To feel annoyed trees were cut down to print this anti-breastfeeding article

[cherrymama]

In the latest edition of Mother and Baby magazine (I bought it for the free gift) the deputy editor has an article about breastfeeding. In it she says that she "couldn't be fagged" to breastfeed and that breastfeeding her newborn using breasts that had previously been used for sex would feel "creepy". And that even the health benefits of breastfeeding "wouldn't induce her to stick her nipple in her bawling baby's mouth."

I think her attitude is horrible! I understand many people try to breastfeed and don't manage, but to say that it is creepy is another thing.

"I am so glad somebody has written about us, the silent majority who are neither ignorant, desperately ill, tried but couldn`t manage nor lazy"

Fewer than 1 in 4 women choose not to initiate breastfeeding in the UK. You are not part of a majority, but rather part of a minority. Most women who choose not to initiate breastfeeding are a) very young b) and/or are not well-educated c) come from communities where rates of breastfeeding are VERY low. This isn't my opinion - this information from the DOH Infant Feeding Survey, which involves 10,000 women and is done every five years. In my opinion women who have not been exposed to normal breastfeeding in their day to day life are simply unable to make a properly informed choice as to how they will feed their baby - their understanding and perception of how breastfeeding works and fits into the lives of mothers and babies will be distorted. It's like trying to decide whether you want to live in another country before you've ever visited it.

Hmmm.. I do kind of agree with you actually, giveittome...I don`t suppose I ever was exposed to breastfeeding before I became pregnant. I was the first one out of my friends to be pregnant too. Also, your post has started me wondering if I was having a little teenagey sort of rebellion at my mother who was VERY, VERY pro BF. I have always shied away from even thinking about why I FF and told myself, and others, my reasons were private. Am not sure now but am off to have a long think.

Hmmm.. I do kind of agree with you actually, giveittome...I don`t suppose I ever was exposed to breastfeeding before I became pregnant. I was the first one out of my friends to be pregnant too. Also, your post has started me wondering if I was having a little teenagey sort of rebellion at my mother who was VERY, VERY pro BF. I have always shied away from even thinking about why I FF and told myself, and others, my reasons were private. Am not sure now but am off to have a long think.

Sorry, no idea how that happened. posted twice.

My parents live in an area where breast feeding rates are very very low,and women tend to have babies quite young,and there can be an attitude there that bf is a bit disgusting and that ff is modern and progressive,so a 20 year old,living there and thinking of bf,reading that stupid article,would be very easily swayed onto formula.

motherlovebone: "lucky you are in 2010 then chuck, or your refusal would be infantacide."

For heaven's sake. Completely unnecessary and ridiculously irrelevant thing to say. The topic is already fraught and emotional enough (as evidenced by this really interesting thread) - no need to throw this sort comment into the mix. It is 2010 so this means nothing. It's just a way to be needlessly incendiary.

Well I have found this whole thread very interesting.

Haven't read the entire thread but just wanted to chime in re the 'wasn't able to breastfeed' brigade: According to my mum (GP, so she should be up on all the literature) there is only one condition - something related to the pituatary (sp? - it's late at night in the States....) gland - that makes breastfeeding impossible for the mother. This condition is extremely, extremely rare - 99% of all mums will be able to breastfeed, if given the right support.

Breastfeeding was so difficult for me with my first that we express fed through a tube for the first three weeks of DS's life. Hardest thing I've ever done - physically, emotionally, psychologically....

But if you keep on going (and keep on going, and keep on going some more...) you really can do it. We all can.

@crisproll.

I like your honesty. Not easy an easy thing on a judgemental thread like this. Your a brave lady.

It sounds like an irresponsible article and one in which the deputy editor is belittling having a baby - surely babies can have a bit of space before their parents are at it like rabbits again!

I came from a BFing family where a granny blamed bottle feeding for my uncle being a hardwork family, and my mum BF all of us.

I grew up thinking that FFing was 'common' and it didn't occur to me not to BF. I also had always lived in areas where everyone BF...I never saw anyone using a bottle with a baby.

This is the easiest starting point to BF successfully; where you expect to do it, see everyone doing it and therefore assume its easy.

OK, it hurt more than expected but I had no idea what to do with bottles and our girls were both born at hot times of the year and I was terrified that - with anything other than BFing they would die!

But I completely comprehend that if you grow up in the opposite culture, with MILs/friends going on about 4 hour feeds and suggesting that 'if you give baby a bottle, you can leave him/her with me for an afternoon', BFing is doomed from the start.

MumNWLondon I'm 31 my mum said I was the first of hers to be on formula (SMA) as that was the first and had just come out at the time, she had my sister 7 years earlier who got the Carnation and brown sugar.

Obesity? you get your facts right, before the introduction of formula milk 30 odd years ago, carnation was what kids got, what lasting harm has it done to all those people?, none at all, obesity is a modern day problem caused by greedy people not caring what they eat and stuffing themselves, it's predominantly a UK/US problem as well.

