BREAST FEEDING AS A SUBJECT IN SCHOOLS?

[GEM33]

Hi, I'm not a political person, I'm not intellectual, I'm not a hippy type or radical about anything. I consider myself to be an average jo. I dont have a problem with people who have to formula feed, however recently, I am getting on my high horse about breast feeding.

When I was pregnant I decided I would ebf mainly because my mum ebfd me and we are told breast is best. Other than this I knew nothing about bf. I think in my life (other than my mum) I only recall ever seeing maybe 2 women bf in public.

Baby arrived, the midwife shoved her on my boob, without waiting to give me chance to go step by step how to do it. I ended up with a bad latch, massive cracked nipple and thrush. After seeing several mid wives, I went to a lactation consultant who showed me how to latch on properly (11 weeks old).

Ive now been bf'ing for nearly 10 months and have found that in my area there are only a handful of other bf'ing mums.

My issues are to do with attitudes and knowledge/ I now get comments from people,
ooh is she getting enough now shouldn't she be on a bottle?.
Or,
urgh, youre STILL bf'ing?
I have met soooo many mothers who say, "oh my god bf'ing no way thats disgusting" or
'my baby was premature my milk didnt come in \or
I tried but I stopped bf'ing because I had a hungry baby it fed all the time.

I had a meeting with work recently about my return and the overall impression given was, well, youre baby is on solids now, as if why bother with the bf'ing and a complete lack of knowledge, I was told to ask my health visitor what times I should express my milk so I could tell work what times I need to express when I go back?!!!

This thread isn't about me personally, please dont comment about my rough start, Im over it. This thread isn't to make ffers feel bad and I'm not judging.

What its about is, how can a human basic function suckling young like all mammals do be so alien to some people, and so little knowledge about it?
we dont bat an eyelid seeing a sheep feeding its lamb, dog with puppies etc.
Aren't we going wrong somewhere if mothers are saying "urgh bf'ing yuk". Should we be teaching kids at school about b.fing or making it a part of the antenatal presentations and then when it comes to having a baby people can make an informed choice.?

Maybe this is just a problem within my area, I dont know?! I wish bf was seen as normal and not cause this odd feeling I get from most people as if its strange or family members thinking Im a possessive mother for wanting to bf.

[MrsMeeple]

I'm not in the UK, and here there are optional classes, which most new parents choose to attend, held at most hospitals with labour wards. The first session is about labour and what to expect, pain relieving options etc. The second is more about what to expect after labour and includes quite a lot of info about BF, latching etc.

I think this is a better way of doing it. School kids tend to go squirmy and having the boys tease the girls about their breasts, the likely consequence I see, isn't going to raise BF rates. Better to teach people when it's relevant and they are receptive to the information.

Then I think training healthcare professional about BF is WAY more important than talking to teenagers. A new mother needs support and good information more than a fuzzy memory of something way back when.

[MrsMeeple]

BTW: crackcrackcrak Sun 23-Sep-12 09:51:28

"Teaching bottle feeding in schools would make teaching about bf a bit pointless."

Where the h**l does this attitude come from? The "we can't teach people about FF or they won't BF" and "how DARE a company give out free bottles. Make FF the slightest bit easier, and a woman will give up."

I'm an intelligent well educated woman, and I had a really rough time with BF. I stuck it out and I'm glad I did. I also had bottles and formula at home, from supplementing early on. It didn't make me give up even after weeks of agony.

Teach people all their options, and let them make up their own minds. Fight the ignorance and bad attitudes against BF, but don't tell me it is helpful to try to remove the FF option. That's not going to help mothers, babies, or BF rates!


grrrr!

[DilysPrice]

New mothers do need good information, but it's really difficult to persevere if your siblings, friends and DP are constantly dripping "oh why don't I give her a bottle at night so you can sleep/we were all ff and it never did us any harm/OMG are you still bf your 2 month old!?". I think if fathers were better informed it would help a lot (and grandmothers, but schools can't really help with that)

[AThingInYourLife]

It is not the job of schools to fix all society's ills by teaching very specific lessons to children about things that various interest groups think they should know.

