NHS FB campaign for breastfeeding

[Isit7yet]

So I'm well aware of all the virtues of breastfeeding but this feels like a first! Local NHS running a friendly BF campaign recently with women holding cards saying I breastfeed because..... And today's had "I love my children" . Am AIBU to want to message them and say how offensive that is to me? Surely that implies that to formula feeding is to not love your child enough?

I had PND with my second. BF was very difficult. I got through it but would have been fine going to formula if I hadn't.

I can't understand the people saying they would have been devastated reading this etc - isn't being devastated when something really bad happens directly to you? No one is actually saying you don't love your baby if you don't or can't breastfeed, they're not speaking directly to you! You, presumably, know you love your baby and that is, or really should be, the end of it.

While it's a difficult time in the early days of having a baby, I find all the "I would have been so offended/found this so hurtful etc etc" so extraordinary. It's a general message to promote breastfeeding in a country where the rates are very low - that should be positive. How do so many people manage to take such personal offence to it?

Here's how people manage to take personal offence - tell a woman struggling to feed that bf is for people who love their babies . And by extension, if you don't bf, you don't love your baby enough.

YANBU to be upset because of your own experience but YABU to think that woman's reason for breastfeeding is a dig at formula feeding Mums. Honestly I think her response is pretty lame because it lacks any creativity or complex thought, but I don't think it was meant to be nasty.

I do find the guilt women get in lots of subtle ways and some really direct ways to breastfeed to be sickening.

Breastfeeding didn't work for us because no matter what I tried we couldn't maintain a good latch and because she's lactose intolerant. I formula feed because I want my baby to live!

My psychiatrist told me not to let the hospital or midwives pressure me to breastfeed if it wasn't working for us because they mostly do it because the hospital gets monetary rewards from the government for having high breastfeeding stats. I don't know if that's true, but it wouldn't surprise me if it is.

Forgot to add, that in my own experience when I talk more in depth with family and others who said they breastfed (implying exclusively), it turned out they "topped up" with formula or at bedtime or switched to formula only not long after. I don't know any women personally who exclusively breastfed all of their children.

To me it's sad that on the surface so many women feel the need to pretend they breastfed exclusively. Women shouldn't be ashamed to formula feed.

My breastfeeding didn’t work out. I was very very sad about it at the time but we have moved on now and ds is thriving.
I have a good idea of what things went wrong and will try again in future.
Whilst I agree that this woman’s poster is rubbish we all do our best.... I do feel However even if this woman’s poster had said something like ‘I breastfeed because it is nutritionally best for my baby’ which is entirely factually correct, like it or not. There would still be tons of ff mothers saying she was smug the campaign was wrong, out to guilt trip people etc etc.
I’ve heard pregnant friends say the wanted to ff from the start because this would mean they could share the load of feeding with their partner. This is also entirely factually correct, yet these mums never seem to get called smug for the points they make. In fact they are often applauded for it, “good for you, why shouldn’t the men pull their weight, babies are better on formula you can see what they are taking” and so on so on.
So I really think that bf mums sometimes can’t win.

I exclusively breastfed for 4 months, now doing mixed feeding, and at 6 months will start weaning and switch to formula.

I always wanted to bf but i wouldn't have felt guilt or anything if i couldn't, i would have just had to send my partner out for formulas and bottles as we didn't have anything!

I breastfed my 4 month old little boy for 7 weeks we had big feeding issues and I hated it. I carried on because of the intense pressure I felt was under to do it. I ended up seeing a therapist for PND. If I had seen this poster at the time I switched to formula it would have really upset me. Yes breast feeding is better for the baby, there's no denying that but to imply that if you don't do it you don't love your baby is really wrong. Why can't we just feed our babies how we see fit without being judged? It makes me so sad.

Here's how people manage to take personal offence - tell a woman struggling to feed that bf is for people who love their babies . And by extension, if you don't bf, you don't love your baby enough.

Maybe I'm just weird but I still cannot see how anyone could take this as an attack personal to them. Surely the mother concerned knows if they love their baby or not... I can't imagine taking a general statement to be a direct judgment on me about whether I love my baby or not. It's only my opinion but that seems total madness. One could take personal offence to literally anything on that basis! (And indeed some people do...)

@makingtime. People are different. New mothers can be vulnerable. Hope this hasn't shocked you to find this out.

It's like having a poster saying "I'm a SAHM because I love my kids" or "I had a natural birth with no pain relief because I love my kids" or "my husband took shared parental leave because he loves his kids".

