To demand a harder hitting campaign to promote breastfeeding?

[WashwithCare]

I?m sometimes taken aback to hear mothers gave up bf-ing because it was sore, or involved feeding for hours at a time? What did they expect? What did they think newborns do? Didn?t they imagine that anything chewing on your nipple for 10 hours a day was going to nip a bit?

But then again, who can blame them? Breastfeeding for the minimum WHO recommendation of 2 years is practically unheard of. Nearly everyone will tell you it?s absolutely your decision, and fine to stop. The public info campaign is fluffy and vague about the benefits, and the baby on the follow-on formula milk box looks decidedly peachy. Lots of women are so mis-informed, they believe that formula is almost as good as breastmilk.

Is it time for something a little harder hitting? How about this for a tv ad; (scene 1) mum feeding her newborn a bottle telling her mate how hard bf-ing was. Caption: Breastfeeding Hurts. (scene 2) same mum, but now older, bald and sick, hugs toddler. Caption: So does breast cancer. FADE to caption: "Breastfeeding significantly Reduces your Life Time Risk of Breast Cancer". Followed by cheesy inspirational slogan.

Ps above post in response to gaelicsheep's comments on WWC's statement that it was 'good' I felt pressure to continue to bf

What information did you want about formula? THey are all pretty similar I believe in ingredients and what make give one baby wind might not another and so on.

Sorry LittleMrsHappy - but according to NHS Direct:

"Babies who are bottle fed using formula milk are more likely to develop illnesses, such as diarrhoea, or a chest, ear, or urine, infection. There is also an increased risk of premature babies who are bottle fed developing a rare, but serious condition called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), where the intestines are damaged due to infection and a poor blood supply"

Note: are more likely to be ill. Not may be more likely to be ill.

But do feel free to carry on banging your head against that wall.

"you call this support to breastfeeding both of you need your heads examining"

I think we'd probably call it a debate because that's what it is.

Although the way you express yourself, it might be more accurate to call it a bad tempered squabble.

Oh gosh LIttleMrsHappy...

'Breastfeeding doesn't guarantee you full protection against SIDS, breast cancer, leukemia, ear infections, diarrhoeal infections or anything else.

But it DOES cut rates of all of these things'

is the same as saying BFing MAY protect against.....

I can't help you interpret the language other posters have used, but believe me when I say that no-one is citing any of this as fact.

Also, you've attributed a post to me that was not mine, it was actually Carmen's. Please read more carefully if you want to take part in a debate.

'you smoke to excess, you can get associated problems and also lung caner, these are proven, AND ARE NOT theories! (please look u the deintion fo this please)'

Good grief, more nonsense! Firstly, smoking AT ALL is linked with illness, not just smoking to excess! Secondly, the point I made earlier, which you have misunderstood, is that for many years, smoking was believed to be linked with lung cancer, there was no conclusive evidence. It takes time for the scientists to gather the evidence. Now, the link between smoking and lung cancer is pretty irrefutable BUT some smokers still avoid serious illnesses. It can never be called a fact that smoking causes lung cancer!

Everyone is entitled to take part in a debate but if interpreting scientific data is not your strong point, just admit it! I have!

[shocked] [shocked]

Well, to my utmost shame I have now read some of the first few posts by the op. I committed the cardinal sin of reading the last few and posted after reading the comments about nazis.

I detract my posts as I do not in any way want to be seen to be in sympathy or agreement with the op.

A personal apology to you, Littlemisshappy. No wonder you were so upset but such twattishness.

I swear on mumnset that in future I will always read more than just the last few posts before wading in.

Breastcancer.org has some interesting articles on this.

Might be worth a read

www.breastcancer.org/risk/new_research/20090810.jsp

Sorry, still can't do linky things, still a SAHM, still got shit for brains.

by such twattiness not but

In general carrots work better than sticks, and campaigners would probably do better to focus on normalising breastfeeding, supporting mothers and attempting to persuade the large chunk of the public that there is nothing "ick" about it (bearing in mind that the target audience for the last is not in general mothers) rather than making out that ff is just terrible, because it isn't, it almost certainly is sub-optimal nutritionally and in terms of the immune system, and formula companies should be stopped from making out it is a wonderful thing, but most of our generation were ff, so if you are healthy yourself the message that it is terrible really doesn't work very well - the link just isn't close enough in most people's minds.

The OP certainly suggested that it was a known certainty that the mother in her advert who found b-feeding hard would be dying aka Jade Goody a year or so later, and that if only she had breastfed she would be just fine. Which is a)not true, and b)incredibly emotive. The majority of cases of breast cancer occur in the over 50s, it's really quite uncommon in women under 35 - a more accurate advert would have the same woman with a grandchild, by which time many many other factors would have affected her personal life time risk. You can't use population risk and translate it to an individual like that unless the risk is very closely linked (like smoking and lung cancer).

mrsbean, you said: 'There have been terribly patronising statements made on this thread e.g. it's terrible that LMH "FELT" she had no choice but to ff.'

