not looking for a row, but has anyone seen the new SMA logo? the one that looks like the mum is bf?

[harpsichordcarrier]

here's the logo

you tube clip here

sma site

way to get round the new advertising rules, which forbid them from saying "close to breastmilk" &c
anyone like to complain? I would like them, very much, to have to change their logo and slogan again. especially as they have clearly spent quite a bit of wonga on it.

I agree Cod - when I was pregnant with DD I wanted to breastfeed, but my midwife was so pro-b/feeding that by the end I felt bullied... I would have hated to have been wanting to f/feed around her.

I think my mistake was saying "I plan to breastfeed but I will take it as it comes"

ok tiktok, i am not an expert on the contents of formula, i just thought formula now might be "better" than formula say 60 years ago, may be "vast" wasn't the correct word ?!!?

at yellow!

I am not an expert either, and who could be, cos the info is really not available, but I do think on the evidence available saying 'vast' is overstating it

The big problem women had not breastfeeding in the days before fridges was keeping (milkman's milk) fresh. The milkman might not have had much refridgeration, either - and he would sell milk from the churn on his cart, which was next to the horse's dirty bum .

The 'vast' improvement in non-breastfeeding probably came when people bought canned milk (like Carnation) or dried milk (like National Dried Milk in the 1940s and 1950s) and so didn't have to rely on keeping the liquid fresh.

flame - almost ALL new mums i speak to say they get bullied one way or the other - some get bullied and harrassed into ff within hours of giving birth

mw/hv/gp need lessons/lectures on good manners before they can help/support to bf - i honestly think they do

tiktok, the only real EXPERTS on formula are the formula companies themselves and as we know they are not so keen on being transparent - lol !

well I don't know- I always considered myself pro-breastfeeding- I was an extended breastfeeder. But when I come onto these threads it always mskes me feel like reaching for the steriliser. You may think that's silly (I doubt I'd actually do it- after all that would be a BIT DAFT- SORRY ds1 lkeabning into mne irritatingly) but if it makes a person who breastfed feel like that then what on earth do these threads do to people who couldn't breastfeed or chose not to? You may want toshare the great ne3ws about breastfeeding, but IMO the way it's done on here probably ends up doing as much harm as good. Juding my comments on tyhis thrad alone I don'tthnl I'm the on;ly one.

anyway can no longer type probab;ly as good thing as an 8 year old dead weibght lying on wrists shouting bloody "ayan" (THAT bloody bloody word) makes it impossible.

Yellow - i completely agree. with the exception of my mw - who was fab - my hv has been quite rude about my bf-ing. and (i may hve mentioned this before) when ds was going through a growth spurt at 7 weeks and i was tearing my hair out with exhaustion casually said "Oh, give him some formula."

by the way - in my post on the Cow & Gate website, i didn't say "You are stupid", i was merely saying that so other people would know what i was referring to. i don't think anyone would argue that giving a 7 week old baby a rusk is fairly dim though.

but this wasn't a bf/ff debate. it was a query about the way formula companies market their brand, and the ethics of that.

wasn't it?

pmsl at misdee. i'll put my hand up too... i bought aptamil because it said 'closest to breastmilk' and was then very miffed to find out the Cow & Gate said the same about their formula.
isn't formula a funny word, btw? reeks of beakers and bunsen burners, must have been suitably scientific-sounding when 'formula' was first introduced.

i remember goibng 'which ione' but the klarger tin for SMA did sway me more.

As usual these threads go off the point totally.

Formula milk is necessary for a large percentage of babies as breastfeeding does not work out for mothers for various reasons.
Formula milk is modified cow's milk - it in no way, shape or form resembles breastmilk.

Formula companies try tp persuade mothers that their milk is the 'closest to breastmilk' so that they will get them to buy their products. SMA are desperately trying to imply that with their logo.

Mothers always ask me which milk is closest to breastmilk when they are choosing a formula (artificial milk). I tell them that one is basically the same as the other.

As Tiktok says, companies should not be competing with each other trying to get the milk with the closest number of ingredients to breastmilk. For mothers who are unable to breastfeed then they should be able to get honest information and milk should be produced that meets all requirements. Not a bit of this in one milk and a bit of this in another. Remember when LCPs were discovered? Milupa was the only company that added them - the other companies had to 'invent' their own.

That is what is evil about formula companies. The profit margin is more important than the health of the baby.

Mothers do want to give their babies milk that is as close as possible to breastmilk. Unfortunately there isn't such a product on the market.

