breast is best

[Haitch27]

Is anyone else who is pregnant sick to the back bloody teeth of the 'breast is best' campaign being shoved down your throat everywhere you turn and being badgered by health carers to attend breastfeeding 'workshops'?? Maybe its just where I live but it seems to be everywhere yet the one thing no one says is "are you planning to breastfeed"? Assumption that all Mums will!!
Curious to know as I said if it is just my area or is it everywhere?

Round here there are posters up saying "Local mum So-&-So is a Star. She's breast feeding baby Whoever because she knows it's giving her the best possible start blah blah blah. Be a star blah blah".

So are mums who don't breast feed inferior then?

[dons tin hat]

IMO the 'breast is best' campaign should be promoted.

It sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder about it.

Mums who don't breastfeed aren't inferior though the milk their children receive is. That 'star' campaign sounds atrocious though and badly thought out.

It does need to be promoted and supported at the other end of the process because it's fact and bfing rates in this country are woefully low.

i wish you health and happiness conngratulations on pg

feed your own child as you wish,ff or bf.love your baby and be loved. do what works for you

I dont have a chip in my shoulder I just dont like people/campaigns being so pushy about anything, most adults are intelligent enough to seek advice/info if they need it not to have endless leaflets thrown at them.
It should be promoted but not so 'in your face'.
That 'star' campaign is a disgrace and no one should be made to feel inferior for an informed decision they make.
You say Bfeeding rates are 'woefully low' in this country but I have found from talking to friends its pretty much even across the board which is not woefully low!!

Thanks scottishmummy appreciated!! x

I'm afraid your survey of your friends doesn't match the official figures. Just one for you....

"Overall, only 35 per cent of UK babies are being exclusively breastfed at one week, 21 per cent at six weeks, 7 per cent at four months and 3 per cent at five months."

That's desperately low actually. And it isn't an informed decision if the information isn't out there. I'm all for informed decisions but most women don't know the truth, haven't researched and many desperately wanted to bfeed but can't because of misinformation and lack of support.

It would be nice if a woman who wants/needs the support can find it as and when. But believe me, you are talking to a woman who begged for help in hospital with a newborn and was told to 'just give her a bottle'. Now those leaflets that I got before birth were all I had and thank God because I wouldn't have been one of the 3% feeding at 5 months, or 1% feeding at 6 months if I hadn't been able to find a breastfeeding counsellor.

The message that you feel is being shoved down your throat is not getting through.

Wahey tits.

I prefer "Every Breastfeed Makes a Difference"

Bertie me too. More manageable, less daunting, actually more factual.

Those figures are from unicef btw if you're interested.

I would disagree ShowOfHands - I think the message is getting through, I think that most mums know breast is best and want to breastfeed, the initiation rates are quite high - about 75%? But they drop off very quickly as you say. Most problems experienced in the early days can be solved or avoided with proper support - which is not to say that mums who don't get that support are doing something wrong, but the huge volumes of mums stopping breastfeeding early on indicates to me that the support is not widely enough available or made obvious enough.

Midwives saying "Just give him a bottle" in the hospital are not helping Neither are health visitors who advise topping up the minute a baby deviates slightly from the 50th centile

Oops sorry crossposted there. I was disagreeing with your statement that the "Breast is best" message is not getting through.

Bertie, no I agree entirely. I meant the message wasn't getting through across the board: to hcps in particular. It's the support that needs to be there, oh I completely agree. You can stick as many posters up as you like but until you balance it with the same effort put into supporting women and balancing out the misinformation that's commonly bandied about then you're not achieving anything.

But I do think more honesty is needed before you start, while pregnant so that you do know the truth. Because if you know about the myths, the behaviour of bfed babies, the norms, the expectations, what is normal, then you have something to challenge the dozy hcp with their infernal top ups. Best if the infernal hcp wasn't so badly informed themselves but while it's happening, we should all be talking honestly about the reality of bfing.

Verity I really am very sorry you feel that way and that you couldn't feed and of course you are sensitive to the posters and see them everywhere but they're not being rammed down your throat and they don't exist to make you feel bad. They're fighting to improve bfing rates. Of course a small number of women cannot bfeed and no they shouldn't be made to feel bad about something they cannot control but we can't hide all bfing promotion and information due to that.

