to think "Breastfeed if you can" would be a better message

[ringle]

... than "Breast is best".

I say this having start skimmed yet another thread where the OP was driven to post natal depression because of difficulties breast feeding.

PND is far more damaging to babies than formula.

I'd like to see feeding babies reclaimed as a feminist act.
ISo much baggage surrounding feeding babies, and so much profit from formula.
If we breastfeed we are submissive martyrs, if we formula feed we are neglecting our babies.

Buggar that.

But breast is best, what else is the NHS supposed to do?

Both my DS's are dairy & soya intolerant so I'm very, very lucky that breastfeeding worked & from the start otherwise I dread to think what would have happened if we went down the formula route.

People need educating about breastfeeding properly. That the baby builds the supply, it's not instant, there can be latch issues & cluster feeding is normal.

I spent weeks & weeks poring through mumsnet before having DS1 about breastfeeding as he was born at 37 weeks & I knew it would be hard.
It gave me the right advice to say I wouldn't top up, to notice his dairy intolerance & him feeding for hours was normal.

I don't judge how anyone else feeds their baby but I've had people judge me in public.

When I had DS1 a young mum opposite to me said she wanted to try breastfeeding & her mother said "Ew why do you want to do that for?"

The judging does need to stop.

In my opinion, the problem is not any kind of slogan. The problem is that most women who start out breastfeeding (and so presumably want to give it a try) stop before six weeks. Women try and want to and then stop. Surveys show that they give up when they didn´t actually want to. In my experience this often means that they feel bad that they haven´t done the right thing or that they failed. This is a horrible emotional cost and a really negative start to parenting. And it is a sad thing.

The real question for me is what can be done to support those women who want to breastfeed but don´t continue for a variety of reasons.

It seems to me that the reasons they stop are very much to do with the scarcity of proper support for breastfeeding mums. I don´t jsut mean a shortage of bf counsellors, but there are assorted reasons and they make up an environment which makes it difficult for women to continue. From HCP who don´t give the correct help, or seem preachy or don´t actually know what to do to help, to partners and families who just want to make everything easier and help, and their go to answer is formula because it is so normal in this country, to unrealistic expectaions of how a newborn will behave, to formula companies reinforcing all this.

I would like to see women who want to breastfeed properly supported to do so. Once we have more women doing what they want to do, breastfeeding might become more normalised, which in turn might improve the whole environment of infant feeding, eithe way.

Putting pro-breastfeeding messages on formula tins seems to me utterly counter-productive. Perhaps the formula companies know this. Slogans on walls, ditto. It is far from what is needed either for mums who want to breastfeed or mums who don´t. It´s a pathetic attempt to support something without any care about what its effects might actually be and it lets all women down.

I think breastfeeding is so limited in part because how to do it has fallen out of family cultures. We shouldn't need specialist breastfeeding consultants; we should be able to ask our mothers and sisters. We should be told the first 4 weeks will be agony as your nipples are toughened up, cracked and bleeding is normal, but it will suddenly get better. We should know that an hour between feeds is fine. My first ds I thought should have 4 hourly feeds, because that is what my mum and mil said. They bottle-fed. It wasn't until his 4 week weigh in where he was the same weight as at birth that I realised all the conversations I had had with my partner about "he can't be hungry, I fed him an hour ago" were wrong. My 4 kids averaged 1.5 hours from feed beginning to feed beginning all through to weaning (longer at night, after first month). My mum didn't know this didn't mean that i wasn't making milk. She kept suggesting "topping him up " with bottles, or 'giving him a bit of farex' (I still have no idea what farex is...except that Mum put it in our bottles in the 70s to keep us satisfied!)
The problem is, the skills are gone from our homes. I could never express more than about 1.5 ml from each breast. But people don't explain that expressing is different from feeding direct, and my DS grew from 9lb at birth to 18lb 12 at 4 months exclusively on my milk, so clearly I was producing plenty, I just couldn't express well.

I hope that when my DC have children, I will be able to give them advice and support about the reality of breastfeeding. It's 4 weeks of agony, and then it's the easiest thing in the world.

Kellymom website saved my breastfeeding.

I agree oldbirdy. it´s the culture and the knowledge around mothers that we have lost.

IMO until we can get mums who want to bf bfing, it wil stay lost. If we do, little by little it might come back.

“This sort of demonstrates the point that was forming in my head. There is so much emphasis on tiny baby nutrition. Most people can get this right. Give baby formula or breast milk. Sorted. It's when they start eating actual food where people need most help.“

I assume you say this working on the assumption that how an infant is fed will make no important difference to their short, medium or long term health?

