To think that this article could have done without the breastfeeding comment??

[mosschops30]

here

I am hoping to go to the new unit here, there are always issues surrounding this at the hospital, a good friend was asked by a MW there why she had 'poisoned' her baby when she said she had given formula at the end of her tether. Other people have seen women bullied into breastfeeding without any real support.
I had a bad post-birth experience, but was lucky enough to have a fabulously laid back healthcare assistant, I wouldnt have even managed the two weeks breastfeeding without her.

Am I being a bit touchy, or could this article have done without the 'she's breastfeeding and thats what we encourage' comment? Just to me it sounds a bit like, this mum is wonderful and if you dont manage it we wont be pleased

This post was not about the advantages of BF/FF.

I am sorry that my post has contributed to turning this thread into such a debate. It is not one which is capable of resolution on an internet forum.

So, that was insensitive but because of my experience I could see why the OP may have felt that way about the article.

I'm a grown up. I haven't blamed anyone for my own words but to turn the discussion to a rant over a word while ignoring the OP and allowing others to spew whatever vitriol they like is a little unfair.

meh, my DW had DS in a hospital where they routinely put newborn babies on the bottle, which fucked things up completely TBH.

So it's nice to hear the hospital say that they do encourage breastfeeding. Because not everywhere does!

"Even though a minority, the bf lobby is actually pretty powerful and I understand why"

Oh, hugely powerful.

When you turn your tv on or open a parenting magazine - there are the ads, pages and pages of them. Millions and millions spent on advertising and promotion.

Lots of powerful industry representatives with a vested financial interest in increasing their market share from over 90% of babies (currently) to almost everyone.

Oh hang on, that's formula isn't it, not breastfeeding......

Breastfeeding promotion is generally done by midwives, the charitable sector and unpaid volunteers. Not people or organisations with loads of power and influence......

I think you are seeing more into the article than intended. I think that it sounds like Ellie has had a lovely experience giving birth to her baby. We should be glad for her that she has managed to initate breastfeeding and I hope her sucess continues.

Breastfeeding is blinking hard and women need lots of encouragement to continue. It is also true that the health professionals are well trained so that the emotional needs of the mother are met.

ooh well, maybe shouldnt have gone and had lunch and left this one to run

Im quite shocked at poo's posts. I did not mention any of those things that you have about breastapos or whatever you refer to.
FWIW i really wanted to continue to bf ds but just couldnt and thats a simple fact. I am in awe of my best friend who is still feeding her daughter a year on, and am hoping that when no.3 comes along I will be able to feed him for as long as possible.

I didnt slag off trained professionals (as I am one myself and know all about evidence based practice thank you very much).

What I asked was 'am I being a bit touchy' about this, and clearly I am. I just felt in an article about a £16m NHS investment in my community that whether the woman was bf or not was irrelevant

actually, I'm on poo's side. I also think the whole soft porn culture of our society (tits out on the top sehlf, Jordan and her like) have totally confused people about the function of boobs. Now, I feel awkward getting mine out to feed a baby because my only other reference for exposing my boobs is bloody Zoo or Nuts.

How can a mention of breastfeeding be irrelevant when the article is about a new maternity unit, part of whose remit (I imagine) is to provide better postnatal care than the old unit?

YAB a little U.

The bf-ing remark does seem a bit "and in addition...", but, as sabire says, it's not completely out of place in an article about a new maternity unit.

(At least it wasn't the smug mother herself congratulating herself on her perfect birth and bf-ing, eh? )

Actually, TBH, the article sounds a bit as if the reporter was in the ward and met the MW and the new mum, and possibly was there when the new mum was holding, maybe even bf-ing her LO, and the MW commented "and Ellie is bf-ing too, which we encourage" (note, btw, she said "encourage", not "insist upon"...), rather than an over-the-phone interview where the MW just chucked that info. in in order to be dogmatic, IYSWIM?

LOL @ the powerful bf-ing lobby: yeah, look at all those bf-ing babies; you can't move for them. They've succeeded excellently well.

good points penth, you are probably right about the circumstances

IMHO, it's brilliant there is a new unit that will hopefully provide excellent postnatal care and support all women who choose to breastfeed. I wish the lady in the article the best of luck and I hope she gets all the support she needs to continue to bf successfully.
However, I do believe that the issue is that whilst plenty of information is provided about bf prior to delivery, due to lack of midwives and poor resources equalling very short hospital stays, support for mothers who wish to bf is often sadly lacking.

I had my DD in a maternity unit in Bristol. Even if I lived in the area now I would NOT be going back there to have number 2.

