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

La Leche, not La Lech League - sounds like a convocation of pervy old men!

waves back have some essential working equipment:

LOL not at work today, that equipment is even more essential for toddler wrangling!

This is for later on:

Hmm. I'm a bit worried about these statements:

"it's ok for bf babies to loose up to 11% of body weight.."

"Most babies are ok on colostrum only for 5 days"

Any references for these?

AFAIK the evidence on this is pretty messy and I'm not sure it allows for any such clear-cut statements to be made. I think if you look at the literature around weight loss you can see that there is an increase in risk of complications with weight loss even if it's below 11% and it's very hard to define a priori what level of weight loss cutoff is OK. I think some evidence points to increased risk of severe problems even after just 7% weight loss. You need to bear in mind that babies vary and late-term babies eg from 37 weeks, are likely to be more at risk of problems at a given degree of weight loss but they are going to be classified as term. And babies will vary in what reserve they have got.

Generally delayed onset of lactation is taken in the literature as >72hours postpartum and this is associated with increased risk of complications/problems due to underfeeding. I am not sure you can say something categorical like 5 days until the milk is in, is "generally fine".

I am not sure you can make clear cut statements like this - particularly when the consequences of underfeeding are so severe, potentially.

My suspicion would be that it is widespread belief in those assumptions which may potentially drive the care by healthcare professionals such as what @RidingMyBike described. ie, reluctance to supplement based on the belief that babies can generally manage "fine" with colostrum alone for days, and can manage that substantial degree of weight loss; combined with scaremongering around formula ("nipple confusion"; "just one bottle will harm the gut"). etc.

@Figmentofmyimagination thanks for posting that link that's very interesting.

Obviously scientists don't need to pander to formula feeding parents though

bigmamapeach I'll try and find links later but I did extensive research before DS to ensure I was equipped as possible to breastfeed. And as I said up to 11% as long as and stated other things that need to be looked at. And most babies are ok for 5 days. Most babies are born full term and with sufficiently reserves. I'd expect breastfeeding trained professionals to be able to understand and apply the nuances of the research and advice and not blindly follow crib sheets.

With regards to weight loss, in the 80s percentile charts and weightless guidance was changed to account for the enormous shift from breastfed to formula fed babies. Formula fed babies lose less weight and gain more rapidly (on the whole, obviously there are some who don't & some bf babies who buck the trend). So most of the guidance is now related to formula fed babies, as that's the norm.

Bigmamapeach sorry but no. No amount of confusion about is many days before the milk comes in is concerning, or how much weight loss is concerning, can explain or justify health professionals not acknowledging the clear signs of dehydration Bike describes. Her baby wasn't weeing, wasn't alert and had a dry mouth. In any patient, never mind a newborn, this would indicate that they were not getting adequate fluids (colostrum is usually all a baby needs until the milk comes in and healthy newborns do not exhibit dehydration).

TBH though it could be a simple tick box assessment done on day 3, 4 and 5 by a not particularly trained member of staff.

Has milk come in?
Is baby producing wet/dirty nappies?
Is baby alert?
Does baby have dry mouth?

Ticks on more than one of those and should be seen straight away by someone who knows what they're doing?

This is just it! Even if your milk was flooding the floor and baby was tracking their centile like a champ, for them not to have been concerned by no wet nappies they would have to be disregarding theirmost basic training in human biology. I can't believe that could be attributed to any "confusion" on their part, they were just negligent fuckers.

Lots of interesting experience on here - I have RTFT and wanted to share my experience too.

I BFed DS until he was 9 months old - not exclusively, I pumped and my DH gave a dream feed with expressed milk every night (I pumped every night for up to an hour to make up one bottle and hated it) plus the occasional bottle of formula if we were out and about towards the end.

I hated every single second of breastfeeding. I never had a pain free feed in that entire time, the best I got to was "uncomfortable". DS was 9lbs 10ozs at birth and didn't lose any weight at all at the beginning so he was clearly feeding well. He was thriving. I wasn't. DS had a tongue tie that was diagnosed in week 1 and we got snipped privately after another few weeks but it didn't help much on pain front.

I went to a breastfeeding support group. I had 2 visits from a private lactation consultant. Everyone agreed that our latch was fine and I shouldn't still be in pain. I was.

I went to a cranial osteopath and DS had a course of treatment. Again, it made no real difference.

My HV was convinced that I had thrush. GP said (twice) that I didn't and they couldn't find anything physically wrong with me.

