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.

That is a bit of a generalisation Fiofio, yes. My ds1, for example, was tube-fed formula in SCBU. Tbh it wasn't our main concern as he fought for his life. It was still just about possible to get bf established later in our case - we were lucky (and there was a lot of pain and hard work involved). There are lots of reasons why mothers don't/can't breastfeed. There are also lots of mothers who simply don't want to.

Generalisations on either side of the debate are equally facile.

Think there might be a word missing in your last sentence Fio

Nice attempt to be patronizing, but it didn't quite come off. Keep practising, though.

was that to me fio?

I doubt it. [rolls eyes]

As soon as I realised the article was from the Ecologist I switched off [yawn] and [yawn] again.

For anyone who's interested in statistics, see here

Mercy interesting stats on rates and reasons for giving up.

Health stats are a minefield though.

Did moondog ever come back to this thread?

Thast interesting - I followed that lnk through onto the UNICEF site which promotes breast feeding.

They don't list decreased risk of SIDS as a reason to breast feed, though there is a list of other risks which are reduced by breastfeeding with the associated studies. The studies they quote have all adjusted for social and economic variables. Does make me wonder if the SIDS one had too many variables to be definitive.

I don't think most people realise beforehand just how difficult it can be to establish breastfeeding..

the combination of doing something very challenging and unknown when you are feeling tired and anxious and your hormones are in turmoil is enormous

MrsBadcrumble - I don't know who you are - by your post (a good one if I may make so bold) I'm guessing ks or tamum (I forget which one of you is the scientist - I think tamum and ks is the grammar pedant - ramble, ramble going off the point .......)

anyway - interesting post!

Mrs BadCrumble, I know. A small example is when I was expecting my first child the midwife and I completed a form re personal circumstances etc. At the end I had a quick look through it and saw she had ticked the box that said my formal education had ended at 16 years old and that my ethnic origin was was white European. Both wrong.

No i am pruni.
I am just trying to point out that it is hard to get good data and even harder to draw valid conclusions from it. You can find papers which will demonstrate a correlation between b/f and x, and yet a very similar study will show no correlation, and yet another with show that b/f is a negative factor. Meta-analyses often show that yes, there are health benefits, but the way this is presented by the people who inform us about b/f is that b/f is the defining factor. I would like to know about exposure to chemicals in the home, in the environment - especially concerning asthma rates. And epidemiological studies like this need thousands of participants, tens of thousands, millions, not 274 or 395 or whatever.
The other thing is, collecting data about b/f is tricky. Exclusive breastmilk feeding is clear, exclusive formula feeding is clear, but there's a whole spectrum in between. It makes a difference.
My ds is down in the red book as being exclusively breastfed for 8 months, rather than mixed-fed for 4 then formula thereafter. The HV told me she counted any breastmilk as the baby being breastfed. And then didn't see me again until 8m. So...that particular bit of data is crapola. Yet it will be part of the government's statistics.
Anyway all this is nothing compared to what a crappy journalist will do with a bit of information once he/she gets his/her hands on it and wrings every bit of sensationalist counter-productive shite out of it.

Actually I have just read my long post further down and it is not really very good....
I have just dismissed out of hand all research on b/f and I didn't mean to do that.
I will go and flagellate myself.

ah Pruni - hello

It WAS a good post, forget the whip and have a Whippy instead . We know that breast is best and there are many benefits to doing so but your points about the data, the collection thereof and the analysis of same was of interest and adds to the debate.

No - really - it was crap.

See I told you we don't agree on a lot of things...

Oooooooooooh yes we do ...............

I read the article mentioned and most of the posts. I have no guilt about giving my children formula after i had decided to stop breastfeeding.As I see it everyone must know breast is best, and as reasonably intelligent women and men we are able to make our own decisions based on the facts we have at the time. The artical made interesting reading and thats as far as it goes for me.

Mrs BC/Pruni: read my post on SIDS Saturday, 29 July, 2006 1:57:31 PM....it describes some of the problems surrounding getting data about SIDS and bf. It's going to get harder and harder to get good Western data on this, as SIDS is becoming rarer, too.

Everyone accepts you cannot get a randomised controlled trial on infant feeding, but that is not the only way to get robust data. We have a massive body of literature going back about 20 years which finds again and again that the way you feed babies matters a lot in many ways, in the short and long term.

Your red book stats will not be part of the Infant Feeding Survey (though they may be part of your PCT's figures), which is a highly respected five-yearly study, carefully carried out and analysed.

In separate surveys, PCTs have been charged with getting infant feeding data, and a lot of them are not very good at it. The DoH has just published this which is a picture of local surveys of bf initiation, and a large number of PCTs' data has had to be ignored, because it simply doesn't add up. If you're into stats, you'll be interested to see how the DoH managed to suss out how crap the data collection was - it was stuff like formula feeders and breastfeeders added together making more or fewer babies born than was the case....that sort of thing.

tiktok, the link doesn't work.

Ah....probably because it is one of those ginormous links and it's maybe a bit too long for mumsnet coding???

www.dh.gov.uk/PolicyAndGuidance/HealthAndSocialCareTopics/MaternalAndInfantNutrition/fs/en

is the actual link, and you can try cutting and pasting. Then scroll down on this page and you will see a link to the local data.

Not sure if anyone is still out there at this point but what interested me in the article was that even in Scandinavia where and I quote "Scandinavian countries banned all advertising of artifi cial formula milk, offered a year?s maternity leave with 80 per cent of pay and, on the mother?s return to work, an hour?s breastfeeding break every day. Today, 98 per cent of Scandinavian women
initiate breastfeeding, and 94 per cent are still breastfeeding at one month, 81 per cent at two months, 69 per cent at four months and 42 per cent at six months."

Even with all that only 42% make it to 6 months??? Maybe that should tell us that even with better support breast feeding can just be incompatible with the whole busy crazy business of modern life. I breast fed for 7 months until I went back to work which was longer than some of my friends and shorter than some others-they are all fabulous mothers in their own individual ways.
I assumed that those who chose not to do so were not unaware of the breast is best message and did not give them any preachy advice unless it was solicited. They are all intelligent women able to make up their own minds about what is best for their own family. I would hope to behave the same way towards MNet 'friends'

oh dear, my PCT is second to last! on the big blue bar graph.