Demonisation of formula!!!

[Summertimehaze]

Don’t know if anyone watched the Dispatches programme last night on breastfeeding? The more I think about that programme the more annoyed I’m getting!!! The demonisation of formula really doesn’t help mothers who struggle to breastfeed and have to start using formula or even as a top up!! Most mothers want to do what’s right for their babies and know that breast is best. But some mums just can’t do it and so formula literally becomes a lifesaver. I’m sick of seeing mums feel so guilty about it and letting their children bloody starve because they surely can’t give them the evil formula!!!!!! The programme basically tells a new mum that it’s really tough to breastfeed, there is no support, they will be judged BUT formula is not an option!!! Grrrrrrrrr 😡. AIBU

It didn’t demonise formula as a product at all, just pointed out facts that are sadly often lost in ridiculous marketing. I think you can try to hold formula producers to account without demonising it as a feeding choice, or at least you should be able to. I’ve just read a good article actually that outlines a few things that need to change in the U.K. alone. People think formula is a highly regulated product, it isn’t. Babies need someone to give them a consumer voice too! Obviously no one can deny that breastmilk and for

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amy-brown/dont-we-deserve-fairer-pr_b_15577536.html

Why does no one talk about the pain, asks a pp? The documentary did. Mothers talk about the pain a lot. Pain on BF is one of the main reasons women give up in the early weeks. Pain is one of the reasons why we need skilled support and assessment easily accessible - because pain, while common, is not inevitable and it can often be helped.

It's maddening to see, again, this idea that because you can't tell the difference between BF and ff by the age of [insert random age here ] it's all a big fuss about nothing. The health impact of infant feeding is not visible - but it exists! It's a truly rubbish argument to state that there is no difference 'cos you can't see it.

And where do that stats come from? Every trust has to compile figures and send them to public health England (not sure what happens elsewhere in the UK, but it will be the equivalent). Not all data collection is done thoroughly but it is supposed to be carried out so localities can compare their records over time.

We know from successive surveys that 80 per cent of women start BF. Of course not all them them will be super keen. Some will be trying it because they want to see how it goes. Others will be broken hearted if it doesn't happen. Most people will be in between. But where is the evidence to disparage this figure, by suggesting mothers are just pretending they want to?

Supporting women to bf, researching and publicising the health impact of BF, is not to judge or belittle women who don't BF. Anyone sensible and understanding knows women have a range of reasons for not BF, and the reasons include 'it wasn't something I wanted to do' as well as 'BF was hell'.

Posted to early. No one can really deny that breast milk provides optimum nutrition for infants but formula is clearly an adequate substitute. They need to ditch the dodgy science claims, unethical marketing, and ludicrous price structures. The 70% of infants that are fed it deserve better.

@hallenbak

I have been told I am "a great mommy" by people, with qualifications, both my midwife and my HV, who has told me that me and a friend are great role models for breastfeeding as we have ebf very big babies. However, as I stated in previous post I personally think that the people who have expressed longterm, or expressed and then breastfed premmies are the real heros and role models that need to be used in campaigns. I don't need reassurance, I am just fortunate to live in a part of the UK where it is still normal to talk about shared experiences with strangers.

@ferrier I never suffered the after pains, I just had an awareness that something was happening when I was feeding, I understand from friends that they can be quite severe.

Nasty post, Hellandbak. The poster was reporting on a nice thing someone said to her. Many people would not be entirely sure what ethnicity a person might be - it's not racist to have a guess!

Why shouldn't wait staff be kind and supportive to a new mother?

I didn’t see the programme but I know of probably 20+ mums who didn’t even consider breastfeeding. These are mostly mums in their early 20s. Reasons given were that they didn’t want to be attached to the baby, they didn’t want to get saggy boobs, they felt repulsed by breastfeeding and they wanted their partners to feed their baby too.

As a poster said on the first page, any encouragement to breastfeed is good in my opinion. It’s not about demonising women who can’t breastfeed, it’s about encouraging women to do it.