At this point I gave up asking for help and just got on with it. I dreaded each feed as I knew it would hurt. I resented DS. Feeds took up to an hour through the whole 9 months, they never really got any quicker. I avoided bfing out not because I had any negative comments but because I ended up stuck in one place for such a long time.

DS has just turned 2. It's only recently that I begin to feel properly bonded with him, squarely because of my Bfing experience.

Because DS was growing well (at 97%+ percentile), none of the HCPs I came across was that concerned about the situation or my well being. The fact that I was unhappy didnt seem to be a consideration. I wish someone had sat me down and said "you don't need to do this". Because BFing was taking up all my emotional and physical energy I couldn't think past it to what the other options might be.

It's very unlikely now we will have another DC. One of the main reasons is the horrible experience I had when DS was small - predominant driven by BFing - and the strain it put on my relationship with DH.

Sorry - this is so long but I felt like I needed to get it off my chest. I'm a strong advocate of BFing but I feel like there is a problem of balance. Successful BFing benefits the baby (I believe) and the mother. But unsuccessful breastfeeding benefits nobody. There needs to be more support both to improve the success rate and to act as a safety net if it doesn't work well.

@bigmamapeach the point is though that you aren't going it alone in the early days - you should be being treated by hcps who will give you and baby individualised care. The main point (and the reason this came up on the thread) is that many women in my experience expect to be dripping with milk from the second they give birth, and think they don't have a good supply when they don't. The message that milk doesn't come in for some days after birth is one that doesn't seem to have got through. Obviously the mother and baby should be checked to confirm that milk has in fact come in in time for the baby.

@Ennirem the midwives we encountered were almost all
very young and presumably not very experienced as they can't have been qualified that long. They'd been trained that formula was to be avoided and that having insufficient milk was very rare - and they clearly believed this, even though what was happening before their eyes was the opposite.

They were extremely patronising when I told them I was worried about the lack of wet nappies. They told me that new mothers often couldn't tell when a nappy was wet (completely ignoring me when I pointed out I'd been looking after a friend's baby twins so wasn't completely inexperienced) and put the non-stop feeding/screaming if removed from the boob down to cluster feeding.

They were very much 'Midwife' knows best whereas the older more experienced ones I encountered later on were a lot more compassionate and realistic.

@newroundhere
So sorry to read about your experience - it does sound very similar to mine, carrying on BFing despite not liking it and it really affecting bonding with the baby.

newroundhere that sounds awful and very much like you have untreated thrush. I know that pain and too had a dismissive GP who poo-poo-ed the idea. It was only when I saw a different doctor about another issue and i mentioned my excruciating nipple and breast pain, that i got treatment. And not a wishywashy ointment,which some women are fobbed off with. I took high dose oral fluconazole for a week, as per The Breastfeeding Network's protocol. The second GP (a woman in her 30s who had bf her children) believed me and was willing to listen and to prescribe, despite the protocol being technically out of the prescribing guidelines for this particular medicine at the time. I was feeding painfree after a few days, so the treatment confirmed the diagnosis. What a treatment lottery. My original GP let me down so badly, as did yours newroundhere. You are an absolute hero for continuing like you did (i wouldn't have managed it) and I'm so sorry that the experience has caused you such heartache It shouldn't be like this. Sadly our patriarchal society does not care about women's pain.

@Newroundhere I am so sad to read your story - I wish I could send you a hug of some sorts! It is so common and so WRONG that often women's experiences of pain are dismissed. It makes me so mad, especially as you say it affected your relationship with DS & DP. Have you thought about talking it through with someone? That weight, pain and resentment you mentioned is a lot to just hold onto - appreciate its not right for everyone.

Big hugs. xxxxx

I watched it as I'm determined to breastfeed new baby having failed with first baby and not even tried with second. It left me feeling somewhat guilty for not trying harder with my first two and was a complete demonisation of formula. Some mother's have no choice for Whatever reason. I feel they should have also included the message of fed is best.
I understand why they focussed on breastfeeding with how people sometimes act seeing a breast feeding mum but there was no need to slag off formula the way they did.

But this fed is best saying is absolutely ridiculous!

If you don't feed your baby you are committing child abuse and your baby will die- it makes no fucking sense.

I am sorry about people's experience with breastfeeding, but I do think that some of this is self made. If breastfeeding becomes too difficult then a sensible woman needs to be able to say enough is enough and go with formula. Guilt is our own emotion, which needs to be managed by the individual themselves, granted midwives and HVs are not always much help- but we need to try and manage our own emotions. I realise it can be a vulnerable time for women, I do!

