To think this isn't very supportive? Bottle feeding related.

[RainbowInACloud]

Went to have DS weighed today at local surestart and there was a huge display as you walked in. The centre piece was a rubbish bin with a sign saying 'bottles and dummies here' and some leaflets around it about breastfeeding being the best etc.
I am EBF DS but it struck me as a bit judgemental maybe about people that bottle feed. It's meant to be a supportive environment but I think if I were bottle feeding it might have made me feel a bit rubbish.
I asked for advice on how to get DS to take a bottle as he flatly refused but was kind of just told breast feeding is best etc., no real need for him to take a bottle. It's not a big issue for me so I didn't push it.
What do you think about that display?

bah I tried, I really did but I just couldn't.

Christ survivors of rape and sexual abuse are often unhappy with the thought of bf. For a variety of reasons. For this reason alone it is ALWAYS best not to question other women's reasons.

Oh...and it's got fuck all to do with anyone else.

It must have been aimed at older babies, surely? Plenty of bf-ing mothers still use bottles and dummies. Women express milk as well as direct feeding and apart from the first 6 weeks when you're told not to, you can combine use of a dummy and bf as well. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Only the most extreme purist bf-ers oppose dummies and the occasional bottke of expressed milk.

I just found a link here where the NHS seemed to last year, encourage people to "bin the bottles and ditch the dummies" during National Smile Week.

Could it have been this year's attempt? Teeth care?

Yes it's a proper campaign to promote tooth care

Extended breastfeeder and i would complain. It has been suggested that some how hcps go about the promotional of breast is best has contributd to pnd. I'd get the info and stick that in my letter.

Why does the NHS keep getting infant feeding support so crashingly wrong? It puts everyone off asking for help, and pits women against each other rather than supporting each other.

I agree with the campaign, but not the bin being surrounded by BF leaflets as it's obviously giving out mixed messages to people (as has been seen by this thread).

I BF and would still find that display really offensive.

Every time I see new research or hear on the news about new proven benefits of breast milk I feel uncomfortable as I don't think it's right to try and imply FF mother's aren't doing the best for their babies and that FF is second rate.

I'm part of a breast feeding group on Facebook but to be honest I've had to stop going on it as I found myself feeling irritated by all the smug "breast is best" attitudes and their cheesy quotes and idyllic photos of breast feeding mothers.

I was also sick of seeing the BF mothers be in competition with each other about who had BF the longest.

I'm happy that I managed to BF and that I still do but I'm under no illusion that somehow I'm better than a FF mother just because of our feeding choices - it's a ridiculous idea. BF mothers don't deserve a medal whilst FF mothers are looked down upon. It's just an awful and really unnecessary attitude.

YANBU OP and good on you for planning on challenging it.

Good evening all
A little peace and love, eh?
Remembering that if there's one thing we can do with it's some moral support.
Thanks ever so.

Ohmychrist my seven week old baby was ten weeks early. She was on neonatal where she was tube fed ebm in the early days. Some I expressed for her, and some was donated (so from your magical milk bank). She was only eligible for donated ebm until she was 32weeks gestational age. So your wrong about there being milk accessible from donated sources for all.

Dd is now on formula. A prescription formula that the hospital feel is the best nutrition for her. I was getting less and less expressed milk and becoming stressed and depressed by "failing" my tiny daughter. Attitudes such as yours can cause so much damage, I am normally a rational, sensible person, but found myself becoming increasingly irrational and sensitive over the tiniest detail of dds feeds.

All my other children have been formula fed. ( I have 5). The first child I was determined to breastfeed and couldn't. It was actually my midwife who sat me down and told me that my baby would thrive on formula and I should not feel guilty.

None of my children have any health problems, none of them are overweight, none of them are fussy eaters and all of them are highly active and healthy. They are all intelligent, dc1 top of her grammar school class.

Guilt tripping mothers into bf, and villainizing women who ff is counter productive. It leads to PND, poorly babies who aren't thriving because mothers are obsessing over not giving "poisonous" formula, infections for mothers such as mastitis. In my opinion, the implied pros of bf are not worth the cons.

And as pp have said, my children rarely get colds, or tummy bugs, unlike most of their bf peers. Coincidence? Possibly, but I don't trust statistics.

ohmychrist I'm not going to bother telling you why I couldn't breastfeed (and where do we find this easily-obtainable donor milk? It was never mentioned to me?)

