To think breastfeeding has made no difference to my dd and is massively overrated in terms of benefits?

[Placeanditspatrons]

I've nearly driven myself to a breakdown feeding my dd. She is 16 months now and I'm still feeding. She has been ill more times and worse than my formula fed from four months son. She does not recover any faster and she catches anything I get and gets it worse, despite supppsedly the antibodies passing to her and either preventing or reducing the severity of the illness.

I know it's anecdotal and the studies say overall bf babies are healthier but how much healthier? I mean I we talking one less cold? One less ear injection? Statistically? Many of my friends have said similar. Again anecdotal but I can't help wondering - after the colostrum which is more important I guess - does it really make any noticeable difference?

We don't need to promote BF, we need to normalize it - and there is nothing normal about BFing because you feel you have to when it is causing you grief or anxiety.

I actually already think we achieved the right precursors to getting BF rates up. This mostly involves it being seen as something the middle/upper classes do, making it aspirational to BF.

This is the way the FF companies turned people off it, they made it look like something rich people did. Now the tables are turned.

So if we stopped advertising of FF (which seems a uniform feature across those countries that have succeeded in normalizing BF), to prevent the message of FF as aspirational getting pushed we would be there.

We could likely just stop banging on about it now, in all but the lowest prevalence areas where there is still a chance that it is not recognised as an option.

Then all that money and effort could be diverted into actual support instead.

Itis...thank you.

Anyone who wants to know why uk bf rates are so low just check out the recent mn thread on post natal care.

I actually cried reading it.

"FFS people have ended up with severely underweight babies and they won't give formula because some idiotic people carry on like it's poison."
This happened to us. I had to be rehospitalised urgently because of a hospital acquired infection the day after I came out - not checked . Triggered an MS relapse.
My MIL asked "how can I feed the baby?". MW said "I'm not allowed to say it but , y know, that stuff"

and there is nothing normal about BFing because you feel you have to when it is causing you grief or anxiety. Morphene

Absolutely spot on. Plus you talked about normalising breastfeeding too, which is important, but there are other options that should be seen as just as normal.

The way breastfeeding is promoted at the moment seems to me to be similar to saying to a person who has never run before 'Running marathons is amazing!' and sending them off. If you were going to run a marathon as a total novice, you'd need some support, right? You'd need advice on the right trainers, and what to eat, and how to train, and you'd probably need a shoulder to cry on a few times as well. But with breastfeeding, all too often, it's 'Breast is best, off you go! Remember if it hurts you're doing it wrong, and don't fail!' We wouldnt expect a total running novice to complete a marathon without any support, so why are we expecting women, who are already exhausted, who quite possibly don't have any support (no one in my family has breastfed for two generations and I don't think I'm unusual in that), to do the baby feeding equivalent, then bashing them when they don't manage it?

So IMO what we need if we're going to improve bf rates is better support, not more sticks. I don't know about anyone else, but I had no shortage of sticks with which to beat myself immediately post birth, I did not need any more.

It just seems so homogenised (no pun intended). Breast fed is best until six months and then wean. And err that's it!

It's totally useless. Mind you most of the midwives said to me that bottle was just as good when I struggled. I did feel a failure though, even though I stuck it out for months with the first, a month with the second and over a year with the third. But looking back, I shouldn't have felt I failed, it wasn't a competition! It's lovely to do it, but it's flipping hard work and it bloody hurts.

Absolutely spudlet.
Great analogy.

Lots of talk about scandinavia...in Norway 100% receive a feed in hospital but the BF rate (not EBF) at 6 months is 80%, not 100%. The EBF rate at 6 months is 9%, 4 months 46%. There is a lot of mix feeding going on which is probably helpful.

If we want to emulate norway we could perhaps look at helping more women to stay BF through mix feeding.

So Bertrand - perhaps that 20% really couldn't BF.

www.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/int-comp-whocode-bf-init~int-comp-whocode-bf-init-ico~int-comp-whocode-bf-init-ico-norway

If we want to emulate norway we could perhaps look at helping more women to stay BF through mix feeding.

I totally agree. There is a very 'all or nothing' tone to the breastfeeding support in this country and the bar is set unrealistically high for many. The expectation (among women and I think HCPs too) is that you should exclusively breastfeed or there's no point, leading to women who are struggling to conclude they've failed and stop completely. If we promoted mixed feeding more and presented that as a viable option when, for instance, the baby is failing to thrive on breast milk alone (instead of scaring women with stories about nipple confusion - my mix fed son never had this issue), there would be less pressure all around, and probably higher breastfeeding rates.

@Spudlet absolutely.

When our mums had us they got a week in hospital and were taught how to feed. Now you are lucky to not be booted out in 24 hours.how is this supporting bf? If it's what the NHS deems favourable they need to support it.

From my own point of view I get v angry when I see people talking about the evils of formula. I had no milk with my first daughter and I mean NONE (confirmed by the hospital before anyone starts bashing me) I was putting her on the boob and she was sucking so I thought everything was fine. On day 4 the community midwife took one look at her and said "she's dehydrated she needs formula and to go back to hospital now" so as far as I am concerned formula saved my daughters life.

If we had support to BF that would be great, the fact is we don't and I am grateful we live in a country where formula is easy to come by and can be made up hygienically.

Your story sounds very similar to mine JakeyBoy.

My son was sucking away for hours on end, more or less constantly, which I took to be cluster feeding (because I'd done all my homework and thought I knew about such things). Except my milk hadn't come in, so he wasn't getting anything and was starving. The midwife insisted that he have a bottle of formula and sent us to hospital where he was kept in SCBU for a couple of days as he was so dehydrated. They said he narrowly avoided organ damage. There's absolutely no doubt that had we not given formula it would have ended very badly. It definitely changed my perception of the debate -before that happened I genuinely believed that pretty much all women could breast feed exclusively, you just needed to cluster feed to boost supply, give plenty of skin to skin etc. and it would happen naturally. Shame no-one told my boobs that.