There is formula milk which is an adequate substitute - that is all.

SMA means Scientific Modified Adaptation BTW

thing is if the marketing for FF over the years hadn't been so succesful, then the percentage of Babys needing formula would be not so large
If bf was the norm then the number of people truely experiencing problems would be sooooooo much lower.

does it, mears? that's hilarious. they don't seem to be pushing that on their pink fluffy cuddles logo, do they?

do you know, ive just remembered that when i was struggling with mix feeding and finding it all a bit of a drain i jokily said to my GP (who i was bfing dd in front of) 'you'd think God would have come up an easier way than this', to which she replied 'He did, it's formula!'.

now at the time i remember being somewhat comforted by this, after all if this elegant, accomplished woman did not manage to BF (she explained that her healthy happy teenagers were all FF) then maybe i wasn't doing dd a disservice by giving her formula?

now, having some distance from the whole miserable BFing experience i'm pretty shocked that she said that, tbh. she's not a silly woman, she's very clever indeed and i really respect her intelligent and analytical approach to her job. but all that proves for me is that it is very, very difficult for health professionals to separate out their personal experiences from the facts. she couldn't BF, and she tried, and it hurt her that she couldn't.

so now she is somewhat dismissive of people's attempts to keep going at all costs. my consultant was the same, actually. his wife had broke her heart over BFing and had become happier giving formula so this left him very sensitive to chat about bfing... hmmm. rambling now, but the reason these threads go awry is because it cuts to the heart of our parenting and desire to 'do our best' and none of us are immune to it.

yes the word "success" re. formula has a very negative side to it when we talk about bf rates in the UK

aitch - your gp sound like food fun - lol ! except god didn't invent formula, it was nestle !

woooooppppppssss - massive freudian slip - i meant "good fun" not "food fun" - lol !

Got it slightly wrong - it is Synthetic Milk Adapted

see here

"very difficult for health professionals to separate out their personal experiences from the facts"

but isn't that what we pay them to do ? - they are health profs. they NEED to be unbiased, scientific, factual, whatever you want to call it !

their personal experiences may be difficult to keep out of their jobs, but every other prof, somehow mananges it - I don't talk about my PERSONAL life to my clients

thank god the word synthetic is in there then - lol !

but you see that's the problem with this sort of thread 3annomore "truly experiencing problems", using language like that makes some sort of judgement against those who state "I didn't breastfeed because I couldn't".

I don't disagree with anything Mears said, and reading her list didn;t make me want to reach for the formula- but "truly" did leap out at me (and this isn't just to pick you up- it's just an example of the type of phrase that tends to end up in these threads, and I think its the use of that sort of language that makes people cross.

Having successfully fed ds1 and ds2 (for over 3 years combined total) bfeeding with ds3 was a complete non-starter. I can't remember how long we lasted but it was a matter of weeks (which for me didn't really count tbh). There wer eplenty of extra reasons above the norm for me to continue breastfeeding as long as possible (family hisptory of gut problems for starters). Now when you examine my reasons for having to stop I'm happy that they were sufficient, but I doubt someone scoring them would count them as a "true" problem. They became a problem because they were tied up in my life, and I had other problems in my life. I think its very hard to judge as an outsider what is going on in someone's life that makes breastfeeding difficult- and whether its a real reason to give up or not. I think anyone who has breastfed for a long time AND used formula will agree that once established breastfeeding is far far easier than formula feeding- people fail becuase its so hard to establish.

Completely off the point. Have to go scvreaming.

but maybe it's just too, too personal, yellowrose? it's about nourishing a tiny dependant child, what could be more emotive? actually i think that medics who are too robot-like would be as problematic as the other way round. retaining your heart is important in medicine, but there are times when it leaks into areas it shouldn't i think. difficult one for them, though.

gess - I am not sure what you mean about my list?

I agree that babies need to have an alternative to breastmilk. What I am saying is that formula is nothing like breastmilk in the true sense but is a suitable alternative.

It shouldn't be down to competing milk companies to develop the 'perfect' milk - it should be a collaboration.

I WAS very grateful for my MW though aitch (very pro breastfeeding and I knew that)- she said to me "look you have to realise that to get over this problem in your situation is going to be very difficult and you have to ask yourself whether it is going to be possible." or something like that. She was able to see my ciurcumstances and that helped iykwim. (Incidentally my problem was not enough milk- I just needed to go to bed for 48 hours, but considering I couldn't even sit down for one breastfeed without having to get up and sort out something hideous that ds1 was doing it wasn't going to happen).