To remove the toy baby feeding bottle from my dd's new doll bath and feeding set?

[Springfleurs]

I was brought up to think that breast feeding was a strange and rather disgusting thing to do.

Luckily managed to overcome this myself and b/f both dc for 5 months and 14 months respectively.

Took dd to a toy shop today and she chose a doll bath and feeding set. Unpacked it for her when we got in and there is a feeding bottle in there. I know it might seem a bit precious but it irritated me slightly, as though it was a mandatory piece of equipment for all babies/dolls.

Or

I am taking it all rather too seriously?

i am aware of that tbm,but quite frankly it was an emotive post

fwiw,i didnt pop a leak in starbucks any time someone else baby cried

It's not in the least controversial to say there is a public cost to formula feeding. Difficult to calculate across countries, and studies are not always consistent in what they include in the calculations - do you assess the loss in wages of the parents who take time off to visit the doc/hospital, and their travel costs? Do you look at maternal health and calculate the health service cost of excess female cancers? Do you cost the meds? What about the social and mental health costs linked with SIDS? And so on.....

Selecting a specific condition, like gastroenteritis, is one way of getting a window on this. It has to be an estimate, because you cannot add up all the individual costs of all the individual infants, but even so, it doesn?t have to be a guess. Scarletlilybug describes how it?s done. We?ve got recent figures for excess illness in the UK among ff and partially bf babies , and naturally, they can only really be taken seriously if they control for other factors, as LT says.

The Millennium Cohort study is a big study, which controls for social and economic factors and still finds that formula is a single factor influencing the incidence of gastro and respiratory infections; this is consistent with all other research in this area (yes, all ? there is not one study published in any of the journals, anywhere, which shows anything different); and one of the justifications for this study is to work out what savings would be if there was less ff. As for ?agendas?, I don?t think there is anything suspicious about these results or the scientists carrying out the research.

None of this should be to criticise or judge individual formula feeders, but it is part of the debate on if and how infant feeding decisions in the UK can be changed. The debate might well include looking at the impact of toys - the effect on one individual kid is going to be tiny and immeasurable, anyway, but it's not a crazy idea to see it as part of the cultural 'furniture' that might be worth changing.

I said "quite common" not "all"

Hoochie, you are quite wrong. If I wanted to put my fingers in my ears, I wouldn't be posting on a forum or taking part in a debate.

There may well be a public cost to ff. What I take issue with is the particular guesstimate that was proffered, earlier down the thread, which I simply do not believe. And I also take issue with such guesstimate being presented as hard fact - which I have said numerous times.

However, I do enjoy reading posts such as Tiktok's, which are reasoned and offer specifics. If I had my fingers in my ears, I wouldn't.

We all know best, don't we?

Actually, to go back to the OP, I thought about throwng away any toy feeding bottle, but didn't in the end as I thought it wouldn't make any great difference to my children's feeding decisions in later life. But I absolutely see where the OP was coming from and I have been frustrated that some people just don't "get it" at all. (I don't expect everyone to agree with her concerns, but I'm frustrated that some people can't even imagine why there might be concerns, without necessarily sharing them). And I don't mean this as a criticism of anyone, just as a sad refelection of the relative statuses of breastfeeding and bottle-feeding in our society.

I do believe that there is a whole bottle and formula package that our children are growing up with. It's not baby bottles, it's one part of the package. A lot of it we can't effect but that one we can.

If it means a lot to you, throw it away, if it doesn't don't. Why tell someone they're wrong too (apart from them posting AIBU ?

'Women have always had to work'

"Thus is undisputable. And I would say it has to have had an effect on bf-ing - in this country, anyway. I see it with my own eyes, anyway, no matter what the dreaded 'stats' say."

I'm not doubting that separating women from their babies through work, and leaving women with small children without social support has impacted on breastfeeding rates over the past 60 years. But it's very much not just about work or social support. As I said - most women have stopped breastfeeding by the time their babies are 2 weeks old, long before they've started to think about going back to work.

"In very few other subject areas on MN is it deemed appropriate for women to be quite as vile to each other as on this topic. I really think that needs addressing."

But I think that implying someone has called ff 'evil' is unhelpful - actually I'd say it's pretty 'vile' and a rather manipulative way of polarising this debate.

Also, Tiktok, do you think that the increased risk of gastro or respiratory illnesses might be because there are problems with sterilising the bottles and bugs picked up that way, rather than the formula itself? I am not saying it is the only factor as bf probably gives additional antibodies, but just wondered what you thought about this as a possibility.

Sorry Hoochie, but I do, and will, take issue with any estimate being presented as gospel, no matter what the source is.

It's good that studies are there. It's interesting to look at trends. And it is laudable as a very general principle to want to improve the health of the population. But perhaps one shouldn't be so ready to take these things at face value. And I don't. Lies, damned lies and statistics - heard that phrase?

LadyT: yes, some of the increased risk is to do with the hygiene issue around bottles and teats. It's a combination of the increased risk of exposure to bacteria and a lack of protection from bacteria caused by not being breastfed. There may also be contamination of the formula powder itself - salmonella is commonly found in powder, and happily far less commonly, a bacterium called enterobacter sakerzakii (sp?) which is very dangerous.

A baby fed on expressed breastmilk with a bottle is obviously at less risk.

And I have just checked - the sources for money spent on formula-related issues are all presented as 'estimates' in the leaflets and papers. They have to be estimates, but that doesn't mean they are invented!

Thank you Tiktok.That's interesting.

Given that not everyone can or wants to breastfeed, I do wonder then whether money should also be spent on research on finding ways of sterilising bottles and teats more effectively and also ways of keeping those bacteria out of formula. I am no scientist, but maybe things could be improved.

