"it is important that, in preparation for and during breastfeeding, you eat a healthy, balanced diet"

[harpsichordcarrier]

or so it says on the "important information" on some HCP stuff Cow and Gate sent me to give out to parents.
but that's VERY misleading isn't it? it might imply that if you haven't eaten a healthy diet during pregnancy, you shouldn't bf? that formula would be better alternative?
it just seems a weird thing to have on a formula notice.
I am thinking of complaining - what do you think?

Oh, it's tricky being in a different time zone! Keep missing the best discussions!

There's a deeper issue here - have you noticed how we all assume that it is everyone's inalienable right to choose whether to ff or bf?

Well, how about this:"It is everyone's inalienable right to have the best possible nutritional start in life."

I far prefer the latter. If we worked on that principle, the vast majority of babies would be bf, because bf is better for most. Some would be ff, because ff is best for some.

As I said before, but didn't have time to explain what I meant, it's not like choosing which trainers to wear or which brand of coffee you prefer. It's potentially a very big deal for a baby's future life.

Yet formula companies are marketing their product in exactly the same way as trainers or coffee - to a "market" of women who are poorly informed, poorly supported, tired and stressed, and in short completely vulnerable to their meticulously designed campaigns.

Coming to this a bit late, but just wanted to agree with the posters that pointed out the spending and marketing power of rich multinational corporations with an interest in selling formula. No-one ever got rich from bfing, and I'm afraid that makes it the underdog in any bf vs ff fight in our capitalist neoliberal world.

I also agree with the OP's original post - this is another subtle way of discouraging women from bfing. It's subtle because they're not allowed to be blatant, but it's naive to think it's not intentional. Was it a thread here on MN that pointed out a leaflet from a formula company that went on about the health benefit of bfing, but illustrated it with wholemeal loaves, mangos etc - classic Waitrose stuff that's statistically far more likely to be bought by middle class rather than working class mothers? On the surface, they're supporting bfing, but the underlying message is 'to breastfeed you need to eat this expensive middle class food', reinforcing the message that bfing isn't for working class people. (the thread was talking in general demographic terms - I know that's a generalization about what working class mothers eat ).

to nappies!

MKG says "I don't think that formula companies want to undermine women's ability to bf."

Eh?

Think about it. Think about $100 you spent a month on formula and multiply it by the number of babies born each month - in the UK, it's about 40,000.

Now if you are a formula manufacturer, do you want all of them to breastfeed? Or do you try to maximise your profits, satisfy your share holders, and trouser your big fat bonus for meeting your targets?

And if you do want to maximise your profits, what would be a good way of doing it?

Ha! I know!

How about undermining breastfeeding?

Tik Tok,

I see your points and I think that they are credible. I know that the companies make tons of money. The word ability comes into play. If someone is willing and able to bf, than the formula companies are irrelevant. Most who are able, will (again why waste the money).

A formula company is not going to make a woman unable to breastfeed. The option of formula might make women unwilling, but not unable. Intelligent women are not going to fall for ads like the one we are discussing and magically decide not to breastfeed. I think that the ad that was presented is nothing but an attempt to frighten women into buying a product. That is terribly wrong.

what does it matter if a woman is able to bf if she doesn't believe she's doing the right thing?

My MIL, for instance, started giving dp formula at 6 weeks because he slept so much better on it. She genuinely believed her milk wasn't enough for him. If someone had been there to explain that it's normal for bf babies to feed frequently, she probably wouldn't have switched.

There are enough women on MN who feel guilty that bfing didn't work out for them (often in the face of truly crap advice from MWs/HVs), very few of whom are 'unable' to breastfeed.

I'm sorry this is long.

Sorrel,

I don't think you understand what I was talking about when I said fall asleep at the breast. I know that it is normal for babies to fall asleep while nursing. Is it normal for them to fall asleep before they even latch on? For the first three days all he did was sleep he showed no interest in nursing or being fed from a bottle. He just wanted to be held.

When I left the hospital the lactation consultant told me to supplement with a bottle since he didn't nurse. At least with a bottle I would be able to physically see what he was consuming. I really had it in my mind to bf when I got home. I tried pumping so ds could get some breastmilk but when you sit for an hour and you get half an ounce of milk you get frustrated. When you spend three hours trying to nurse and your baby is still screaming you get frustrated.

