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

We were encouraged to donate milk to the NICU - the only possible problem mentioned at the BFing antenatal class was too much milk, and the solution offered was to donate it! They were very proud they'd never had to buy any in.

Agree with you riding as my milk also took ages to come in.

riding but not having milk until day 5 is common, especially for first time mums. You will be under the care of the community midwives or still in hospital so your baby's wellbeing will be monitored. I think the recommendation is to "reevaluate bf" if no milk at Day 4. If the baby is ok then that is not a reason to give up bf. My milk didn't come in until day 5. I had a 4kg baby who only lost 4% of his body weight so it really depends.

@harrietm87 no it isn't a reason to give up BFing but the midwives have been trained that no supplementation is necessary and ignored all the warning signs with my baby - dry mouth, no wet nappies. Both the midwives and the parents had been very very poorly prepared.

Instead of telling us all that even one bottle would destroy bf they should have been teaching us how to supplement safely if we needed to.

I was discharged from hospital on day 3 (no milk) and saw community Midwife on day 4 (no milk). Rang Midwife line twice in despair at the non-stop cluster feeding on days 4 and 5. Still no milk. Never told to supplement. I drop baby after no sleep for three days.

Day 5 more experienced Midwife who was horrified by what we told her, weighed DD, realised we were in serious trouble and sent us into SCBU for tube feeding formula.

But Riding, it is common for milk not to come in until then and common for babies to lose a chunky %of birth weight in the first week (a lot of this is fluid retention that is lost). What happened to your baby is not normal and not ok and you did the correct thing to supplement. You seem angry/ to be looking for an argument here?

Sorry Riding, just seen your more recent posts. You were very badly let down by your HCPs. How awful for you.

That's why I'm angry @CardinalCat - I've seen on BFing forums that babies have lost 10%+ percentage of weight and people are still insisting on EBF and getting angry at having formula suggested. I hadn't realised before it happened to us how dangerous it can be. I just thought they'd lose lots of weight, then put it on again. Not that it could endanger life or cause brain damage.

Failure to advise you re wet nappies was extremely negligent.

Yes riding it sounds like you were really unlucky with the treatment you received. It's all part of the general lack of knowledge and training in this area. I had the opposite- really bad nipple pain and the community midwives just kept telling me to give him formula.

From some of the posts above it seems women aren't getting the support they need even in areas with supposedly good support. In my area supposedly the MWs and HVs were trained to support BFing. Except they weren't, they'd been trained to tell people off for using formula and to push BFing, ignoring problems.

The BFing support groups weren't available at certain times of year (and weren't in convenient locations).

What many women seem to need is someone to actually come to their house, who knows what they're talking about, and who can offer them support in the early days.

Is it feasible for the NHS to provide that? Would the cost of that outweigh the reduced costs associated with the benefits of BFing?

Would the cost of that support outweigh the cost of dealing with the babies ending up in SCBU because of feeding problems? Our 4 day stay must have cost a fortune and would have been totally unnecessary if we'd been offered maybe even two bottles of formula.

Riding That is so useless of the CM not to pay attention to dehydration symptoms one of many things not taught to me by NCT or NHS, but which I learned from evidence-based breastfeeding support, is that weight is less important than nappy output and affect of baby. Weight can come off very slowly or very rapidly depending on a lot of factors, but if a baby is alert when awake and peeing and pooing normally (at least 6 wet nappies and poop at least the size of two pound coins daily of the expected colour range), colostrum/milk is passing through and all is going as it should (usually). So shocked anyone would be so badly trained as to ignore obvious signs of dehydration, makes me actually livid. I hope you made a complaint against the community midwife team, although I get that at such difficult times complaints are the last thing on one's mind, and once it's all blown over the impetus kind of goes...

I was only told to supplement two weeks after ds was born. He dropped under five pounds in the end and ended up in hospital all because the HV didn’t tell me it was an option. For us it would have saved additional harm.

My baby for example was a hefty 9lb 2 when born, and lost almost 5% of weight in the first couple of days which worried the CMs a bit - but she was feeding lustily, pooping and peeing like a champ and was alert /and usually vexed!) when she was awake, so apart from my poor shredded boobs being in agony she was going great guns. The reason she dropped so much weight was probably because I had had tons of IV fluids over my crappity 5 day induction/failed labour as kpet spewing everywhere - poor little baby came out all puffy like the Michelin man, so I think she was just shedding all of that. The centile thing was a bit of a red herring on account of the same thing, as she started out on the 98th at birth(!) and as she started levelling out (she's actually got a very slim build, like her dad) I got anxious as she 'crossed two lines' the big no-no, but she was strong, vigorous and hitting her milestones well ahead so eventually I calmed down. Pretty much after I stopped going to HV clinics, listening to their ill informed bollocks, and just started doing my own research for current evidence and guidance (of which there is shedloads so there's no excused for HCPs to be so ill-informed) and looking at my baby.