Have to add that the phrase about 'damned lies and statistics' is always trotted out by people who for some reason think it's an argument against statistics! And we should ignore statistics somehow...

Obviously, it's not sensible to be gullible and naive. Any literate person can understand basic stats, and appreciate that a sample of 'me and my neighhbour' is less powerful than 'a randomised controlled study of 20,000 subjects'....and that one person's experience of their own healthy, formula fed baby does not trump a study which examines the outcome of many thousands.

"Lies, damned lies and statistics - heard that phrase?"

Yes - it's true that statistics can be manipulated by those people with a vested interest in misrepresenting the facts, and that some research is poorly designed.

However, you'd have to ask what interests would be served by misrepresenting infant feeding statistics to manipulate public opinion on the subject. I mean - who's to gain from it? These statistics come from big organisations like the WHO and the NHS, not from small pressure groups whose sole purpose is to promote breastfeeding.

Fair point Gaby. I know what you are saying. But the trouble is, I don't think that for many people - even organisations - promoting bf is necessarily all about the health benefits alone. Or perhaps more accurately - what might have started off as research into promoting better health gets transmuted into something else: yet another stick to beat ff mothers with. And that troubles me.

Lady T: A great deal of money and time and effort has been spent in the last few years to improve feeding preparation techniques. It's not so much sterilising that needs attention - in cleanish households, careful washing and keeping the bottles away from the family dog is probably as effective as boiling and what have you in getting rid of milk traces which might breed bugs. It's the way the dried formula is prepared, and the use of 'old' made-up formula that's gone off, that really gets the bacteria multiplying.

Hence the change in guidance in 2006 (I think) for safe preparation - which was faced with resistance from the formula manufacturers (some brands took a long time to change their instructions) and confusion from HCPs. There is at least a thread a week on mumsnet from mothers who are confused as well about this.

The manufacture and packing of formula is all done to inspected standards, and there is a recall system in place when bugs are discovered....but the fact is that you are dealing with a product that goes (unlike breastmilk) through many processing stages from origin (in the cow) to the baby, and one which (again unlike breastmilk) has no built-in anti-bacterial plus immune-boosting qualities.

In the UK, we probably have it as clean as we can - the water is clean, we can boil it, we can afford to chuck cracked/scratched bottles and worn-out teats. We can reduce the risk further with safer preparation. I think we have gone about as far as we can down this road.

Lady T: you say "what might have started off as research into promoting better health gets transmuted into something else: yet another stick to beat ff mothers with"

Can you give an example of this happening? I am not talking about individuals posting their own feelings about infant feeding (in the grand scheme of things, what can a handful of people on an internet forum do?) but campaigns or projects or organisations, using research as a stick ('yet another stick' indeed) to beat ff mothers with.

No Tiktok, I was only referring to this board, not the world at large. Thank goodness!

It seems to me, from what you say, that a lot of the real gastroenterital problems caused by ff (using old made up milk, cracked bottles, insufficiently washed or sterilised bottles and all the other things) could be eradicated or at least improved in this country by clearer guidelines both by formula manufacturers and also from HV. I am quite a new mother and so all this stuff is fresh in my mind, and I do think it could be made clearer.

Also, (and I have only scanned so feel free to pick me up on this) in the links posted up today, the material about ff and the link with gastroenteritis and money spent on this doesn't seem to explain that more of this comes from 'misuse of equipment' rather than the formula itself. I think this is a really, really interesting point and is new to me. People are going to ff in their multitudes, so let's make it as safe as poss.

why would organisations want to beat ff mothers with a stick? What is in it for them?
Sorry if I'm being thick but I'm completely mystified

It just seems such an odd thing to believe, that bf organisations are motivated by wanting to hurt ff mothers. Why? I mean why should they care or want to do that?

I can see how someone might think a lot of bf campaigning is odd or inexplicable or OTT if they don't realise that some people are convinced that the difference between bf and ff is significant, that it's a big public health issue, that lots of people try to bf and are let down miserably and become unnecessarily unhappy. But surely once they do realise that people think that (whether or not those people are right!), then that lays to rest the idea that they must just 'want to make ff mums feel guilty', or 'beat them with a stick'?

If you turn it round, doesn't it seem slightly odd that people could go and do training as bf counsellors, say, read and read and read and think and debate and campaign, out of a secret desire to put other people down? Isn't it vastly more likely that (rightly or wrongly) they simply believe what they say they believe, that bfing matters a lot for health, and that we're all being let down a lot by the current systems of support? They could still be wrong, but why do their motives also have to be secretly malign?

LadyT, you said "I don't think that for many people - even organisations - promoting bf is necessarily all about the health benefits alone." Pretty clear there you meant more than the people on this board, yes?

There is an inherent risk in not breastfeeding, unconnected with less-than-perfect use of formula and its equipment. It's because the product involved in not breastfeeding cannot be 'made' to be safe.

Safer use of the product will reduce these risks, but it can't reduce them to nil.

The gastro problems cannot be eradicated, ever, because babies will come into contact with bacteria simply by living in the world, having contact with people, and drinking milk which can never have the antibodies and other infection fighting properties of breastmilk.

That is fact, not a guess, not a statistic, not an estimate

And it's not a stick to beat ff mothers with either

Peppered - I am talking about the boards. As I said above.

But fwiw, I think there ARE plenty of people who would say anything to put people off or decry ff.

That doesn't mean there aren't genuine people out there. Of course there are. And I believe that people who chose to bf should have as much support as they need.

Anyway, going round in circles here. Off to cool down now!