to think baby formula should come in plain packaging?

[Yoyoyozo]

Fancy packaging is used to inflate prices and extract more money from parents with phrases like 'premium' plastered on the tin. Parents shouldn't be made to feel guilty for not buying the most expensive, well-marketed brand.

Yes, parents can make their own informed decisions, but clever marketing is proven to undermine this.

A report published in The Lancet (2016) unveiled that aggressive marketing of breastmilk substitutes is undermining efforts to improve breastfeeding rates

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(15)01044-2.pdf

No, this is not equating infant formula to tobacco! The aim is to prevent exploitative marketing practices that undermine access to impartial information on infant feeding.

All fair points apart from saying that I shouldn’t ’chime in’ because I BF. Most of us will post replies to threads that we don’t have personal experience of. We can hold opinions, surely?
And plenty of people chime in with opinions on BF when they have no experience of it

Yes thats fair, sorry I think i worded it badly and didn't mean it to come across like that. Ironically I was feeding my baby and typing 1 handed so I didn't give it much thought. I'm sorry, and you are absolutely right that you can "chime in" on any thread (I know I do 🤭).

I also agree about BF, i was under a different username but asking for advice at pumping with my first and the vitoral I got was unbelievable.

They don't though, do they? Because if a woman can't breastfeed, for whatever reason, she will immediately revert to talking about formula feeding with perhaps a passing comment on why BF wasn't for her. No comment made about other women and their decision/ability to BF.

There's nothing to stop you 'chiming in' but there's also no reason why you would, not on this. It's highly emotive for any mother and a woman who is able to feed in the 'heralded' way should have enough empathy/emotional intelligence enough to know not to wade in.

See my previous post. BF moms don’t get an easy ride, either. Would be far better if we just didn’t attack each other for our choices.

BF moms get let down too. We get told when we should stop, or we try to get forced in to giving a baby a bottle so they can discharge you from hospital faster rather than providing the support we need.

Where are you based? Because in the UK midwives and nurses are not allowed to suggest formula feeding. I agree BFing support is abysmal, but there's no way that over here they would try to make you give the baby a bottle. FF mums on my maternity ward (I wasn't one, I was BFing) were treated like pariahs!

I don’t know if this is strictly true, in my hospital stays, both times I was advised my babies needed FF due to loss of weight from unsuccessful BF…however practise may well have changed since I gave birth.

I had my daughter in 2018 and she ended up in hospital with dehydration because she wasn't feeding. They gave her a bottle in hospital but told me to go home and just keep trying. Eventually I became suicidal and only then did my midwife say I should switch to FFing. By then I had severe PND and attempted suicide a few weeks later, at which point my HV apologised for my earlier treatment but said that the midwives would have been in a bind because they aren't allowed to promote FFing in any way, not even for combi feeding. I guess it could be different trust by trust but certainly in my experience, BFing is seen as the only way. Even in my prenatal classes (which here in NI are run by the NHS) they said they could only offer advice on BFing.

I am in the UK and this was only a few years ago.
They told me I had to stay over a second night in hospital because he wasn’t feeding enough. They really put the pressure on and said ‘of course you could just give him a bottle and we will let you out today’
They seemed almost annoyed at me for wanting to keep perservering with it. Kind of a slight eye roll and more back handed comments about giving a bottle. This was definitely my experienxe

This was my experience too. Both in 2021 where we were put on a feeding plan and the doctor actually gave my baby formula to see if it was a sucking issue or a breastfeeding issue. And a few months ago, where at less than 24 hours old I was told repeatedly 'just give him a bottle, why don't you want to just feed him, he's hungry he needs formula, we've got some we can give you etc etc' instead of anyone doing anything helpful like actually helping him to latch.

As a result I've come across this book that may be of some interest to others: https://pinterandmartin.com/products/why-breastfeeding-grief-and-trauma-matter

Actually on the question posed by OP I don't think formula packaging should be plain. But I do think we as a nation should adhere to the marketing and advertising code much more if we want to improve breastfeeding rates. There is evidence that the more a country adheres to the code the higher the breastfeeding rate. Whether that is causation or correlation I don't know but that, along with some of the comments from mum's in the study someone shared about their beliefs on formula being labelled as 'closer to breastmilk' is enough to think that education around all feeding options is needed antenatally so parents can make fully informed decisions.

Definitely lack of support for me when I had my twins. If I had my time again I would try to persevere.

My milk never came through really and I was never sure if that was linked to the fact my son had a terrible tongue tie (even though I asked professionals to check and was told 5 times in his first 3 weeks he didn’t have one to learn he had a very restrictive tongue tie).
I tried hand massaging to bring the milk in, breast pumps, double breast pump, domperidone, fenugreek, supplements - absolutely everything to try and bring the milk in whilst keeping him alive with formula. I was going to breastfeeding clubs, clinics, cafes, doctors appts, NCT sessions - absolutely everything. After hours each day trying to get some milk I would be lucky to have 10 mls which I would feed to him (often whilst sobbing) hating myself for not being able to do better.
When he was about 10 weeks old and I had been putting myself through this since about day 3 my husband begged me to look at our boy (who was in fine fettle on formula) and to stop torturing myself and just enjoy our boy instead of sitting on the sofa with a double, hospital grade, breast pump on me.
Every tub of formula I bought was like a dagger in the heart. As previous posters have said - there is a bigger problem than fancy picture marketing.