I don't know if this was in response to my post?

I said to LittleMrs: 'I understand why you felt you didn't have a choice in how to feed your son'

If that's offensive or patronising, then I'm just baffled, I'm afraid. Maybe you weren't addressing me though. I'd be interested to know.

My son is on a soys based prescription milk,BUT milk protein and soya protein can go hand in hand, atm he is showing signs that this is the case with him, their are many many other milks out their that he should be trying to see if it suits him more, but as he is on the cheaper one, they want to stick to this and if he gets worse then they will change the milk.

their is milks out their that he NEEDS to try but due to expense and the breast is best campaign they are not allowed to talk about the difference and also say these milks can be better for him.

Nutramigen, Neocate and Pregestimil these are the ones he NEEDS to try but are more expensive and also soya and milk free.

anyway, I am ignoring all the other comments, cant be arsed anymore with it.

Have you tried starting a thread on allergy section or a new thread here about your son? THere are lots of knowledgable people here who could help.

The OP certainly suggested that it was a known certainty that the mother in her advert who found b-feeding hard would be dying aka Jade Goody a year or so later, and that if only she had breastfed she would be just fine. Which is a)not true, and b)incredibly emotive.

Don't be silly. I didn't say it was a certainty - the caption at the end gives an accurate statment about risk. It is a possible scenario used for dramatic effect, and it could be true.

If you are going to design an advert to put people off something, you clearly pick a worse case scenario. If you wanted to put people off smoking, would you pick a healthy looking 90 year old telling you he'd smoked 90 a day? That is possible. Or would you pick a young family man croacking his last while his wife and kids looked on? Well, exactly.

Waswithcare...if you really want to help...go out and support mothers trying to breastfeed.There aren't enough people around to offer support.
Also re Breast Cancer comment...utterly stupid.and you have dome yourself no favours.
I bottle fed by the way.

Little Miss Happy - I'm confused - you say your son is allergic to milk? And he needs nutramigen?

You mean he's allergic to cow milk? It's not really possible for your baby to be allergic to his own mother's milk. He may be allergic to proteins that you have ingested - so, for example, if you are drinking cow milk, that would affect your breastmilk.

My understanding is that babies stand a better chance of growing out of allergies to cow milk if they are breastfed, so if this is the case, extended feeding would have been beneficial.

It is a big shame if you given up bf-ing because you didn't understand how to deal with your son's allergy.

Sorry - should have said, if that is the case, what you needed to do was limit your diet to exclude cow milk and possibly other foods so that you couldn't pass these on to baby. It wasnt' necessary to stop breastfeeding.

washwithcare - you are a twat. I don't care if this gets deleted but you are one of the nastiest posters I've ever come across on mumsnet. Shame on you.

But how can you equate the health risks of smoking heavily with formula feeding?

We all know that the evidence shows it is better nutritionally and developmentally for babies to be breastfed. I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that that isn't the case.

HOWEVER, the fact is that the vast majority of western babies do just fine on formula.

And WWC you never answered my post on how you would react to people making judgemental comments about working mothers. I would be really interested in your response if you can be bothered to find the post. I think it's probably a few pages back now.

Rainbowinthesky - was that some sort of attempt at black humour

I'm not going to report your post... I'm not your mother!

No one is equating the health risk of smoking and ff-ing, are they?

I think it is very arrogant and complacent to say the majority of babies do just dandy on FF-ing. The evidence doesnt' support this. It says they get sicker more often.

I missed the comments about working mothers - most of the evidence for negative impact is around group child care and long working hours, afaik. Not sure what you're getting at though?

I completely agree with nooka's post at 20.04.

WWC, the majority of Western babies do do fine on formula. A small minority will suffer from something that they perhaps wouldn't have if they had been breastfed.

just catching up but I was wondering about these statistics

"by day 10 most new mums have given up."
"by 6 mths only 1% of mums are ebf..."

How can that be, that would be only something like 3,500 women in all of the UK are exclusively breastfeeding after six months. I find that impossible to belive.

sorry, more like 7,000, I think, but still impossible to believe.

Still ignoring my posts then WWC? I'll take it to mean that you don't have a ready rebuff. I'm hurt that you can't be bothered to even pass comment though. It's quite rude actually, considering how many old wounds this thread has opened up for me. And here's me sharing my very personal experiences in the hope that it might help make for a more balanced debate. No more.

The evidence does say that ff babies get sicker more often, but that doesn't change the fact that the majority of ff babies do just fine. If ff babies were all dropping like flies then obviously no-one would choose that feeding method. The evidence shows that ff babies are more likely to suffer from glue ear - that doesn't mean it's common. I've never met a baby with glue ear. My point is if an ailment is very rare, then even if a ff baby is twice as likely to get it, they still probably won't.

My question to you is on page 28 WWC. I really would be interested to see your response.