To think the breast is best strategy is all wrong

[SheepOrWine]

Just back from the health visitor clinic where I was at in front of an entire wall (no exaggeration) telling me why breast is best. Apparently for one young woman it was the best decision she EVER made. This morning I read about another study which "proves" that breast is best (presumably because the many, many existing studies on this are not enough and they needed another one?) At my NHS antenatal breastfeeding class, more than half of the allocated time was dedicated to the benefits of breastfeeding.

Has anyone ever been persuaded to breastfeed by a poster or a news article? Is there anyone out there who seriously has not yet heard the "breast is best" message? Does the NHS just think women are a bit stupid but if you tell them to do something enough times they will do it?

Wouldn't this money be better spent on helping those women who want to breastfeed to do so successfully? Three months ago I was on a postnatal ward with DD where I received conflicting and often incorrect breastfeeding advice. Every time I buzzed for support a frazzled looking HCA or midwife would come and glance at the latch say "yeah that's fine" and walk off. I asked four times to see the breastfeeding advisor but she never arrived. I was discharged without anyone observing a feed.

8 weeks on I gave up breastfeeding as I just had enough of all the various problems I was having with it and for which I was completely unprepared. Before I had DD the posters were useless as like most women, I already knew I wanted to try to breastfeed. And now, post-breastfeeding, all these posters do is just make me feel guilty. What a waste of money.

2stripedsocks lol there are three of those on the wall at the HV clinic. It's not quite my favourite though, that's the "breastfeeding is the best decision I ever made" one. Seriously? It's the best decision you ever made? It's a better decision than the decision to, you know, have a baby??

Much more real breastfeeding support is needed. It took until I paid for a private IBCLC when my son was 4.5 months for anyone to take a proper look in his mouth - that includes every nurse, midwife, doctor or peer supporter we ever saw. We could have been saved so much misery if the tongue tie had been diagnosed earlier, now we're approaching a stage where it becomes a bigger job to snip it and the NHS won't do it if we have no appointment in the next 4 weeks.

Sheep You didn't bother to reply to my earlier post and suggested that the only reason I felt the posters were a positive was because I was a breastfeeder. You felt they were there to shame you. I was replying to the theme throughout the thread that the posters are there to judge people and shame them when they aren't.

agruffalo sorry if I missed your earlier post.

I don't think the posters are there to shame me. I think they're largely pointless, if not actually harmful. And I think they're a waste of money. Money which would be better spent on actual real life support to breastfeed.

There is also an issue with bad support as well as lack of support. This bad support exists in poor advice from some HV and in published books (thinking Clare Byam cook - I tried to read her book, got all confused, told someone who said stay away from it its all wrong, read something else, made it seem simpler and it worked).

The best advice I got was from a La Leche League (LLL) leader or peer supporters trained via LLL. I think the simplest way to solve lack of support and bad support with very little effort on behalf of the NHS would be for the NHS (or prob public health England actually as it would need to be done at national level) to provide LLL with funding to set up more 'branches' and recruit more supporters (some paid, some volunteers).

'This mum knows best'

Holy fuck. I've never seen that. What an awful poster. The more I think about that the worse it gets.

I'm a staunch breastfeeder / breastfeeding supporter but geesh, that is wrong on so many levels.

The posters round here were much more fact based and way less judgey. More of a 'why not try it' approach.

bread I was thinking this - could they not pay for some NCT/LLL reps to be available on the postnatal ward? Given that bounty are allowed in?

That said, those organisations aren't perfect, I got some dodgy advice from the LLL helpline. Perhaps I was just unlucky. I had a good experience with the NCT helpline.

The misinformation about how hard it is is what we need to stop, not breastfeeding information

Well that's a glaring piece of misinformation in itself.

I think some mothers over inflate it's properties,treat it as some elixir of life and then wean their babies/ toddlers on far from adequate food

I knew someone who bf her son until he was 3. She and her husband were heavy smokers which continued after the birth. Her husband was an alcoholic. She was not a heavy drinker but continued drinking throughout her pregnancy and when she was bf. Her son was underweight and suffered health issues directly related to passive smoking.

The reality is that woman of a lower socioeconomic group are more likely to formula feed a factor generally ignored by the breast is best lobby. The socioeconomic background and health attitudes of the parents are a significant factor in outcomes.

Those posters are awful.

I read the posters, didn't change my mind about formula feeding my baby.
As far as I'm concerned 'fed is best' my baby is a very happy smiley baby, healthy, gaining weight well etc and FF works best for our household.
Everyone should be free to make their own choices and should not feel pressured into anything. Thankfully i had amazing midwives who supported my choice and never pushed BF on me

That poster is grim 😂

So far as misinformation, bf made me nauseous. I was told by health visitor it was either my imagination or something I ate.

Years later Google confirmed the release of oxytocin does cause nauea in some women. It settles for most fairly quickly but for a small number it does not. I was one of them.

And as for "the best decision I've ever made" bollocks.

