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?

i agree with morocco - my personal experience always has been that people have tried to push me into ff - the only people who have been very supportive of bf is one close friend (a child-led weaner like me), my in-laws and dh - i am actually surprised to hear of mw/hv/gp who push for bf - the ones i have met even in leafy parts of affluent London were pretty blase "give him a bottle [formula] at night so you can get some sleep" sort of women and shock horror "why are you bf a 3 year old" ?

now someone tell me if this lot have ever even heard of WHO/UNICEF - they sure as hell have heard of Nestle.

where does this 'give him/her a bottle at night so you can get some sleep' come from?my ff from birth babies have all woken at least every 2 hours and would take at least 40 mins to drink a bottle in the first 10 days or so,and my 9 week old is going about the same length of time between feeds as the bf babies her age on the post-natal thread.

'get some sleep'another myth!

someone else can give the bottle, Divastrop - isn't that what they mean?

oh right,now why didnt that come to me i wonder?

oh yes,because men always sleep through the baby crying anyway

My dh does too.

What a stupid headline . I hate the DM soooo much....

I have never ever felt pressurised into bfing - in fact more often than not it's the other way around. Societal pressure makes you feel like a freak for doing it. You meed a thick skin to bf in front of others to start with and even thicker one to persevere over 6 months. But I grew one of those and carried on for 3 years in the end.

I had trouble with DS#1 and ended up staying in the local maternity wing for a whole week while they got me started. I still had problems but I was able to go back for more help. It paid dividends because with the other 2 I was fine from the word go - at least when I had problems I knew what to do. It isn't always easy to start with. Maybe that's something else that extended families and generations of experience used to help with - generations of experience nowadays probably includes mostly women who only used bottles.

I think the article was rather unbalanced starting with the alleged blood stains on the shawl (wtf was the relevance of that??). A simpler written essay telling her story would have been much more to the point without sensationalism like that. I was discouraged from giving my dd a bottle in hospital by one mw but another one gave me the fm quite happily and it certainly didn't stop me from breast-feeding her for the next 12 weeks or so.

If anything, all it's going to achieve is annoyance from experienced mums/mws/hvs and fear in mums to be that they're never going to get anything right now for the rest of their lives . We're doomed, we're all doomed.

Feelings of guilt may well be in the head of the mother but if there was not so much pressure to breastfeed then why would anyone think they had anything to feel guilty about? After the first couple of weeks of bf, my daughter began to pull away and scream during every feed. I told my HV, a lactation consultant, a paediatrician and a GP. We tried infacol for colic and wind, infant gaviscon for reflux, cranial osteopathy for moulding, and just about every feeding position known to womankind. To no avail. Each feed became something to dread and I'd look at literature extolling the virtues of 'the joys of breastfeeding' and couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry. Rang a helpline but there was no-one there. Spent hours on the internet looking up possible causes. At six weeks I gave her her first bottle of formula and mixed the two from then until six months. If I had not done this I would have given up breastfeeding altogether, yet no-one ever seems to offer mixed feeding as a compromise solution. All you get are lectures about how it will interfere with your milk supply.
In a perfect world, breast is best, but it's hardly as if you are poisoning your child by opting for an alternative.
PS I hate the Daily Mail but it's refreshing that somebody finally had the nerve to publish something that flies in the face of the current breastfeeding obsession.

I think that for every mother who tried and tried and struggled and wept and breastfeeding still didn't work, there is a mother who tried and tried and struggled and wept and then suddenly, almost as if my magic, the baby got the hang of it and they were off. And at the point when the midwives are encouraging the mother to stick with it, they don't know which category they're dealing with.

sublet - I admit to mixed feeding to get over the problems I had with DS#1. But I now know that I could probably have managed without but refuse to worry about it. But in a society where so many women are horrified by the very idea and won't even countenance it, I think there might be a place for this 'current breastfeeding obsession' don't you?

R4 Saturday morning there was a newspaper review programme (that Fi Glover thing) and all the men came out with the 'I have nothing against bfing mothers but bfing is one of those things that should be done in private' line and no-one argued with them. It's going to take a hell of a long and fierce obsession to get over that kind of attitude.

Fair point OrmIrian, although I have yet to meet anyone who is not willing - even eager - to give breastfeeding a fair chance. With regard to the feeding in public debate, although I only ever did it once myself (on a train, no less) I don't see what the big deal is. But sadly it's something some people are always going to have a problem with. Perhaps more feeding rooms and places where you can go and feed in comfort and relative privacy would be a solution??