All this promotion of breast feeding via fear and the attempts to make women feel guilty or less of a women for not doing it needs to stop this is 2010, we don't live in the third world our kids are not dropping dead all the time and it is our right to choose without interference from busybodies.

There are more important things to worry about peoples long term health then what milk they had for a few months, such as what effect the cocktail of 300+ pesticides used today is having, the pollution from cars and planes, the effects of having so many immunisations at once and the effects all this microwave technology could be having on the human body (no doubt at least half of you are using Wi-Fi).

"carnation was what kids got, what lasting harm has it done to all those people?, none at all"

Err - you know this do you?

The need for the majority of the population to seek out medical input on multiple occasions throughout life doesn't suggest to me a country where everyone enjoys perfect health.

"There are more important things to worry about peoples long term health then what milk they had for a few months"

If there's research showing higher rates of arterial stiffness and lower IQ in adolescents ff as babies then I think it's probably reasonable to assume that feeding an infant a physiologically normal diet (ie, human milk) during the months of fastest growth may well have a global and long lasting impact on development.

It is also important to remember that there is no independently verified information available about formula milk, its ingredients, etc because the formula companies carefully control the information THEY release. Their sole aim is to increase sales of their product. The only way they can do this is to encorage more women not to breastfeed. Because of the WHO Code, they are not allowed to advertise breastmilk substitutes for babies under 6 months, so they have to be very careful in how they promote their formula. So they actively undermine breastfeeding by targetting healthcare workers, magazines, advertising follow on milk in baby bottles instead of cups (not allowed), etc etc. For more information see www.babymilkaction.org/index.html

So you think a low IQ is more worrying then eating a cocktail of pesticides?.

It is a mothers choice what she feeds her baby and she should not feel under any pressure from anyone, we do not go lecturing adults about what they are eating so why have the BF police putting pressure on people, there are many parts of modern life that are not good for us or not as good for us as living off organic veg, living in the countryside and walking everywhere, are you going to live your life to the dictation of medical studies or are you going to do what you feel comfitable doing?.

I'm not anti-breast feeding I am pro choice without interference.

Babymilkaction.org sounds very unbiased doesn't it.

Let me tell you something I spent 41 weeks feeling under pressure from the breast feeding police, all the midwifes, anti-natal classes going on about it and how formula was evil, making me feel like a freak, like there was something wrong with me for not wanting to BF.

You know what happened in the end?, an emergency C-section, I didn't start lactating until 4 days later and DS had a condition called tongue tie, he had a 100% tongue tie meaning his tongue was totally anchored to the bottom of his mouth, he got that sorted out 3 weeks later but you know what, when he came out all the pressure about BF stopped they where just happy if they could get something inside him as he had trouble because of the tongue.

It made me angry, angry that for 41 weeks I had been made to feel like there was something wrong with me because I didn't want to BF, made me angry for the weeks of upset and made me angry because in the end he wasn't an option anyway.

No one should feel pressured or bullied into breast feeding, no one should be made to feel like there is something wrong with them if they don't want to do it, it is a womens choice and no one else's business how she feeds her kids.

Ryoko, I think it would help if you informed yourself a bit more on the issues. It's fine to feel strongly about things, but you also need to know what you're talking about. Using your own experience or your family's experience only can mislead you - your mum may have been the first to use formula among her circle, but formula has been around in the UK for about 130 years, and in fairly widespread use as National Dried Milk since WW2 (I think this will be the powdered milk your dp was fed on as a baby, thesecondcoming - it existed until the late 1960s I think). About 50 years ago, 'modified formula' came in, where the protein content was changed. In the US, formula was more widespread, more quickly.
We have a massive body of knowledge on the ill-effects of not breastfeeding - not to breastfeed has risks, whether it is Carnation, dried powdered milk, formula.

Women should know these things as part of making a decision. They have a right to decide that the risks are not important to them, because (I believe) mothers should be able to decide how to use their own bodies.

Pesticides are a concern for everyone, but they are also a concern related to the polluted cows who eat the polluted grass....and that's where formula (and all other cows milk products) comes from.

There is a good body of respected science on the presence of environmental toxins in milk and none of the work suggests babies would be better off avoiding breastmilk - not sure if you were suggesting this.

The diet of a human being in the first months of life is important - the baby gets no other form of nourishment, and this is a time of the most rapid organ and body growth. The baby will never depend on good nutrition more, ever in his life. Other aspects - junk foods, for instance - are important too, but babies are uniquely vulnerable as they are totally dependent on one food source only, provided for them. I am not sure why you would deride these facts.

No, YANBU at all imo, OP. As tons of posters here have already said.. freedom of speech and all that but...

a) this is a parenting mag
and b) she's the deputy ed

and because of that her opinion will hold more weight with many of their readers than if it were, for instance, a reader writing in M&B letters page or even a random journalist writing in the Daily Mail.

IF, BF was the most popular method of feeding, mothers got all the support they needed to BF, public BF was perfectly acceptable, and BF mothers didn't get negative comments from friends and family about their choice then articles like this would not matter quite so much.

