Dispatches - Breastfeeding Uncovered

[DrCorday]

Anyone watching?

Love the presenter Kate Quinton. She’s come off mat leave to do this programme.

I love that she’s feeding and pumping and showing the vunerableness of struggling with feeding.

Recording it to watch later. Any good?

I was watching it but had to stop to breastfeed dd back to sleep. The irony...

Will have to watch on catch up. Shocked by some of the stats, 67% of people think there's no difference between formula and breast milk!

Very good @InDubiousBattle
She’s got a newborn herself (4 weeks).

She’s showing empathy to mums however they feed.

They’ve covered the science, formula companies marketing, lack of support / cuts, society, feeding in public.

@PeachesandPie the irony!

It was a good documentary in a short time, could have been a hour and shown a bit more of the mums video diaries, that would have been really interesting to see.

It was nice to view and to see breastfeeding spoken about positivity and not a debate about BF V FF. I think we should be allowed to be proud in our achievement, it is bloody hard work.

I'll have to to watch this on catch up, later. The trailers looked good.

I agree @Okaassan no debate, and no right or wrong, but a good reflection on where we are. We cannot ignore that we have the lowest BF statistics or societies’ pereception of BF.

I’d love to see the anantomy of the breast educated in schools. How do they make milk? Why do they? Why they sometimes not make enough milk? Why else do we have them?

Haha. There's another thread posted in Telly Addicts saying how cringe this programme is! I'm not watching it myself....

I thought it was really good. Also expected an hour but I guess it didn't make it a long drawn out moan about how shit it all is and actually made short punchy points which were really worthwhile.

I searched to see if a thread had started before starting this @gigi556 but looks we started one at the same time.

I still maintain it was a good programme despite others saying it was one sided.

Posted on the ‘Chat’ thread but the main thing that depressed me was the young woman saying that she thought it might bother men to see breastfeeding.

100 years of women’s suffrage and that’s still a view and a concern. I’d be angry but it just makes me sad

@DrCorday well I'll have to have a look for it on catch up now :)

I agree that breastfeeding is wonderful and a real achievement. However, as s new mother who has been unable to master this and ended up in s bit of a state about it i have to say that formula feeders also feel stigmatised. I feel like the endless promotion of breastfeeding and it’s benefits put enormous pressure on women and guilt if they can’t do it or don’t want to. My baby just doesn’t latch. I tried for weeks with countless sessions of help from local support group and the midwife. I got so stressed I cried myself to sleep every night and ended up pretty depressed. Eventually I had to stop for my own health. I now express about 60% of his feeds and am building up my supply.

I found breastfeeding extremely hard. I know diffierent women and babies are different. However, I don’t think anyone ever warned me how hard breastfeeding could be. The elements I struggled with were very much dismissed as something I had to just ‘suck up’ and get on with. It was a bit like the woman who had a very easy labour telling the woman who has a difficult one how easy and natural it was with no regard for the other woman’s circumstance. The only thing that would have helped me was hiring a lactation consultant to come and sit with me in my home for week and support me.i don’t have the cash for that.

So yes, let’s ensure that breastfeeding mothers have support. But dodo be honest about how hard it can be for some of us to establish feeding, the commitment it requires and most of all your baby will be fine if it doesn’t work out and you give formula.

I thought it had promising information, but it seemed a bit unfinished and could have done with being longer to get the information across better. A whole programme about feeding whether bf or ff may have been useful.