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

The negative mental health part of my story is the birth, the breastfeeding part was positive.

Just trying to make the point that breastfeeding can have a positive mental health impact.

Wonder how it compares to other health promoting activities, such as making extended rear facing car seats compulsory, which would save lives?

to be brutally frank and pragmatic about it, saving lives is not the function of public health (at least not in this country where we have socialised health care). It is about making those lives healthier and thus less expensive to the taxpayer. Quick, inexpensive deaths are not particularly injurious to public health, it is the population wide malaises like obesity, malnutrition, substance abuse, sedentary living, combined with the ability (and thus the obligation) to extend even the most sickly, hindered life almost indefinitely that is bringing the health service to its knees (that and chronic underfunding).

There is (according to the experts) reason to believe that higher rates of breastfeeding would result in a reduction of costs to the NHS for various conditions which currently burden it (let's leave aside for a moment how significant the effect is, as I feel we're not going to agree on that and it isn't really the point).

Globally, the breastfeeding initiative is about saving lives, and demonstrably could save many in countries where women are turning to formula due to mendacious advertising convincing them it's better for their babies than their own milk, without either the money to afford it in adequate quantities or the conditions to safely store and prepare it.

But in the UK, where we are by and large wealthy and have access to electricity and clean water, it is mostly about achieving incremental improvements in various burdensome national health problems to allow the many many people in this country to be somewhat healthier and make somewhat fewer demands per head on the overstretched facilities of the health service.

Likewise, breastfeeding has been mostly positive for me, although my absolute favourite way to feed is to bottle feed expressed milk.

Breastfeeding is great for some women and not for others. I don't understand why it is such a controversial issue. Breastmilk is the best for babies, but formula is nutritionally just as good. Some women choose to FF and that's fine. Some women choose to breastfeed and find that they can't and they do not get adequate support to help them achieve that goal, and that's not fine. To me that's the message the programme was trying to convey, although I don't think it was particularly well done.

I think it's an important point flowers. I think the other thing that gets lost are the positive stories around breastfeeding generally. I have friends who are absolutely adamant that breastfeeding was easy and that's why they did it and that if it hadn't been they'd have FF without hesitation . All of the talk of struggles/ support may put some people off who would actually have no problems at all.

*@Ifeelshit thank you for posting further up about how you felt about physically BFing. I felt the same way - hated the sensation and the way my baby stared at my boob rather than at me. At the time I thought there must be something wrong with me, not to enjoy this thing that I'd been told was so amazing. *

Just a query if either of you ever considered the possibility that you were suffering from DMER? Much like sex, evolution has designed us to get happy hormones from breastfeeding - even when it was hurting like hell for me I still got the rush of oxytocin and the surge of love towards the little beggar happily shredding my nipple on the roof of her mouth - felt bloody weird and counterintuitive somethimes but it was there, purely biologically. However quite a lot of women suffer from a hormone dysfunction that means as the milk ejection reflex kicks in the have a huge drop in dopamine, another happy hormone, that can result in sudden onset feelings of distress, disgust, fear or anger and make breastfeeding bloody miserable.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a part of your experience, more just flagging it up for any mum still bf and struggling with such feelings that it might be worth looking into. Another thing most midwives and HVs know nothing whatsoever about so just immediately tell any mum she isn't loving every minute she must have PND (the go to now for even the slightest complaint or concern from any new mum in my experience)

People always end up contradicting themselves - either BFing is the harder option and ffing is the easier way. Or else they couldn't be bothered with all the sterilising and making up bottles and BFing is so much easier

Or maybe different women have different experiences of bf? It can be more difficult in the early days but gets much easier once established.

To be honest, this thread is totally indicative of how ingrained formula advertising is in this country. Someone even referred to it as a 'miracle' upthread!! Not breastmilk that has evolved over millennia and is taylor-made for your own baby - it's formula that's the miracle!! This right here is partly why the bf rates are so low.

How on earth can anybody state that my dc are blighted inside because I didn't bf for 4 and a half more months.

P3ony your language is so ridiculous on this. No-one is saying your kids are 'blighted inside' for God's sake. This isn't about individuals. And it's not about 'formula fed children all have the seed of disease sown in them, woe unto this generation!' thumps copy of 'The Politics Of Breastfeeding.

These are statistical, population level effects. It is not about your - EXTREMELY HEALTHY, HEALTHIER THAN YOURS RANDOM BREASTFEEDING MUM ON THE INTERNETZ - kids. OK?

I suspect Enn if the NHS provided every mother with the bfing support they need alongside better support re safe bottle prep and you take in to account hospital admissions for those where bfing doesn't end well there wouldn't be savings at all. I suspect this is why we have the current status quo.

*And crucially could be done by someone other than me!