I'm just going to say fuck the fuck off.

Our local Children's Centres are all Baby Friendly accredited and the staff are trained to support BFI. It is about supporting patents in their infant feeding choices. I would be all over the CC management with this, and I am very pro-BFing so long as you don't undermine women at a vulnerable time in their lives.

However, if it is aimed at older children who use bottles and dumies to the point where their speech is affected, then fair enough to inform patents...but again not by making them feel like shite. (Because IME the parents who take this to heart will already be trying their best and the others won't care).

Gingercuddlemonster I now fully blame you for my incontinence this evening. I cannot stop laughing at your post about strapping ohmy up to a milking machine and allowing her to save the world one tit at a time..

For anyone who has seen me on here before I have mentioned that I'm 7 months pregnant with a 10 month old (no I'm not mad, yes I was on the pil!) and my new baby will more than likely go straight onto the bottle rather than breastfed. That first experience has put me off for life, maybe if Id had more time to recover from it and push it to the back of my mind but it's still very much there at the forefront unfortunately.

Bah. Patents = parents. Sorry

I think the fact that it was interpreted the way the OP took it is the issue, even if it wasn't deliberately supposed to be about binning bottles in favour of BF. The display is laid out in such a way that makes it look like BF > FF and so those coming to the centre, which is a place that a lot of new mothers will go feeling vulnerable or unsure of many things, may well receive the same message. From that point of view I think that's enough to raise it with the centre staff.

It does sound to me like it is supposed to be about extended bottle use/dummy use though. We have a bin like that at our local children's centre, it's there year-round but it stands alone and has a clear poster saying something along the lines of, "Over 1 year old? Still using a bottle or dummy? This could lead to speech delay and tooth decay. Bin your bottles here and we can reuse them for play!" (the centre cleans and sterilises any bottles and dummies and they are used for home play with dolls in the nursery). It's just one way in which they try to give the message that extended bottle and dummy use can have negative affects, a lot of people in our area use both with their children so it's a particularly common campaign here. It's about the actual bottle (and dummy), not so much what goes inside of it, although water would have less of an effect in terms of tooth decay I suppose.

As soon as mine stopped drinking from a bottle in the evening at about 2 and a half, they stopped drinking milk practically altogether as neither of them would take milk from a cup I thought that at 2, with a good diet it doesn't matter so much. But there is no way in the world I'd have tried it before then as having the milk is more important than what receptacle it comes in.

It's not really important to drink milk though. It's only recommended due to the calcium content and they only need 300ml a day for that. The calcium (350mg) could come from other sources eg other dairy like yoghurt, cheese etc.

I BF DD and I'm appalled at that poster. Yay, more guilt heaped onto mums, just what we all needed

I only managed to successfully BF DD because I refused to be discharged from hospital post birth unless they let me back on the midwife-led unit to get more BFing help. If I'd been younger or more knackered, I might not have had the balls to do that. I still really struggled and so very nearly gave up many times. We finally got it and I BF until DD was about 18mo.

There are some circumstances where breast might be 'best' for both mum and baby, but there's plenty of circumstances when it simply isn't. If the mum isn't happy or able to BF then I don't really see how it is 'best'. Formula isn't poison and every mum has a choice depending on her circumstances.

As it happens, we used cloth nappies, they're pretty good at reducing nappy rash and don't add to landfill. Therefore all new babies should use cloth nappies as they're 'best' and (obviously) disposable nappies are full of awful chemicals, akin to poisoning their cute little bottoms Err... I don't see that advertising or pressure on parents, so why on earth do we do the same with BF vs FF??? Or have I just starting something else.... CN vs DN.... I feel an NHS poster coming on

I read when DDs were little that milk was really important until they are 2 years old, and they are only 9 and 6 now. The advice may have changed recently. It changes all the time. I found it best to rely on my instinct most of the time, which said they enjoyed a bottle of warm milk at bedtime and it was best to stick with it.

I think it inappropriate. Enough to justify complaining. It's one thing to encourage breast feeding, something else to insult those who choose not to. It is exactly the sort of horribleness some people see as stereotypical of the pro-breastfeeding camp.