To think that if you're going to start an advert 'Breast feeding is best for your baby' you shouldn't turn out to be selling formula?

[SomeGuy]

I'm sure I'm not.

(This is an advert for Aptamil follow-on.)

Obviously it's not as bad as the ad with the bloke who says he's doing night-feeds for his baby (who obviously is over six months, oh yes), but still....

Are there any milk adverts that aren't actually secretly shilling for infant formula?

(Like the Aptamil follow-on milk advert 'Aptamil 3' - conveniently almost identical in name to 'Aptamil 1' and 'Aptamil 2', both of which are illegal to advertise in the UK.)

Whilst abroad this summer I was shocked to see formula advertised and 'gold gain'. In a country where babies are naturally small the tins all advertised huge 'healthy' babies and had words like protein, etc branded across the tin. It did look like protein shakes for men!!

fruitshoots - if this is an issue you care about, you can join any of the groups, inc the two I mentioned, and help make them more visible.

You are asking volunteers to take on a massive cultural and legislative change. This takes a lot of effort. But it is being done.

The things you ask for - normalising bf, seeing bf on TV, enabling younger mothers to see they have a choice to breastfeed - are all an integral part of all breastfeeding support groups' activities, campaigning and day to day support work.

Harpy - I rubbished your immunity info, and it deserved it, because it was incomplete, but mainly because it drew the wrong conclusions about the risks of formula feeding and the impact of it on infant immunity.

BTW, I really, really cringe at the faux-naive tone of your posts ('must be imagining things again'). It's so flippin teenage .

I'm tempted to say something like 'it's not big and it's not clever.'

Grow up a bit, and we can still talk, eh?

But Tiktok, I only bf for a year at most, so far. I associate bf groups with militant women with hairy legs, is this not the case?

'Any associated risk with formula feeding in the western world is negligible' - well no its not, its significant isnt it or the studies wouldnt be published. In the Western world for example formula fed infants are 50% more likely to visit their doctor in the first six months. I am not saying the reasons are life threatening but its not 'negligible'.

Are ff fed babies less easy to settle because they have a finite amount of comfort through milk? If my baby's unwell/miserable can just on/off feed all day thus making him less miserable.

You are indeed a hopeless candidate, friuitshoots, as you suspect. Could you not encourage a little bit of leg hair growth???

Read my posts, Harpy. I have never accused you of saying ff babies are free of risk.

Sorry I made you think I am hypocritical by warning you you looked like a 'tit', and the use of 'FFS' - but I only accused you of using a cringe-worthy faux-naive, teenage tone, nothing else.

'Try looking in the mirror, dear. Sorry, did I hit a raw nerve again?' is another example of this - just in case you do this without thinking. I'm assuming you don't actually want to sound like a cringe-worthy teenager

Now, Harpy, off you jolly well go!

"So the alternative is to demonise formula? (thus exacerbating the guilt which many women feel over their decision to formula feed. Nice.)

Errr, no. The alternative isn't to 'demonise' formula. The alternative is to give families the facts about the increased risk of illhealth associated with ff.

"Any associated risk with formula feeding in the western world is negligible"

Never mind that the commonest reason for hospital admittance in children under a year is respitory disease and gastric illness, both very much more common in ff babies than in bf babies (particularly exclusively bf babies)....

The RCM argue that approximately 100 preterm babies a year die from a lack of breastmilk. Mostly from a disease called necrotising enterocolitis, which is 5 times more common in ff preterm babies.

Then there are the concerns about type one diabetes (life limiting illness), also more common in children fed formula as infants.

Let's also not forget higher rates of SIDS.

In my opinion these risks cannot said to be 'neglible' (not in a society as otherwise concerned about child safety as ours). But no mind what I or you think - give mothers the information and let them make up their own minds as to whether they feel it's significant to them and their child.

I have not retracted anything, Harpy.

Apart from one thing.

I thought you were in danger of looking like a tit.

No further danger. It's happened.

I've been consistent and measured in my posts, and used good knowledge to inform them.

You've been writing like a petulant, sarcastic, cringe-making, teenager (not infantile, no - definitely more like a teenager). This is not name-calling, BTW. It's merely a description of the tone of your posts.

I'm sure you are a lovely person in RL.

Harpy, I have found the tone of your messages appalling and bullying.

I think you need to calm down and consider how you come across on this board and whether that's how you want to be seen. Any information that you wanted to put across in your posts has been onscured by petty bitchiness.