I wasn't under pressure to bf - in fact it was the reverse with my xp's parents. He was bottle fed as were a lot of babies in the 1970s and his mum couldn't understand why I was bothering to feed my dd myself when you can get perfectly good formula milk.

My mum fed four kids though so it seemed more natural to try to feed her myself rather than go for the bottle option. In the end I opted for a kind of mixed feeding where my dd fed from me first thing in the morning/last thing at night and she had ff the rest of the time. It was about all the milk I could produce as it never seemed to come in properly and even dreid up at one stage! but I didn't feel too guilty about it. I knew that I'd tried and done my best. Probably had my xp been moaning at me to just get on with it and feed her (he was quite keen on bf as it's 'free'), I'd have felt differently. Being able to feed her, even partly myself, gave me a feeling of achievement. If I had a second baby, I'd probably end up doing the same thing again. Even cows only feed their calves for a few weeks, if that - why do we think it normal for women to keep lactating for their children for months/years at a time when animals do it for an allotted stint then move on?

'I have nothing against bfing mothers but bfing is one of those things that should be done in private'

FFS - were those tossers thinking about masturbation by any chance and equating it with bf ? they must think it is the same thing, a sexual act or possibly the same as peeing or pooing

i do think that many men in this country are so obsessed with breasts as sexual objects that they can't think of them as having any other function.

how can we ever hope for progress on bf in public when even our so-alled educated men (not many blue collar workers come on to R4 !!) talk about bf in that way ?

shockingly, i was in Spain last week and didn't see a single baby being bf. it goes to show how far down the ff path we have gone even in more "traditional" and rural parts of Europe.

i bottle fed my 2 ds then with my dd i decided I would breastfeed her. She ended up dehydrated, running a temperature and hungry as I just couldn't feed her myself. The treatment I received from the midwife after deciding to bottle feed her was appallling she actually gave me a dirty look and didn't speak to me again.

I hate mothers being treated like shit becasue they don't want to or can't breast feed.

FFS....is all that I can say to this one....why does this woman feel the need to write it in this way...oh yes...otherwise it wouldn't have been published in the daily mail....sigh!

I would have given my right arm to have midwives/HVs around who were so pro-bf. My DD had low blood sugar because of my diabetes, and I was given no help to express, just told she needed formula to get her blood sugar up. Despite days of asking for a pump while she was in scbu being bottle-fed formula, i wasn't brought one til she was back with me. When she refused to latch that compounded things and I was given no help, just a load of platitudes about not beating myself up coz I hadn't been able to bf. Whatever side you are on (and unfortunately it is an issue which seems to divide many of us into sides) you can find many examples of how the system went wrong, but whatever side you are on it's clear that better trained/less-overworked post natal care would benefit all concerned.

I don't agree with mindless midwife bashing, but there undoubtedly are some shocking ones about (as indeed can be said for other health professionals). Some midwives are bullies (yes some - not all) and some do specifically bully about breastfeeding. A colleagues midwife said to her "Would you deny your child life-saving treatment?" Of course she said no, to which the midwife replies "So why are you denying your baby breast milk" That is an example of bullying. Women are very vulnerable when they've had a baby and deserve good quality care and support. They often don't have the strength to challenge bad practice and they just want to get their baby home safely

I've felt 'bullied'! Mainly because of pressure combined with lack of resources and support.

I.E 'Just get on with it - it's natural, of course you have enough milk' 'formula is bad bad bad bad' 'Any problems mean that YOU are not doing it right'.

It's pressure you really don't need when you are recovering from an exhausting birth and had me in tears often!

Thankfully I'm still bf at nearly 6 months, (partly due to MN) but I reckon it would have been a huge relief to have given up in those early days!

It's such a lottery who you are looked after in hospital. That explains why some women felt "bullied" to breastfeed and others felt "bullied" to formula feed. I do wonder though if it really was anything like bullying. After all, the few days following birth you can feel so fragile that even very mild comments can feel harsh.

the thing is, NKF, you'd surely think that midwifery staff would know how fragile some women can be after they've given birth, and not do things like thrusting a small baby at a new, inexperienced young mother and say, "He needs feeding!" then walk away and never see her again?!

It's not just to do with what happens in hospital, though - it's also about antenatal classes and hvs.

well, yes, antenatal classes filled me wth a false optimism that bf-ing was easy, that anyone could do it etc etc. i think the biggest lie was "It won't hurt if he's latched on properly" bolleaux

we need honest, open, realistic antenatal care, and proper postnatal care.

there. i've solved it. easy peasy.

I think we need some honesty. "BFing isn't easy" would be a good start. "Even with a good latch it will almost certainly hurt for a while". But saying the it's the best thing you can do for your baby isn't bullying - it's just more honesty.