terminology rant alert.....bf-nazi, mafia, Police, gestapo....

[3andnomore]

So, just why do people it's o.k. to call people that are pro breastfeeding etc...Bresaatfeeding Gestapo, Breastfeeding Nazis, Breastfeeding Mafia, Bf Police etc...how would people feel if people started to say FF Nazi to people that are pro Formula feeding, or other such terms....it realllly annoys me....it would never occur to me to call a Formula feeding mum such names...., sigh!
Yes, people that bf often feel passionate about Breastfeeding, but mostly this is, because they are aware of all the surrounding problems, all the myths, etc...I just find it disturbing that people will use such terms so loosely!

ooops that was meant to be:
So, just why do people THINK it's o.k.

Because they are ignorant fools.

nownow ;)

Maybe it's because as you have just implied in your post that mums who don't breastfeed are not "aware of all the surrounding problems, all the myths etc..."

Which is not to say I agree with terms like nazi, gestapo etc.

what moondog says.

i get really about this as well.

I'm always against people throwing the word Nazi around as a generic insult - devalues something that was evil on a massive, previously-unknown scale.

I don't understand it and find it disrespectful to use these terms so lightly.

Most of the bfing mums I know, even lll ones, I know I am going to get slated, just listen when ffing mums say 'I wanted to feed but I couldn't/she self weaned at 6 weeks'
Hardly a Nazi Mafia response, that would be to gas you or throw you into a river with concrete tied round your legs. Most of us bfers are as normal as you ffers, no dictatorships, despots yet really.
Goodasdold is v pro bfing but has never questioned a rl mum about any aspect of their childs care.

I agree with edam. These words should not be used out of context.

Mums who cannot/will not feed or who just never got it right despite trying desparately (I am one of those) often feel incredibly inadequate.

I think they feel intimidated by mums who can and do BF successfully. Unfortunately people who feel intimidated often say nasty things to try and bolster their own confidence.

Sad but true.

I also find references to Nazis/Gestapo distasteful. So unnecessary.

I'm with dejags.

It is a poor choice of descriptor (NAzi etc) but the feeling behind it is usually some sort of guilt/failure/envy and a bit of attack as a form of defence.

Says I, who 'failed' to bf and experienced huge ammount of envy for those who had succeeded and it used to really get to me when I read about how much better than FF BF was, because I knew that and yet I had still been unable to do it for my child and so felt like the pro-bf messages were just slapping me in face.

I'm over it now...

OH dont get me started.......

go on VVV

So glad I have let go my BF angst. It can be very overpowering.

I trainer as a bf counsellor when ds was tiny. I was surprised how little we were taught about women's choices about not bfing. I can see why people may be made to feel like failures and that promotes very strong feelings. But still think these terms are unnecessary.

Dimpled...wha would you have to learn though about womens choice NOT to bf? Not being disrespectful, just wondering....to me a bf councellor will be seeked by women that want to bf and need help with that...if a woman chooses NOT to bf, then she is hardly gonna come and seek the help of a bfc...or did you mean,as in councelling a woman that has tried to bf but in the end ends up to FF? Just trying to clarify.

3andnomore

was a while ago but let me think. I understand that those seeking out a bfc would want to bf - but during the teaching I found it uncomfortable to accept a lot of the ways in which women who were unable to bf for various reasons were perceived as needing help to change rather than maybe coming to a point where you would accept the womans choice.

I did the course as I was really angry about the negativity surrrounding bf and the lack of support within society, but the kick back reaction to this seemed to be that all women should and ought to bf, and that in turn blames the women who don't.

This was 7yrs ago. I do believe the course was badly put across and also I hope a lot of these attitudes have changed with time.

But there are few reasons why a woman can't breastfeed and so if she is seeking the help of a counsellor then I would expect she wanted help to succeed. If she had decided she didnt want to breastfeed then would only need advise on how to stop surely. WHo did you train with? My understanding is that counsellor training is pretty long and with lots of substance.

Again just popping in.....

All the breastfeeding counsellor training with the 4 vol orgs looks at women's choices and how they are affected by all sorts of factors. There is nothing about persuading individual women and nothing about blaming or judging individual women.

Some individuals at the beginning of their training may not yet have gone very far on that learning journey, of course.

