Being ‘paid to breastfeed’ - your thoughts?

[SarahMumsnet]

The BBC's reporting this morning that new mothers living in some areas of Derbyshire and south Yorkshire are to be given vouchers for shops including Matalan, Mothercare and John Lewis if they breastfeed their babies. These will be given out as part of a study by the University of Sheffield, aimed at discovering whether “financial incentives” will increase the uptake of breastfeeding in parts of the country where rates are low; mothers will receive vouchers worth up to £120 if they breastfeed until six weeks, and another £80-worth if they continue to the six-month mark.

The scheme, according the senior researcher on the project, is intended "as a way of acknowledging both the value of breastfeeding to babies, mothers and society, and the effort involved in breastfeeding. Offering financial incentives ... might increase the numbers of babies being breastfed, and complement on-going support for breastfeeding provided by the NHS, local authorities and charities."

We've been asked by the beeb what Mumsnetters make of the idea; what's your reaction?

LittleBearPad - because it's research that's obviously gotten funding. Getting funding is incredibly difficult at the moment, and trying out quick remedies like vouchers - and getting the feedback from it - can lead to better funding for other types of projects that work better. That's why pilots of this kind exist.

If you think that the medical research group and researchers wouldn't love to do a proper study with all the help that people want, that doesn't say much about your empathy or understanding of the current state of research. I don't see why they need to be insulted (do you question the intelligence of the women as well? How do you think your comments would make them feel for taking part?). I've taken part in medical research and personally benefited from it in terms of vouchers, cross country travel, random gifts. Pretty much all research on that goes through this site has this to encourage people's interest. My partner was given free gym membership as part of a research to see if it would help people with physical disabilities lose weight (and hopefully they will learn that it doesn't matter as they don't have proper equipment), should he and those in charge of that study have their intelligence questioned? We've never done it for the compensation but it does make it a lot easier to do and removes a lot of barriers to doing research.

Cash-alternatives in hand to compensate for time and energy for dealing with medical research is common and useful practice, their time and effort is being valued and treated with respect it deserves. Hopefully their team is well trained to help these women fully discuss all the issues and barriers they face so a full picture can be done. These women are going to have to deal with them for months.

And for all we know, John Lewis and Matalan offered them a really great deal so they could offer these women more for their time and effort.

Also, John Lewis and Matalan vouchers can be used for more than just pretty things - though why wanting pretty things is bad I don't know particularly at this time of year. They could buy breast pumps, work clothes, nice things for the child they couldn't otherwise get, they could just use them to make themselves feel good and that would be lovely for them.

Tiktok why ask incredulous but why does it feel like a kick in the teeth to you , then? It's obvious why and the italics and rhetoric of the question overegg it.

working, I was genuinely interested in Sandy's reasons, so shoot me :)

I know it is emotive - generally.

I wanted to know why someone who had had such a terrible time felt personally damaged by it....is it that she feels it's unfair that some women are 'paid' for breastfeeding? Does she feel it's a criticism of her own struggles? Is she upset at the reminder of her struggles.....or all those things and more?

Fair enough, I didn't get that from how it was written, it seemed to me you were implying her feelings were irrational.

Ah my bad didn't read the op properly. I thought this was an nhs / govt initiative. As it's a research project it's obvious that they need to offer some sort of incentive and of course no-ones under pressure. Whoops and sorry if I offended anyone :)

To those saying 'the money would be better spent on support', even with the best support in the world - breastfeeding is challenging. A large part of this is because you can't pass the baton to dad, grandma, whoever. It's relentless in the first few weeks. Support won't change cluster-feedings, growth spurts and mammoth feeding sessions.

Also, no one answered my question a few pages back where I asked: How does this scheme prevent choice? It's not like a mother will lose something if she does not breastfeed. She will simply gain something if she does so.

It's hard to put into words. The ladies in the first video clip of the
above link say it all really. It's not black and white. It's not always a choice.

"It's not always a choice."

Help me to understand this, please. Are you implying that at least 80% of women have broken breasts?

Gym membership being linked to losing weight for people with physical disabilities is sensible. It makes sense.

This study doesn't. It's ridiculous and as another poster above commented treats the women involved like pavlov's dog.

It is not always 'a choice' - breastfeeding is a complex physical, emotional, psychological, social behaviour, and absolutely not like a choice to paint your bathroom green or cream.

A mother may have difficult challenges in either or all of those categories. She might get to a stage where the physical difficulties of breastfeeding are overwhelming (often because of poor information, lack of support, but absolutely not always). She might find the emotional demands of it overwhelming. Her friends and family might be horrible about it.

Lots of ways where a mother's choice is removed from her.

"treats the women involved like pavlov's dog."

yes, classical conditioning works on humans too. It still doesn't remove choice.

Health incentives are nothing new. People are pissed off about this particular one because it stirs up hurt feelings. Boo fucking hoo. Stop being so selfish.

"A mother may have difficult challenges in either or all of those categories. She might get to a stage where the physical difficulties of breastfeeding are overwhelming (often because of poor information, lack of support, but absolutely not always). She might find the emotional demands of it overwhelming. Her friends and family might be horrible about it."

Are you suggesting these factors cannot be overcome?

I think Sandy's experience illustrate that support really can make the difference between bf and not.

My DTs were born prem via EMCS so were clearly unable to feed. Having said I wanted to give Bf a try, they gave me a pump and told me to get on with it. Dosed up to the eyeballs on morphine, without my babies or my DH, and a clunky awkward massive NHS pump was awful, and I cried and swore at it a lot in the middle of the nights. On night 2 or 3 I was about to give up, and a wonderful midwife who had helped deliver my DTs came in and sat with me, and told me I could do it. Looking back I think she was nearly in tears herself, and she told me that she had had a prem birth herself and knew, as an HCP, what to expect, but had felt exactly the same way. She really helped me push on.