I think that is the absolute best bit about formula feeding.*

From the reverse, this is absolutely one of the best things about bf for me (or was in the early days). After my shitty birth, I really didn't want DD out of my sight. I wanted to be with her, I wanted to hold her, I didn't want to 'get my life back' as everyone kept exhorting me to do, my well meaning MIL was SO KEEN for me and other half to go out for a night out ('even overnight!') and leave her with baby and the idea just horrified me - she had been a part of me for 9 months, she still felt like a part of me, but people seemed so keen for me to let her go, leave her behind, from the minute she was born.

It felt completely unnatural to me (note I say to me, other people feel differently and these feelings are valid, and in the sod's law run of things probably had people in their lives giving them shit for wanting to walk around the block without their 8 month old - so it goes alas).

Breastfeeding was my fallback position when I was being pressured and made to feel silly - I couldn't leave her, she needed feeding. It allowed me the space I so badly wanted and needed to go into the mum zone and just be about her and me for a while, recover from what we'd gone through and get to know each other.

We're all so different, we want such different things, need such different things to be a good mum. Taken holistically, no choice is better than another.

I am replying to those continuously saying bf kids differ inside to ff kids. They never say how. The fact is we take all parenting advice and apply it to our own children. We don't blankly take all the ideals and apply them without fail regardless. I knew I'd prepare bottles safely so hospital admissions were unlikely. I knew I'd give my dc a healthy lifestyle and wouldn't overfeed so obesity not likely. It is the same re 5 a day and screen usage. I know screens can alter attention span and have a lot of negatives however I know I can regulate and compensate in other areas. My dc went through stages when they regected 5 a day. They made up for it further down the line.

As I said it's a marathon not a sprint and no parent should make parenting choices on a population level. Genes,environment,circumstances.... all vary far too much.

I suspect Enn if the NHS provided every mother with the bfing support they need alongside better support re safe bottle prep and you take in to account hospital admissions for those where bfing doesn't end well there wouldn't be savings at all. I suspect this is why we have the current status quo.

You can suspect that P3ony and who's to say, but the people whose paid job it is to work these things out think differently. These people do modelling, and statistics, to work out the likely outcomes of different approaches. And it is their view that widespread breastfeeding would be a good thing for public health.

Something I've always wondered is why people think that scientists who understand probability etc, and NHS statisticians whose job it is to try and save the service money, are banging this drum so hard if the evidence backing it up is so weak and laughable it can be dismissed after a quick peruse by Jane Bloggs in an afternoon. What's in it for them? Why are they so keen to promote something that won't actually make any difference? Because trust me, if you are able to evaluate the statistical significance of findings then so are they, it's their JOB.

There is (according to the experts) reason to believe that higher rates of breastfeeding would result in a reduction of costs to the NHS for various conditions which currently burden it (let's leave aside for a moment how significant the effect is, as I feel we're not going to agree on that and it isn't really the point).

So why doesn't the NHS properly support new mums then? .

Ah sorry it's easier just to blame women for the failure and set them against each other on internet forums......

Until 'pro-bfers' see that this isn't about Breastfeeding but it is about how all women having babies are treated in this country nothing will change. Because blaming women is really convenient for the establishment.

*So why doesn't the NHS properly support new mums then? confused.

Ah sorry it's easier just to blame women for the failure and set them against each other on internet forums...... *

Please read my posts on this thread. I agree with you!!!! It's bollocks the way mums are set against each other, and the approach currently taken clearly isn't working. I made a substantial suggestion early on up thread as to how I think bf rates could be improved - work towards making feeding a neutral choice, take away the stigma of bottle feeding, so that people who are on the fence about bf or would actually prefer to ff don't feel under pressure to 'try'. Let mums who want to choose to ff. And then pour support for bf into the women who, for whatever reason, are desperate to bf and will go through the hurdles to try and get there. I think this targeted approach would create better success rates, resulting in more normalisation, more community support, and thus more women willing and prepared to give it a go. The last thing I want is people who would be happier ff being pressured into bf, it doesn't work and just uses up scarce resources for bf support.

So there you go, the start of a revolution

@P3onyPenny

Differences inside:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/8888912/

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2299705

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/04/04/292755

For mother

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/98/4/1020/4577045

@P3onyPenny

• Harriet saying you can't tell the difference and my kids are fine aren't non points because they're fact.The vast maj of kids have formula and are fine. As far as Im aware no poster has x Ray vision and can see the insides of my children"

You're exactly right - no one has X Ray vision - my point entirely. The stated benefits of bf are to things like the immune system (for example) which no one can see. That's why I say that it's silly to say things like "no one could pick out the bf kids in a line up", which is the type of thing people say on these threads. You can't see a propensity to diabetes, a good sense of humour, a higher or lower IQ etc etc either by looking at children but that doesn't mean these differences don't exist (disclaimer: those are random examples not in any way related to bf before anyone freaks out).