When all you get from nurses and doctors is, "breast is best" and "this baby wants the breast" you start to feel inadequate. You start to think, "My child isn't even a month old and I'm already a terrible mother". I think that if formula wasn't an option I would have committed suicide. I'm not being overdramatic. Put the self hatred of not being able to breastfeed on top of the crazy hormonal fluctuation and you have a recipe for disaster.

Having formula available (and I really hesitated ff 100%) allowed me to enjoy my baby and not resent him.

FF and Bf are personal choices. I'm pregnant now and I would love to be able bf, because I want the experience of enjoying it. So many women tell me that they love to do it. Ds and I didn't work well together and it wasn't successful. If this new baby and I work better together I'll bf for as long as I can, if not, at least I know that formula is available.

I'm sorry that a went on . But I don't think it's fair when people (no one in particular, that just seems where this thread is going) attack ffing.

MKG, at last, another voice in the wilderness.

Welliemum - yes, bfing is the best nutritional start in life, but although the benefits are well known and understood, there is absolutely no evidence that formula feeding damages a baby, makes it less intelligent (see recent study finding no link between intelligence and breastfeeding - other than the intelligence of the mother, that is) or makes it any less happy or successful as it grows up. The most important factor in a child's well being is that it is loved and nourished by a mother who is happy. And a mother who finds breastfeeding a horrendous experience, painful and distressing, is not going to be happy. She is going to be depressed and, like MKG said, possibly suicidal. A good friend of mine breastfed for four months with each experience being agony, despite help for counsellors, and only regained her sanity when she switcvhed to the bottle. However she felt guilty for months afterwards and vowed to never have another child. her daughter is now 7, bubbly, bright and very happy. My friend has not had another child and insists she never will. How different could her first few months of motherhood have been if someone had told her "it's ok, you won't hurt your baby by giving her formula"? She's an intelligent, middle class woman but had been led to believe that breastfeeding was the only way to give her daughter the best start in life. Instead it affected her relationship with her for well over a year. I don't call that "the best possible start in life".

Yes formula is big business - but it's also a useful, perfectly valid choice for women to make.

and the 'bfing establishment' made your friend believe formula was evil?

Some spectacularly good point missing going on on this thread.

NOBODY is attacking the woman's right to choose to ffeed, for whatever reason. Nobody's attacking formula.

What people are angry about is formula companies who make breastfeeding look like a specialist thing to do "for women who eat a healthy balanced diet", and all kinds of other unattainable by ordinary mortals statements.

That's what people mind. There are billions of posts on here from women talking about not making good quality milk and other posters urging them to "eat well", "rest lots", "drink plenty" - all good advice for any new mum, but not essential for bfeeding success.

The underlying feeling that if you can't do all these things, you are in some way not giving your baby the best, and the message from formula companies that formula is near as dammit the same as bmilk (especially bmilk from "the kind of woman who eats Mars bars instead of apples") does influence women to ffeed, whatever you say.

As for every woman who is able and willing to bfeed doing it - that's pure tosh. Again, there are billions of posts from women who were poorly supported to bfeed who are in pieces sometimes years later over their inability to bfeed. These are women who would very probably have been able to bfeed with the right advice and a supportive healthcare professional who didn't talk about formula at the drop of a hat (and I've been on the receiving end of that pressure myself with both boys, for different reasons) - but formula companies have got to the HCPs too and they also believe that formula is some kind of magic...er...formula for all infant feeding issues. Which sometimes it is. But not nearly as often as they'd like us to believe...

So that's why I'm angry about it. I'm definitely not getting at women who ffeed.

I agree with Hunker
it isn't just the formula companies fwiw, the culture of the medical profession vis a vis feeding babies and the need to control intake and feeding patterns of new borns and removing babies from their mothers over many years that have combined to lay waste to a supportive bf culture.
for millennia we successfully fed our babies with our own milk. it has taken an astonishingly short time for the knowledge and wisdom of generations to be pissed away.
it's a tragedy, imo.

and as for "every woman who is able and willing to bfeed doing it" - blimey, that is SO far away from reality...

