To believe that formula companies have PR agents working the BF/FF threads on here?

[CocoDeMoll]

They are a multi million pound set of companies that are invested in keeping Britain’s low breastfeeding rates down and keeping their profit margins up.

Any positives about breastfeeding seem to be shot down in flames on here.

So much pro formula and anti breastfeeding rhetoric.

They can easily afford to and have the best at the jobs be it lawyers, pr teams or spin doctors on their sides and they’re not exactly renounced for their ethics are they (nestle?!?!).

Or am I just getting a bit tied up in conspiracy therorys?

It is mainly due to an increased incidence of infections due to lack of maternal antibodies that a baby with an underdeveloped immune system relies on.

Would interventions such as a complete ban on formula advertising or a huge increase in breastfeeding support (or even providing formula free on prescription where necessary) really lead to parents feeding their babies unsuitable food? I’m not sure there is any evidence to support this?

It's a bit boring hearing about 'the benefits of BF-ing' over and over again. Yes we know. However I also see babies not starving to death, or being fed by tube in hospital for the first few months of their lives a pretty huge 'benefit' of formula.

Of course all babies lives matter but pushing breastfeeding down the throats of UK mother's will do shite all to help vulnerable mother's in third world countries.

"Doubles infant mortality rate"

How many infant deaths were actually CAUSED directly by the use of formula last year then?

It is mainly due to an increased incidence of infections due to lack of maternal antibodies that a baby with an underdeveloped immune system relies on.

So feed the baby colostrum initially to counter this. It doesn’t require months of exclusive breastfeeding.

Which is awesome if you want to do it, but you’d save more babies lives by encouraging mothers to give the first breastfeed or to combination feed for a few weeks.

'People saying why do you care? How you feed your baby is your choice and all but I think that choice should be informed by health professionals and not a money making global conglomerate.'

And what am I, the mother, a ham sandwich? Don't I get a day? Or is Nestle controlling my brain

I’d love to see all formula advertising banned and products properly tested and regulated, for if it’s a necessary product there’s really no need for shiny ads spouting completely unproved claims. However the USA didn’t sign up to the WHO code on advertising and also has no paid parental leave yet they have supposedly higher b/f rates than the U.K. It would suggest it’s not just advertising undermining b/f in the U.K. We do seem to have a particular problem with it here. Strange prudish attitudes? Less family/child focus? I really don’t know why.

Less family/child focus?

This is it in my opinion. The U.K. isn’t a family friendly country.

The us is a bigger country, so would have higher bf rates than a county a fraction of its size, with more people.

No, the BF rates are referring to percentage rates... nothing to do with population.

US hospitals have qualified lactation consultants working in them - they tend to have access to BF support straight away. They also tend to stay in hospital for a couple of nights. In UK hospitals you'll be lucky if you get good advice from a midwife, who has very little time to spare even if she happens to know about breastfeeding. Then you're discharged often less than 24/48 hours later. The difference is in the UK you do continue to get support at home (in theory) whereas in the US you tend to be on your own but there you go.

@Aeroflotgirl but it’s done by percentages, so population size doesn’t matter.

That is because theUS health care is privatised so better services, than the cash strapped NHS.

@BertieBotts yes I hate to say it but I’m thinking it probably is the inadequacy of the NHS. As much as I despise the idea of privatised health care, if you can afford it in the US you probably get much better personalised postnatal care than on the nhs here.

Well this has degenerated in 24 hours, cannot believe the ignorance of the breastapo on this thread.

Formula kills babies.... IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES FFS WHERE YHEY DONT HAVE CLEAN WATER AND LIKELY THERE ARE MULTIPLE FACTORS AT PLAY - like frigging malaria for one.

Give me strength.

And as I said upthread my baby would have died without formula because in my case the cupboard was absolutely bare.

Agree with past poster that this bullying insipid attitude is what turns a lot of people off bf.

