Refusal to discuss formula feeding at parentcraft class

[obeliaboo]

AIBU? Ready for the fire!
I've been told that in order for me to have a tour of my chosen hospital's delivery suite, that i need to attend 'parentcraft' classes.
Yesterday was exclusively about breastfeeding, fair enough, didnt know that of course until we got there.
So, as the midwife goes on about breastfeeding and support, I enquire what is the support for those who fall into small percentage of mums who cannot breastfeed. Simple question.
"What do you mean?".
I had to ask again, and put it across that i intend to breastfeed, but what if i cant, what if my milk doesn't come in. It happens, it happened to my eldest sister, its nothing to be ashamed of so whats the harm in asking and what is the support in that situation.
"We don't discuss artificial feeding".
Seriously?? I understand the necessity to promote breastfeeding is a priority for the NHS, because it seriously needs normalising, but to just object to even touching on the subject of formula feeding really riled me. I felt like i was at a propaganda session! She instead continued to address breastfeeding and a specific brand of electric breast bump at a specifc well known retailer.
Is this what the NHS supports? Big business's and there overpriced products (the specific one mentioned was over £100, I am not in a position to be able to afford something like that for a start), under the guise that 'breast is best', its the best start for baby - and insinuating that formula is the devil when for some poor souls, it is the only option?
AIBU for finding this absolutely snotty and condescending? There are mums out there who are underconfident, or genuinely don't lactate, mums who have gone through breastcancer and mastectomies etc, so why are these midwives refusing to even consider discussing both options.
Why make it militant and harder for those who simply can't, to speak up without feeling ashamed?
FYI this is the 3rd midwife i've had ranting at me over this.

For the first time in 8 years I've heard voices like mine. I was so poorly after dd was born and all I gleaned from midwives was how much of failure I was for not being able to sustain bf. Turns out the poorliness was an MS relapse caused by the infection I got due to shocking perinatal care during a traumatic birth. Hearing that I had MS was, ironically, the best news I had after so much trauma, guilt and distress. A kind word telling me "I know you want to ebf but let's try mixed feeding - our priority is getting you stronger and keeping your baby fit". Instead all I got was "just bf on demand and everything will be fine". I gave up and it broke my heart. Guess what? turns out bf doesn't cure MS.

Have things dramatically changed in the last 5 years? When I was in hospital last time they have DC a top up of formula as soon as I'd finished my bf. I wanted to ebf. Her weight was fine. They just ignored my request not to feed her formula.

They then have her ff behind my back!

And this was at a UNICEF accredited hospital. So much for supporting bf!

Jackie, you should complain.

Yabu, I haven't read all 200+ posts but it sounds like a breastfeeding class. Formula feeding comes with instructions on the packet! In terms of emotional support, I got none from the nhs for breastfeeding or bottle feeding, they talk the talk on bf promotion but ime their support postnatally is crap - when I wanted to bf I had to seek out an Nct breastfeeding consultant, the midwives had very little idea other than some textbook responses to questions.

I find your comment re the £100+ pump funny - you can't afford that but when you ff you will find it costs a whole lot more - formula cartons, bottles, sterilising equipment etc is way more expensive. The formula alone will cost a small fortune.

You don't need practical support to formula feed.

But considering PND is high in the group of women who tried to feed but can't, you'd have thought they wouldn't be quite so militant towards it, and would maybe discuss emotional support?

Carrier No way could I have afforded the £100+ breast pump and all the equipment in one go - it would've been too much of a money loss in one go.

Formula is just under £10 a week, you can pick up self-sterilising bottles fairly cheap. When you are spreading out the cost, it's a lot more affordable than an all-in-one-go purchase that, along with everything else you need for a baby, would've left me struggling money-wise.

You do need practical support to formula feed in the same way that if you are a first time parent you need reassurance about everything.

I didn't really need practical support to breastfed, (although emotionally was another matter). However in the same way that we panicked about baby acne and made notes on everything that left ds's body in the first fortnight, in the event that we had had to use the emergency bottle and tub of formula, it was reassuring that we had discussed it with our brilliant Nct breast feeding counsellor.

God, I made notes too on everythig that went in and out of DS plus all his naptimes also for the first several months. It was an added stress for me.

Not the point of the thread, but I mixed fed for the first 6 weeks before giving up on breastfeeding entirely. My milk just never seemed to come in at all......I once sat with the breast pump on for an entire episode of Homes under the hammer and got only a few drops. When I told the HV I was trying to bf but was mainly ff she wrote on my notes that DS was EBF.

Then carrierpenguin I suggest you go back and rtft before posting yet another tedious comment about how it's so easy to ff because it's on the packet.

Ff is not nearly as expensive as it is made out to be either.

I certainly needed practical and emotional support too when I finally gave up on bf and went ff exclusively because I felt such a failure, and such a bad mother and useless. Okay, sure, I also had pnd which I did not realise at the time.

I also experienced people haranging me..... a friend of mine is a breastfeeding support something or other and she ripped shreds off me when she saw me use formula once. (She's still a friend, incidentally, but she is a bit judgy on other things too)

Gosh, this is bringing back bad memories. Thankfully DH said to me at one point 'Who gives a fuck how the baby is fed as long as he is fed!!!!!'.

Agree with the op. No support given at all for ff. It was like formular feeding was a dirty word that we couldn't mention in nct classes or nhs classes.

