Fewer than 1% of mums exclusively breastfeed for six months nationwide

[hunkermunker]

Are the massively outspoken minority(!) on here making any difference to the MN population? Have we hit (or exceeded) 1% on here?

i apologise i read it differently than it was meant.

hunker dear in general. not specifically you. it wasn't about you.

Twinkle, the figures are not skewed. The survey asks women how long they breastfed for, and when they introduced solids. They don't say, 'oh, your baby is six months now, are you excl bf?'

Go on then, the general criteria.

Ripax - is formula feeding still a difficult subject for you? How old is your LO? It is very easy to misinterpret throwaway comments, believe me I know.

What would your motivation possibly be Hunker?

Tiktok - But Hunker's thread title says less than 1% breastfeed exclusively for six months - that is the message conveyed by the survey.

But if you read the extract I posted, if a mum breastfeeds exclusively for six months and then introduces solid food on her baby's six month birthday, then she will not count as breastfeeding exclusively AT 6 months.

If we're using the figure to measure how many women are following the weaning guidelines, it is a figure of exclusive bf FOR 6 months not AT 6 months that is relevant. IMO.

I started the thread to see whether the MN population were likely to be exclusively bfeeding for longer than the general population, as it's often been said that MN's "different" - and I have found myself in RL that not many people exclusively bfeed for long, and I know many women who introduce formula and solids early, for a range of reasons.

What do you think my motivation is, Ripax?

I should have said btw that I agree with you Tiktok that the figures aren't skewed exactly, now that I've read the methodology. But like I said, I think they could be misleading.

me me me me me!!!!
Crap at it and dont like it but do it exclusivly till dinner time ( for baby) plus done it 5 times!!!!

Twinkle, the survey is retrospective....they are not asking mothers 'what are you doing now?' and counting the ones who intro'd solids on the 6 mth 'birthday' as not exclusively bf at 6 mths.

They ask mothers (and it's always a large sample - a few thousand, IIRC, in these 5 yearly surveys) 'when did you stop exclusively breastfeeding?' or whatever (I haven't looked up the exact question),and if they say 'at 6 mths' this will go down as exclusively breastfeeding to 6 mths, and I would be amazed if it was more than one per cent, in fact.

I didn't "exclusively" but I'm still bf-ing now (9 m) but ds was in Great Ormond Street Hospital for a feeding problem so I had the medical experts behind me when I started weaning at 5 months.

But every baby is different!! Life would be so boring if every baby followed WHO guidelines.

Do I count as part of the 1%? DS had nothing apart from breastmilk until the very day when he turned 6 months. That afternoon he tried some steamed carrot sticks BLW stylee. He was born at 11.15am and the carrot sticks happened at around age 6 months and 4hrs!!! Do the 4hrs count as being excl breastfed at 6months?

DD is 9 months and had her first bit of formula this week other than that she has only ever had breast milk. She started solids 5 days before she was 6 months though. Do I count for the purpose of that stat?

Oh - I see from reading ealier posts that we would not count

both DSs were exclusive BF to 6 months.

Speaking to friends, the 4-5 month growth spurt/night wakening etc is commonly believed to be a need for solids OR mums think they are running out of milk. They think that at this stage a bottle at night or baby rice will make their baby sleep better. If only HVs would warn mums of this and encourage them to keep going with BF perhaps it might slightly improve stattistics?

Also, with paid Mat Leave ending at 6 months, I think mums were stopping BF early in preparation for the return to work. Now Mat Leave is 9 months, the stats may improve?

Both my DDs were exclusively BF until 6 months and I am extemely proud of it especially DD1 who was a nightmare to feed when she was first born but with the help of some lovely mumsnetters we ignored the "get her a bottle" brigrade and got through it.

Formula feeding is not lazy IMO it's hard work; lazy is lifting your top and latching a baby on when they are hungry. No mess and nothing to clean.

What I hate is nearly every mother I talk to who discovers I breastfed (I don't advertise it openly) has to give me her reason to why it didn't work for her, why? I don't really care and I feel it's sad they have to justify it somehow but the most common cause of not breastfeeding is that they didn't produce enough milk. Where are they getting this info from? Mothers can feed twins quite happily, if women didn't produce enough milk most of us wouldn't be here by now. Why can't we trust our bodies to feed our babies?

i think it's sad for mother and baby when they are set on the path of formula, especially when baby has cow milk from birth.

even farmers know that it's essential to get mother and baby cow together for the first few feeds, otherwise the calf looses the valuable immunising elements that can't had from elsewhere.

if more women (young people) were educated about the human body, women would be more empowered to resist formula companies claims. it's proven that better educated mothers is better for the family unit as a whole.

when has breasts been discussed in a biology lesson? or in terms of reproduction? britain should really join-up it's health education, so we can learn about how our bodies function.

we don't trust our bodies to produce life-giving milk, because most people aren't educated on how the body works!

dd was excl b/f till 6 months and had her first taste of food at 6 mths on the dot.

I didn't know much with ds and believed the old "bottle will help at night myth" in the first few weeks and supplemented, but soon read up and stopped as soon as I found out it wasn't ideal (and was probably the reason for all my blockages and mastitis ).

ds started solids at 5.5 mths cos I fell for the peer pressure - he could have waited though and took a while to get into the whole eating thing.

I sneaked in the odd bottle of formula from 5 months in anticipation of switching to formula by the time I went back to work 2 months later.
With hindsight I wish I had built up a supply in the freezer and tried to use that, expressing and morning and night feeds to keep going after my return to work. The thing is, I didn't think that my supply would last if I was doing only 2 feeds per day. I sometimes think I should have given it a go.

I think the extension of paid maternity leave should help, although SMP does not help much if you work in the city and normally have a substantial income. It also makes no difference if you want to go back to work earlier. On-site creches would really help but that will never become the norm in the UK IMO.

I also let DD have solids before she reached 6 months too. Not baby rice, but since she started grabbing food and eating it, I decied to follow her lead.

I bf mine to 6 months - no solids, no formula. Ds went straight from breat to roast potatoes!

I breastfed my DD exclusively from about 3 weeks until 6 months when I let her try some baby rice. She hated it so we went back to breastfeeding for another month until she showed more interest in food.
I'm really pleased I made it this far as hardly anyone in my family has breastfed and my Mum comes out with the weirdest things about it, so I've had very little support from her!
People have mentioned that they think it is strange to be breastfeeding still (she's one year) but I think it is people's attitudes that need changing and not how I feed my DD.
I did supplement with formula at the beginning (on the hospital midwives advice) and it was a nightmare! So much work and sick!

I am still bf ds at 2yo, but he did have the odd bottle of formula and some solids before 6mo. I was encouraged to do both (in the vain hope of helping him sleep better) and NO-ONE ever said to me categorically "your baby needs nothing but breast milk for the first 6 months." It was mixed messages all the way and unfortunately I didn't know any better at the time