Read this shocking article about the damaging effects of formula and the immoral practices of the companies who peddle this junk.

[moondog]

From The Ecologist magazine.

Here.....

Grim reading.

Yes I was wrestling with the concept of SIDS and similar not being a normal state of health, but rather caused by something having gone wrong - caused by some external factor than protected against by breastfeeding. However even I can see that statements like that are going to be hurtful to people who have lost children to SIDS.

It's all very tricky. I don't think there is a way round it, though, we do need to know the facts. I would respectfully suggest people who feel very sensitive and upset about this issue stay off threads on the subject, as I do with my own similarly touchy issues.

Zippi, you said "I think the way forward is to support mothers, but unluckily at the moment it does seem to fall to zealots who unintentionally can have the reverse effect."

Who are you talking about, zippi? I am a breastfeeding counsellor and I know many, many breastfeeding counsellors in this country. None of us are zealots - the training to become a breastfeeding counsellor knocks any zealotry out of you if there was any there in the first place. I actually don't know any trained breastfeeding supporter (including peer supporters) who are zealots. They are only too aware of the sensitivity needed when speaking to individual mothers. Please don't judge breastfeeding supporter by ill-thought out thread headers on a talk board.

You also said, "I know exactly why some socio economic groups fall through this net. It is because they are intimidated by older middle class mothers and health service reps who patronise them instead of supporting them."

Eh? Where and when do these older middle class mothers get the chance to intimidate these socio-oeconomic groups over feeding? Enough to put them off choosing to breastfeed in the first place?

You may be right about health service people patronising instead of supporting in some contexts - I don;t see how that stops someone choosing to bf, though.

If manufacturers are formulating infant feed which is poor quality and down right dangerous when it leaves the factory (content of heavy metals) and merely pays lip service to optimum nutrition as the supplementary vitamins and minerals it contains can't be accessed by young babies, then they need an incentive to improve. The incentive to improve a food product usually comes through free market competition (certainly National Milk wasn't the best)..more restriction on advocating its advances doesn't seem to help either cause..breastfeeding or marketing formula. It seems a bit of a deadlock.

If I formula feed I would like the best possible product...according to this article there is further to go in that respect. If I breastfeed I would like the best possible chance of doing so. The adversarial nature of the debate which has been going on for 100 years hasn't succeeded in advancing either as far as it might.

I also think that the emphasis on breast feeding for 6 months is a discouragement in some cases to starting at all. It is true that it is better to breastfeed for 2 weeks or 2 days or 6 weeks than not at all, but in the effort to get the minimum 6 month message across which for many people is very daunting the baby is thrown out with the bath water and people think there is no point starting to breastfeed at all.

I think one of the faults with the WHO code is that it concentrates more on banning than it does on positively promoting.

Yes and don't blame the women who are working hard to do something positive for the breastfeeding rates, by calling them militant breastfeeders or worse. Women who try to help other women to breastfeed, to explain the drawbacks of formula, to advise and inform, are at least doing something with the best of intentions and often get only abuse and blame.

What are those of you who feel angry about bottle feeders being made to feel guilty, doing to help women who would like to breastfeed but are not able to? The best way to stop women feeling guilty about not being able to breastfeed, is to help them breastfeed for as long as they want to.

The other side of that coin Franny is that it might have absolutely nothing to do with feeding, be it breast, formula or weasel. The study Caligula refers to will be interesting to say the least!

Yup Squarer I agree.

Should it be an MN "rule" that everyone on controversial topics should have goofy names?

A friend of mine recently gave birth. Beforehand we spoke about feeding and she said she was going to bottle. I encouraged her to give breastfeeding a go and she did, he did and all was happy and I felt so

And also so and

Can I have a gold star to make me feel better please?

re "zealots"

Trained infant feeding counsellors are not readily accessible to disadvantaged groups. There isn't an outreach service from every gp surgery/maternity unit/council children's services offering high dependency one on one breast feeding support.

As far as the extended family or friends in the community are concerned, having breastfed as an individual doesn't necessarily enable you to give sufficient knowledge or support to someone else having difficulties. The idea that breastfeeding is easily passed on by osmosis just isn't true and never was.

If you want references to show the difference in health between breastfed and formula fed babies, you can find some of them here .

The SIDS thing is more controversial, although the bare statistical facts are not in dispute (ie that formula fed babies are at a higher risk of SIDS). In the UK, the Foundation for the study of infant deaths has always avoided saying anything more than 'breastfeed if possible' (I think that's the term they use) without putting it more strongly.

Their view, as I understand it, is that it is difficult to separate out socio-economic factors from the feeding factors in the research, especially now that SIDS is so rare in the UK (mainly since the back to sleep campaign).

