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?

I know it's a DM article

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3009733/Dangers-buying-cheap-breast-milk-internet-Experts-warn-milk-sold-online-screened-diseases-hepatitis-HIV.html

Would much rather give formula, if I couldent breastfeed, than out my baby at risk from unregulated and untested milk.

Start thinking logically. The display had to be about older children. Just the bad location for leaflets.
BTW - dummy helped my DD with her latch. She has never stuck out her tongue properly before sucking on a dummy for two weeks.

Breast milk banks in the UK as of 2014.

ohmy makes it sound like they are on ever corner. When I had dd1 I would not have been able to get to any of those, along side not actually wanting my baby to have someone else's milk (I felt bad enough as it was surrounding her birth, so giving her another woman's milk would have been to much for me to handle) formula did it's job!

She is a fit healthy & wonderful 11yr old!

Smile week (or month as it is now) isn't until May, so I doubt it was to do with that & why have breastfeeding leaflets there if it was about older toddlers ditching the dummy/bottle.

IMO it was aimed at not ff.

That advert reminds me of the knife amnesty drive. It's revolting. After you've given up your illegal blade bottles and dummies, what happens when the baby gets hungry?

Can'tbelieve - Make hasn't come back but there is research linking FF fed babies with obesity in later life.

As someone who tried and failed twice to breastfeed, only to discover I have a cyst on my pituitary gland that causes me not to produce milk as well as having fertility difficulties, that display would have reduced me to tears, possibly even worse.
Both my girls had a good latch but both we're readmitted to hospital for failure to thrive. I kept on trying but gave up after a month, at no point had my boobs felt like there was anything in them, my nipples were utterly shredded and my children starving.
I became very depressed due to the fact I felt a failure. These feelings resurface when there are headlines like last week about ebf babies being more intelligent etc. Both my girls are happy, healthy and bright as buttons but it still upsets me that I possibly didn't give them the best start. Irrational, as it was outwith my control but mothers are put under such pressure. It really is not fair.
Posters who are saying that they support this display, what would you like, a round of applause for being able to breastfeed or should people like me just be put in the stocks and ridiculed. You are lucky that it went ok for you, not everyone is that lucky.

'Hilariously' if I threw away all our bottles then DS would no longer be able to drink my (expressed) breastmilk and would therefore have to move onto thse little one-use formula cartons from the supermarket...I suspect that isn't what they are trying to achieve there.

Haven't read the whole thread but I have EBF 3 children. Am now expecting DC4 and very open to the idea of at least mix feeding. Because none of my DC slept through until over a year (I appreciate this could be unconnected), I couldn't leave any of them as babes for any length of time and I was so tired by the end that it massively affected my ability to care for my other DC. I was tired, irritable and like that for a while. So this time, I will do what works for all my DC and suspect that first year of DC3's life would have been easier all round had I not felt pressured to do the same by all 3. I am grateful that I now know what a small part of it all infant feeding is.

OP, I agree, I'd have been fuming if I'd seen that. Oh, and I used dummies for dc1 & 2, would never have slept otherwise. They're now 7 & 5 and have no ill effects!!

Christ almighty will people please read the full thread, as lots of people have already said it was probably to do with national smile week which encourages stopping the use of bottles and dummies for older babies. Nothing to do with breast feeding vs. formula feeding. But as usual the same old bun fight has ensued.

Far too many knickers in a twist on this thread from both sides of the camp. Women should be able to decide how and what to feed their own babies without judgement from those who are pro breastfeeding, it is none of your business and so long as those women are making an informed choice then you should butt out.

And those who can't or just don't want to breastfeed need to stop moaning about breast is best campaigns. Nutritionally breast is best, statistically. That doesn't mean that ALL breastfed babies will be healthier and more intelligent, and it doesn't mean that ALL formula fed babies will be less healthy and less intelligent. It's like if you smoke you are more likely to get lung cancer, doesn't mean you definitely will, and being a non smoker doesn't give you magic immunity you are just less likely to get it.