My opinion is that being healthy is luck.

My formula fed kids don't usually manage 3 a day never mind 5 a day but all have 100% attendance at school. Two of them (the teens) have never been needed A&E and none of them have had an overnight stay in hospital or an operation. One has never needed antibiotics and all of them last saw a medical professional 5+ years ago.

of course the health of your child is mostly down to luck. It is only 'on average' that FF children have slightly (SLIGHTLY) less good health outcomes than BF children.

There are many many other decisions you make as parents that also lead to slightly different average outcomes, none of which will be detectable at the single child outcome level.

IMO the benefits of BF over FF aren't worth any ongoing level of anxiety or pain on the part of the mother. I thinks its probably worth pushing through some initial mild discomfort if it only lasts a few days at the start, but if you aren't happy with it after the first few weeks then ditch it.

I also think vaginal births aren't worth more in benefits to the baby than the value of the sanity the mother may lose in a traumatic birth process, or the rate of lasting physical damage. If I had known more about the worse case scenario in a vaginal birth then I would have ELCS.

A lot of the hype about BF is to return us to a state where people recognise BF as a valid and normal option, given where it was after the FF companies had finished filling people's heads with the idea that FF was vastly superior and the choice of the rich elite everywhere.

We can probably stop now....

Please stop misinterpreting stats, if at all possible :)

Latest misunderstanding - Norwegian BF, now touted as having so much combination (mixed) feeding it enables them to breastfeed.

And we should do the same, apparently.

Norway's rates of mixedH feeding are far lower than ours, and their rate of exclusive BF far higher. If you think excl BF only means 'no formula', then you are going to overstate the rate of mixed feeding (9 per cent BF excl) because by that age most (over 80 per cent) are on solid food, and excl means 'only breastfeeding with nothing else inc solids'.

At four mths, 46 per cent of Norwegian babies are excl BF. Some are already on solids. Many do use formula alongside BF, but they are not largely formula fed as a population at that age.

By comparison, in the UK only 12 per cent of babies are Excl BF at three mths.

More formula feeding would not lead to more BF, believe me.

There will always be individual cases where judicious supplementing with formula in an early days crisis enables a mother to continue breastfeeding - BF has got off to a difficult start, baby finds it hard to BF, shows signs of needing intervention, formula given, baby perks up, mum goes back to full BF with a healthier baby. That is absolutely appropriate in some cases.

But generally speaking, babies are supplemented with formula because fixing the BF is beyond the skills of the hcps. Once formula is given, the chances of going back to full BF (or any BF) fall. Now, this is not a disaster or the administration of poison and the sky does not fall in. But for some mothers, it feels very sad and they look back on an experience that could have, should have gone differently.

Women who wanted to BF, and then did not, are at a higher risk of pnd. The answer is not to tell them they're making a big fuss over nothing, that they have been duped, and lied to....the answer is to ensure they are enabled to BF, and if this does not work, to support them, properly.

Do you think combination feeding is a bad thing tiktok? It worked well for us

Of course Norway has more mixed feeding than we do.

There are far more infants in Norway receiving both formula and breastmilk than in the UK.

Because, as you say, there are more infants in Norway being breastfed full stop.

I'm also interested in your stat about weaning, this article seems to imply the advice in Norway (like the UK) is to wean at 6 months; these researchers instead say it would be better to wean at 4 months. I'm assuming most norwegian parents probably ignore this!

sciencenordic.com/limit-exclusive-breastfeeding-four-months

Very well put Morphene

Well... vaginal birth, or at least labour, can be significant. Your baby gets a dose of immunological protection during labour. There is also a link between instrumental/CS deliveries and maternal health and wellbeing.

But TBH there is an association between negative health outcomes and pregnancy/birth too....

Think these threads usually make me feel that when the pregnancy, birth and childcare crap is so bad for women's health on it own then why the hell do we make it even worse with crap support and stupid judgements and stigma?!

Well the list of what affects our children's health is ever so large, isn't it? We can just do our best.

Ideally, they should have good genes, their mother should have a blissful stress-free pregnancy, natural cAnbirth, breastfeeding, parent's with good mental health, organic food with lots of fruit and vegetables, all meals made from scratch, no sugar, no air pollution, lots of safe exercise, etc. etc.

It is impossible to ensure all this, so we just do our best.

Morphene - totally agree!

Offred...I'm interested in this. There are lots of countries with much much higher C section rates than us (Italy, for example), which have similar rates of PND to other western countries with much lower CS rates.

In fact Italy has better perinatal, maternal & infant mortality than we do.

You're totally right that support is shit. I think if we gave all women a true and informed choice about all aspects of pregnancy, labour and child rearing we would see more Bfing and more natural births.

Youcannot, didn't the baby get colostrum? My milk took 4 or 5 days to come in but in that period before the babies were getting liquid- colostrum from me so I can't see how they could be dehydrated.

There's far more combination feeding early on in the uk compared to Norway. Far more. Later on, Norway has more combination feeding simply because the majority of mothers in the U.K. are not bf at all.

I don't think combination feeding, or ff, or bf, are 'good' or 'bad'. A binary question like this simplifies a complex social, behavioural and cultural issue.

Babies can become dehydrated in the very early days. Virtually all women produce colostrum simply by dint of being pg and giving birth. But the baby has to be able to access it. There may be issues making this difficult or impossible and not everyone can express it because expressing can be a skill.