Why are breastfeeding rates so low in the UK?

[Olivebrach]

So related to the news about the Royal College of Midwives changing their policy saying mothers have the right to formula feed and the stigma around formula needs to change ect..

I get it that for people that breastfeeding doesnt work out for/isnt easy, they shouldnt be made to feel like a failure. And the 'breast is best' mantra can be upsetting if that is what you desire to do but it doesnt work out.

But considering the breastfeeding rates are so low in the UK (1 in 200 babies are breastfed at the age of 1). The "mantra" and policy atm currently isnt working to up bf rates..? Clearly more people are formula feeding.

So in your opinion..
what should be done to increase breastfeeding?
And why do so few women end up breastfeeding?

AIBU to think the rates need to improve?

For me:

• hospital nurses kept saying they would check my latch multiple times but didn't as too busy. It was a heatwave and so so hot in the hospital I just wanted to get out of there so just left asap. (That part is my fault I know)
• NCT breastfeeding session didn't touch on what can go wrong at all so when I asked she glazed over it and said we can hire a private breastfeeding consultant if we are having issues. The problem I found with that is when you are in agony and your baby needs feeding you need someone to help immediately.
• unsupportive DM who said "you were FF and fine" and "why are you putting yourself through all this pain unnecessarily". (DM not usually a dick, I trust her advice so it was hard to hear)

I don't really know what can be done to help this, possibly more support. For example our local free BF clinic only runs a Tuesday. If you start having issues on a Tuesday night you don't want to wait a week. I'm sure there are phonelinesetc but I have no idea what these are.

I go back and forth with thinking I'll never try BF again as I found the pain worse than the birth, to I'll give it a go as it's best for the baby.

@2good .my experience too but its out of 30 mums i know. Very strange isnt it. More research needed.

There are some odd attitudes to breastfeeding. I had to resist comments from older in laws that I wasn’t making enough milk or that my milk would dry up. For some reason they seem to think formula feeding is better or at the very least they prefer combination feeding. Thankfully I ignored them and trusted my body, which fed my beautiful, healthy baby to a point that they were amazed at how well she looked after just a few months.

I think part of it may also be that breastfed babies are smaller at first and some people are used to seeing very fat babies from a young age (which ff babies can be).

Also, breastfeeding is very exhausting in the early ages and it’s all on mum. I can understand how some mums may feel unsupported doing that and might switch to ff. This is especially if they have friends with ff babies who are sleepng better.

I think the previous post about how American women express more at work is very interesting. I had to stop breastfeeding when my baby was 8 months as I returned to work at 9 months. I know my employer technically would have been required to facilitate me expressing but it would be so awkward with my workplace culture. Having said that, I know a woman in our US office expressed for a year- hats off to her.

Mumsgonetoyonderland - surely women bf for longer in countries like sweden has more to do with mums getting 80% of their salary for over a year on maternity leave which means it's much more likely they won't be rushing back to work. Comments like scandi tits are no different from uk ones completely ignore this type of issue and are unhelpful.

...I feel lots of women who want to bf are not getting the support and encouragement they deserve

And they're the women who should be asked why breastfeeding rates are low, not someone who had the perfect experience and believes those of us who 'failed' actually chose to ff because we only our boobs out for guys and didn't understand the benefits because we're thick. I nearly killed myself over breastfeeding. I cried all day every day for months. Piss off with your chat that all that was because deep down I'd just seen too many Aptamil adverts.

Also on the support thing - other parts of the world would laugh at the idea of a breastfeeding support group or breastfeeding counsellor to help mothers. That service isn't needed because far more people breastfeed. Little girls grow up seeing breastfeeding all around them, every time someone has a baby. They know about things like latching and cluster feeding because they've seen their mother/sister/aunt/neighbour experience it. The community has a high collective knowledge about breastfeeding and when someone has a baby, all the other women are the experts if she needs help.

In this country we've lost all that. Mothers of my parents' post war generation were bottle fed themselves and just don't have that knowledge to pass on. The NHS "medicalised" breastfeeding with their obsession with charts and weight which until recently were based on the way a formula fed baby gains weight and didn't reflect breastfed babies. We as a society have unrealistic ideas about how babies should behave, especially sleeping. I certainly thought I was doing it wrong with my first who was a terrible sleeper, until I had another, treated her in exactly the same way and she slept like an angel. The first thing any new mother is asked is about how her baby is sleeping. A "good" baby sleeps midnight to 6am. A "bad" baby is waking every three hours for a feed.

