Ive just very dramatically stormed out of a session on weaning peddled by my local PCT. Apart from being incredibly proscriptive about what we 'must' and 'must not' do, to the point of parading round with different pots of mush of the consistency we 'must not' offer until particular weeks/months old. When I asked about baby led weaning they said they could offer individual advice but couldn't teach to the group, then basically said we 'must not' offer finger food until 8 months... I'll prob post this in Weaning too, but the thing that disgusted me most:
One woman expressed concern about her BM supply dropping since introducing solids. Their response; "yes, that's what happens until it eventually dries up then you can stop"!! This line delivered as if everyone wants to stop ASAP after the introduction of solids.
Somehow talk came round to night feeds. Their take on this; "babies don't need milk at night. If you feed them at night you're encouraging bad habits" - I'm paraphrasing but they then went on to suggest we let the baby 'cry it out' if they look like they want feeding at night!
At this point I did a bit of a 'woah woah woah there' and asked if they were advocating not responding to our babies' physical and emotional needs, pointing out that feeding my baby back to sleep takes 5 mins but 'leaving him to settle' would result in a psychologically damaging hour of screaming until he makes himself sick, their response; "it won't be an hour every night"!!!
I said that feeding is about so much more than nutrition in what are still very tiny babies, and they trotted out an appalling analogy that "if your husband made you a meal in the middle of the night you'd eat it then expect it every night'... WTF???
What bothers me most is that I know enough to dismiss it as tosh, but there were women there clearly taking it as gospel. Should I complain officially do you think? They run this session every 2 weeks so lord knows how many women are feeling terrible about not following their ridiculous regime!