The courses are all basically similar in that counselling is mother-centred and aims to help a mother make her own choices. Several of the assessed assignments in NCT's training ask the student to look at the way people's experience is influenced, and throughout, the counsellor is trained to support a mother's autonomy.

I feel very strongly that with good training, no counsellor would ever 'make' a woman feel guilty for using formula. Occasionally, I am sure individual counsellors get it wrong, but the training is pretty sound on this.

I reckon you can't have done one of these courses, dimpled....was it maybe a short supporter course or similar?

From a personal pov I was never made to feel guilty about my feeding choices - either at hospital or by my community midwife.

She was congratulatory at my efforts, tried to give as much information and advice as possible and once I had given up supported us well through our problems with FFing.

This was in the UK in 2001 and 2004 (same MW for both boys) so I think somewhere along the line the training is working well at midwife level (or at least for my midwife). On the other hand I left a BF'ing workshop in 2001 feeling like the world's worst mother.

All training is interpreted and advice delivered differently by different people. It doesn't help that some are so vociferous about either choice that we now have a situation where people are literally afraid to discuss their feeding choices.

I should say some people (who have no training or anything other than personal interest).

"but during the teaching I found it uncomfortable to accept a lot of the ways in which women who were unable to bf for various reasons were perceived as needing help to change rather than maybe coming to a point where you would accept the womans choice. "

don't quite get this...
I know there are some real reasons of why a woman can't bf,but there aren't that many, mainly the problem is that women are sabotaged by the Healthprofessionals and expectations of society...so, those women surely can only be helped by showing them how, etc....and if they truely want to bf, then surely no one is helping them by saying...."oh you must just accept you can't"....
I might have completely misunderstyood though what you were trying to say!

crikey

can of worms or what!

I will read back through and try and put it acroos in a clearer way.

It was called a peer-to-peer bf counselling course. I lived in a very run down part of a large city and the bf rates were very low. I was asked by my health visitor to attend this course as I was the only mother who was still bfing beyond nine months that he knew. The course was produced by one of the most well known bf groups (one of the 4 vol orgs), but was dissemniated by another HV, a midwife and a volunteer (I think this is where the problem lay tbh- there were a lot of ancedotes about people they had come into contact with that I felt were inappropiate and the way one of them spoke about the women we wold come in to contact with was very patronising). I was expected to approach women at the HV clinic session and ask them about their feeding choices and tell them about the benefits of bfing and give out my phone number. This was very hard as often the women were very defensive and instantly not willing to listen. I was also subject to some verbal abuse.

There are only a few physical reasons why a woman can't bf, but a huge amount of psychological ones (mainly due to wrong advice or societal pressure). I wasn't meaning you should just say 'oh just accept that you can't' but by not acknowledging that the woman feels that she has a actual problem and insisting that she can bf will alienate her and any chance of any progress. By accepting her problems as real and accepting her choices you can then move to discuss the reasons for these choices and other possible outcomes.

I appreciate that the training is very involved and I understand I have not done a qualification in bfing, but I feel that the fact that people do feel pressure (hence the title of this thread) about the way they should feed their babies is counterproductive. My experience from the course I did just reinforces this idea. It makes me think that there are a lot of people who are unable to approach people for help as they feel they will be perceived as failing and this issue needs to be addressed. By being seen as accepting their choices may be one way of doing this.

Thanks for clarifying, dimpled.

I don't know of the course you describe, but it sounds very poor. I don't think any of the people delivering the course should have shared anecdotes of the sort you heard, and the idea that you should approach women uninvited makes my blood run cold....what were they thinking of? I too have been on the receiving end of very scathing comments about mothers, from hvs and others, who assume that because I am a breastfeeding counsellor I will share their view of mothers who don't breastfeed. It's not nice. I don't think the majority of hvs and mws think like this.

I agree - psychological and social issues which produce barriers to breastfeeding are just as real as physical ones.

Any training - even short course training - is useless and counter-productive (as you say) if it does not explore this and acknowledge it.

There are many reasons why people do not seek help - fear of being seen as a failure may well be one of them. Other reasons are fear they will be 'made' to formula feed, fear they will be dismissed as making a fuss, not knowing how to get help, not having the confidence to speak up.