[TheFallenMadonna]

I am also a science teacher and refer to lactation in lessons on classification, reproduction and food.

I'm not sure how effective it would be as part of PSHCE, which is where I assume people would like to see it?

[CouthyMowWearingOrange]

I took my 10yo to the GP on Friday (he has a respiratory infection.)

The GP asked me to do a survey about coughs. One of the questions was had the child been BF at 3mo.

He had been, and I told the GP, but didn't see how it was relevant to a cough in a 10yo. GP said that the benefits of BF past 3 mo last at least 50 years!!

And I didn't know this despite having BF DD to 6mo, DS1 to 4mo, DS2 was spoon fed BM till 3mo (disabled, no sucking reflex), and DS3 was BF to 12mo.

So I am pleased that I DID bf, despite opposition with my first DC as I was so young.

It is more than likely that I BF because my mum BF my Dbro who is 10 years younger than me, and that my DD will BF because she saw me BF DS3 who is almost 13 years younger than her, and that my DS1 will want the mother of his DC's to BF because he has seen his SM extended BF his 3yo brother to 2.5yo, me BF DS3, and his SM bf his sister to date (9mo).

Just seems normal to me and my DC's.

I even got Judgy (in my head only though!) at an acquaintance bottle feeding her 3wo baby.

[TheFallenMadonna]

There is no immediacy to it, which is why I think it would be ineffective. Sex ed has immediacy. It is something they are thinking about!

[crackcrackcrak]

Mrsmeeple - in the same way that when kids learn about digestion they don't have a colostomy bag and or colonic irrigation suggested as alternative choices!

I love these threads - the total hysteria one can generate just by stating facts about biology is just staggering.

Bf is part of reproductive biology. Ff is a modern convenience product - it is not part of biology. For all we know ff may not even exist in 100 years time - it didn't exist in the past.

[crackcrackcrak]

And also mrsmeeple - Norway removed all ff advertising etc and a few other ff influences iirc and their rates shot up.

[Mydogsleepsonthebed]

I don't see hysteria

[BertieBotts]

Schools shouldn't be teaching about latch etc, that's utterly pointless and no I don't think it should be part of PSHE.

I think that it should be taught as part of biology/reproduction/the differences between species etc how mammalian milk production works, and not just briefly mentioned as in "Mammals produce milk for their young, which most will exist solely on until they can eat solid food" but things like a diagram of a breast with the milk ducts in (yes, very funny for teenagers, but I'm sure there's a diagram of a penis involved in sex education somewhere) explaining the supply-and-demand process, e.g. if the baby is breastfed successfully then more milk will continue to be made, if the baby is adopted, or dies, or the mother chooses to bottle feed then the milk supply will dry up, perhaps if there is more time then explaining how the supply changes as the baby gets older from being hormone driven to being totally adjustable and based on how much the baby wants or needs, and that most mammals continue to nurse once the baby has started eating solid food and that it continues to provide nutritional and immunological benefits, perhaps even the average weaning ages for different species? About how the antibodies in it can be passed on, because it's interesting and useful information to know that mothers can pass on immunity to their young children. This could be a side topic to something like vaccination? It also gives an opportunity to talk about live foods, like the "friendly bacteria" yogurts etc and in what situations they're useful.

