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?

Btw, I agree with that the vast majority of women can breastfeed. But I think people say they couldn't, not because they really believe it/have been tricked but because they think people are judging them. They just don't want too. If people ask me I'm happy to tell them - I just didn't want too.

People have always fed babies alternatives to breastmilk. Or had wet nurses. Before infant formula was developed there were lots of types of milk marketed for babies, or people used cows milk with various things added to it. The point is that there was a period of time where a majority of people were convinced that the newly developed infant formulas were better (cleaner, more scientific) than breastfeeding. And as a result our cultural knowledge/experience of breastfeeding was largely lost.

Consider then, why did people use alternatives back then? When the alternative was dangerous or involved a women slave in the case of a wet nurse. Before formula companies existed, before any companies existed?

There have always been people who couldn't or didn't want to breastfeed, and used alternatives. Shrills on Mn have nothing to do with it.

Because they had to, or they wanted to, and they didn't have the understanding of infant nutrition that we do now. Infant mortality was much higher and people wouldn't have made the connection between nutrition and mortality rates.

Wet nurses weren't slaves, they were paid servants.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that (unethical) formula companies wouldn't be tempted to try shills on a website with a large user base of their target market. This is not the same as saying that all posters who comment about how awful breastfeeding is etc are shills!

Yes I'm sure the wet nurses back then were all very well paid and treated wonderfully

Anyway let's get back to OPs question. I think that posts about formula on Mn aren't shrills, though of course it's possible some could be.

(I think wet nurses were probably treated just as all other hired staff of a similar type were during whichever period of history they were in. I don't think I said they were well pod and treated wonderfully, I think I said that they weren't treated like slaves.)

It's even possible that pro bf posts are shrills for clothing companies (also known to be extremely unethical) that sell nursing bras and tops, breast pump manufacturers, lactation consultants, and the makers of breast pads, breast milk bags, bf support pillows and lansinoh.

Yes that is a possibility. I would imagine the temptation to use shills on social media is very high. Look at all the bloggers who get paid to mention stuff without being clear they're being paid to do so.

This forum is a little unusual in that it encourages name changing, whereas most don't. That means you don't necessarily expect to see the same names posting and new names may or may not be new users.

That's good for anonymity, but I suppose it leaves it a bit more open to this type of thing.

I agree with you, OP.
I also agree that any poster who mentions the positive aspects of breastfeeding is shot down and told by numerous others there’s no point as formula is just as good, they are making formula feeders feel bad or being judgy. This happens on every thread I have read here on the subject. Many people don’t want to know if you enjoy breastfeeding and find it easy. (Yes, easy - which it generally is for most people once established. As well convenient.)
Commercial formula has only been in widespread use for a relatively short time and there is a lot about breastfeeding/breast milk we don’t yet understand. It’s true that breast milk alternatives have been around a long time but their use was comparatively rare and made in order to save lives, not as a widespread feeding choice. We still don’t really know what the long term effects of commercial formula feeding are at a population level. But we do know that breastfeeding is the optimum infant nutrition. That fact is very unpopular on here.

The problem, OP, is that there is literally no way to convince you.

For me, I believed all the hype. I read up on all the breastfeeding stuff, I did classes before birth, I had a lactation consultant on call. I had nowhere near enough supply to nourish my baby. I just didn't. No matter what I tried, what advice I followed, what I did or didn't do. I was devastated. And while my real life lactation consultant was actually non-judgemental and helpful, every where I turned online made me feel like an utter failure. The constant advice to breastfeed more and more and more simply didn't work as my baby absolutely wouldn't latch or relatch once he sensed that there was no milk there. Following the breastfeeding advice online - which insisted on sitting under the baby feeding (or attempting to feed) endlessly for hours did nothing to enhance my supply and landed me in hospital, as close to death as I have ever been in my entire life. Nobody warned me of the hugely elevated risk of blood clots in the weeks after birth. Pulmonary embolism is still one of the leading causes of maternal death in the UK and I put myself at risk of that because of breastfeeding. So every time I see a post on here, cheerleading for a 'baby moon' and telling a post-partum woman that her breastfeeding problems will be solved if she just "takes to the bed with the baby / doesn't move off the sofa and have her partner wait on her hand and foot because you shouldn't be lifting a finger and your only job is to breastfeed, feed, feed, feed", sure as hell you'll see me chip in with my experiences and warn women that attempting to follow that advice nearly killed me - and I am not saying that metaphorically, I was in real danger of death, rushed to hospital, bumped to the top of a 17-hour queue in A&E, seen immediately and admitted immediately with an enormous team dedicated to ensuring I didn't die and of course without my baby because the type of specialist care I needed isn't available on the maternity ward, only on the intensive medical ward - and no, I am not getting paid a penny by a formula company.