And actually some of these breast feeding countries are no healthier. Brazil is a breast feeding country with a massive obesity problem. This is due to the crap eaten and drunk after. America for all their breast feeding has a bigger obesity problem than us. Again it's lifestyle choice.

And as for the health benefits the NHS won't talk about because the research isn't there yet,even though formula and breast milk must have been the most scrutinised foods for the longest. Said benefits don't exist until the research is there. It isn't so you can't preach it.

I don’t plan on breastfeeding if I have children. It’s painful, messy, restricting, and inconvenient. Why would I put myself through that when there’s an option which means the other parent could share the task?

As for the benefits of bf versus ff - I can guarantee you if I gave you a class of 6 year olds you’d have not a clue which were bf and which were ff. I’m sure breastmilk is technically better and I don’t argue with that, but for all intents and purposes whether you breastfeed or not makes the sum total of diddly squat difference.

I doubt if my potential future children got into UCL as opposed to Cambridge, for example, that I’d be wailing and beating my chest saying “If only I’d have breastfed!!”

@polkerris

That is infuriating. I was desperate for help and the help available was so poor. I couldn’t even pay someone to come and help. We are now (almost) exclusively pumping as we never got our latch sorted and ds, (now 20wo), became so used to bottles that he was never satisfied with a bf. We finally found out at 3mo that he had TT, but it was a bit late in the game, despite me taking him to every available support group from the day we left hospital.

I’ve posted about this before. I was a very experienced breastfeeder and the treatment I received in hospital for breastfeeding was disgusting. This was in a baby friendly accredited hospital. They failed to follow guidelines, gave advice which was not evidence based, promoted popular brands of formula. I complained and an investigation agreed staff did not follow hospital policy and they failed to follow evidence based practice. One was a senior member of staff! They got retrained but I guarantee their attitude won’t have changed - it wasn’t a training issue in the first place!

I bf in public and have never had anything but positive comments. I’m still feeding 2 year old twins and will feed until they decide to stop.

Women should feed babies how they choose to feed. But I was told I was causing my baby to be at risk of brain damage by refusing to give formula. I was also told to see formula as medicine. At this point I was tandem feeding twins and expressing colostrum by pump. My milk kicked in 24 hours post section. I had so much milk I could have donated!

@Rhubarb - as with everything it's down to funding. In the time I was on the helpline and taking calls there was funding from the NHS but that was only enough to pay for the website and some promotional cards with the number. Those of us who were answering calls were expected to have an adjustment made to our home phone which made it ring differently when it was a breastfeeding line call - that cost around £5 per month which we were "encouraged" to pay for ourselves as it was a charity and there was no money. £60 per year might not sound much but it's enough to put people off - and it just shows that the NHS isn't taking breastfeeding support if they're not prepared to put the money behind it. Breastfeeding counsellors on the phone can also do so much - I was taking calls from mums all over Scotland and could arrange to meet them in person if I were local but I'd be getting calls from the Highlands or Shetland and there's only so much you can do over the phone without the mother and baby physically in front of you.

Lockheart

It’s completely your choice but one thing that isn’t usually mentioned on the pros / cons list is how lovely and rewarding breastfeeding can be. For me, once things were established, it was a time of bonding and closeness that I will treasure forever. I think breastfeeding mums probably don’t talk about this much because they don’t want to upset mums who are unable to breastfeed. I guess it’s something you have to experience to understand and appreciate.

"I cried all day every day for months. Piss off with your chat that all that was because deep down I'd just seen too many Aptamil adverts."
Of course it wasn't. But we have to look at society as well as individuals. There is a lot of stuff "normalising" ff. We don't like in a breastfeeding friendly culture. Most of us will never have seen anyone breastfeeding before we try and feed our own. Many of the people offering "support" in hospitals won't have ever bf because they are young nurses who don't even have children.

"I don’t plan on breastfeeding if I have children. It’s painful, messy, restricting, and inconvenient."

Lockheart-can I ask why you think that?

I breastfeed both DC fully for the first 6 months and extended BF until 2.5.

I got a lot of comments (not of the admirational kind).

No idea what the issue is over here. I didn't grow up in the UK but come a country were BF is much the norm and I think this is partly the reason why I BF. And no, I didn't find it easy - cluster feeding, night wakings, I had Rae nipples, mastitis, severe courses of ABs (but I stuck the first few tough weeks out).