I do not think the programme in any way was passing on the message that you must carry on b feeding regardless, but it is an issue in the UK (very low rates) and so trying to raise the issue (given the health benefits) should not be met with such disdain.

After all, formula is a multi million pound business, let us not kid ourselves here!

Saying breast milk is better than formula milk is not the same as saying breastfeeding mothers are better than formula feeding ones. Fed is best is surely the same as saying milk is better than no milk. Which it is.

If breastfeeding becomes too difficult then a sensible woman needs to be able to say enough is enough and go with formula. Guilt is our own emotion, which needs to be managed by the individual themselves, granted midwives and HVs are not always much help- but we need to try and manage our own emotions. I realise it can be a vulnerable time for women, I do!

Of course women should try and manage their own emotions and guilt is pointless but it isn't always that simple is it? If it was then there would not be the high levels of people with depression/ anxiety that there are. The post partum period is one where women are higher risk for mental health problems than usual.

The post partum period is one where women are higher risk for mental health problems than usual.

Which is why I said I realise it is a vulnerable time, but PND is not caused by a twenty five min programme on breastfeeding, is it?!

There are lots of links between breastfeeding and PND is the point that I am making and that it isn't just about 'controlling your emotions'. You can say the same about any message about breastfeeding/ posters/ stuff written on mumsnet that some people might find upsetting.

It's a really weird thing because in one way mothers have the positive benefits told to them constantly/ may feel it's a key part of early motherhood and pretty useless if it goes wrong. But when it does they then just have to get over it, control their emotions and not be bothered. Other stuff in life (y'know splitting up with a pointless boyfriend/ being made redundant etc) gets lots of sympathy and people are allowed to be upset about.

There are links, but this is a cultural/support thing- it is not directly linked to breastfeeding.

In countries where there are high rates of breastfeeding and possibly a lot of pressure to breastfeed there aren't high rates of post natal depression. In fact, breastfeeding can reduce post natal depression.

It is estimated that around 1-2% of women are physiologically unable to breastfeed, so this would not really affect a high percentage of women.

With regards to the actual op- the demonisation of formula, the actual problem in the UK is probably the opposite- the amount of advertising in the 60s which encouraged formula use.

I've not read all 948 messages in this thread, just the first 120 or so. I've also not seen the programme, but I understand that to some extent it was about the lack of resources put in to breastfeeding support.

My experience was that I had issues bf both ds1 and ds2, including significant weight loss and hospital treatment for them both. DS1 was mostly formula fed from 1 week old with a tiny bit of expressed milk. I learned later that not being able to express enough milk didn't mean I couldn't have ever had enough to feed him. Because after some initial struggles and mixed feeding, I returned to bf ds2 from 5.5 weeks to 3. Solids when he was 6 months, a couple of bottles of formula from childminders when I went back to work at 9.5 months, ordinary cows' milk from 12 months.

I spent so much of ds1's baby days feeling terrible and crying everywhere. I had some idea where to find support for feeding ds2 and fought for it, but I'm still grateful that I had met the NHS breastfeeding counsellor who works with health visitors when I had ds1, because she was able to come out to see ds2 and me with the health visitor and reassure her ds2 was growing slowly but surely and that he was healthy.

Because part of the problem is that once baby's feeding doesn't go well, you find yourself in a system where many health professionals themselves don't have sufficient training in this area. Paediatricians see really ill babies - we needed help but she told me she wanted to see ds2 put on about twice typical weight gain through any feeding method per day. Health visitors fall back on advice.

The manufacturers of formula milk and baby foods invest heavily in offering "free training" and therefore shaping the thinking of midwives, health visitors etc, and then there's those Bounty bags.

I also found useful advice and backup on feeding from mn and other online sources, eg more realistic info on ideal weight gain and weaning.

My babies and I spent a lot of time in hospital at great costs to the NHS, and I do think that money could have been invested on better bf support at less expense.

In fact, breastfeeding can reduce post natal depression
Well quite, that's the point isn't it?

It is estimated that around 1-2% of women are physiologically unable to breastfeed, so this would not really affect a high percentage of women.
It would affect 1-2% as you say - so if 800,000 babies are born per year then 2% would equate to 15K+ women per year that this affects (taking into account multiple births). It's hardly rare is it? And that's every year. It's why loads and loads of women on mumsnet have had this exact experience.

If failure to breastfeed puts mums at higher risk of PND then perhaps that's why some don't want to risk trying.