I’d say your time would be better spent campaigning for decent breastfeeding support for ALL new mums, not just those with the means and funds to access private lactation consultants.

(IGT mum, almost zero supply and absolutely shocking feeding advice given when both babies weee dehydrated - but “all women can breastfeed” apparently)

This is the reality for a large number of mums and it needs to be acknowledged by the NHS and associated health organisations.

I absolutely agree, as I had a situation with my first that prevented breastfeeding. He also nearly died for a seperate reason and wasn’t even consuming formula at that point.

However, it’s also why personally I’m behind the no marketing rule. I’ll mention the Nestle baby milk scandal again as I mentioned earlier in thread - but also just that it should be less of an emotive decision and should not be able to have brands competing on it or causing parents anxiety over which brand is best (yes, some do worry).

Equally, I didn’t get extra support when I breastfed. I had no family to show me how as I’m adopted and wasn’t breastfed, I didn’t live close to friends and only one had had a baby and breastfed at the time, the HV etc didn’t know anything and research on Hypermobility and breastfeeding hasn’t led to some great support system. In fact I was told oxytocin should help my pain levels - I tried that and it didn’t. No one really knew what to advise me, except that I could either carry on or give up (which of course is obvious).

Just to say that there are parents who’ve had a tough go time who’ve FF and breastfed - some both. Obviously there are very complex issues around the support available for both sides. However, brands marketing it is not especially helpful, particularly where they may cause much bigger issues in countries outside the UK, and it should be something everyone has access to the best version of and best advice around alongside breastfeeding (which imo works best when you remove marketing as a factor).

Just going to agree with @FuckOffTom and @Wrongsideofpennines here.

I posted about this earlier in this thread but when I was in SCBU with my twins I was repeatedly urged to switch to FF. And bear in mind I was able to pump and producing some milk via pumping!!

My twins were early and tiny so there were practical difficulties with feeding on the breast. I really, really wanted to keep trying but I was told “don’t you want to take your babies home?!”

Combi feeding wasn’t mentioned but as I was struggling to breastfeed FF was immediately mentioned. No encouragement to keep pumping and alternate between that and formula. Instead, there was a whole attitude of “oh well, you tried to BF and it didn’t work so let’s just switch to FF now”.

The only real cheerleaders for BF were two nurses who were foreign (India).

In fairness, SCBU was really busy and there was never enough nurses. They were rushed off their feet constantly. So maybe it was a case of just wanting to get the babies fed efficiently and discharged to free up incubators which were in desperately short supply, rather than taking more time to establish BF, with all its difficulties.

Also worth mentioning though, there was lots of information around SCBU re the best formula, bottles, flow rates for teats etc. virtually nothing re BF.

Interesting actually there was also some strong opinions re the formula chosen. One nurse said SMA was like McDonalds for babies!!! Aptomil was apparently the “gold standard” and mums were heavily encouraged to use that. There was also a big thing about the best bottles - I’ve forgotten the name now but their favoured one began with N I think. Anyone caught using a Tommy Tippee bottle was quickly told that they weren’t very good and they should switch!

I can only speak for my experience but FF was heavily favoured because of its relative ease. And as per PP, I also got a lot of thinly disguised eye rolling when I wanted to continue to try and establish BF.

If my experience is any way typical then it’s not hard to see why so many mums FF, even if they might have preferred to BF.

Prescription medicine generally has plain packaging as it is dispensed by a pharmacist, but the o.t.c. medicines compete for brand share with attractive or premium packaging. Why should formula not do this too, even if it is being classed as a medical item rather than a menu choice?

Surely the only reason to suggest plain packaging is to shame women buying it and therefore dissuade them from doing so (because you believe it is always a "choice" between BF and formula rather than formula and inadequate nutrition) - which will directly harm the health of babies, because the vast majority of women buy formula when they are responsible for a baby that needs feeding and has no or insufficient access to breastmilk. Would you rather than even a tiny fraction of them decided to just let the baby go hungry and fail to thrive instead?
And for the small number for whom it is 100% of lifestyle decision - you don't get to tell other women what they must do with their bodies or make it harder for them to choose!

I was 23 when I had my DS so many would regard me as a vulnerable mum. I wasn't, I would have happily paid more if the product was better, maybe legislation is needed that the price of formula can be uncapped and they can market it as long as X percentage of profit is reinvested into research. Yes the current formula is basically the same but it doesn't need to be. Below is a nice article about developing new formula

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10320619/#:~:text=Compared%20to%20breastfeeding%2C%20experimental%20IF,was%20assessed%20as%20visual%20function.