I desperately wanted to breastfeed, desperately and because I wanted to so much and the unit seemed to be very pro breatfeeding/anti FF (sorry new to the site and am only just getting to grips with the abbreviations) my daughter ended up losing lots of weight (more than is considered normal for a newborn) and being tube fed in NICU.

I was a new Mum and I guess didn't have the confidence to just turn around to the midwives and demand a bottle for my baby as she was starving. I thought they knew best.

My DD was born my emergency C-section, 2 weeks early because my BP went through the roof. She was tiny at birth and soooo sleepy so found it very hard to suckle. And to add to this my milk was in poor supply and the medication they gave me to increase the supply didn't work

I was in hospital for 11 days after the birth because my BP wasn't playing ball and for every feed I trundled down to NICU and tried to breastfeed. I was at the end of my tether and wanted to just give DD a bottle, but felt so guilty about it. In the end it was a lovely assistant in NICU who told me to do what I wanted and that I wasn't a bad parent for giving my baby formula. By the way, she had to tell me not to repeat what she had said as she would get into big trouble for encouraging FF.

One of the other things that astounded me was that I heard the breastfeeding advisor tell the midwife not to cup feed my baby and just to let her keep on trying to suckle.

In the end I gave DD a bottle, but I am still bitter about the whole thing and the feeding became a big issue for me and played a big part in the PND that I was finally diagnosed with.

I'm sure that had a midwife just said to me 'you're doing a good job trying to breastfeed, but it isn't working. Why don't you give her a bottle and then see how you feel about things' my DD would NOT have ended up in NICU and I would not have had a feeding issue with her when she was small (I was constantly woried that she was not getting enough milk and that she was starving) . I think maybe I would have still ended up with PND, but that is another story in itself

Don't get me wrong, I am all for breastfeeding and will definately try again as I think it is best for baby, but if it isn't working, it isn't working and we shouldn't stress ourselves out about it and I feel the maternity ward teams should be more supportive. I for one will be in a stronger position next time round, having done it all before and all that, and will know what is best for me and my baby.

I can see your point MC

OTOH (namechanger btw, we were discussing the new unit and HB's other day- live nearish you btw) if I had received a few more spitive comments in that vein to contradict the negative ones I got from faily etc I might have kept on with ds2.

It's hard to make the balance I suspect (well I know, as a Mum who has done both BF and FF and some BF support for work) between encouragement for some and what others may take as a slur.

Now 'she's chosen to BF and we are pleased how well she is managing that' might have done it but who thinks so well on their feet (and we dont even know what was said before editors got there anyway)

Debbie, genocides apart we have research suggesting that the majority of owmen wishing to BF don't manage it. I have no issues with those who choose not to, but assuming its just becuase women dont want to seems wrong based on research, the women I know and my own experiences

florence taht's sad

I do think other stories balance it a bit though

With ds4 I was repeatedly told I couldnt BF (nopt too far from you actually, over bridge) and ordered to stop by HCV ? GP etc- in fact 16 months on he is latched on now and doing damned well. Beating some other odds he had in fact, which may well be realted who knows? (the answer is nobody as nobody yet knows the aetiology of the disease my family has a history of)

My ssiters birth was similar to yours as wella nd she was forbidden from ging to BF as it was toot iring- she also had PND as a result, just as a result of the guilt of not being able to BF her abbay who was also in NICU.

It'scomplex, really MW's need to tailor these things to the individual and it is poor, flippant practice that does most ahrm. And extremism- on either side.

PND does seem to tie in with soem BF stories- I cant share mine here for identification reasons, but I also had it and ascribe it to a combination of a rotten birth (eclampsia) and inability to BF. I think the not - feeling- you- measure - up is the main factor in all truth, just how it went wrong is not so key iyswim.

I hope you are feeling better now. You tried your best to do what was right in the eyes of everyone you trusted, that's a positive.

BTW florence, I couldnt with ds1, only for a bit with ds2, mixed with ds3- and ds4 is still bf at 16 months, it CAN vary over time so if it is what you want give it a go)

Oh and MC, if you do decide to BF and want a friendly chat with someone fairly local who has both failed and succeeded, I am on FB or CAT, feel free (did the Unicef thing years ago, so not totally up to date but better than most I would imagine)

there are hormonal factors at play in PND where BF doesn't work out - the actual chemicals flowing around your body are different as a consequence. Whatever people say around you, if your hormones are switched to 'sad' it isn't going to make you feel good.

op - YABU. the BF comment is totally appropriate for this - what is more, given the totally unnecessary flood of negative publicity for BF recently (i mean, what good does it do?), I welcome a teeny tiny bit of positive.

although you have already apologised for the fuhrer comment - this likeness has been repeated in the press several times over 'the bf police' 'bf nazis (!)' etc - hence the backlash you got. utterly unnecessary and poisonous - particularly irresponsible from the National Press (even including the Times)

oh and, 35% of people don't think BF is any much better than FF - 6% think FF is better. Ignorance is a large contributory factor to the Uks low BF rates. And poor support.