Trouble is, I learnt about breastfeeding for several hours and still, when it came to it in hospital, I had little support. Couldn't express properly, it hurt, baby wouldn't latch, I got sore, my hemarroids were so massive I couldn't sit even for a moment and the pain was so bad that it was all I could think of. I wanted to bf but in the end the midwives gave a bottle as ds just wasn't getting anything. None of the classes prepared me for this. What a waste of time. Surely those that bf can get their info from internet too? If formula milk is such a disgusting product that the nhs refuses to discuss and it is that bad for our health, ban it like we did with smoking. Make it illegal like class a drugs!

There are lots of complications to ff. I can read the packet of course but it doesn't tell you:

How much do you really need to feed baby? How much is not enough? The packet is just a guide

How often?

How the hell do you prepare it when you have a screaming baby? From scratch... Are you joking?! In the end I got a perfect prep machine.

How long do things remain sterile for? How long do you keep sterilising for?

What bottles are best? What teats?

There are many more questions I had and I felt unable to ask anyone other than a network of friends that also ff.

It's very sad that the nhs wouldn't help me when I needed it after baby came. I will try again when we have our next baby.

It's sad about this constant battle between mums that bf and those that ff. Some that bf have made me feel crap to be honest.

Oh Op it apparently comes with 'instructions on the packet'....

Off you go

I also think the support I got at the hospital was pretty poor. This was in Ireland where the rates of BF are amongst the poorest in Europe and there is lots of noise about this but very little practical support, which is what would really make a difference. When DS was born he was very sleepy and this continued for the next day or so. He refused to latch, rearing back after every attempt, so the midwives told me to give him formula and gave me an electric pump. This might sound like a reasonable approach but I was given no help with latching at all, no advice as to what might be causing the problem and had to go chasing the pump anytime I needed it and I wasn't the only one who was using it so long delays meaning I wasn't getting enough stimulation.

Really they wanted me to give DS formula so he wouldn't have to be kept in and they could discharge us. Despite getting no more than a drop or two with pumping, we were discharged with no follow on support or advice, with DS never having latched and pretty much exclusively having formula, yet my notes describe him as breast feed. Nonsense to be honest and done just to improve their stats.

Needless to say despite hiring our own medical grade pump when we got home the latching issue was never resolved (even with help from a lactation consultant) and we had to switch to exclusive FF at 6 weeks. It was very very hard for me and cast a big shadow over an otherwise very happy time.

Not to mention that trying to mix feed was horrendous. Pump for 30 mins to get maybe 20-30 mls. Put in bottle for DS, feed him the BM. Then make up a formula feed too and give him that. Then wind/change, settle DS. Then wash and sterilise pump, bottles etc for next time. Then maybe have 40 mins before having to get back on the pump.

It was relentless, twice the work of just FF or BF alone.

You are treated like cattle by NHS maternity services and if you can't help the midwives and hv s meet their breastfeeding targets, they give up on you. I dare Mumsnet to start a campaign for all inclusive feeding help for first time mums. There's surely enough evidence of how toxic lack of support can be.

Formula feeding guidelines
here

Can't see the bit about emotional support myself?

Bottle feeding basics here

That's all those leaflets are - the basics i.e. the bare minimum. Nothing on emotional support as wind points out and there is a huge amount missing on practical tips and advice with ff. Most of those leaflets you can, unsurprisingly, get off the back of a carton.

And what if reading is not someone's strong point? There is no doubt that there is much more support available to mothers who bf. If you manage to make it past some of the draconian measures to get you to bf in the first place which are also awful.

Totally agree it's not about one being better than the other and people just need more support in general. And less judgemental comments from health professionals and the general public! Can't seem to win either way sometimes.

I'm always surprised when people say that HCPs were really scathing about their decision to FF - all the HVs and GPs I have seen have always seemed to be falling over themselves to tell me what a good job I did for BFing my kids for 3 whole weeks

After a lot of angst in the beginning I am philosophical about infant feedig now, and my philosophy is that i just don't give a fuck.

Havin said that, I do think there could be a bit more info more readily available about ffing - when DS was born hadn't given a single thought to formula as the Nct Classes had been very 'pop them on and off you go', so when it all went tits up (pardon the pun!) I had no idea what to do. Yes I got the instructions on the packaging, but it was only through a fair amount of research/asking others etc that I found out about storing batches of milk safely, or why it is so important that the water is 70 degrees etc.

And the message still isn't getting through - at a toddler group last week I saw a 'naice' mother in her 30s (sorry about the stereotype but there you go) take out a bottle of water, add powder to it and immediately give it to her still fairly small baby.

*most of the information on those leaflets....

To be fair though, although I dutifully went along to the NCT breastfeeding workshop, it was only via mumsnet that I found out about things like the fact that sometimes the baby will literally want to feed constantly (yes, he really was hungry again), how to help with pain, and how bloody difficult it can actually be.

So breastfeeding support is fairly crappy as well I would say.

Back of Aptamil packet: 0-2 weeks, 6 feeds a day. Yeah right, ds had about 12 feeds a day, dd around 15 at that stage. Big shock first time round but prepared for it the second!

When it's all scary and new, it would have been nice to know that it's ok if your baby doesn't follow the instructions on the back of a bottle.

moltenpink so true