aibu to love this blog post about why formula feeding is brilliant?!

[girlwithasecretsmile]

I think it's great to have a post talking about good things about formula for once but part of me feels bad for laughing so much.

passmethebottleblog.wordpress.com/

Defensive drivel.

I don't think it's natural so I won't be using that term to describe it.

Hah haha ha.

You must literally be fucking joking right??

Ok, if you think it's not natural to bf till 3 years old, please answer these questions honestly.... (for full disclosure I bf till 3.5)

1. Why is drinking the breastmilk of another mammal, more natural than our own? Most kids go on to drink cows milk, also formula is baed on it.

2. If it's so unnatural to bf till later (like 3 is really old ) why do kids keep their milk teeth till 7ish??

3. Millions of years of evolution has designed breastmilk for the child it was made for. Why is it unnatural to feed a child until that child is ready to stop, but natural to feed it milk designed for an entirely different species??

Why oh why does she have to diminish breastfeeding in order to big up formula feeding? Do what you want but don't make others feel like frumps in shit bras. It just feels a unkind to me and a bit them and us.

perfectly you’re equating extended breastfeeding with universal suffrage? Wow. I take my right to vote extremely seriously, and have voted in every election since I turned 18. I also breastfed DS1 until I conceived DS2.

The Politics of Breastfeeding is an excellent read.

And at perfectly - extended bf not natural? You can say it's not necessary, in YOUR opinion, but if you actually are saying breastfeeding until the child naturally stops is not natural, I'm forced to tell you - "hat word, I don't think it means what you think it means."

Ffs bitty
Absolute twat

Thank you Lana, I was feeling a bit shaky there until you stepped in

Wtf? Yes, it's fucking horrible. And she is not just 'talking about the good things about formula', she's talking about breastfeeding really negatively. She doesn't need to sell it as being awful just because it didn't work out for her. No need for the chip on her shoulder, the majority formula feed anyway ffs.

' ‘cluster feeding.’ Midwives sell it as this idyllic bonding time where you and your baby get to ‘snuggle up’ and ‘watch boxsets’ and ‘relax.’ HA HA FUCKING HA. No'

... well, after the initial week of being in hospital, that's exactly what it was for me. I didn't feel like doing anything other than watching tv anyway post birth, so was perfect for me. Also, the bit about sharing feeds- many people mix feed or pump from the start, so sharing feeds is still possible with breast feeding . Oh, and I've never found discreet breast feeding difficult in the slightest, and I'm a pretty self conscious person- this is most definitely not an issue for everyone. Honestly, this blog is the sort of thing that will stop anxious pregnant women even wanting to try breast feeding.

Bitching about breast feeding is no better than bitching about formula. I really don't understand why people feel the need to be so sour, in either direction.

Why oh why does this always have to turn into a debate everyone single time someone so much as mentions BF or FF. If you read something that you don't like just move on. Why is everyone so offended? It's not personally aimed at you.
The only thing I will add is that everyone talks about how more babies are FF. In MY personal experience nearly all of my friends and family BF (and no one judged anyone) and I see more BFers come out the wood work on threads than I do FFers.
Just concentrate on what you do and not one someone else does. Like the woman who shouted at me in a cafe for giving my son poison... It was expressed milk...

There are 2 'issues' with formula. One is that it isn't breast milk so doesn't have all the immunity etc but the bigger issue is that in countries where sanitation is not as good as in the uk there's a huge hygiene risk. So on a global scale ff absolutely increases the risk of death. That absolutely doesn't mean that each mother should not have the right to feed as she chooses. I used formula, it was right for us.

elephant it's great that It worked for you but it clearly didn't for her. Why shouldn't she be allowed to voice that?

You loved it, she hated it. It's just her opinion.

She seems quite cross. It must be different in different trusts because I never felt I was under any pressure to bf. I remember being asked once by my midwife how I was planning to feed the baby and I think I said "I'd like to try breastfeeding if it works out" and that was it. No one seemed too pushy about it.

The edge, bit confused by your final point. Are you suggesting the national statistics on prevalence of FF Vs bf are wrong because they don't accord with your personal social circle cough anecdata cough?

I don't really get it. I breastfed, never wore ugly bras or had any cracked nipples or whatever, didn't leak milk everywhere and vitamins were never suggested to me. I also ff and found it much more of a ballache tbh.
The article sounds more like she's trying to convince herself than anything.

Why are people not getting that just because they found it fantastic that not everyone does?

It's missing the point to say that most mothers don't bf therefore where is the guilt coming from.

In my world (middle class, educated blah blah) I knew nobody who ff their baby. It wasn't even mentioned by any of my ante natal group. It was assumed we would bf, and we all did. I suffered for it and it affected my mental health.

If my world was full of people who think breasts are for sex and your bubz your rulz hun then I wouldn't have felt bad.

Oh and the teeny tint amount of mothers who bf at all, must tell all you "ff feeders are slated all the time" people that actaully you are fucking massively in the majority, and that the glee some of you have at this, frankly bollocks article, is very telling.

If 99% os kids are ff, and (like me) bf'ers get shit all the fucking time about what a crap choice we are making, why don't we just give them a bottle (always in a smug voice btw) etc etc.

Why are ff'ers so pleased when someone writes a bunch of bullshit like this??

Seriously??

Yeah bf is fucking hard sometimes, it took me weeks and fucking weeks to get it sorted, especially after DS spent his first few weeks tube fed in SCBU, and it would have been so easy to stick him on a bottle. I know how it feels to struggle, and I don't have any issue at all with women feeding how they can. But articles like this are exactly what put my friends off even trying bf, they were conivinced it was awful.
When the vast, huge majority of women ff, why the fuck woud you need to justify it, when bf women are had a go at every single day.

wow, I wasn't expecting so many replies! I think I liked that she was honest about struggling with breastfeeding and so often I see women too scared to say anything good about formula so it was kind of nice to see this.
I don't think she was saying breastfeeding is terrible, just that her experience was bad and here is how she made her peace with switching to formula?

Hellosquirrels - the term 'fed is best' was dreamt up as an antidote to 'breast is best' (probably by a formula company) and so is absolutely the opposite in this context.

A better phrase (but granted not as snappy) would be 'breast is normal/default'.

HelloSquirrels why can’t she champion her experience of formula feeding without denigrating breast feeders though? I’m thrilled she found a feeding method that worked for her but why not just concentrate on the positives of that?

wow, I wasn't expecting so many replies!

It's a BF v FF thread, how can you have thought that? Always loads of replies, usually defensive ones from both camps...

I think the whole thing is very simple: breast is best for most babies and most mums, but it's hard work and isn't the only way to feed a baby. Formula is not devil juice, and ultimately it's up to parents to decide how best to feed their DC.

Unfortunately there is so much wrong information (on both sides of the debate!), prejudice and sniping that so many new mums get caught in the cross-fire completely unnecessarily

She just sounds angry and like she's trying to prove a point. I'm sure there are benefits to ff- like everything else. However it's just a bit hysterical and badly written regardless of the subject matter.
I wouldn't read anything else she wrote based on this.