@Arewehomeyet

Come on - where is the evidence for a doubling of infant mortality in the UK attributable to formula?

Yes Grandma's, that is exactly what I was thinking. If a woman wants to stay longer in hospital to support in bf, she can. I had decided at 9:30 am, was turfed out at 10:30 am of NHS hospital and had to go it alone. The community ity bf support person had no kids and never bf, useless.

I think the almost punitive approach to regulating the sale of formula does nothing to encourage breastfeeding. It always strikes me as pretty pointed that it's not allowed to be on offer or bought with points. Can you get formula at foodbanks, does anyone know? And there was a news story recently about post natal wards in one NHS trust no longer keeping stocks of it.

As I said, I'm massively in favour of breastfeeding and one of the biggest reasons is financial - not having to pay to feed your baby (that is, if BFing is working for you and you're happy). And it really stinks that some mothers who could really use that extra money feel like BFing is not for them because it's gross or nobody else does it. But I think any change will have to come about on a societal level, within families and communities. Making formula exempt from discounts isn't going to change anything. It just pisses people off.

Buntyll is spot on. The dogmatic stance of some posters on MN on the benefits and importance of BF is off-putting and has led to posters like me wanting to present an alternative view point.

I remember one poster who seemed slavishly obsessed with the importance of other women BF while posting on other threads about her problems with her teens. It really puts infant feeding into perspective as just one of many parenting decisions and other life experiences that turn a baby into an adult.

There has been a campaign on our local radio to help foodbanks and they specifically asked for formula and nappies. Whether it is actually "allowed" I don't know but if it's not it bloody should be.

My nhs hospital stocks formula (or it did when I had ds) he was 're admitted at 19 days old and though they advised me to bring formula when I actually got there they told me to use their ready made bottles because it was easier than taking poorly baby ds to the kitchen every time and waiting 40 mins for it to cool down. Lovely staff on that ward they were.

The us is a bigger country, so would have higher bf rates than a county a fraction of its size, with more people

They were talking about percentages here. The US has increased their BF rates, despite having no mandatory maternity leave. I believe this is due to a pumping culture (pumps free to all new mums) and efforts being made to include working class women in these efforts to increase EBF.

What I hate most in these debates is that feelings win over fact, which I hate.

Your feelings do not override the fact that BM is better and there is good epidemiological reasons to promote EBF among infants even in developed countries.

If “mom guilt” really affects you that much, you need to get over that shit pronto—statistically, it doesn’t really matter if you BF as the benefits are spread over a population, which is why you get stupid comments like my cousin’s SIL BF and her kids are allergic to everything blah blah blah

That is because theUS health care is privatised so better services, than the cash strapped NHS.

I don’t think think you know much about US healthcare if you think their privatised healthcare in the US has better outcomes than the NHS. The US has horrendous health inequalities and I certainly wouldn’t swap the quality of the NHS for US quality care.

For example -

In babies born at normal weights infant mortality is 2.3 per 1000 in the US and 1.6 per 1000 in the UK. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856058/#!po=8.97436

pineapple I have no "mom guilt" I just think it's fine to formula feed.

Who is honestly, going to choose their feeding method based on an advert?

I once heard someone say that she chose Aptamil because the bear on the packaging looked sleepy, so she thought it would make her baby sleep for longer

Parents don’t really have anything to go on when choosing a formula, so I wouldn’t expect particularly rational choices, more arbitrary ones. A sleepy looking bear isn’t a great reason to pick a formula, but I wonder if many parents have a better one.

I wasn’t there when DH went out for emergency formula. Apparently the pharmacy assistant said they sold most Aptamil, so that’s what we fed both our babies with, each for a year. He had to make a hurried decision and then it seemed to work for us, so we didn’t try to change it. I don’t think that’s any better than the sleepy bear.

I have no "mom guilt" I just think it's fine to formula feed.

I’m very happy for you. Really. The less people feel guilty about these things, the better.