Current evidence suggests - at least at a population level - that breastfed babies have fewer hospital admissions and GP appointments, are less likely to succumb to SIDS, get childhood leukaemia, or type 1 diabetes. So clearly for some children how they’re fed as babies is very important.

There’s a clear rationale for promoting breastfeeding. We just do it quite badly in the U.K. and then add insult to injury by often not supporting women properly with breastfeeding problems. It’s also true that early postnatal care is really poor. All these things affect people’s experience of breastfeeding in a negative way.

“We should be told the first 4 weeks will be agony as your nipples are toughened up, cracked and bleeding is normal“

If we do this we’ll end up with mums with tongue tied babies being readmitted for failure to thrive after not being diagnosed and treated because women think it’s normal for a really badly latched baby to tear nipples to shreds.

We’ll get women with rampaging mastitis and breast abscesses turning up in clinics wanting to stop breastfeeding, or women whose nipples are so damaged they simple can’t continue to feed.

Bleeding nipples, abrasions etc usually indicate a problem with breastfeeding and need checking out. Sometimes if a mum just grits her teeth and keeps going the problem with latch resolves itself. Sometimes it doesn’t! Best to get it checked!

Oh, wow, aren't you all amazing mums feeding through the pain and understanding all the ins and outs of breastfeeding before you gave birth? If I'd only been as dedicated and informed as you I wouldn't have ended up sobbing for days because I thought I had failed my daughter.

This is exactly why women feel that they have failed if they struggle to breastfeed. Because you other mums tell us 'if only you'd have done x, y or z, you'd have been fine'. Thanks. If only I'd thought to consult my MW or breastfeeding support group, or do some research. FFS, I'm not a moron, I did all of those things.

But way to go, you've made me feel utterly horrendous about myself again almost 3 years after having DD.

Can we have proper scientific links for all those claims please Mini.

Re GP appointments and hospital admissions many will be down to poor bottle prep which is easily resolved. Would be nice to have stats for dehydration in breast fed babies. Funnily enough I had more hospital admissions and Gp, midwife appointments for breast feeding 3 babies than I ever did with formula feeding.

You omitted to say Type 1 diabetes risk is mostly down to genes. People without it in the family have 0.5% risk. SIDS is thankly extremely rare and if you don't smoke,co sleep,do drugs,lay baby on back,use a dummy,don't over heat.... extremely unlikely howeverever you feed. Leukaemia study is pretty weak,focuses on weaning and again incredibly rare.

So thanks for the stat twisting and scaremongering.

Obesity is an actual threat on children's health. So yes as was previously mentioned how children are weaned and fed/ lifestyle throughout childhood is of far bigger importance. Why not focus on that?

Yes but if you look when obesity started to rise you will a surprising timeline.

& those all saying way to make me feel bad, why are you even reading this thread then?

Obesity has rocketed in recent years due to diet and lifestyle not formula feeding.

We had formula in the 60s,70s and before.

What we didn't have then was kids spending hours on screens,kids not getting enough exercise,cheap readily available junk food,junk food advertising continuously in your face,the sugar epidemic,families not eating together.......

To blame the obesity crisis on formula is ludicrous and smacks of clutching at straws. You only have to look at Brazil. On track to be the most obese country in the world with very high breast feeding rates. The reason being they consume too much sugar.

I think "feed your baby safely" sounds about right. Educating people how dangerous it is falling asleep while feeding babies, teaching people how to sterilize bottles/ pumps and mix formula correctly.
Breast milk contains everything a baby needs, so does formula (in this country) as long as baby is fed, clean, warm, loved, whether they are breast or formula fed for the first 6 months won't really affect them that much, but it will affect the mother.

I agree with this thread. We all know that breast is best for our babies but there are sometimes circumstances which pop up which stop us from breastfeeding which unfortunately is out of our control and can leave us feeling like a failure as a mother which isn’t something that would help PND.
I think there is a lot of pressure on new mums to breastfeed and when they can’t that’s why they feel like a failure to their child.
I went through this with my DS, hello tried breastfeeding him but it wasn’t happening. I remember the day my DP went and brought formula to just try him on and he was a completely different baby, he seemed happier and more content. However I was devastated.

"those all saying way to make me feel bad, why are you even reading this thread then?"