Various people told me they don't/didn't want want to BF because:

• wrecks your boobs (mine are certainly fine after 5 years of BF)
• hurts (in the beginning)
• dad of the baby is not involved (my DCs' dad changed nappies, gave bathes and cuddles in the early days)
• babies grow teeth and will bite (mine didn't and surely, FF feeding mothers don't switch to a medium rare steak once their DC start to grow some incisors).

I don't preach BF. each to their own but I agree, OP, it's baffling that the UK rates are so much lower than in comparable countries.

That breastfeeding and a routine led baby are not compatible at least for the first few months. Feeding will not be four hourly but much more frequently

bf but I don’t know a single bf baby that sleep through at weeks old, whereas all ff babies did

Mine never cluster fed and slept through from Day 1.

I have never had any issues. I know many women that haven't either.

Your experience alone isn't representative of 1000 of women

My BF baby sleeps wonderfully, thank you

I agree with all the comments about lack of honesty about how hard, painful and time consuming/sleep depriving it can be, and how despite the preaching there is bugger all practical help available on the NHS. This needs to change, as do the culture attitudes, as pp mentioned.

I would also just like to mention that it doesn't always get less painful as time goes on. I bf'd for six months, and each and every feed was excruciatingly painful, up until the very last time. It was horrendous, and really upsetting to dread each feed with the newborn you love and want to bond with.

I was lucky to have a helpful HV with lots of tips on different positions/ways of latching etc, but she couldn't work out what was going wrong, and neither could the private LC we hired. I had to mix-feed as it was so painful, and DD was so slow at bf. We found out a year later that she is extremely hypermobile, so the likelihood is this meant she did not have the jaw control necessary to achieve a good latch. While this would only be an issue for a small proportion of babies, not a single person offered this as a possibility, or gave us any tips to overcome it (although maybe that is not possible).

Something else- I wonder if sites like mumsnet inadvertently give a negative impression of breastfeeding because mums who are struggling come here for advice and support. It’s good that they are seeking help and sharing their problems but I wonder if it means there is more written about the downsides. Most mums who get on with breastfeeding and find it easy and convenient (like I did) don’t need to write about their experiences so the good stories don’t get aired. Just a thought.

That breastfeeding and a routine led baby are not compatible at least for the first few months. Feeding will not be four hourly but much more frequently

bf but I don’t know a single bf baby that sleep through at weeks old, whereas all ff babies did

Mine never cluster fed and slept through from Day 1.

I have never had any issues. I know many women that haven't either.

Your experience alone isn't representative of 1000 of women

My BF baby sleeps wonderfully, thank you

My comments about the helpline should have been that there is ONLY so much you can do over the phone.

It's brilliant for talking to mums about medication, or discussing expressing, or reassuring about weight gain or something. But when you have a tearful mum with a week old baby, mum with mastitis and baby who is clearly not latching, telephone support doesn't cut it. You need to be there, and quite literally, hands on.

@BertrandRussell - of course; it is the overwelming consensus on blogs, threads, almost anything that’s written about the practical realities of breastfeeding. The cracked and bleeding nipples, the painful swelling when you need to express or feed, the mastitis, the sudden and unexpected letdown in inconvenient places, the leaking through clothes and pads, having your baby clamped to you for most of the day (and night) and not being able to pass them to your partner, not being able to eat or drink what I want (after 9 months of the same!). And this is assuming that you produce enough milk and have an easy latcher. I’m sure there are other things I can’t recall right now.

So like I said, painful, messy, inconvenient, and restricting. Not for me, that’s all.

Of course online platforms will be under representing all the women that found breast feeding easy, convenient and enjoyable. Most forums, blogs will probably be talking about problems and hurdles, because just feeding a baby with little problem isn’t remarkable. And it’s hardly likely that those women will start commenting about how great breastfeeding was for them on the same platform as people are tearing their hair out with problems. Although I have to say I’ve seen the

Posted too soon. I’ve seen threads that are positive about b/feeding have to be removed because of accusations of smugness or goading. That’s not very fair or representative either.

@Lockheart, that isn't an accurate picture of breastfeeding as I know it at all. It's a Frankenstein of all the tough moments it MAY have, stitched together to make it sound like one unending odyssey of yuck. Plus a handful of misinformation (you can eat and drink whatever you like and practically any medication).

Breastfeeding has its difficult moments in the run-up for most but also many wonderful ones, and not just for "the lucky ones" that some seem to regard as some kind of genetic freaks.

(You can eat and drink what you like when breastfeeding, apart from getting so drunk that you aren't safe to hold the baby.)