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

I had to top up with formula. Ds6 was failure to thrive and I don’t feel guilty as it was that or he get very sick.
It didn’t help that I got judgement from health visitors at both ends as some believed I should just switch to formula and some that I should stop the formula.
One I never returned to as I ended up having a row with her over my using the top ups.... silly moo, I’ll sick it’s the hospital advice ty very much.

If bfing is so crucial to the nation's health they'd plough the millions that is needed into the support that is needed.

No they wouldn’t. Because it’s a women’s heath issue, and babies have no voice to complain. As the woman in the doc said ‘they’re not very good at holding placards’.

Tbh a lot of the dispatches programmes are bollards anyhow.

"We can only go by our own experience....." you say, P3ony.

Happily, we don't.

Happily, we can look at research and assess across many thousands and millions of experiences and outcomes.

The research should inform governments, NGOs, HCPs, health and social services and all other relevant bodies to enable them to remove barriers to breastfeeding which allow mothers, as individuals, to make a genuine choice to breastfeed or not. We know most want to breastfeed. So the barriers may be things like lack of informed support to deal with problems, lack of acceptance when BF away from home, poor medical advice.....all those sorts of things which are tackled by strategic and policy change.

Btw, the link between infant feeding an intelligence has not been debunked at all. Much of the research is of poor quality and suffers, inevitably, from poor definitions of breastfed which allow short periods of BF or periods of any BF to stand for breastfeeding, or from inevitable difficulties of lack of controlling variables. Not to mention the problems of measuring intelligence.

Yet given what we know about the constituents of breastmilk and neurological development, it would be astonishing if normal term breastfeeding had no effect on the development of the brain, even if its hard to translate that into showing better cognitive performance. It's worth remembering that no research has ever suggested that formula would be better for neuro development than breastmilk.

‘I honestly believe if more mums knew how beneficial breast milk is they would choose that over formula.’

It isn’t always a choice though is it?

Yep I do think there benefits to bfing. Not enough for me to worry about or to continue past 6 weeks. Certainly not enough to warrant the angst shown by some.

Your anicdote is flawed.90% of children don't get obese due to ffing and 90% of babies certainly don't end up in hospital. I expect you knew that though.

@thereareflowersinmygarden I'm glad that it did help with your mental health and I know it does help some women.

But I found the pressure to bf to help with my PND really difficult to deal with. I'd been given the excruciatingly awful Womanly art of breastfeeding as a present when I was pregnant. When I was diagnosed with PND I looked it up in there to see what the advice was - to go to bed with my baby, feeding as much as possible. I'm afraid that advice made me feel suicidal. I didn't want to spend days in bed all on my own with the baby whilst DH was at work.

Instead I threw the book across the room in tears, stuck her in the sling, put a bottle in the changing bag and went to a local toddler group where I cried on some lovely older women who'd experienced the same thing and they made me tea.

I'd never have known that if I hadn't experienced it. I don't think endorphins came anywhere near my BFing experience as I never liked even the sensation of doing it.

P3onyPenny

I think the problem is that nobody really knows yet exactly how BF babies will go on to differ, since there is such a prevalence of ff since the middle of the last century.

One thing that is being explored is the relationship between breastmilk and the microbiome- scientists are forming the view in recent years that the health of the gut biome is responsible for far more than had ever been imagined. It is this element of 'nutritional content' that formula cannot yet replicate (even with the assiduous use of pre and pro biotics), and which really sets bm aside. I suspect the impact will not be known in our lifetime.

Anyway, back to the actual OP. I cannot believe how many people have not actually watched the programme but have just dived straight in with their tuppence-worth nonetheless. I am sure that formula is demonised by certain uber-militant factions of the BFing lobby, but that was NOT what this programme was about at ALL! FWIW I didn't massively warm to the protagonist, but the only 'demonisation' that I could see going on was the entirely correct calling out of the fiction that is 'follow on' milk- a product which is devoid of any use whatsoever and is purely produced soley because the advertising rules do not apply to it, and so it gives Nestle etc a platform upon which to advertise their brand.

It is a choice. Granted, it depends on the support you have to continue it.

It isn’t always a choice though is it?

No it isn't Starmix, and if it isn't it isn't. But does that mean we shouldwithold evidence from those mothers who do have a choice to make?

I haven’t read all of this thread as I’m sure the majority of comments are similar and the same old comments thrown around MN.

Why can there never be a positive programme/article on breastfeeding without those who formula feed taking offence/getting angry. It isn’t about you choosing to formula feed!!!
It’s about encouraging women to BF and putting across the positives in a factual way. Not once did I hear them slate FF or come across offensive towards those who choose too.

It took me three months to get into the hang of breastfeeding and it was difficult!!! I chose to do this because BM is nutritionally best and because of the health benefits to me and my baby. I have experienced GPs trying to push formula, even a consultant gastroent asking what milk I use without even considering I might be breastfeeding.

I have never once seen anyone FF being looked at funnily, being judged or questioned in the last 6 months. It is seen as the norm so I don’t know why all this defensiveness needs to happen?

If you choose to BF or FF that is your choice, people aren’t against you. But please if something positive comes out to try and help women, like me, who want to BF don’t try and quash it. Feed your babies and be happy for each other!!

(By baby has had formula since being 6 months and I am not against it FYI just fed up of shit threads like this!)

@P3onyPenny oh for goodness sake...I'm slightly losing patience now. It wasn't an anecdote - it was an illustrative example. The numbers were meaningless.

Do you get what I was trying to explain? That just because one person isn't affected by something doesn't mean that no one will be? And so to talk about one person in this context is meaningless?

