ok, i probably am, but the way new mothers do thing s now, and there attitude is really getting on my nerves.

[pukkapatch]

rant alert
te entire holier than thou attitude. huge genreralistaion, i know. but whats so speical about waiting till the baby is six months old before weaning that will garantee said mothers a direct ticket to heaven?
from what i recall, upping the age to six months didnt happen because of some amazing scintific breakthrough. no new data was used t o make the decision. (a mnetter showed the evidence of this on some thread.
and then the whole breast bottle thing. the ones spouting statistics at everyone, with their smug expressions. it doesnt matter. every mom does what she sees as best for her baby. we dont constantly need to have information shoved in our noses.

my eldest is ten, and youngest four, so i'm not that far away from these subjects, but, some peoples attitudes just really really get on my tits.

experience sharing is GREAT, in fact.

BJB, do you realise how ridiculous you sound?

Some people like to base parenting decisions on facts, you know. Some people ask for them in OPs, even.

The way some people go on, you'd think you could get leprosy from facts.

When your children are older, you get to forget all this "research" and think about more interesting stuff, though I doubt it would qualify as being scintillating...

...

yes bufo and that's why people become arses and newbies end up not BF when they really really want to...

i presume when your children are older they are also weaned? so no more bfing? not drinking formula? i presume the question of whether to have a homebirth or not has been long since answered? so why would you care about it? you're probably concerned with things like schools or exam results or jobs or uni, but i don't come onto those threads and call you all smug, self-righteous zealots because you care about what happens to your children... do you see? wtf do you care about preparing formula safely if you're not doing it, but it doesn't mean that people shouldn't have access to the information.

What does that mean?

presumably it's a reference to the many grandparents who 'never killed anyone' with formula feeding and so don't support their children who want to bf.

Oh, well I only read the OP which I must say did strike something of a chord with me. Having breastfed two children myself for what seemed like centuries, I do recall that some of the most offputting people were the slightly pushy midwives and NCT lady, who did cite many statistics to me! and who, on occasion, succeeded in making me feel extremely demoralised. It all seems so long ago now though...

So when DS2 weans, which he will at some point, should I not think or write about bfing? What a waste of knowledge!

Can I then start thinking about it again when I have another baby?

Some of the best breastfeeding counsellors haven't breastfed for ages. Should we tell them not to bother with all that malarkey in case they become baby bores?

isn't that funny? we've discussed this before on here and all agreed we didn't get the midwives we needed. i wanted to bf and they kept pushing formula at me and were useless when it came to support. but others had right pushy harridans who wouldn't let them let it slide.

finding out up to date research is great - it shows you have got a real interest,intelligence and desire to do the very best for your kids imo.

it does, doesn't it? [smug]

They should allocate midwives according to preference.

(Can I just say, my new name is making me laugh But I bet somebody berates me for it...)

Well, all I can say is that I generally neither think nor write about bfing. Having said that I was a TERRIBLE breastfeeder, had to construct towers of cushions to balance babies on, bleeding nipples, the full horrors...so I doubt I would have any useful info (statistical or otherwise) to pass on anyway!

I find flaky people boring.

smug is great...let's make it a positive attribute

Smug is fine.

Glad to see Pukka came back for a while!

This seems to be going round in circles.

Surely we can go and google guidelines until they are coming out of our ears. We don't need to get them here on a discussion board. What a lot of people want when they come on MN is people sharing experiences. However, if your baby is older than 2 yrs or something it seems that is not allowed since you don't comply with current guidelines. Why shouldn't an older mother share her experiences?! Do you really want new mothers sharing with new mothers to the exclusion of everybody else? Is that even wise to by pass years of experience? The only scoffing I see going on is those who seem to think that older mothers have nothing to offer!

Now that isn't to say that people shouldn't talk about the guidelines and inform, of course they should, but that surely is only part of it. Otherwise, just type up a fact sheet and people can just queue up here for a copy rather than actually talk to each other!

Serious question by the way. Not trying to cause a ruck I promise but how many babies die from having their milk made up from cold water? It is not something I have heard of before, not having ff myself. ( I really am interested not trying to start a fight I really do promise you )!

Oh god, my 3 and 4 line didn't read well. I tried so hard not to annoy! Please, before you accuse me again of throwing out guidelines, got to my 4th paragraph! We do need guidelines but we need experience sharing too!

Was it one or two children that died in Belgium from contaminated formula inappropriately made up?

it's very rare, a few babies died in france and belgium and that's why the boxes were changed. actually there doesn't seem to be a problem with making up cold and using straightaway, it's when people keep them in the fridge for the day that the problems might arise.

again, though i find myself asking you to link to the threads where all this newbie to oldie scoffing goes on, as i can't recall seeing it. there's surely a difference between saying 'the guidelines have changed so best not to advise that any more' and 'none of this matters, my kid is fine, you new mums don't know anything'?

Zealot - thanks for the reply re the formula

Actually, I think you have been scoffing at the very notion of the fact that mothers whose babies are no longer in nappies have anything useful to say. But that is just the way I read it.

I have linked to a thread once, on another thread similar to this one and it ended up with it being analysed to death. We are having a general discussion on attitudes and I doubt that even if I or anybody else found an example of smuggery or scoffing, that you would agree with it on principle so really it is better to keep it vague.

There isn't another board on MN that is guaranteed to be so tied up in guidelines as the one about feeding babies. Obviously it is very important but it won't be so important when you get the other side of it. There are too many other factors to affect the health and wellbeing of our children. Sometimes it is useful to step back a little from it.

Yes, niecie, once my children are older, I personally won't need to know or care about bf.

But for the last 3 years (since dd1 was born) I've been reading the infant feeding research - not the guidelines, the research, which is a heck of a lot more complicated.

It was horrendously difficult to get into at first - it's not my field and I had to start from scratch. Now, when I read a new paper, I can fairly quickly put it into the context of the general body of research.

So what you're saying is, I should just flush all that hard work down the toilet when my children are too old to bf? That because it isn't important to my children, I should stop caring about anyone else who comes along later and wants the same quality of information I wanted?

That would be incredibly selfish and a waste of hard-won knowledge.