Please stop now.

oops, that should say obscured obv.

I wasn't being sarcastic, Harpy. I meant what I said. People are very often different in RL from what they are on line. Sorry you read sarcasm into my post - not normally my style at all.

You come across in your posts exactly the way I described, and it makes discussion difficult, but I can well accept this is not the real, or the 'whole', you.

"You will demonise formula by repeatedly mentioning the perils associated with it its consumption at every juncture."

Who is suggesting 'mentioning the perils (your word) of formula at every juncture'?

Nobody is suggesting that anyone should be harangued and nagged, only that they should be equipped with this information at a time when they are still in a position to make a choice as to how they intend to feed their baby. Do you have a problem with women discussing this issue with their midwife at an antenatal appointment? Or being given the information at an antenatal infant feeding class?

"You did also mention previously that there is a "climate of social ease about formula" which presumably you would like to change. (euphemisms aside you are essentially admitting that you would like to see formula viewed with greater derision)"

No - not derision. I think people need to better informed about the possible implications of using formula.

"I would like women to be furnished with facts and not propaganda".

But advertising is the purest form of propaganda, and presumably you don't have a problem with that, judging from your previous posts?

" Its doing in a balanced, impartial way that we should be striving for though. (without all the myths and so on)"

Ok - so what information would you like them to receive about infant feeding? When I was making this decision for my first child, I would have liked to have been given access to good quality, up to date research, and large, peer reviewed studies. This information is out there for parents already, though it's not always easy to access. There's something called the 'Informed Choice', which produces evidence based information for parents and health professionals on a range of issues relating to maternity. (I've c+p'd below).

"The Informed Choice leaflets are the result of a collaboration between MIDIRS (Midwives Information and Research Service) and the NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination. Based on the best available scientific evidence, the Informed Choice leaflets present research-based information in a clear and easy to read style. There are two leaflets for each topic, one for pregnant women and one for health professionals. The professionals' leaflets are fully referenced, providing a firm basis for discussion and good practice. The women's versions provide the facts to help women make decisions, which are right for them during their pregnancy".

The problem is Harpy, that the information that you'd find in the MIDIRS Informed Choice 'Breastfeeding or Bottlefeeding'? leaflet would be very unpalatable to you - as you have already rubbished everything in it as 'propaganda' (I have simply repeated in my posts what I have read in these leaflets and in textbooks produced by the Royal College of Midwives about the risks of ff). I don't know where you think this repository of 'non-biased' information on infant feeding is, if we can't trust the NHS, the WHO and the Royal College of Midwives to provide it?

"Higher rates of SIDS", "Diabetes" ... - you are now really venturing into the realm of the dubious. This is all highly speculative. Did the studies examining the "higher rate" of SIDS in formula fed babies factor in social, economic, and potential smoke inhalation into account? Oh a
and diet too..."

The answer to those questions is YES.

And the FSID (foundation for the study of infant deaths), a very large and reputable SIDS charity refers to this issue on its website - which I strongly believe it wouldn't do if there was a suggestion that the link between ff and SIDS was 'highly speculative'. here

With regard to SIDS, it took the FSID quite a long time to judge the evidence for a link between SIDS and ff was strong enough for them to publicise it. They are a fairly conservative orgaisation, and mindful (justifiably) of the potential effect on bereaved families of everything they say. Other SIDS support and research groups publicised the link for many years before the UK one, and 'ours' waited for more and better quality research. No one suggests ff is a single cause of SIDS, but actually, nothing else is, either. It's likely to be multi-factorial with some of the causes working together.

Diabetes organisations round the world have a similar difference - and there are different ideas about how strong the association is for the mother (developing diabetes later) and for the infant. However, the balance of the research - the good quality, controlled stuff as well as the less good stuff - is all one way, in favour of bf.

I think our job here is done Captain....

I am expecting a Glenn-Close-in-Fatal-Attraction-bobbing-up-in-bath late return, though, sabire....

Yes Harpy you have been arguing with yourself, Tik Tok and sabire have been trying, apart from one or two, very slight and totally understandable lapses, to have a discussion not an arguement. In fact I think they've both remained remarkably calm in the face of the type of meanspirited petty unpleasantness I thought we'd all left behind at school.

As for 'Kindly don't involve yourself please', I didn't involve myself, you involved me, by turing an open discussion in what is normally a helpful and positive forum into somekind of low level personal war.