"but if it isn't working, it isn't working and we shouldn't stress ourselves out about it"

With sympathy for the hard start you got with your bubs though, you do have to take into account though that most of the time bf doesn't 'work' it's not because the mum is intrinsically incapable of bf, but because of poor postnatal care and inadequately skilled support to overcome problems. I see this all the time at our local hospital. I've seen so many women who've been told to ff because the person who's supposed to be helping them actually doesn't have the knowledge, the time or the confidence to help them overcome early bf glitches.

I'm sure that had a midwife just said to me 'you're doing a good job trying to breastfeed, but it isn't working. Why don't you give her a bottle and then see how you feel about things'

This happens a lot at our local hospital - and it's one of the reasons we have such a huge fall our rate from breastfeeding in the first few weeks. The sad fact is that every bottle you give your baby in hospital reduces your chance of successful breastfeeding once you get home. The vast majority of babies don't need to be bottlefed, they really don't - if the appropriately skilled staff are available to help mum in the early days. Honestly - I don't think most women realise quite how huge the skills gap is among midwives and support staff when it comes to breastfeeding. Many midwives are seriously inept and ill educated about breastfeeding. It's a disgraceful.

It can be very hard not to be 'hyper sensitive' when you've had a bad experience around birth and breastfeeding.

I had a horrendous labour and emergency c-section and would have given anything to have been able to breastfeed my daughter as I felt it was the one 'natural' thing I could do for her after all the intervention involved in bringing her into the world.

Unfortunately I had very little practical support and the hospital I was at wrongly diagnosed her with severe jaundice, resulting in top up feeding.

I struggled for 2 weeks to get her to breastfeed successfully and had to give up because it was causing both me and her so much distress, and with DH going back to work doing 13 yhours a day shifts there was no way I'd have coped. She then had chronic colic until 4 months of age which I felt was my fault for 'giving up' and switching to bottles.

She is nearly 5 now and it still hurts to relive the experience. From a detached pov I agree that there was really nothing wrong with the comment in the article, from a personal pov I can totally understand where the OP is coming from. When you've had a negative experience with something very emotional like bf it is not always easy to be rational.

"why do FF women, who don't get stared at or commented on when feeding"

Wrong. That's not true I'm afraid. I mixed fed although intended to ebf (long story) and I had a range of comments when I ff, inluding (from a childless close friend)

"mmm, I bet she just loves that horrible plastic teat in her mouth, she can't get enough of it hey?" {grimace}.

Totally agree with you GAL.

There were numerous times when I was in Mother and Baby room feeding DD. The bf mums would always chat to each other, but I was never once spoken to by any of them.

Probably just a having something in common thing, but it certainly didn't help how I was feeling.

When I had my first baby I was the only one on a ward of 8 women who even tried to breastfeed. The women with the trolley full of ready made formula bottles would insist on leaving me bottles becuase "you'll be sure to need them later on dearie", and the night nurse told me my child was starving and I "give him a bottle of proper milk before he wakes the whole hospital up"
I managed to establish bf despite the atmosphere, despite his severe jaundice (a doctor told me this would clear quicker if I gave him formula), despite a complete lack of help or support of any kind. The only thing I saw were posters about how the hospital was pro-breastfeeding.
Yeah right. Even the nurse at the BF clinic told me supplement with formula at night.

YABU to expect a MLU not to promote BF and be proud when it works.

I have seen debate after debate on this subject. I am all for choice and do not judge women for FFing. I feel bfers are judged however. If you BF you are a smug hippy who hates bottles and looks down on everyone else.

Hmm or maybe just someone feeding their baby?

I have heard women objecting very strongly to bfing posters being put up in maternity wards because they felt bullied! Sorry but I just do not get the connection.

As for the breastfeeding lobby being powerful! Oh yeah, the day we see miss rubber tits Jordon bfing her baby instead of doing a half magazine spread with a new baby, a bottle AND 'coincidentially' placed formula advertisments - maybe we can discuss that.

In fact when do you ever see images of breastfeeding unless it is in an article about breastfeeding?

Being pro bfing does not make you anti ff OR does it make you pro 'natural' birth. Lumping the two groups together just exposes preconceptions and predjudices.

WF that does work both ways though-- have been in eaxactly the same position with FF mums

The solution of course is just to be nice LOL