In health care terms the best decision any one can ever make is probably the one never to take up smoking.

I agree with the OP, the money needs to be spent on support, not posters. With DS1, I remember being on the postnatal ward after a crash section, drip in the back of one hand, blood transfusion in the other, catheterised. DS1 was in the cot and out of my reach as the drip stands were either side of my bed and I couldn't negotiate those and the catheter bag too, plus off my head on morphine. Asked for help, midwife came in, brought DS over, whipped my nightie up and stuck him on like a window sucker and walked away, I felt exposed, vulnerable and utterly helpless. DS was sliding down my front, I was in a tangle with sheets and tubes and I actually sat and howled like a child myself. My milk never came in, never even needed a breastpad, totally barren. I asked for formula and there was no support for that either! everything I had read had been re breast feeding and I had no idea what to do with a bottle.

Bastard, that is shocking, it really is.

I firmly believe women should be treated as adults and told the pros and cons of both breastfeeding and bottle feeding. It may have changed since I went to ante-natal class 9 yrs ago but we couldn't be told about bottle feeding unless we asked and for that we had to 'stay back after class'. This meant that safety advice on bottle feeding wasn't given. We also weren't given advice about what to do if things are hard (ie who to ask for help, what to try if baby isn't latching on etc). By posting a too rosy picture of how wonderful breastfeeding is, there is a risk of alienating women who want to breastfeed but on having problems feel they are a failure and it becomes a huge issue.

I'll get back off my soap box now.

The NHS hasn't been funding breastfeeding promotion for a while. The posters are old stock and the leaflets are likely to stop being printed this year. Besides they are funded by the obesity money and that's funded by commercial companies. The infant feeding survey has ended and there was a move to stop collecting stats though at present they still are. The national infant feeding coordinator post went from the DOH years ago. Commitment to breastfeeding in the NHS is rhetoric and policy. It's not financial.

There is no money for breastfeeding support. I know that health visitors in some London boroughs have had no bf training for years. I assume it's the same elsewhere. Why should anyone care? They just blame low breastfeeding stats on women themselves.

disillusioned that's really interesting, I didn't know any of that. I assumed there was some kind of strategy in place.

Sheeporwine, I am completely with you. I was desperate to breastfeed and knew the benefits but I had problems latching DD. I kept asking and asking for help, including crying out in the corridor of the hospital attached to my IV but I didn't get the support I needed. I begged the MW for help and rang for a bf counsellor who came but didn't have long. I wasn't well enough to go out and in that time DD had been bottle fed because she had to be fed.

Since then I had so many tuts (I was living in central London at the time) from posh career women when at baby meets I got the bottle out. I lied about dual feeding and I was pumping all the time and still not getting enough milk and trying and trying until I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't afford support or doulas like others.

So overall my experience of trying to get help was negative and I'm really pleased we had the option of formula and both DH and I were able to feed DD. It was one additional stress that I couldn't cope with and sadly had to say goodby.

Bastard that's terrible, terrible

Meh. No matter what you feed you baby/child in public, someone will tut. 30 years ago when dd was young, some woman thought it was a good idea to lecture me, a young mother, while I was feeding dd from a bottle in a shop. She was going on about how breast feeding was better but young mums didn't care, they just wanted the convenience of formula blah blah. When she stopped to take a breath, I pointed out that it was expressed breastmilk in the bottle, perhaps a bit less than politely. The words "nosy busybody with nothing better to do" may have been used. She did the cat's bum face and scuffled off. Nosy cow.

Honestly I hate the way pregnant women and mums are like fair game to publicly criticise by anyone and practically everyone.

They have also stopped funding the infant feeding survey, so we don't even have useful data going forwards as to what is helping and what needs to change.

It's a great shame. The only thing I can say is tell every pregnant woman you know to read about breastfeeding if they want to do it, join forums, find out where the local groups are and direct them to them. If you don't have access to that kind of stuff you are likely to have a hugely steep learning curve often with no direction. Some women are lucky and breeze through it anyway, most are not. The people I know who succeeded despite initial difficulties all, without fail, were trawling internet forums and seeking out advice on their own, many paying for it.

It's not somebody's fault if they don't have access to the support which is essential for overcoming problems. Blaming them or saying that they "failed" at breastfeeding would be like blaming somebody for failing to run a marathon on crutches when somebody took the crutches away.

It sure puts you off breastfeeding when in the hospital your two nipples are open bleeding sores, and the baby is vomiting pink milk.
And when you ask for help you get a shrug of the shoulders and are hurried out with a leaflet as they need the bed.
How does a scab heal up if its constantly in someone's mouth?
I never worked that one out.

See posts like sadies are likely to put me off trying to breastfeed altogether. Who the fuck wants to know that out of context?

Don't women from lower socio- economic groups get free formula?
My sil did - was a few years ago now tho
I tried to bf Dd but the milk never came in - the total help
I got was a hv telling me to eat!
Mine were all FF in the end and the fact that they were fed is the most important thing