Maybe because it started off as a thread about the damage that the breast is best message does, until the usual people popped up extolling the virtues of breastfeeding and how easy it is, if only we all just try hard enough, and get support, and get through all the issues and its just all so easy after the first few weeks. Oh and breastfeeding has lots and lots of magical qualities that mean your child will be healthier and cleverer than they would have been if you didn't breastfeed. Thereby insinuating that if you don't breastfeed you're failing to help your child to thrive.

Like all these threads turn into. There's no room for anyone else's experience. The militant breastfeeders still come along and for some reason get really over invested in making other women feel like shit. It's really NONE of your business how other women feed their babies. It makes no difference to you. You feed your baby how you want, leave everyone else alone.

I wasnt even that fussed about bfing while pregnant. It wasn't until my babies were in NICU and i was hearing breast is best 20 times a day that it became a big issue that took over my life. I almost had a breakdown. It's a really fucking damaging message in that particular scenario and the mothers mental health should be a primary concern. But it's not is it? The woman is supposed to just get on with it no matter the cost to her, because breast is best.

I still can't believe someone asked whether you would choose fresh milk or powdered milk for yourself. Like its as easy as picking milk out in a supermarket. What a load of ignorant bollocks. Until youve been there you obviously have no idea what damage you could be doing to someone else.

When I was pregnant, I decided I’d give BF a go and if it didn’t work out, I’d move onto formula. No dramas. No guilt.

Maybe because I wasn’t under pressure, BF happened easily for me and I BF until my DD was 9 months old.

I’m still amazed I managed it for so long because I’m far from being an “Earth Mother!” LOL

I still can't believe someone asked whether you would choose fresh milk or powdered milk for yourself. Like its as easy as picking milk out in a supermarket.

I can. Sadly this is the way all these threads go. First few pages are great. Lots of people sharing experiences / ideas then suddenly.....

I’m going to ignore the angry sweary people on here and make a suggestion as to why the message isn’t getting through.

Women’s experiences simply don’t match the science. We laregly hail scientific knowledge as superior and infallible. At the same time we tend to see individual experiences as unimportant when discussing topics, particularly health topics.

I won’t make the post too long by giving specifics but there has been a few things, particularly related to women’s gynae issues whereby the scientific evidence has contradicted real women’s lives experiences and as such, women have been ignored and have suffered in silence because they ‘must be mistaken, the science says otherwise’

No science is produced, reproduced or understood in a vacuum. It is culturally and historically specific, produced by fallible human beings who have their own experiences and biases, as do the people who in turn interpret and reproduce the discourses surrounding it. When a topic become highly emotive and politicised, certain knowledge and voices inevitably heard over others.

In other areas of academia, empirical evidence, consisting of the actual lived experiences of people are considered important and are included in studies. For some reason, breast feeding studies contain very little of this. I wonder if it is because they are the sole preserve of female experience?

Women by and large do not see their breast fed babies as nothing as noticeablely more intelligent, healthy, happy or more bonded than their bottle fed peers or siblings.

Science, leaflets, NCT classes, health visitors, midwives and anyone else can go on and on about studies but there is a real disconnect on the ground between female’s experiences and this information which is alienating women, particularly in the UK where the language around the subject has become so highly emotive the debate inevitably turns accusatory.

Excuse the typos and extra words put in through error. I’m typing off a phone

I should add that it was my PND and struggling to eat or drink anything that I firmly believe led to me not producing enough milk and struggling to breast feed. NOT the struggling to breast feed that led to my PND. There can be a causal link the other way round.

It’s not about choosing fresh vs powdered. It’s to rebut the ludicrous claim that fresh breast milk from a baby’s mother is the same as mass produced powdered formula. Of course it’s not. If fresh breast milk were widely available - and it could be if milk banks were invested in, its working amazingly well in Brazil for example - I think the majority of mothers would choose fresh.

So we can agree formula is nutritionally satisfactory but to stretch that into claiming it’s just as good - sorry.

It makes me so angry that formula marketing is so effective that women now believe Nestle is better at providing nutrition to newborns than we are. If this is progress Lord help us.

"it's easy and if it's not, you aren't doing it right"

Find me one piece of "breast is best" literature that says it's easy.

This drives me insane. NO promotional material tells you it's easy. They'll tell you it's natural, which obviously gives you the impression it's suppose to be easy, but it won't say it's easy. Of course it's not easy for most women.

The 'it's easy' message was proclaimed loudly and clearly throughout my entire NCT intro to breastfeeding session, which to be fair was my most comprehensive exposure to the topic prior to having my baby.

My post clearly references NCT as well as NHS.