Sleeping position is more easy to distinguish in research. Your social and economic circumstances do no affect how you place your baby to sleep.

But other factors are not so clear cut.

SIDS is associated with so many factors - smoking in pregnancy, smoking in the family, low birthweight, prematurity, previous illness and infection - that are also associated with poverty and deprivation.....and formula feeding is also associated with poverty and deprivation.

So it's all mixed up, and not all research is powerful enough to teaze out the different strands.

Some countries do state very clearly that breastfeeding is protective against SIDS and they have this on all their campaign literature (New Zealand, for instance, unless they have changed recently).

The Foundation blotted their copybook in the last couple of years by taking sponsorship from one of the formula manufacturers - I don't think this relationship continued for more than a short time.

Other health issues - gastroenteritis, chest infections and so on - show up very clearly as being influenced by feeding method. Because these conditions are more common than SIDS, it is easier to get a study where you can control for socio-economic factors and make sure this is what your results are showing ie that the difference between babies is the feeding, not the fact that they are more or less middle class.

In fact, there is some good work that shows breastfeeding can reduce inqualities in health - see here and this is actually the main reason why government are making efforts to support it (means less cash spent later on).

None of this justifies anyone feeling criticised or distressed for using formula milk, by the way. None of this means mothers who use formula are bad mothers - as if! None of it predicts what will happen to an individual baby either.

But it is tedious in the extreme to be continuing to argue whether breastfeeding makes a difference to infant health....of course it does.

F&Z- the thread title describes formula as "junk", and yet you say that people who are left feeling guilty because they couldn't breatfeed are being oversensitive.

Right.

tiktok's earlier post summed up everything that is wrong about this thread.

unparp...oh god I must be a right freak I'm capable of feeding my children and having a good sex life with my udders!.. or maybe I just a santimonious multitasking bitch for just mentioning it???

I can't believe this thread is still going on!
I think that jimjams expresses very well much of what I feel.

We need to ensure that clear factual information about the advantages and disadvantages to mum and baby of breastfeeding and formula feeding are widely available and well known at a much earlier stage of life.

I delivered at 32weeks and by that point in my pregnancy no one had mentioned feeding to me, it was assumed, correctly as it happens, that I would want to breastfeed but for many mums who were unsure about how they wanted to feed this would have been far too late. I think that it would be really useful if this sort of thing was covered at school, eg as part of GCSE Science so that the information is absorbed by children before any (very very few) have considered getting pregnant let alone feeding method. Then once again during pregnancy, perhaps at your booking visit, the information a should again be clearly presented.

I also think that it is unrealistic to present only the positive aspects and advantages of breastfeeding, for many mums, myself included, it is bloody hard work and an acknowledgement of that may make it less likely that mums who start feeding and then have difficulties would stop.

I also think that if you choose to formula feed after being given all available information then that should be considered to be a perfectly valid choice and one which mums should feel happy to make itf it is right for them and their family. Conversely if mums choose to breastfeed then far more government funded support should be available to them than there is at present to enable more women to achieve their personal goal of feeding their baby for however long is desirable for them.
As women we also need to try to get away from the use of such emotive language when discussing breastfeeding. This is clearly difficult as it is an emotive topic but describing someone, even oneself, as having failed at breastfeeding helps no one.

this has been a personal best for me in terms of length of post typed with one finger whilst holding baby in other arm .

ippi: "Trained infant feeding counsellors are not readily accessible to disadvantaged groups. There isn't an outreach service from every gp surgery/maternity unit/council children's services offering high dependency one on one breast feeding support. "

Trained counsellors are available at the end of a telephone line to every mother in this country - and SureStart (targets deprived areas) has a committment to breastfeeding support. I think it is still probably more advantaged groups that take (um!) advantage of these (including the SureStart services). I don't think we can blame the trained supporters - alll volunteers - for this, and I don't see their place being filled in disadvantaged areas by zealots, which is what you were saying.

I agree - one on one bf support in an outreach-type service would be great. I would do that job if it existed and if it was paid. Now....how can we do this, without people accusing the supporters of being zealots???

I'm pretty sure breasts were always sexual as well as being a milk-bar - aren't they supposed to have evolved to mimic buttocks? Though I do agree that they probably have been 'sexualised' away from their primary role.

Don't even get me started on how much easier socially it is to bottle-feed - I remember being at Kew Gardens in the dead of winter and there was nowhere inside that I could feed DS2 except sitting on the disabled toilet; it was freezing outside, proverbial witch's tit stuff. But if I'd had a bottle of formula I could have lobbed it into him anywhere without either of us undressing.

Well, I enjoyed reading the article. I'm not disputing the facts, though I can't tell how significant some of the numbers are. I think it's unduly sensationalist and I think it is preaching to the converted.