I also feel and empathise deeply with story after story of women who felt the same searing grief, the same enormous sense of failure, at not being able to exclusively breastfeed my child. I had fallen fully for the magical benefits of Breastfeeding narrative and was terrified of giving my baby less than the best. It was a horrid, lonely, agonisingly painful time and it nearly tipped me into depression.

So no, when I see women recount similar experiences, I don't see formula company shills. I see women whose life experience matched my own and I can empathise with them.

I also see no reason why people insist on massively exaggerating the benefits of breastmilk. For my babies, it wouldn't matter if breast milk would give them super powers. The simple fact was I didn't have enough of it. The most basic food-related need any of us have is to get sufficient calories. Adequate accessible quantities of breastmilk may well be marginally better than adequate quantities of formula but for my babies, the first of those options was not available. I did not have enough milk to sustain my infant. I combined-fed for six months but with the benefit of hindsight, I now wonder why I pushed myself so hard to do that. The scientifically proven benefits of breastfeeding (or any other "perfect" diet) are marginal and not hugely convincing.

So no, not a formula company shill, just someone who has had the scales fall from my pro-BF eyes.

OP you call people shrills are probably the ones who had gone through the research papers on breastfeeding and pointing out the advantages are overstated.

I actually know a lot of mix fed people and their mothers, some of whom weren't brought up in the UK, so find those who promote only one way of feeding babies fanatics. Oh and virtually no one I know trusts large companies on their marketing and some have actively protested against the formula companies due to their marketing in the developing world.

Sycamore - no one is saying that there isn’t a place for ff and that of course some mums will need to. But there are also those of who preserved bf and it did get easier. It’s the mums who tried to feed for 3 days, but didn’t like getting up in the night every 4 hours, wanted to go out drinking with their friends 2 weeks after birth, don’t bother to speak to a lactation consultant - oh this is all a bit hard - I’ll ff and don’t you dare mention to me that formula isn’t as good as breast milk mums are personally the ones I hate
There was a really sad thread on here a while ago about a mum who had struggled to bf her first and who had given up and then had managed it with her second and was so happy and wanted to celebrate her success - and she got absolutely trolled for being happy and apparently making everyone else feel bad because she had overcome adversity. The thread got pulled with the op aplogisong for making all the ff mums feel bad! That’s ridiculous. If you now had a second and magically you got bf to work wouldn’t you want to be able to celebrate that?!
I really don’t see the connection between bf and blood clots tho. How you feed your child does not make you more prone to a blood clot.

And before I get lambasted with everyone’s tales of woes about why they couldn’t bf - please don’t - I do get it - for some people it just is too hard and it’s better for baby to have f - I don’t want pages and pages of everyone’s stories - it’s not relevant to this debate. You’re validated to use f and if you feel guilt, please get appropriate counseling for that, The op is wondering whether f companies are fuelling these threads and I think she’s right.