Also, as we all know, what you feed your child is only a tiny part of what shapes them, and every child is different. Which is why it makes no sense to say things like "my child is ff and has a high IQ/was hardly ever sick etc etc" - you don't know whether if bf their IQ might have been higher, or they might have been sick even less. It just doesn't make sense as an argument to resort to the anecdotal like this.

I'm not sure if the rest of your post was aimed at me but I didn't say anything negative about formula at all in my post. It's a shame some people are so defensive on this topic. Presumably everyone can agree that people who want to breastfeed should be supported to do so?

But they don't though do they. If bfing is so crucial to the nation's health they'd plough the millions that is needed into the support that is needed.They can move quickly when needed,the HIP vaccine for boys being a case in point.Also if they can't plough money into tackling the obesity crisis(sugar and junk food addiction,lack of exercise)and screen addiction problems both of which have directly linked long term consequences getting those millions for bfing isn't likely.

And don't talk to me about scientists and doctors. We know several who as regards their own kids don't bang the bfing above all else tune who have used formula quite happily. Have read several posts from doctors on here over the years who happily used formula for their own dc too.As I said,there are hoards of parenting ideals. You do your best and what is best for your children within the whole picture and it is ever ongoing.

So there you go, the start of a revolution grin

clambers down off soap box

But they don't though do they. If bfing is so crucial to the nation's health they'd plough the millions that is needed into the support that is needed.They can move quickly when needed,the HIP vaccine for boys being a case in point.Also if they can't plough money into tackling the obesity crisis(sugar and junk food addiction,lack of exercise)and screen addiction problems both of which have directly linked long term consequences getting those millions for bfing isn't likely.

You contradict yourself within that very statement! headdesk

First you say "If breastfeeding was so important for public health they'd find the money, they do when it matters".

Then you say "well if they can't find the money to tackle obesity, which REALLY matters, they won't find it to support bf!"

Do you not see how you contradict yourself and tie yourself in knots purely to be able to piss on breastfeeding?

And don't talk to me about scientists and doctors.

And here it is, at bottom. The 'had enough of experts', anecdata culture that thinks facts and evidence are an optional extra to be acknowledged if and only if they support your instinctive prejudices.

But you can say that about any parenting choice,do you examine every daily choice so thoroughly?The IQ theory was debunked anyway but I'm sure you're aware genes,maternal education,environment trump anything. It was something ridiculous like 2 points anyway. But still you bang on.

We can only go by our own experience and sorry to disappoint but my dc don't need any more IQ points or to be healthier. They really don't. My overall journey as a parent has produced smart,healthy kids reaching their full potential. Sadly for some pro bfing posters in this country this is fairly common with families who shock horror used formula. Sadly for those where this isn't the case a few more months of breast milk have nowt to do with it.

I breastfed my first ds for 8 months (he self weaned unexpectedly). I always did it in public and used to get such positive feedback and comments such as "it's nice to see a baby not having a bottle shoved in it's mouth". And if I'm honest I felt proud of myself

Fast forward 2 years and ds2 arrived. He went into neo natal as he had breathing difficulties. I was syringe feeding colostrum and when I was allowed to hold him 30 hours later he wouldn't latch on. I tried every day for 1 month and it didn't happen. I had so many support workers visit and nobody was successful.

The guilt I felt giving him a bottle in public was ridiculous. Formula is still fortified with vitamins that the baby needs so although it's not breast milk it is still good for them.

Ds2 is 3 months old now and the happiest little boy a lot of people have ever come across. I don't let the debate bother me and I don't know why people care how others feed their baby.

To those who feel smug about breastfeeding and shame others who formula feed - I really hope that you are never faced with the decision where you choose to feed your baby formula or let the baby starve. I stayed in hospital for 6 days and expressing wasn't getting enough milk off even with the electric pump. The hospital staff took the decision from my hands to give my baby formula due to the weight he was losing. I hope that never happens to you!

It didn't demonise formula ffs. It was just showing the difference and I honestly believe if more mums knew how beneficial breast milk is they would choose that over formula.

@P3onyPenny I think maybe you've misunderstood what I was trying to say - sorry if it wasn't clear. I'll try again.

I'm not "disappointed" that your kids are happy, healthy, amazing, whatever. I'm happy for you. I was just making the general point that anecdotal evidence about individuals is irrelevant to the overall debate because affects are felt at a population level.

Let's say there was a 90% chance of getting caught in a rain shower. 100 people go outside. 10 could come on here and say "I didn't get wet it was absolutely fine"...would that mean that it hadn't rained?

Genuine question: do you think there are any benefits to bf?

*effects!!

The maj do choose breast feeding,many then stop.