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?

www.thelocal.dk/20150302/danes-are-worlds-second-biggest-candy-consumers

Hmm Scandinavians don't fair so well after their 4-6 months of bfing. 3 of the counties are the highest candy eaters in Europe. They wean their babies straight onto factory made Vallig and jar food.

Couldn't and didn't want to are two different things...
I think they are equally valid.
I'm sure that with better support some women would bf or bf for longer.
But with the state of the NHS ATM post natal care will just get worse and imo this will lead to decreased bf rates.

"Fwiw I think that breastfeeding is worth giving a go if you can, but I think that there needs to be more common sense across the board here, and an acknowledgement that the benefits to the individual of EBF are small enough to be not worth risking either the mother's or the baby's health if there are signs of problems."

I definitely think that BF is worth working towards, actually I believe that any amount of BF that a mum thinks she wishes to do is helpful, and to any degree; combo or exclusive; pumped or direct from the tit; expressed colostrum then formula; whatever. It's the exclusivity that is impressed on us now, that I think is not really that helpful, and the mantra of a single way of doing things and lack of support to do it in alternative ways that might be benefician for many families. Actually, we would probably (in my opinion) get a lot more BF'ed babies if we relaxed our messaging and support methods, (ie, stopped banging on about exclusive BF for 6mo then BF for 2yr and beyond), and therefore a lot more benefit (and bang for the buck) for british babies and mums.

If you read this fascinating paper (one of my faves):
bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/2/e000504
A serial qualitative interview study of infant feeding experiences: idealism meets realism

you actually see that mums really want much more flexible, open minded messaging that is positively framed (not talking about the "harms" of formula), and this would probably go a long way to support more babies being BF, which overall would thus produce more overall benefit of the immune health of british babies (more breastmilk consumed by more babies means fewer URTI/diarrhoea/otitis media - even if it's in combination with FF).

That's my view anyway, but it's not in tune with the majority opinion set out there by most of the UK BF organisations and opinion leaders (vocal people active in BF support).

BMP exactly! It's about giving women calm, rational, unbiased information and then supporting them to do what they want.

I completely agree with everything you say bigmamapeach. A more relaxed approach would definitely help. As we've seen, most women want to breastfeed but then feel they've failed when they can't live up to the 'EBF' standard and give up. 'Every feed counts' is a much more helpful message.

If the research shows that actually there is very little difference health wise between the two methods, then why do we actually care about getting bf rates up? Each method is as valid as the other.

For what it's worth though, a small amount of mixed feeding early on to alleviate the risks of dehydration may be the lowest risk strategy.

Yes I read that half of the benefits of bfing as regards breast cancer is if you have ever breast fed. You are 10% less likely to get breast cancer. Considering most try at the start they are getting that protection so yes it is worth giving it a go.

"Couldn't and didn't want to are two different things..."

As I have said what feels like 50 times.

Gray I think the colostrum is worth having too.

After that sorry it's not worth killing yourself for in my opinion.

We know Bertrand.

....and are both equally valid.....

It depends what you mean by "valid"

"Don't want to" is obviously valid.
"Can't" can be valid- but "Can't because misinformed/unsupported" is obviously not.

Re: "Is it worth it to BF", IMO it's definitely worth encouraging BF from a purely cost saving/environmental factor. And if more women did a little bit of BF we would overall slightly fewer infections/breast cancer.

As BMP says, the message should be "something is better than nothing", and there should be a much more relaxed attitude, a much lower stakes approach.

Ps, Greenginger, I think Skerrywind is probably the other poster you were thinking of upthread...

Aloha, breastfeeding isn't always cheaper. With bottles I could go back to work earlier as I get very little mat pay, and my husband who can get a much better SPL pay, look after the child. Also, where the mum earns more than the dad, it's financially worth her going back sooner.

Ok, she could express, but that's again a faff in terms of time and requires a lot of equipment.

Breastfeeding is only free if a woman's time isn't worth anything.

Frankly, I think expressing then bottle feeding is the worst of all possible worlds.......

"Breastfeeding is only free if a woman's time isn't worth anything."

Or if she was going to be off work anyway.........

And doing 101 other things.

Bertrand Russell - but not all women can either afford to or want to spend long off work. Some people want to split that time with their partner.

Yes, if you are going to be home anyway, and don't have a million other pulls on hour time, then breastfeeding is free. But that's not the situation all women are in, and so it's really not universal.

Also, the purchasing of lots of nursing bras, clothes etc can soon add up to more than a basic feeding set and formula. Not that particular clothes are essential of course, but most women will buy some I expect, and that cost does have to be factored in.