Then a bit later when my babies were actually taking some millk through the tubes, I wasn't producing enough, and the NICU sister told me they were putting up the percentage of formula, I felt like a complete failure. But one NICU nurse mentioned Domperidone, I did some reaserch on here, got an emergency appointment with my GP, and went in and told her what I needed. My GP is awesome, and said, OK, I've never prescribed that like that before, but sit htere and I'll work it out. She got down her big fat book of drugs, lookeds some stuff up, even called back the NICU to confirm doseage, and wrote me a script.

Thanks to them I was able to pump for 2 months until I could get feeding established, then mix feed until they were 6mo. It is one of the hardest things I've ever done, and there were lots and lots of problems with it, but it really really needed those two (and many other) staff to help me at just that moment. Not sodding vouchers.

(Sorry, that isn't meant to sound like I'm saying you should have been able to feed Sandy. I just mean that when it seemed hopeless - me too ill to produce milk, two babies too ill to feed - a couple of staff members said 'ok, let's try every option we can think of', and luckily for me it worked. No judgement on your situation at all.)

Re: support, how is LLL not accessible? Anyone with access to a phone or internet connection can access this support, and it is of a consistently high standard.

wombles, a lot of factors can be overcome, but not by refusing to recognise the complexity of the difficulties, not by refusing to see that breastfeeding support needs a range of layers and targetted tailoring so the right support reaches the right women at the right time.

I called LLL wombles, and although they could give me some advice over the phone there are no local groups anywhere nearby, I couldn't call very often because I was in NICU so much, and the help they could give me with such a specific set of circumstances was very limited.

Personally I think bf support really needs to be available at the most immediate point of contact, which for most women is via NHS - midwives, HV etc

tiktok, please see my above post re: LLL. Very accessible 24/7. The vast majority of women are computer or phone literate.

Wombles- for me personally I didn't have a choice.

My baby was born at 10pm and I didn't come out of theatre until 6am when I was taken to HDU in an ambulance. I then went back into theatre 24 hours later to have my uterus repaired. I can barely remember the first 48 hours. I then spend the next few days barely conscious in HDU.

My baby was in scbu because of what had happened during is birth.

If my baby was happy to wait say 4 days until i was conscious enough to feed him then maybe I could have give breast feeding a shot.

"I couldn't call very often because I was in NICU so much"

You couldn't step outside for 10 minutes? I'm not goading, just intensely interested in getting my head around the support card that is played in these debates.

Sandy, what about relactation once you had recovered? Perfectly feasible in your circumstances.

wombles Yes, I could step outside a few times to make phone calls. I had to because I'd given birth 10 weeks early so there were quite a few loose ends in my life that needed sorting out!

But, when I phoned LLL and explained my circumstances they had to find an advisor who had some experience of prem twins. And then they had to get that person to call me back, so it's not as easy as expert advice on tap.

And to be honest, having one critically ill baby in front of me, the other one 2 hours away on a ventilator, and being in pain from an awful CS, to go and try to have a conversation about breast feeding in a wet cold carpark (or worse, in smokers' alley, with pregnant women lighting up while my son fought for every breath in a hospital miles away) isn't quite the same as sitting in bed with a baby on your boob and chatting through the latch.

Perhaps it may seem feasible to you but in reality it just wast that straightforward. If it was then I would have.

Wombles I bfd both mine til they self-weaned, each in the ninth week of my subsequent pregnancy.

I made 'the choice' to continue in circumstances where both were really gaining weight excruciatingly slowly. Ds2 ended up at point of hospitalisation at 20 weeks when I suddenly thought, fuck it, enough is enough. This is not a crusade and my child needs food and nourishment more than some crusade.

My sons were severly underweight relative to their builds, they look like famine victims in photographs. I took myself to the brink and ended up with a psychiatric diagnosis as I was so obsessed with weighing and charting etc (perinatal OCD).

My boobs weren't broken. I made the calls. I got the support, some of it excellent. It just didn't work particularly well for us as bfing dyads and combined feeding worked better.

I'm very much on the fence though about whether the benefit of breastfeeding can possibly have outweighed the risks of infant malnutrition.

I'm pregnant again and I will yet again access every possible drop of support to make it work but this time I will NOT make 'the choice' to starve my child because breast is best/normal/healthy or whatever.

Relactation is incredibly hard and as someone who had armies of supports and privileges who still couldn't produce enough to make my babies thrive I think it's often bandied about as a simple answer in complex emotional contexts in a very unempathetic way.

wombles - "tiktok, please see my above post re: LLL. Very accessible 24/7. The vast majority of women are computer or phone literate."

Oh for goodness sake....I am a volunteer bfc (not with LLL, with NCT).

I know my limitations. Volunteers are not there for complex situations, they really are not. Phone help is great as far as it goes....and counsellors cannot possibly see all the women who contact them, and that's often what might make a difference.

Making a phone call, or sending an email, is difficult - sometimes, tired and demoralised women who are in pain and feeling like shit cannot bring themselves to make a call to a stranger. This takes courage and energy and confidence - any or all of those may be in short supply.

About 550,000 women start to breastfeed in the UK.

There are maybe 600 volunteer breastfeeding counsellors in the UK (across all the vol orgs). Peer supporters - more of them, but most are not trained to give on the spot phone support.

Do the maths. The answer cannot lie in suggesting everyone phones a helpline.