MKG: I am genuinely sorry breastfeeding didn't work out for you. Of course your baby needed to be fed somehow! This isn't the right thread to go into individual experiences, really, but it's very likely your baby was affected somehow by birth and events around the birth and you may have been separated from him. This is what makes babies otherwise healthy, term babies excessively sleepy and uninterested in feeding - and they need to be kept in literal physical touch with mum 24/7 to overcome that. It needs more care and input from hospital staff, maybe some support to hand express colostrum to drop into the baby's mouth, plus careful, hands-off support and encouragement for you. This sort of care is very rare in hospital. It is absolutely not a mother's fault when this sort of care is not there....you are never more vulnerable in your life when you are in your nightie, postnatal, new to motherhood and not even in your own home.

The least likely reason for your breastfeeding not getting going is that you are 'unable' to breastfeed in a physical sense. I hope this gives you a boost so you know you can do it with your next baby

Still waiting to hear from Wordsmith about how asking for ethical marketing is the same as demonising women who use formula.

Sorry Tikok I'm at work and can't log on as much as I may like to. Just to say, I don't agree that the message about healthy diets does undermine breastfeeding, and I do believe that the tone of some postings on MN does imply that those who choose not to breastfeed do not have their child's best interests at heart, and in fact undermines their confidence. And on that note, I'll shut up, and try and remember why I decided long ago not to get involved in breastfeeding threads.

OK, Wordsmith.

Why don't you come out and say you don't think asking for ethical marketing is the same as demonising formula feeders, then?

This is what you said:

" it is no good adopting confrontational tactics like insisting shelves are cleared and complaining about wording on packaging and the like. Formula is a legitimate choice for many mums even if they don't need it - ie if they just decide they want to breastfeed. The task is to persuade more to breastfeed, not demonise those who formula feed."

So clearing the shelves and complaining about wording on packaging - which is a fight for ethical marketing - is in your words, to 'demonise' those who formula feed.

You may be right that the tone of some posters is objectionable. But that's not what you said - you were referring solely to the objections to marketing tactics. And in the process, you defend un-ethical marketing.

Surely you think that formula needs to be marketed in an ethical way?

In the UK, we accept that commercial activity sometimes needs to be curbed, for the greater good. The example that comes to mind is supermarkets - useful and necessary commercial entities. But we think very carefully (or we should do) about allowing them to spring up everywhere, because of their effect on local business and local shopping. And sometimes, we refuse them planning permission, for the wider good of the community.

That's not to demonise people who shop at supermarkets!

Tik tok,

Thanks for you your words. My ds was born to term, two weeks early but perfectly healthy, drug free vaginal delivery. So we didn't experience anything that would make it more difficult. I think that is why it was so difficult for me to understand why it wasn't working out.

Anyway, I live in the US and I don't see any obvious attempt to scare people into using formula. Here formula is a $550 million dollar industry. The two biggest are Similac and Enfamil, followed by Good Start. All three advertise in magazines, but only Good start advertises on TV. I haven't seen any advertisement that is used to scare moms into using formula like the one that was originally posted.

I think that the scare tactics are used more abroad and in some developing countries. In poorer countries like Mexico (my family is from Mexico so it's the only example I know) some women are told that they should use formula because since their diets are not high enough in calories to be able to sustain themselves and their growing babies. What is scary is that formula is not priced appropriately. It is a pricey item in contrast to what the people who may need formula make. That is where the crime is to me. Telling someone that they are too poor to eat well and bf well, but making formula too expensive to buy. Of course all baby product we consider normal are luxuries there. Only rich people have car seats, strollers, and formula. The majority of people don't use those things because they can't afford it.

It's funny how these things change. When my mom was a new mom. Ffing was recommended and putting cereal in babies bottles after 1 month was the norm to get babies to sleep. There are people that still do that. Now we're told that putting cereal in a bottle is an absolute no-no and we are told that breastfeeding is the best thing to do. I wonder what advice we'll be told in another 27 years.

MKG, sometimes it can be a puzzle. I feel pretty certain though that your baby and you were separated - by that, I don't mean you in one room and him in another (though some US maternity units still have nurserys, so that may be the case), but not given ad lib skin to skin care with 'bedding in'. When your baby was showing no signs of wanting to feed, I am pretty sure you won't have been helped to give expressed colostrum within no more than a few hours of his birth. All these measures might have helped avoid the crisis you had on day 3 - and even then, formula might not have been your only option.

In the US, formula marketing is even more pervasive than here. Free samples of formula have not been legal for about 20 years in the UK, but I know they are very common throughout the US.