We need better educated midwives in maternity wards (mine were dreadful, one telling me I would never feed successfully because my nipples were too small ).

We need better educated health visitors, who don't worry so much if your BF baby is not gaining as quickly as those ridiculous charts suggest. I know they are supposed to be producing new breastfed baby charts.

We need honesty from all - breastfeeding can be toe-curlingly, agonisingly painful in the early weeks and it isn't always because the bloody latch is wrong.

We need sympathetic doctors who don't bark at you, "What are you worrying about?" when insisting they plug your baby, sick with bronchiolitis, with a naso-gastric tube and feed him formula every 2 hours until you can express enough to take over the tube feeds - in my case it was 12 hours later when my breasts were full.

When DS1 was seriously ill, I expressed and breastfed throughout. I thought it was the best possible thing I could do for his immune system, fighting away as it was. But I still had nurses and HVs say "Why don't you give yourself a break and give him some bottles?"

OK, that was a formless rant, and I don't expect anyone will read it, but I feel a whole lot better now .

But I still don't think calling formula milk 'junk' (using the inverted commas MD eschewed in her OP) helps anyone.

But the fact that trained counsellors are there is not widely publicised. When I was trying to feed DD, I had no idea I could ring up a number free of charge. I thought I would have to pay stacks of money to an NCT counsellor, and that stopped me in my tracks. These numbers need to be given out at ante-natal classes/ maternity wards/ midwife visits/ whatever.

Also Ladidadi I think your point about children at school being taught about bf is a good one, but I think it needs to be done within the social context as well as the biology lesson one (much as with sex education, which isn't much cop if it's just biology-focussed). Because most mothers are aware that "breast is best" but many still don't the ins and outs of why, and don't choose bf from the start and give up at an early stage and that is every bit to do with cultural factors as well as the actual physical difficulties and lack of support, imo.

Zippi, I'm expressing for my local milk bank - a recent newsletter tells me that there are 85 other women doing the same. The milk is fed to premature and sick babies who would otherwise have formula until their own mother's milk comes in - they'll have what colostrum is expressed, and any milk from their mother, but often it's hard work to establish a supply with a breast pump in such emotional circumstances.

I feel very, very strongly that if I can give some of my milk, which I have in abundance, I should do it. So I do.

I have also been to my maternity hospital to get them to review their bfeeding support.

I have also emailed my MP several times on this subject (to ask why paid maternity leave wasn't longer, to ask him to sign the early day motion to make it an offence to ask a woman to stop bfeeding in public in England and Wales, as it is in Scotland).

I will train as a bfeeding counsellor once my life is less hectic.

I do every little bit I can to help women bfeed, including challenging misinformation and myth wherever I hear it - I just wish that the Government would support bfeeding, not just pretend to with posters in hospitals and lip service.

I'm not saying that there places are filled in disadvantaged areas by zealots But in the media the face of breastfeeding is often culturally at odds with disadvantaged groups.

The access to disadvantaged mothers is limited in the sense that the baby clinic is not able to refer a mother to an outreach brestfeeding counsellor.

Telephone lines are not a lot of help to nervous/shy parents or thiose who have a pay as you go phone..there is a huge barrier to jump.

Telephone lines are not the greatest help if you are having problems unfortunately.

I don't think you'll find me calling anyone over-sensitive, Jimjams. Please don't put words into my mouth in future.

I have said earlier that I also have issues which are painful and touchy for me. I avoid threads where I see those things being discussed. I don't expect other people to avoid discussing them because of how I might feel.

But bfeeding counsellors are volunteers, the NCT is a charity - what's needed is not "oh, bfeeding counsellors are hard to find" it's action to make paid posts in maternity hospitals and the community to support bfeeding.

The NCT is also not able to reach disadvantaged groups, with the best will in the world it is seen as thoroughly middles class.

Sure Start has two problems either it is colonised by those who see its advantages or it is seen as "charity".

As tiktok and huNker say it is a funded breastfeeding/infant nutrition counsellor that is needed.

And like magistrates they need to come from all walks of life..will that ever be possible?

I'm sorry F&Z I misinterpreted this line "I would respectfully suggest people who feel very sensitive and upset about this issue stay off threads on the subject, as I do with my own similarly touchy issues."

So I will rephrase. Perhaps people wouldn't feel so sensitive and upset about discussing breasfeeding if the thread title did not include a description of formula as "junk".

I'm not sure that bfeeding counsellors in hospital would be that much use, people are out the door too quickly.

I am sure moondog will flattered to feel she has such influence, Jimjams, but I frankly doubt that the use of one word, in a thread title on a website, is responsible for the huge wave of guilt and sensitivity concerning bottle feeding that we are hearing about on this thread.

I think they should be attached to gp practices so that they are for everyone to access equally not through a scheme but just normal