I agree.... it was for binning dummies etc I reckon. In the spirit of tooth care....

So Oh my ....you can hold back with that emergency Milk bank ....it's not required here.

It's absolutely not aimed at encouraging people not to formula feed. It's aimed at parents of children aged 1+ years to encourage them to get their children off bottles and dummies asap. Our CC swapped bottles for a tommee tippee sippy cup.

If the intention of it is not clear, the OP needs to raise that as well as the suggestion that they move bfing leaflets away so as not to confuse the message but it really is not aimed at formula feeders or pregnant women so there's no need to take offence or declare it revolting or anything else.

I ff all four of my dc from the word go and used dummies for 2 of them, I think its a great campaign.

Arf @ anyone who can walk into a room full of healthy happy babies adored by their parents and feel sorry for any if them.

yes clearly they are abused and malnourished and not cared about at all.

babies lie on their backs or crawl around eating gravel and dead bugs and people still give a shit what milk they have? really it's the least of your worries.

display is inappropriate and could well cause fragile women to feel even shittier.

complain

Was just going to say pretty much exactly what MadgeMak said. It doesn't sound like the display had anything to do with choosing breast or formula, and people need to stop getting so bloody histrionic ("I am a FF mother who glimpsed one of those evil breast nazi books once and it caused me to have a nervous breakdown and lose my job, breastfeeding promotion is the worst thing anyone could do to anyone, ever, and should be banned" vs. "Formula is poison and child abuse and anyone who does it should be locked up"). Agree that the BF leaflets should be moved away from the display to make its intention clear.

Hi all,
i'm so sorry to read some of your traumatic breastfeeding stories. That's exactly why I was worried about this display.
I will go back on Friday to stay and play with my toddler and I'll read it more thoroughly and point out about the breastfeeding leaflets etc. and how it could be perceived.
I didn't know about the bottle/ dummy drop and it could well be to do with that but that wasn't clear to me when I saw it (I am sleep deprived though so there could have been a huge flashing sign saying 'for older children' that I entirely missed)

i love how everyone cites research saying obesity in later life was due to being formula fed my nan and great nan were obese in later life formula milk didn't exist when they were baby's my nan went on to breast feed her children they are all tipping the scales (bar one who is borderline) in later life one of my nans children has type 2 diabetes and my nan had to catch a bus several times a day to feed her in the hospital one of her favorite stories was of her protesting at going into the bomb shelter because she needed to get to the hospital to feed her baby "there is a bomb on the way love!" yes but who will feed the baby!!!

really poor display by the way

"i love how everyone cites research saying obesity in later life was due to being formula fed"

No, it's just statistically very slightly more likely. This does not mean that every breastfed baby will not be obese, or that every formula fed baby will be. That is how statistics work, and also why "but my nan was breastfed and was the size of a house" doesn't disprove them.

I worked for sure start for years and it was a campaign called 'dump the dummy/bin the bottle' ran every year. It certainly wasn't about not formula feeding, it was an oral health promotion to discourage bottles from being used over the age of 12 months. We also gave out free beakers/ doidy cups along with toothbrushes that kind of thing. Maybe you misunderstood it. We did have the dummy tree and bottle bin but it definitely was not related to formula feeding!

Oi cherry I take terrible umbrage - I did come back, I did - on page 2, I even gave a lovely reference for a study that i googled

Formula isn't rubbish
Women need to be allowed to make choices with their own bodies
It is good if choices are informed
Research isn't trying to make anyone feel bad
You can't generalise to populations from individuals, and individual experiences can't disprove studies unless you get lots of individuals together and do a study!

Now I really will run away

ICantDecideOnAUsername My first DC was exactly like that, but the second time it was TOTALLY different and I bf for nearly 3 years.

I wonder now if DC1 had a posterior tongue tie - certainly he had a rubbish latch which hurt like the very blazes and was ineffective at getting out milk and at stimulating my milk production.

But a different child is a whole different person!

It's absolute pish to conflate formula feeding with the risk of lung cancer from smoking. Formula milk is a very necessary thing and is not harmful.