I don't think manufacturers need scare tactics - and as you imply, they aren't going to work well in many settings. They just need to subtly undermine the choice to breastfeed. They keep their presence and their profile high, they present themselves as a friendly, caring, helpful aid to mothers (this is all classic stuff in marketing) , and they publish subtle untruths about breastfeeding. That's all they need to do, in fact, in a society where breastfeeding is socially very fragile.

Wordsmith - Please reference the recent study you refer to that says there is NO link between a child's intelligence and the kind of milk it drinks. I would like to know where they get their scientific backing in making this assertion.

Also the study that says that the only correlation is that of the mother's intellignence is tosh. I referred to a Brazilian study on another thread a few days ago that showed that poor/undereducated Brazilian women who had bf their babies increased their child's chances of gaining social mobility (due to higher intelligence/IQ derived from bf).

There have also been studies in the UK that show that a woman with poor living conditions/poor diet/low level of education can through exclusive bf obtain the SAME health standrads for her baby as a very well-off woman living in excellent conditions.

Here is a quote from Dr Sears' book "The Family Nutition Book":

"The most rapid brain growth after birth occurs during the first year of life, with the infant's brain tripling in size by the first birthday. Different species provide different types of fat in their milk, fine-tuned to the needs of that particular animal. For example, mother cows provide milk that is high in saturated fats and low in brain-building fats, such as DHA. This helps their calves grow rapidly, though it does not do much for their brains...human milk is low in body-building saturated fats and rich in brain-building fats (DHA and omega 3 fatty acid). DHA is the primary structural component of brain tissue, so it stands to reason that a deficiency of DHA in the diet could translate into a deficiency in brain function".

There are 10's of studies to support this stuff. If you are interested I will dig them out.

Samples aren't legal?!

That's so weird. Do you get any free samples when you leave the hospital? Here we do get formula, but also diapers, creams, feeding accessories like thermal bags and ice packs for on the go bottles. Some have toys, and books, coupons. They all come in free diaper bags, they're cheap, but hey it's free right. The best part of being at the hospital is the free stuff. Heck the hospital even tells us to cleen the room of diapers, lydacane, pads, formula the hopsital provides. (Here most hospitals don't let moms bf for 24 hours after a C-section so the babies don't get all doped up)

My mom works for a company that makes the sample packages. The formula companies that do samples are Similac and Enfamil, Good Start doesn't want to participate. (My mom has been trying to get them for a long time, they want no part of free sampling)

MKG - what you say about Mexico is replicated in most poor countries. I agree that it is a crime to make formula so exepnsive that women in these countries can't afford. However, in my view, it is a a much bigger crime and a crime against humanity to make a poor/undereducated woman BELIEVE that she does not have enough milk or deficinet milk to feed her baby.

If I had the money and the means, I would spend the rest of my life suing those bastards (the formula companies in collusion with the health service) for giving out false information to millions of poor women whose babies health/lives could be saved through a very effective anti-bacterial and FREE substance, always available on tap, uncontaminated from the mother's body, breastmilk.

MKG - I am horrified that in the US a c-section woman is not allowed to bf for the first 24 hours. That can be absolutely fatal for the bf relationship. Do they actually bother asking the parents what kind of milk they would like the baby to receive in those first 24 hours ? I hope so ! Christ, I thought the US was better than here in supporting bf.

have read op only and i dont think it is implying that the formula would be better.

I think you are wrong about hospitals not allowing bf for 24 hours after a section, MKG - I know what I am talking about here, and have many US contacts. There is absolutely no risk of doping the baby even if the mother has had a general anaesthetic - once the mother is conscious the GA is out of her blood and if it is out of her blood it out of the milk.

Free samples of formula are illegal here - and a good thing, too. They are not 'free' - who do you think really pays for them? Mothers.....because the cost of the 'free' samples will be factored into the retail price paid for later, when the babies fed on the free samples have to have bought formula (and for poorer mothers, as you said before, this matters).

Free formula is the most insidious form of marketing, and if they could do it in Europe, you can be sure they would. There is a lot of research showing that hospitals which give out free formula have a worse breastfeeding rate.

It's totally undermining to breastfeeding and to mothers' confidence.

And they have convinced people they are doing mothers a favour

Not saying you are wrong about what the hospital did in your experience re. bf after a section, MKG, but I do know this is not a general thing.

"The best part of being at the hospital is the free stuff"

I find that really, really sad.....there are lots of great things about the USA, but the health service is not one of them!