I've had people tell me that the reason DS2 has SN is because I stopped bf him at 3 months. Because I was being put on anti-seizure medication. Which meant I couldn't feed him. Nothing to do with the fact that I should have started on the tablets when he was 2 weeks old, and delayed it for another 10 weeks. And if that was truly the case, that me not bf him past 3 months 'caused' him to have SN, then what's their reasoning for DD? Who has greater SN than DS2 and was bf till 1yo??? Tis all guff and blow. Yes breast is best, but you can't beat yourself up (or let anyone else!) about stopping for whatever reason. Or choosing not to in the first place. It's not like anyone's DC is going to DIE through being ff, is it??

where was that article about a survey in scotland where women would stop/not start BFing because they felt that they were being pushed into it by midwives... [off to google]

Loudlass there are actually over 1 million formula related deaths world wide every year and they aren't only in developing countries. [http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/113/5/e435 here] is research into infant deaths in the US

WOW - showofhands - those figures are way lower than what I thought.

I agree, they do go on and on a little too much about it.

I DID BF my son for over a year but I still felt annoyed by the HV asking me about it when he was little. Got lectures about it even though I was doing it - massively annoying. Then I was told [by HV] my son was more likely to die of cot death because he slept in his own room. I told her not to bother coming back after that.

They go "on and on" because the BF rates in the UK are woefully low.

That being said I agree with the poster who said that whilst a woman who FF is not inferior she must accept that the milk that hse gives her child is.

Obviously there are a small number of woman who cannot BF (I was one: I was only able to BF DC2 for 6 weeks having BF DC for 10 months) but they are in the minority and certainly don't account for the fact that 97% don't BF at 5 months.

BF should be encouraged and mothers should be supported. I have absolutely no problem with that.

Has anyone noticed the more subtle approach to put people off ff? When DD was born, I received all the usual bumf, and inside, a pamphlet on ff.

On the front cover, all bottles and cleaning equipment. This continues through the whole thing. No babies at all. So, the message is: ff is clinical and you will spend a lot of time away from your baby cleaning and preparing milk.

The posters which seek to encourage those who chose not to breast feed (I anticipate they are not aimed at those who cannot), are IMO, quite patronising to those (like me) who simply choose to bf and get on with it quietly without any trouble. I am not a star, I am just a mum. I bf because it suits me and the baby just fine, and we both enjoy it also. I don't want or need praise or recognition.

I am with those who support additional support for those who are decided to bf, who then struggle, to help them make it. Trying to change someone's mind, who does not want to bf for their own reasons, is wasting valuable resources which could be spent on helping those who really do, but struggle.

The posters irritate me, too, despite being very pro-feeding. Putting up posters is an easily measurable thing to do in order to tick a box saying that breastfeeding is being encouraged, when in reality a poster is zero support to a woman with soreness and a screaming baby in the wee small hours of the morning.

Poster with phone number of breastfeeding counsellor, or suggesting latching positions, or strategies for dealing with sleep deprivation - all great. I would really like to see posters in maternity wards explaining the early stages - what colostrum does, what happens when milk comes in, etc.

I am not fond of the saintly breastfeeder poster, nor the guilt trippy ones, because they leave women with a sense that they can't possibly measure up. In the fraught early days, it's a very short step to "This isn't like poster at all, I must not be cut out for this, I give up."

When my first was a fortnight old, I saw a cartoon depicting a breastfeeding mum sitting in a very messy room. The baby was wailing loudly with tears rolling down her face, and so was the mum. It was so funny and so true. I found that so much more encouraging than the posters that invited me to compare myself with ubermums.

bf rates are woefully low. The posters are not just to target you and your friends. They are also to target the wider community. Hopefully they will also have an impact on the elderly population who lived through the 'formula is much better' advertising that used to be around in the good old days and stop them putting preasure on the younger women in their family who want to bf. The posters are also seen by younger people who may not become parents for another 20 years and it may put the idea in their head that even though formula feeding is the social norm, they will bf their child. They are a very very blunt, crude tool but its hopelessly naive to say 'no-one makes up their mind because they have seen a poster'. People have been glancing at these posters for years and years and they do shape peoples decisions. Thats what marketing is.

I agree with other posters who have said that its an easy way for the pct to say they are encouraging bf whilst doing nothing real or constructive. There should be more actual info on things such as supply and demand as there are still a lot of people who think that they will run out of milk if they feed too much. Maybe there should be a series of old wives tales are bollocks posters as well.