Daily Mail -"My beautiful baby was starving to death, until I defied the 'breast is best' bullies"

[theUrbanDryad]

i'm not sure what to think here...on the one hand it raises very valid points, but the headline is so inflammatory....

what do you think?

Typical Daily Mail really. But it is 'normal' practice now to discharge after 2 days after a c section. When I did my O&G training (only 5 years ago) my consultant was though of as being abit old fashioned because she insisted that post-c-section the women had to stay in for 5 days. Everyone else was OK with discharge after 2-3 days.

No one checked that I was feeding DS2 correctly before I was chucked out after 2 days (having said that, i would've self disharged as the care was just miserable and I knew I would get more rest and support at home - not their fault - just not enough staff).

have they said anything to you, though, gingermonkey? how do you know they were looking down their noses at you, really? i certainly used to feel mortified bringing out formula in front of bfing pals but that emotion came from me, not them.

kateyp - NICE guidelines actually recommend discahrge 24 HOURS after c-section if there are no problems

I didn't come across anything I would call bullying but there was certainly pressure and I found many health professionals could be very clumsy - under a lot of pressure from targets, I suspect.

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I feel that maternity staff are damned if they do and damned if they don't promote b'feeding. To my mind she was let down by the "experts" regardless of how the baby was being fed, and the editorial slant is just gratuitously anti-b'feeding biassed. The slung scales and calculation on a mobile phone seem to sound alarm bells in themselves but surely a baby losing that amount of weight so quickly should n't even need to be weighed - jsut the look and behaviour wasn't right. However imho the lack of continuity with the same midwife making the daily home visits and therefore compromising such ability to impartially recognise the problem, underlies how this situation became so critical not so much the feeding advice itself.

Pitchounette - this is the reality in Babyfriendly hospitals and should be the norm. Sadly it is not the norm and that is what should be strived for. It is not about giving FF mums a break - it is about giving BF mums support.

The majority of women in this country FF at 6 weeks - that is a fact. Many of them FF because they did not get the help and support needed to BF.

It is sad that in Scotland only just over 50% of women ever try to breastfeed in the first place. By 6 weeks that is down to 29%. The majority of babies in this country are formula fed overall. That is why there is a drive to increase breastfeeding rates.

Considering that the vast majority of women are able to breastfeed - there is something far wrong.

I stand by my comment that the emphasis should be on supporting women who choose to breastfeed to do so.

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How very Daily Mail

Pitchounette - a baby being on the second percentile does not necessarily mean that the baby is being starved

DAISYMOO - well - nothing NICE says/does surprises me! Don't get me started on them I could be here all day...

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i agree that breastfeeding needs to be promoted but if there are significant problems, either with baby feeding, mother producing, psychological problems etc etc there should be help offered and sometimes even councelling offered for mothers who feel a 'failure' for not managing to breastfeed. It is not fair to be made to feel like a second class citizen because they tried to do best for their baby but whatever went wrong something did and they failed!

with dd she wouldnt latch, not to my boob not to a bottle, even when she got bigger (around 5-6 months) she still wouldn't latch to a bottle properly so i doubt very much she would have ever got the hang of breastfeeding, but in the hospital rather than help feeding they shoved a bottle of formula into her while i was sleeping and then she wouldnt even try and latch when i tried to bf.

with ds i wanted to breastfeed, we seemed to be doing great but i was acutely aware something wasnt right and he wasnt feeding properly, i was told by numerous midwives that they can get all the nutrition they need in the first 2 minutes blah blah blah, to keep trying and it would establish. After getting home and still being convinced there was something wron i gave him formula for 24hrs to see how much he was drinking.....1oz every 5hrs.....i phoned the midwife and we had to go straight to nnu check his jaundice hadnt got worse (which it had) and they wanted to put him on a drip to rehydrate him, i managed to convince them to let me wake him every hour for 24 hrs to see if he'l eat better. he took around anounce an hour. i could not have faced going back to breastfeeding then, having to feed every hour of the day for over 2 weeks to keep his weight up and build his stomach up to take more. If i hadnt been ableto hand him over sometimes i would have probably broken down more than i did anyway. i felt severely guilty, probably more from my pressure than anyone elses, that i did not manage to breastfeed him and developed PND. but it was best for us and if anyone looks down at me now i tell them they dont know the story and to butt out!!!!

sorry bit of an essay

again, sleepless, a well-trained bfc is brilliant to have around if you're not managing to bf for Whatever Reason. in a way, when they finally told me that the pills i was on had probably interfered with establishing my supply despite all my hard work and tears over it, she allowed me Not to feel a failure. the more they know about bfing, the more that they can help all of us, iykwim? whether we are bfing or not. my friend still thinks fondly of the bfc who said to her 'do you want me to tell you it's okay to stop?' after she'd been expressing for 12 weeks and her son had suddenly latched on and had eaten her nipple... she just needed someone to tell her that she'd done really well. mother and son much happier...

Sleepless - you said something very important there - "i felt severely guilty, probably more from my pressure than anyone elses, that i did not manage to breastfeed"

Who is it that looks down their noses at women who FF? Who 'makes women feel guilty?'

I feel that women beat themselves up about it rather than outsiders.

No-one can MAKE you feel guilty - it is something you do to yourself IYSWIM? You are quite right - counselling is needed to help women realise that. I know that that statement will come over as being harsh but that is not how it is intended. Breastfeeding counsellors can help women to come to terms with FF if that is what is best for them.

There are resources out there - women ofetn do not use them.

I started a thread before asking how many women prepared them selves for breastfeeding by reading about it etc. The vast majority did no preparation at all.

Knowledge is a wonerful tool and women can find out information form a variety of sources. It is not all down to health professionals although I agree they are a major influence.

If women arm themselves with the knowledge of how to get off to a good start then problems can be avoided.

the problem there, though, is that not all women assume that they're actually going to have a real live baby at the end of it so don't want to tempt fate by reading about things that will happen post-labour. that's certainly how i felt, i must say.

aitch, yes - I had comments especially after DD and my sil's mum made some comments after DS, but to sil and not me. I've also had people say 'oh, I could never use formula', well, they would have to if they couldn't produce milk, wouldn't they?

Ginger - I have said that I would never use formula. That does not mean that I judge women who do. You are quite right that if I didn't produce milk then I would need to use it. For me, milk production was not a problem therefore I could safely say that I would not give my baby formula at any point. It was really important to me.

mears you are right i think a lot of it is self pressure rather than pressre from outside, i have had some comments from others but not a lot and none that bothered me as such!! but the counselling or even just 'it's ok to stop now if you need to' from a bf counsellor or such like would have been great, now i know i did what was best for both my children, but then........well i didnt and it pushed me further into depression i think.....but now iv thought about it rationally i did what was right in our situation. i would love to change it but i cant, so i move on!

i remember being in a cafe and these women deffo started talking v loudly about how breast was best, etc, but no-one in my famil would ever have said anythign cos they could see how i was struggling with it all. but generally speaking i'd say any humiliation i felt stemmed from me more than came from others.

oh, Aitch - sil's mum also went on about how anti-depressants were wrong and I should just 'pull myself out of it'. Again, this was to sil and not me. She's an opinionated woman, and one that just loves to share her opinions with the world (many a time I've had to grit my teeth when she starts spouting off)

I had major pressure to ff DS2 and have had many "anti-bf" comments from health professionals who ought to know better, so it does go both ways.