In my view feeding is in the same category as all of these, they are complex decisions and what's right for one family won't be right for the next. In some cases the choice can get taken out of your hands anyway for all kinds of reasons. Simplifying it to "I do X because I love my kids" is just crass. We all love our kids.

@makingtime I can't see how YOU can't see why some people might find this upsetting. So I guess we're even!

I agree makingtime.

Yanbu at all at best this is tactless at worst, as several posters have mentioned this could seriously affect a mothers mental health. For a lot of women breast feeding is not an option and there’s already enough guilt out there without shit like this

It’s such an angst ridden subject for mothers. I see why it’s offensive and if I knew the woman irl I’d think a lot less of her for making that statement tbh. Ditto the “because it’s normal” one.

Yes, it’s the biological norm and it is better for your baby, but they have been a bit thoughtless and insensitive here. The NHS as well as the individual women in the campaign.

Full disclosure; I’ve mix fed both of my dcs. Currently, I’m pretty much exclusively pumping for my 5mo dc2 due to undiagnosed TT (thanks for that NHS) which only got snipped at 3mo followed by flat out breast refusal. Anyone who thinks that is through lack of will power, grit, determination or desire to breastfeed, lack of love or because I didn’t try to do something so “normal” and natural, clearly hasn’t tried exclusively pumping 🤪. It’s a total pain in the arse! Seriously, pumping, sterilising everything and feeding bottles is a lot more time consuming than just whipping out a boob. If I had any choice in the matter, bfing would clearly be my preference.

Two minutes in some of the threads on here would show you how crass and insensitive it is.

Are there any (reliable) figures about why women don't breastfeed? The NHS stuff seems to be targetted squarely at women who (currently) don't think they want to, whereas experience amongst friends and reading MN would suggest a far bigger problem is women who want and intend to bf but either can't because of medical/health reasons (theirs or baby's) or find it horribly difficult and aren't given any support to help them continue.

A campaign of 'I wanted to breastfeed and xyz was so helpful when I found it hard' with a list of resources (websites, charities, etc. if NHS can't/won't fund) might go a long way, without making women who couldn't breastfeed or decided not to feel awful.

Totally agree @morred. Someone said on here a while ago that HVs spend all their time pushing reluctant mothers to bf when they don’t want to instead of helping the ones who actually want to do it 🤷‍♀️. I suppose the theory might be that if enough women want to do it, then that increases the odds of more people actually managing to do it for any length of time.

At an individual level though, it’s pretty gutting when you genuinely can’t manage to do something which is considered totally ‘normal, natural and easy as long as you just try...’.

It’s a really difficult area and people feel strongly about it. It doesn’t help that hormones are a raging at the very beginning when mothers are sometimes struggling to establish breastfeeding.

Yes it has offended me and I’m not even in the midst of trying to breast feed anymore.
I had all and sundry try and help to feed my
33 week sleepy, jaundiced baby. I had midwives tell me that ‘formula wasn’t for babies’ and that it ‘slowed their system down like a foreign meal’ I had a midwife tell me she could always pick out formula fed babies and ‘not in a good way.’
I couldn’t feed my baby. I tried and tried. I had to express. I expressed for two years. Day and night. Every 4/5 hours. And it ruined my life. It ruined my baby’s life. It ruined the life of my other child. And the best of it is no one even cares now - no one can tell if my child was formula or breast fed. So I damn well nearly killed myself for nothing, over feeling guilty and inferior. Oh and at the two year check the hv told me that expressing wasn’t as good as ‘properly breast feeding.’ Great. Thanks for that.
So yes. This image may have tipped me over the edge at the time.

One of them has ‘I breastfeed because breast milk is magic.’ Ffs

Waves at sunday! Exclusive pumper here too. Such fun .

Best times ever!

It’s a little bit smug and annoying, but I can’t help but think that any ‘positive breastfeeding’ campaign is going to hurt people that really wanted to b/f and couldn’t. So how should it be done?

How about "our local NHS service helps support new mums". That would be a shocker.

Yep that truly would be a shocker!

any ‘positive breastfeeding’ campaign is going to hurt people that really wanted to b/f and couldn’t. So how should it be done?

This one really wasn’t handled well though. I don’t object to positive bf campaigns at all. I’m quite clearly sold on the whole breast milk thing, or else I wouldn’t be pumping milk like a dairy cow 🐄 , every day for the past five months, and planning to continue for another few months at least. But this particular campaign was badly done. It’s quite lazy too. There are less divisive ways to promote breastfeeding. This just plays into that whole mommy wars thing, which is deeply unpleasant and unnecessary.