So re intelligence with that in mind we should pay credence to said weak research and worry ourselves into bfing regardless?Seriously if it was anything else you'd be laughed at. So there are been no subsequent studies debunking previous research into IQ and bfing?

I think if everyone stopped pandering to the "how dare you judge me for formula" crap then we might get somewhere. You're not allowed to state simple facts like "breastmilk is best for babies" because you get this shit about demonising formula.
This is one of the big problems with promoting BF, we have to pretend formula is just the same and just as good as to not upset people. But it isn't and we should be saying so.

CardinalCat the microbiome stuff is really fascinating. I hope the door is unlocked in our lifetime! The problem with adding probiotics to formula is that in order for them to work the powder can’t be heated, and as we all know formula can never remain sterile so I don’t see how they would ever even come close to replicating breastmilk in that way. As it stands EFSA say there is no benefit to adding probiotics to formula yet they do put them into the specialised ones.

No the numbers aren't meaningless they created a pretty bleak picture( on purpose I suspect). You also forgot to mention that many of that 90% would be wearing rain coats or using umbrellas so wouldn't get wet at all. In the same way a few months of breast feeding works,other outside factors have a huge impact in preparing anybody against risk.

I watched the dispatches show and agree that formula companies were demonised. They were attacked for making follow on milks so they could advertise their products and had all the health benefits listed on the products made out to be false. I also felt that it further reinforced the scaremongering that people would be verbally attacked in the street for bf. The responses given by the people interviewed appeared to be more in line with responding to a question such as "why do you think others may have an issue with bf in public?" rather than asking for their own actual opinions on bf in public - lots of the comments started with "it might be because..." or similar. When bf DS1 I never experienced any negativity about bf in public.

As someone who tried to bf DS1 for 3.5mths, whilst his weight gain (or lack of) caused more and more concern for HV, GP, dietician and paediatrician, I can only wish I'd had support earlier to tell me to switch to ff! I saw lactation consultants, midwives, the list goes on. I had more support than I could have ever wanted to carry on bf, but for some unknown reason my DS1 still struggled with weight gain (falling further and further from the bottom centile on growth charts). We eventually resorted to formula top ups and DS1 self-weaned off the breast and onto the bottle. He's now 14mths old and between the 75th and 91st centile on weight and is now the biggest (height and weight) out of his NCT group.

Formula has its own health benefits - you don't have to give added vitamins to your baby from 6mths old if using formula, whereas you do if bf. Heck, formula even means your baby thrives when it struggled on bf only. What bigger health benefit could you want than that?!?!

I felt so guilty at not being able to keep bf my DS1, and look back at his early baby photos and cry when I realise how thin he was (at the time I'd convinced myself I just made tiny babies). I also regret spending the first 4 days of his life in hospital, constantly crying whilst struggling to feed him, whilst other mums had their babies and went home.

I'm currently 38wks pregnant with DS2, and have made the decision to ff from the start as I want to enjoy my time with DS2 from the beginning. The show the other day added to the already enormous amount of guilt I feel about this decision.

The show the other day added to the already enormous amount of guilt I feel about this decision

I'm sorry but if you feel enormous guilt about your decision, the rational answer is that the issue lies in your decision, not in the facts given in a programme. If you actually believed that formula was the best choice for you, you would not feel such guilt. I'm sorry for you that you do feel it, but that's not anyone elses fault.

‘I'm currently 38wks pregnant with DS2, and have made the decision to ff from the start as I want to enjoy my time with DS2 from the beginning. The show the other day added to the already enormous amount of guilt I feel about this decision.’

Well done Gizzy, happy Mum equals happy baby. I’m congratulations on your pregnancy.

And*

They were attacked for making follow on milks so they could advertise their products and had all the health benefits listed on the products made out to be false.

Do you think that was an unfair characterisation of the reasons behind follow on milks, and if so why?

Did you disagree with the evidence provided on the veracity of the health claims for formula, and if so why?

It isn't 'demonising' if it's true...

I get your point @Ifeelshit and it's good to hear that expressing is included in the statistics if this is the case.

I personally don't refer to myself as breastfeeding, and nor do the other mums I know in real life who also exclusively express. We feel that we don't fit in with either labels to be honest- bottle feeding implies formula but breastfeeding implies it's from the breast. Health professionals encouraged me to see it as still breastfeeding in the early days but then my MiL actively observes that I don't breastfeed and takes the piss out me pumping every time we see her... it's a whole other hidden world, expressing! I just wish programmes like this dispatches one would draw more attention to it as it's never really talked about as an option. None of the classes I went to pre-birth mentioned expressing and I didn't even know that breast pumps existed until our neighbour leant me one.

Yes breastfeeding is hard of course and I mixed fed.
But the research demonstrates breastfeeding is better at a population level.
That isn’t demonising formula.
It is just factual and not much you can do about it.
You can be annoyed by this fact and but it doesn’t change the fact.

I'm currently 38wks pregnant with DS2, and have made the decision to ff from the start as I want to enjoy my time with DS2 from the beginning.

That is fine! Don't feel guilty! It is great that you have made a choice that will be best for you and your baby in the round. People who don't want to bf shouldn't be pressured to. And by making that decision, and owning it, rather than trying when you aren't keen, you are keeping clear blue water between 'chose not to' and 'couldn't', which is really important for those mums who do want to breastfeed and encounter problems initially. So thank you!

It's definitely not a choice for all @ohdeardeardear (assuming you're talking about breastfeeding?) As mentioned, I was desperate to breastfeed and always intended to but it turned out we were physically unable to. I know of plenty of other mums in real life who definitely don't feel that they made a choice in how they've ended up feeding their child.