For some women it's cheaper than formula feeding. For some its less faff than formula feeding. For some women the opposite is true.

I don't see there is any better or worse way here, only better or worse for individual parents.

"And doing 101 other things."

Well, presumably one of those 101 things will be feeding th baby?
And you real, are talking as if I'm suggesting that breastfeeding should be compulsory. All I'm saying is that no woman who wants to breastfeed should end up thinking she can't because she has been misinformed or poorly supported. And if other countries have found ways to avoid this then mayb we should see if there's anything we can learn from them. I honestly can't see what's so controversial about that!

frankly, I think expressing then bottle feeding is the worst of all possible worlds

depends on your perspective - could be best of all possible worlds - baby gets nice mummy milk but mummy isn't necessarily the one that has to do the feeding.

Hm, I sort of feel like the argument - virtually all mums could BF if properly supported - is a bit problematic. Thinking from a different perspective, about structural barriers to BF, and the socioeconomic gradient in infant feeding behaviours, these are very pronounced in the Uk and very strongly influence infant care. The Uk is a very unequal society compared to in scandinavian countries, as far as I know (but I have no specialist knowledge on this).
But we don't often think about this or have clear mechanisms for addressing those - it's very easy to say "oh but if you had better support you could have breastfed" but how could that "support" have fixed say, a low income mother's need to return to work at 6 weeks, if she is the sole breadwinner and has a job where it's really hard to express? Or, a family living in cramped housing with older children who needs to be alert for school and can't be woken by the baby constantly waking to be fed, so the nice answer is "give a bottle". And these decisions will be made without too much of a second thought, because they are the decisions that have to be made. The messages we send about "exclusive to 6mo and then BF to 2yr and beyond" send very exclusionary messages to families who are not as advantaged as those where BF is more the norm. This (and many other reasons IMHO) are why the conversation about BF needs to change - but not in the ways that the BF advocacy community tend to indicate (which is more about being more and more strident about how wonderful BF is, we must talk about the harms of formula not the benefits of BF, etc etc).

Not sure why Bertrand is getting grief - she is not saying people have to breast feed, just that we as a society/country should be doing more to ensure that those that want to are able to and that there is many reasons why women say they can't breast feed, but if any of those can be fixed by outside support or knowledge then we are letting women down by not fixing them, because we are actually stopping women from having a true and proper choice.

I agree with bigmama though, it's definitely about changing the message somewhat, combination feeding should be seen as a much more valid choice - it doesn't have to be either or. I was told a lot with my first baby that if I introduced a dummy or bottle before 6/8 weeks, there would be nipple confusion and I wouldn't be able to breastfeed at all. So I listened to their expert opinions and nearly went a bit mad with sleep deprivation as no one could help me feed and I couldn't comfort my son any other way than with a boob. By the time it came for us to try giving a bottle of expressed milk, my son refused it, which sent me even more crazy as I couldn't do anything or go anywhere because I had to be available to feed my baby. I made it to 9 months, at which point I was slightly broken and disappointed in myself as I'd wanted to do it until a year

This time around my baby has had a bottle from day four, the first couple of times it was formula and now it's expressed milk and she is taking a dummy for comfort and to help sleep, and do you know what everyone in our house is much happier and calmer.

I think the nipple confusion and exclusive breastfeeding at all costs message is actually damaging to breastfeeding rates long term.

It's mine - you could have fed but like I said it would have been so much effort and faff and taken too much out of you - hence why your decision the right one. You could have pumped and dumped or used donated breast milk until you were fit again (it's perfectly possible to increase milk supply again or relactate).

Virtually all women can breastfeed it's just how much effort they are willing to put into it. There definitely does become a line tho where the effort isn't worth it compared to formula and different women just have different ideas of where this line is. Support of course makes the effort less and is hugely lacking in this country.

Grayelephant - I'm ashamed to say I'm speaking from a position of great privilege, I automatically assume women will have the same great benefits as I do (6 months full pay Mat leave).

Of course this is actually very rare, and you're right that you can only view BF as free if you don't value the mother's time.

I think a lot of the modern natural birth/BF/attachment parenting philosophy takes the woman as someone whose time is valueless; or rather her only value is in serving the every need of her children.

So obviously I have absorbed this enough to reproduce it myself!

Bert is getting grief because she is insinuating that women aren't being honest when they say they "can't" breastfeed.

And as Grayelephant and BMP say, actually a lot of women can't BF because they have to return to work quickly, or it would actually cost more for them to BF than to FF, or any other reason unrelated to a simple desire not to.