I think that it's totally relevant, much more so than how a plant produces chlorophyll, and it wouldn't be that much more to fit in. It might not have a long term effect but I think that most of us retain a basic gist of the science we learned at school, so this could potentially add the following to general knowledge:

• That breastmilk has not only nutritional benefits but immunological ones which cannot be reproduced
  
• That breastmilk is produced in the early days on a use-it-or-lose-it basis
  
• That breastmilk is produced as and when, in small quantities, so breasts aren't just vessels full of milk akin to a bottle which can run out or need time to refill
  
• That supply shifts after a certain time to being produced differently and then is a lot more flexible
  
• That it's okay to nurse past 6 months when babies start having food
  
• The average weaning age of humans compared to other species (acceptance of longer-term BFing, not saying everyone should do it)
  

Obviously not everyone would retain all of this, but I think if it was taught then general standards of BF knowledge would be higher over a generation or two, women who want to BF would be more likely to succeed armed with counter-arguments to the common myths, men would be able to support their partners better having a basic understanding of how it works, and people who decide not to are at least making a more informed choice rather than one based on misinformation. (I know not everyone makes the choice to FF based on misinformation).

[MrsMeeple]

There's a difference between educating, making information and resources available, and marketing. I don't have a problem with limiting marketing of FF. I am extremely positive towards spraeding more information and education about BF. I don't think it's helpful to mothers trying to feed their babies to try to block information or resources for FF. We need to find a balance so that those mothers who can BF get as much support as possible to do so, while not demonising those who might actually need to FF.

[BertieBotts]

There's no point in teaching how to do it, I agree, and hence no point in teaching about bottle feeding, unless it's a lesson on nutrition and you're exploring how baby formula was invented and how it was decided what ingredients to put into it etc.

As others have said you can't teach how to make up a bottle or how to latch because it isn't immediate enough. What you can teach and would be useful as background knowledge is how the process works, just as we teach what menstruation is and how that works rather than just showing girls how to use pads and tampons.

[GreenShadow]

The NCT used to have an Education program and went into both primary and secondary school and talked about things like this. It stopped years ago and as far as I know, hasn't restarted, though am a bit out of touch.

When DS1 + 2 were little we used to go along as an example of what a baby looked like (!) while a fellow mum with a small amount of training gave a short talk. There were then lots of very basic questions.

I once breastfed DS2 in front of a primary class - the topic was actually bathing babies and I demonstrated how you did it and then as DS always had a feed straight after a bath, did just that.

[DilysPrice]

I think that if a girl gets to the age of 18 still thinking that bf is weird and gross and nobody's ever challenged that belief then her midwife is highly unlikely to be able to persuade her to change her mind when the time comes. That kind of gut feeling becomes more and more entrenched the more people try to persuade you otherwise, regardless of the evidence produced.

[TheFallenMadonna]

Important though it is, the detail of lactation absolutely is not more important than photosynthesis!

[Seriouslysleepdeprived]

Excellent post Bertie I think that's exactly the info that's needed. It would be great if they told you all that in antenatal groups too.

None of the essentials were mentioned in the 5hrs of BFing antenatal I attended. Lots of breast is best & stuff about latching on. Nothing that actually helped when I tried to breastfeed & realised I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Supply was not mentioned once.

It would have been really useful to know all that stuff rather than the hugely steep learning g curve that hits most new mums when they least need it.

[Nigglenaggle]

OK I will change my view slightly and agree with Bertie all that is useful and interesting. And a damn sight more use than some of the 'Breast is Best' shite you get antenatally. Searching on the internet and looking for books beforehand on how to breastfeed I found mostly the whys and lots of practically evangelical preaching. As I had already decided to breastfeed, this was not alot of use, and some of it was so preachy it actually put me off a bit. My midwife gave me some stuff that was helpful, but think if everyone focused as much on the 'how to' as the 'why' lots more people would be successful. Teaching should be just that, factual and instructive.

'For all we know ff may not even exist in 100 years time - it didn't exist in the past'. It may or may not do crack but then in the past a baby without its mother would die or be raised on cows milk if no wet nurse was available so Im not sure thats better...

[Mydogsleepsonthebed]

Lots of things didn't exist in the past. Like cars. Doesn't mean we have to use a horse and cart. I'm not advocating FF particularly, but the reality is that it's the preferred option for a lot of parents.

[bunnyfrance]

We were taught about it at school - in South Africa in the '80s. It was just a one-off presentation by someone from LLL (or the equivalent) but I still remember it to this day.