Breastfeeding in the Tesco baby club magazine

[Bumperlicious]

Just sorting my recycling out and had a quick peruse of the Tesco baby club magazine (0-3 months) and they had 3 real mums discuss their breastfeeding experiences. All discussed how hard it is and it appears that one stopped at 2 days, one at 5 months (also using ebm) and one had a 10 week old mix fed from 3 weeks.

I'm disappointed they did not offer a more balanced view & did not include anyone who had exclusively breast fed for 6 months, let alone breast fed at all beyond 6 months.

I appreciate breastfeeding is hard (I've found it really hard) but we need to see that it can be done, and is completely normal.

I have emailed them my view & suggested it would have been good to include details of breastfeeding support groups, but I don't expect a response.

Ahh but then they would sell less formula milk, bottles and other related paraphenalia.

When the Sainsbury baby club magazine did a similar article about 6 months ago, I was pleasantly surprised at how well balanced it was. They did feature a mum who bfed for about a year, i think possibly more! Maybe they sell more cakes to bf mums!

The supermarkets have similarly unbalanced discussions of sleeping issues. I read one in Sainsbury's that discussed controlled crying - the mum of a 3 month old was against it, but the mum of a 4 month old who had used it successfully was the one for it. :( There was no mention of the fact that it shouldn't be used under 6 months.

I don't think they're very responsible. And exclusive bf for 6 months is a bad thing from supermarket's point of view when you could be selling weaning foods from 4 months.

Yes, I read a similar article on weaning. Although it did say at the top about the guidelines being 26 weeks, all of the mums featured weaned at 4 months.

Oh I know exactly what you mean. I start to get all cross when I read these so I throw them away before I get on my high horse and chew DH's ear off about it

Even the clubcard vouchers you get are all extra points/money off weaning foods. Well thanks, but it was absolutely no use to me in the 3-6 month mag when I was waiting until 6 months to start introducing solids. We're doing BLW anyway, so it still doesn't help. Why not give us some pennies off bibs or spoons, or a cup instead?

And all the vouchers for nappies, when I'm mostly trying to use reusables. I know they're not to know that, and they keep throwing the offers at me in order to get me to buy the stuff I'm not interested in, but still. The baby club stuff goes in the recycling pretty swiftish here.

Oh yeah, don't get me started on routines. They had a woman doing Gina Ford 'i even breastfeed for as long as she tells me' but at least they had two others including a 'go with the flow' person for balance.

I bought the Gina Ford book after it came highly recommended in the magazine I got with the Newborn Bounty pack...

See, these things do have an influence and anyone who says otherwise as people often do on here should thing about why they make these magazines & why advertising is such a lucrative business!