Yes, the documentary did. In real life, I seemed to be the only one going on about. Was looked at like I was some kind of idiot. Felt like nipples were being slammed in a door.

Nobody tells you that is actually normal. Pain is normal at first. Normal!They should so at least you can mentally prepare.

Really liked the documentary.

Formula companies are deeply suspect- there are some dodgy going on with formula companies and the Trump administration at the moment.

I had no issues breastfeeding but had to stop at 3 months due to being incredibly ill and having to take medication that I didn't want to risk entering my child's system through my milk. The difference in changing to formula was astounding. Suddenly I was given filthy looks, questioned by strangers as to my reasons for using formula and generally made to feel dreadful.
When are we all going to accept that it's about personal choice/circumstance and that as long as a baby is loved and cared for and well fed in whatever way, that's all that matters in the end.

@Ifeelshit DS will be 9 months when I go back, I'm hoping in the next 12 weeks he can take a beaker/cup of some kind!!!

I feel if bottle refusal was mentioned during my pregnancy and the effect it can have on returning to work/inability to have a break etc I would have gone down a different route, certainly introduced the bottle with expressed milk FAR earlier.

Re difference- how long is a piece of string though? The stats involved with any benefits are tiny,then there are a large number of other life style choices that will complicate any benefits hugely.

I was I suspect pretty average. Aimed for 6 months,ending up doing 6 weeks. Don't smoke,strove to provide 5 a day for as long as I could( babies are now teens), kept sweets and fizzy drinks to few and far between,ditto processed meat,balanced diet, sugar,junk and red meat limited. Screens limited,books a plenty, encourage exercise etc.

I really do struggle to see any difference under the skin of my 3 healthy,high achieving kids due to 6 weeks of breast milk instead of 6 months.

@tiktok

Thank you

Nasty post, Hellandbak. The poster was reporting on a nice thing someone said to her. Many people would not be entirely sure what ethnicity a person might be - it's not racist to have a guess!

For clarification the reference to ethnicity was in no way intended to be racist, merely to acknowledge that to people from other parts of the world, the lack of breastfeeding in public in the UK is noticeable.

Also, I wanted to counteract the many anecdotes of women being asked/told to sit in a corner when breastfeeding in cafes, as that has not been my experience of breastfeeding.

Women are encouraged to breast feed ad nauseum. It hasn't worked. In fact I'd go as far as saying the breast is best campaign has had the opposite effect

‘I was struggling to maintain my weight and was getting thinner and thinner).’

I wish breastfeeding had that effect for me. They say it makes you lose weight but I found it meant I struggled to lose my pregnancy weight whilst breast feeding and my body just seemed to cling on to it (the extra cake etc probably didn’t help) but I found it so draining it kept me sane. I found the moment I stopped breastfeeding the weight started falling off.

I really do struggle to see any difference under the skin of my 3 healthy,high achieving kids due to 6 weeks of breast milk instead of 6 months

and you will never know, because you don't have an identical twin for each child whom you ebf. No-one is saying that ff children can't achieve amazing things or that they are in any way inferior, just that statistics show that, even taking all other things into account, breast-fed babies are in general^ healthier and have slightly higher IQs than ff babies. It's not possible to know whether your DC would be better off had you bf because you can't go back in time. You did the best you could at the time, be proud.

I've just finished watching this and I have to say I disagree, I don't think it was demonizing formula at all, I think it was more of a criticism of the lack of support for mothers who chose to breastfeed.

I've been incredibly lucky that I've had access to support throughout my breastfeeding journey. My little boy had a tongue tie which was corrected and I was hospitalised with mastitis and I've had so much support through every step.

However I do agree with the social side of breastfeeding in public, I've only done it once and had so many dodgy looks and was told that I shouldn't be doing it in public that I went home in tears and haven't done it since.

We need to normalize breastfeeding and increase the support for all mothers in their feeding journeys whether that's breast, expressed, formula or a combination of all of those, because at the end of the day FED is best and all mothers need support.

And there you go again. Stats do not say bf babies are healthier,how can they when genes and long term lifestyle choices\environment swamp a few months of food.