Until we've reached the point of mass acceptance of BF then imo parenting magazines do have a responsibility to mothers and babies to present the facts rather than drivel perpetuating some of the negative beliefs (e.g. it is a bit creepy - which is the reaction I've had from people when BF after 6m) and myths about BF (e.g. BF makes your breasts droop and you can't drink alcohol).

Ryoko, who told you formula was 'evil'? Who told you you were a 'freak'? Are you not protesting too much, over-dramatising? And you had this for 41 weeks? From the second you were pregnant? Amazing.

It is a concern when women don't breastfeed - not a personal, individual concern that excuses any personal, individual interference, of course, but as a public health concern, there is a great deal of money that could be saved if more babies were breastfed.So that's my, and your, taxes

Babymilk Action is not 'biased' - it is an organisation that focuses on baby milk. The clue is in the name. You might as well complain that the RSPCA is 'biased' 'cos it only focusses on cruelty to animals, or that Mencap is "biased' because it does not focus on physical disability.

Oh and a personal story illustrating why it is important how BF is viewed:

I was strongly advised to mix-feed DS1 when he was 2 days old (still in hospital) due to high sodium levels/dehydration due to a late pg issue.

BF was super-important to me so I stood my ground with the (male) consultant and my DH (who by then was in a real state about the traumatic birth/health of DS) and kept asking for support to treat the problem via exclusive BF. The impression I got was very much that the benefits of BF were very much secondary to quickly and easily 'fixing' the problem via FF.

Finally, after I got a (female) doctor onside, they gave me 'permission' to continue BF thru that night and to review it in the morning.

That morning, the midwife on duty said I was right to have not given him formula as the amounts they were suggesting would have very likely resulted in DS stopping BF. She supported me in doing 3 hourly expressing and cup-feeding/BF and within a day his sodium levels were fine and we were discharged. I went onto BF him for 14 months.

It still makes me sad to think that a similar situation is played out all over the country with a very different result purely because BF isn't deemed as important enough to retain when possible.

Yes pretty much 41 weeks, from the literature given to expectant mums, the GP, the midwifes and the classes as I said.

Also as I said there are many things which are not good for us that we still do, there are many things which are not bad for us but not as good as other things, Formula milk is one of those things, it is not bad for babies it is simply not as good.

Is that a reason to make mothers feel under pressure to BF no, leave people alone to make there own choice.

Ryoko - and you were told formula was evil and you were a freak by these GPs, midwives, classes and leaflets?

How odd.

Sorry, on a roll and can't shut up now...

In every class/group DS and I attended, I was usually the only one BF (sometimes there was 1 other) and after 9 months I was always the only one.

To me, that makes it very hard to understand why greater acceptance of the choice to FF (if that's what this article is aiming to do) is needed. Most babies are FF - surely that makes it and the reasons for doing it, normal and acceptable to 'society'.

Oh and we live in an area that should be a high % of BF according to the demographic.

I am 35, born in 1974.

My mum was desperate to BF. She was guided in hospital towards 4 hourly routine and told that if I couldn't last 4 hours (with 15 miins on eachs side) it was because she didn't have enough milk. At 6 weeks I was screaming and she was advised by my MIL, a GP that she was starving me and I would do better on bottles. I was given evaporated milk - my Dad is also a GP so they would have followed the best medical guidance at the time. I was also given solids at 8 weeks.

I am very glad women are not treated like that anymore! re: IQ, I have done well academically better than my siblings who were all EBF.

Well where I am they made out that formula is evil and wrong and everyone should breast feed.

the Anti-natal class was the worst as they also decided disposable nappies are evil too, there was no advice at all about formula feeding it was all breast feeding advice and they didn't even show you how to put a nappy on a baby it was all about how evil disposables are to the environment and how we should all use washables to be exact they where waxing lyrical about how great Bum Genius are.

I use disposables, It was pretty clear they must have been on the pay roll of this Bum Genius brand I don't even know any other brand names of eco nappies and clearly that one has stuck in my head so maybe a few fools in there may have been suckered into buying em who knows.

Perhaps it had something to do with it being a middle class area, I see BF as a middle class thing as they can afford to spend 6 months or so sitting around at home feeding the young and they can afford eco nappies.

Ryoko - your posts are increasingly those of a victim mentality.

I'll say it now - I don't believe anyone said to you that formula is 'evil'. They may have explained the effects of formula in a way that made you feel uncomfortable and pressured - that's not good. But 'evil'? I expect you are now accepting that you misremembered being called a 'freak'.

The breastfeeding class may not have given you advice on formula feeding - why would it? It was a breastfeeding class. They probably didn't teach flower arranging or accountancy for beginners, either.

I don't understand why you would need to be shown how to put a nappy on in a class, while you were still pregnant. It's the sort of thing learnt in about 30 seconds with a real baby, at the time you need to know about it!

If you felt they were pushing one brand, and not declaring a commercial interest, then of course you should complain.