I’m sure I remember a study being done that said that women who wanted to breastfeed but couldn’t were the most likely to get PND.
Ie. Women who planned to formula feed/breast feed, and then did, had rates significantly lower.
It’s all over this thread, the guilt people feel, that it’s their ‘biggest regret’ etc. It’s so unnecessary for women’s mental health to be affected on this way, especially when their children are getting on lovely.
It really shouldn’t be a cause of depression that your baby was fed and not starved!
It’s not fair on women

There was an interesting stand at this year's Royal Society of Science Summer Exhibition about the research being done into the importance of the bacteria that live in our gut and the role they play in providing a strong immune system. An important aspect of the exhibition illustrated how many of these healthy bacteria come from breast milk. They can't be replicated in formula or in later life through e.g. eating healthily etc and their absence may be linked to e.g. adult IBS.

The message of the researchers wasn't to criticise women who use formula milk but there is good evidence that at least some breast feeding is better, and that women should be supported to achieve this.
royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2018/summer-science-exhibition/exhibits/guardians-of-gut/

@Ennirem yes I did complain about the community Midwife team and also the hospital staff (despite having to give formula in SCBU they refused to provide advice about sterilising bottles so I ended up doing it incorrectly at first as had never thought I'd be using bottles).

Complaint was initially ignored until I wrote to the Chief Exec. I ended up meeting with the senior Midwife. The community midwives denied they'd done anything wrong (and had lied in their notes - we checked the notes as soon as they left the house and I now wish we'd questioned them about it whilst they were still there but it is so hard to stand up to them when you're overwhelmed as a new mum and they're meant to be the experts). So the community midwives pretty much got away with it. It has made me extremely distrustful of midwives and HVs though as they seemed more intent on covering their backs than supporting parents

RidingMyBike it's ok for bf babies to loose up to 11% of body weight, but not more. But wet nappies and other signs are equally important and it appears that you had whole host of shit midwives. Most babies are ok on colostrum only for 5 days, but obviously some aren't. I think it's a real indictor of how much knowledge we have lost on breastfeeding that even trained professionals can't see the difference between ok and not ok and are only following the 'book'. One (or more) bottles of formula would not have harmed your ability to breastfeed and would likely have prevented a hospital admission, but you were given incorrect advice. Totally unacceptable.

The whole "all or nothing" approach really boils my piss!

@Ennirem

I am a HCP, I wrote a dissertation focusing on attitudes towards evidence based practice 17 years ago, it wasn't good then... "we do x because that's what Dr Y has always done (and will do until they retire!!!)", "I believe c works because it has worked for my (small cohort of non randomised)patients" rather than believing large scale randomised trials and Cochrane reviews!! Unfortunately nearly 2 decades on things are slow to change. HCPs are often lazy and will not have bothered to learn what is current best practice and think it is acceptable to follow what was considered best practice when they trained, which often (if long enough ago) had a limited evidence base in the first place (many people in the NHS are surprisingly resistant to change).

I get VERY frustrated.

I think a lot of the problems with breastfeeding support centres around this total disregard for learning, understanding and applying best practice. This is why it is so hit and miss, from one area to another, and one midwife/HV to another. Also, personal experiences and opinions of HCP seem to come in to play far to often. Consistency in advice and support is needed. It seems from reading this thread that people are failed by omission of information as much as incorrect information.

@Sandstormbrewing and this was in a hospital accredited to level 3 of the baby Friendly Initiative and meant to be really supportive of BFing. Supposedly all the staff were trained to support it.

Riding gives you every confidence in our health care system doesn't it!

Riding how shitty. People like that shouldn't be providing healthcare.

CYW2018 I feel you, I'm a medical librarian and I had far too many researchers come to me at the end of their projects asking me how to conduct a literature search for papers which showed that x treatment was better than y treatment 'for the literature review bit'

It's not all just laziness or hideboundedness of course, people are busy as fuck and get given no time to learn - but in the case of bf, I think any conscientious HCP who knows full well they haven't had a chance to update their bf training for too long should just be upfront, and say, as we librarians are often wont to do, "I don't know the answer to your question but I know someone who does", and point people in the direction of La Lech League of the BFN who have REAMS of up to date, evidence based guidance. But for the sake of pride, they'll just run off any half-arsed nonsense they half remember from a half day ocurse ten years ago .

@Ennirem waves to fellow librarian