Stats do not say breast fed babies have a higher IQ either. How can they when genes,lifestyle and environment will supersede bm in spades.The maj like my babies had both anyway.

And then you get the research that is proclaimed from the roof tops by the breast is best brigade only to be debunked further down the line. The IQ theory being a case in point.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11886646/Breastfeeding-does-not-improve-IQ-study-finds.html

@P3onyPenny please don't spout lies. Just saying something doesn't make it true.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2939272/

But some mums just can’t do it and so formula literally becomes a lifesaver.

I think that's the key to it all though. Some mums just can't do it. Formula is a lifesaver.

And no one should ever be demonised for using formula. But, the reasons for using it have changed, and it is important to talk about it.

It's no longer the life saving formula for premature babies, or very sick mums, or mum's who physically cannot feed. It's now a choice (not that I'm saying that's right or wrong).

And that choice is now made by 99% of women.

Something has gone wrong somewhere.

In fact, every time there's a thread on here about a woman who is struggling with breastfeeding (because it is bloody hard) - most answers are 'don't worry, just formula feed, don't feel bad'.

Then if the poster comes back and says she doesn't want to FF, it's then a pretty defensive 'why not, what's wrong with formula' 'I've got 3 healthy children all FF' etc etc.

And whilst there is nothing wrong with giving women support to go ahead with formula (if that's what she wants) there's very little support for BF.

Imagine the response to someone struggling with FF, that they were told to try and re-establish BF?

And people are desperate to prove that FF is the same as BF. So what's the point of BF at all then?

Our society has changed. Women are no longer stuck indoors with baby all the live long day, we work, we're busy, we need sleep. Sometimes that means we make a choice about feeding based on that.

Personally I'd like to see far more information out there about how hard breastfeeding is. How sore it is. How much it hurts. How hard the cluster feeding is. So when it does happen, you don't feel like you're doing it wrong.

I'd like to see more information on mixed feeding. I'd like to see more places in public where you can feed, rather than some shitty toilet (this happened to me in Debenhams. I sat down to feed on a chair - out the way - and they directed me to the disabled toilets to feed instead).

I'd like to see more training for midwives and HV's on both BF and FF support.

I'd like to see more support for women back at work who want to continue BF.

And I'd like to see more compassion from both sides.

Moreover, it would be nice to be able to discuss the benefits of breastfeeding without upsetting and offending anyone who chose to formula feed.

Spouting lies about what exactly?

But Glue 99% aren't choosing to ff the maj choose and start to bf. Many after Herculean efforts then stop.

And the fact is not one of the above parents can reliably attribute any ill health to ffing. It may be inconvenient but it's there.Not sure why said mothers shouldn't be allowed to voice that. Obviously a mother of a baby ill from formula made in non sterile bottles and dirty water in Africa could.

‘It's no longer the life saving formula for premature babies, or very sick mums, or mum's who physically cannot feed. It's now a choice (not that I'm saying that's right or wrong).’

It’s right, it should be a choice. I’m pro feeding whichever the method.

Anecdotal evidence is useless in this incidence, no one can know if there ff baby would have been less ill/more intelligent if ebf. Likewise a sickly breast fed baby could have been even sicker without ebf. But on an individual level it is impossible to know.

At a population level researchers and scientists with a greater understanding of data and statistics can attempt to control for variables like socioeconomic group or parental education levels etc, and these studies have shown that breast milk is better than formula. Less admissions to hospital for breast fed babies is a good proxy measure of its impact on immunity.

@gluteustothemaximus well said!!!

Anyone interested in the science and the public health aspects can read the Lancet who have a collection of articles:

www.thelancet.com/series/breastfeeding

Formula has a role to play and of course we want the best, safest and most accessible cost-wise. But it was not invented to save lives. It was invented to make money and to do this, mothers had to be convinced their milk was not good enough....that's how it got a foothold in the market.

Formula - commercially manufactured supplements for mother's milk - began mid 19th century. Spurious claims were made from the very start.

Marketing and lies and exaggerations have been a part of formula selling ever since.