point to lots of different factors that BF advocates don't talk so much about.

I mean, Norway scores better than the UK on every public health issue. So why beat up on British women for not BF more? Clearly it's a system-level problem, not just that British women are ignorant or won't try harder.

I think there is some fundamental misunderstanding here of how internet forum threads work. They are akin to a conversation, rather than an Oxford Union debate :) . The idea that an OP can set the agenda and fix it (like a 'This House believes.....'), so further contributions and topics cannot be discussed is wrong - and in any case, the OP did not even attempt to do this.

She asked to read about 'why people ff'...if she had said 'I do not want to read anything other than people's own direct experiences' or 'I do not want this set in a cultural or social context' or 'I do not want to read about research into this' then I think most people would have respected this. She was not interested in what's 'best or right' and I for one have not said anything about that.

"But if you're going to come on a thread and tell people they are not responding correctly, then yes, you should damn well have read the whole thing." I don't understand this, sorry - I corrected a couple of crazy stats presented as fact. I have not said anything else about whether people are responding 'correctly'.

"Statistics are not lived experience. They may be of special interest to you and your agenda, but there is a time and a place. FF mums talking about their experiences is not such a place, because those statistics are used solely for the purpose of bemoaning the fact that more women don't BF."

Statistics are lived experience - they don't necessarily throw light on an individual's own feelings or explore anything more qualitatavely of course. I have not used any stats to bemoan the fact that more women don't bf - I have done no bemoaning. Perhaps you don't mean me, here :)

MrsD I'm sorry you're leaving. I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your thoughts on all this in such a respectful way, I think they added a lot to the thread.