@sycamore54321 I'm sorry to hear what happened to you, I too suffered pulmonary embolisms postpartum, but I don't blame breastfeeding or suggest it nearly killed me. Breastfeeding is not associated with an increased risk of blood clots. Lack of mobility is, but why and how breastfeeding could be blamed is going a bit far. I would however agree that support is hit and miss, and I found in my long painful recovery the pressure to continue breastfeeding whilst on warfarin, stressful and exhausting and meant baby had to accompany me with all my hospital visits and stays and looking back I think I'd have recovered better if I had had the option of leaving baby or getting rest.
Not producing enough milk is one think but to suggest breastfeeding and trying to increase supply leads to blood clots is quite worrying. I'd have sat as much bottle feeding as breastfeeding.

😂 to this thread.

People who formula feed think it's great, is it really so hard to understand?!

Zsazsajuju "I don’t think there is any evidence that formula companies don’t want people to have the “facts” about breastfeeding. People need to drop the paranoia."

Except it's not paranoia.

www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/nestle-baby-milk-scandal-food-industry-standards

BunnyBath

People who formula feed think it's great, is it really so hard to understand?!

Exactly. Basically OP YANBU to think that companies market in all sorts of unusual and unethical ways. However YABU to think the only reason a women would use formula is that she is stupid and been tricked in to it, or is lying about it and is just a shrill.

@CocoDeMoll
I recently started a discussion about formula feeding as I have been told that I will be unable to BF. I have found nothing but support but also the general consensus underlying comments is that a lot of women want to BF as they know the benefits.
I think MN is a good forum for women to seek support with FF especially if it's something they feel particular guilt about. This maybe why there seem to be a lot of posts regarding it but on the whole the MN community I've been in communication with are very pro BF!
I'm not denying the ability for companies to infiltrate a thread covertly but I think actually what you are seeing is women supporting each other and the challenges or situations they face with the BF/FF world!

I find it interesting to hear that bf has no advantages over ff which goes against all the pieces of paper I was given throughout pregnancy and beyond. Please could you link to research.

I have always seen bf as the norm with ff as a handy backup. I have had a good local support group where I have openly discussed how to introduce bottles.

The only militant attitude I had was in hospital when a nurse asked if I understood the importance of ebf to 6 months. I explained that baby would probably have formula at 5 months as I was returning to work and last time struggled to express. She made me feel bad for this possible future with no advice.or support as to alternatives. But that was a one off.

Back to the op. I wouldn't be surprised if there were marketing bots but also think some people are very pro formula. Possibly as a defence against criticism.

I think all the talk about negative comments when bf in public has a negative effect as it makes bf appear as a radical political statement rather than the norm.

TBH I think if they do this it is occasional. Most people on parenting forums are real people who are reaching out to other real people at a time when they want connection/support/are bored.

I don't know, maybe I'm naive but I don't think that marketers really invest time into forums like that. It would stick out like a sore thumb if a poster's only posts were ever about formula especially if they kept casually mentioning brands. Which means that somebody who was doing that job would have to spend a significant amount of time on other parts of the forum too and build up a real posting personality. That seems very cost ineffective, when they can do other things like sponsor articles in parenting magazines, buy space in Bounty packs, encourage parents to join their clubs, use their helplines, etc.

I think that the posts OP is referring to are simply reflections of a FF culture.

Interesting theory about Brexit bots. I subscribe to a major newspaper online (no tin foil hats) and all of the readers are certain there are Russian Brexit bots commenting on the article discussion there too.

I’m long past this stage with DD who was mixed fed (mainly BF) for the first 6 months. Now she’s a lot older I look at threads like this and shake my head that there are still lots of women out there who try and make other women feel insecure and bad about their choices. Let’s be honest this isn’t about worrying about breastfeeding rates at all, unless you’re a professional lactation advisor, why would you want to or have the time to care about what other people feed their babies? I genuinely don’t care how my best friend fed her baby as long as the child was being fed.

I think these feeding threads whether pro BF or FF are usually about the posters own insecurities. When their child gets older and nobody an tell the difference between a BF or FF child, they’ll be berating mothers for other choices depending on the stage their child is at whether it be SAHM, WOH, Nursery or not, private school or not, grammar or not. Just focus on your own families and stop trying to make vulnerable women feel insecure just because you are because in reality you don’t really care about how strangers on the internet feed their babies.