Gather round all pro-bfeeding anti-formula MNers I have a question..........................................

[Malaleche]

Shouldnt there be a be-all and end-all bible of breastfeeding info, experiences and statistics etc which every woman should be given at the first pregnancy check-up and MADE to read (yes, I know, maybe we could be examined on it and !) , which has been written by the WHO and breastfeeding experts and which could be the final and last word on bfeeding(...until new evidence means a new edition has to be brought out.....)

I just dont understand why there has to be so much conflicting advice out there and why some women are still so woefully ignorant about bfeeding at the end of the day....

I also agree absolutely that formula should be avaliable only on prescription but before that happens there needs to be a lot more education and (24 hr)support avaliable or there would be a lot of hungry babies and suffering mothers out there....and why don't govs give 9 months maternity leave on full pay if the WHO recommends 6 months exclusive bfeeding (am adding 3 months for establishing weaning)?

Mixed breast and bottle not only risks putting an end to bf (not that it will- but it is a risk) but there is a health impact to consider.

Formula feeding is 'dose related' ie the more formula a baby has (and the less breastfeeding), the greater the impact on health.

Take this recent study which shows that ff babies (in this country, recently, and with confounding variables removed) are more likely to need hospital treatment in the first year of life; babies who were mostly or exclusively bf were least likely to need it; babies who were mixed fed were halfway between.

Any bf is better than none, of course, but formula has risks, and a full, informed choice should be made by each woman bearing in mind her own circumstances, which of course include her own mental and emotional health, her baby's growth, her need to go back to work and so on.

But to pretend it has no impact on the baby is to infantilise mothers - treat mothers as adults, tell them 'this is what we know', explain the concept of risk and how it predicts nothing for an individual, acknowledge they have their own agenda to sort out, and then accept their decision without judgement.

Oh, and breast cancer risk is 'dose related' too....less bf, more br ca.

smallwhitecat - you were let down. Demand feeding only works if the baby is demanding. Not your fault - there are people who are paid to make sure bf works.

Agree with fio about the 'ideal' scenario. My failure to feed ds3 was entirely about having to care for a severely autistic child as well (never mind ds2 then aged 2). I think that's why I find these threads faintly ridiculous. They're so far removed from any sort of world I (or many others) live in. Try establishing breastfeeding when you can never actually sit down for more than 2 to 3 minutes tops at a time (and I think anyone on mumsnet who has met me with ds1 will vouch for that).

lol at 'complicated', swc. it's amazing when you think it all through, isn't it?

i had the fact that i was in denial about being pg so hadn't really read up on bfing with my usual geeky aplomb, i had an epidural and i had a v sleepy baby who would suck anyone's finger but not me (the bfing nurses couldn't believe it), when she did suck she did so for hours and fooled all lactation consultants into thinking she was latching on but i knew she wasn't.

she lost loads of weight, got jaundiced, her blood sugars were funky, Plus i was on high bp meds and have PCOS so it turns out they might have explained the fact that my breasts never really exploded with milk.

if i'd been able to access specialist help at that poiint i'd have been put on domperidone to boost my supply and taken off my bp meds, but i was stuck with bog standard bfing cousellors and young docs who said 'it'll be fine, you'll be able to exclusively bf, this is just a glitch'.

a month later, when i'd finally screamed my way upt to getting the proper medical help (after a zillion other interventions, natch) i found out that it could all have been so different... lol, i think i was a bit cursed, actually. never got sore nips, though.

Ok but why does ff have that dose related effect? What is it actually doing that is so bad? I can completely see how exclusively ff babies have their appetites screwed up, don't self-regulate, could suffer obesity later etc etc - but I cannot see how one or 2 cartons of ff per day can damage health - surely the reason why more exclusively ff babies need hospital tretment is becasue these babies are more likely to come from less educated parents who aren't as interested in finding out how to maximise their children's health, give them jars instead of fresh food etc etc - obviously I am completely excepting the many women who ff becasue they have no choice like some of the posters here from this sweeping statement.

I completely see the evil third world marketing thing with ff and the risk to destabilising bf but not the health concerns if given in moderation. Why Why Why? It can't be helpful to pressurise people too much to bf - though obviously it is desirable - but many women I know who ff were devastated but had no choice. What is gained by making them feel even worse?

Interestingly, I had the opposite problem in hospital - the mw's were trying to pressurise me into ff for the same reasons - jaundiced and no interest in demand feeding - it is very hard to resist that when your baby is in an incubator and they are telling you you have to get liquids into him somehow or your baby will have to go to special care and be tube fed. luckily I insisted on expressing and feeding him with a cup/syringe as well and he did start bf spontaneously on day 5 but my god it was difficult and emotional.

oh sorry, i meant to say that teh 'this is just a glitch' thing was when they were insisting i give dd formula top-ups. and of course it wasn't a glitch, it completely stopped me from building up my supply.

why not have a gcse in health, which encompasses puberty, sexual health, pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, childrearing, food/digestion, etc?

kinda answering my own question here, but is that because it's deemed 'women's work' and unpaid and therefore not important?

casbie - that's a very good idea indeed. But it needs to be obligatory.

smallwhitecat - yes the jaundice was entirely normal though had come on quickly and they were worried as I am rhesus negative and ds is positive. In hospital I was given a huge pump and told to express every three hours, which I did, but also told I HAD to give formula. (I was off my head with new mother hormones so kind of unable to think about this, plus worried as well.
DS did root and would kind of latch on but would not continue sucking. I simply could not wake him long enough for a decent feed. As he is tongue-tied (we later found out), and was a couple of weeks early, I suspect he just wasn't able to get anything out, really. I went home four days later with instructions to try feeding him then express plus top up with formula. I remember one midwife coming round and asking how much liquid he'd had - I'd been trying to give him only what I could either feed him or express - and telling me he needed formula to clear the jaundice. I have no idea still - despite a lot of reading - what ought to have been done in this situation.

I expressed for about 4 months, but we ended up formula feeding. There was a window when he was about 3 weeks old when he fed three times a day but it always ended with him screaming so I suspect he wasn't really getting as much as he needed from it. THen we found out about tongue tie but not that we could actually do something about it and tbh we were so beaten by then and ds was thriving so there you go.
ha! I thought I was reasonably well-prepared for b/f as well [fool]

(Sorry MN won't take a longer post grrr so i have to split it)

Pruuni yes I am still not sure about the whole jaundice formula thing - I always thought they had enough fat reserves for a day or too before your supply comes in but in hospital they were saying it would be dangerous not to pump him full of ff to clear the jaundice - probably just another ease of maangemnet thing to get it over with quickly so they could process us out and clear a bed - usual story.

just because bf might be difficult/impossible for some people in some circumstances, and may not be other's choice, doesn't make it ridiculous to want to try and increase bf rates. I don't agree with the op's reasoning, but I don't think it is in the least bit ridiculous to try and encourage more bf (and therefore bring about improvements to the health of babies and mothers and children) and to debate how we might go about that.
I am very glad that some people have the time and energy to want to increase bf rates because they are so very crappy right now. just because it isn't your RL, doesn't mean it isn't real

No, but judging from these threads they just seem to get everyone's teeth itching don't they (thanks for that olive- an expression I will be using regularly). I'm all for increasing breastfeeding rates, I'm just unsure as to the purpose of this sort of thread.

It's lovely that some people have time and energy in RL to do such good.

barbamamma: you ask "Ok but why does ff have that dose related effect? What is it actually doing that is so bad? I can completely see how exclusively ff babies have their appetites screwed up, don't self-regulate, could suffer obesity later etc etc - but I cannot see how one or 2 cartons of ff per day can damage health - surely the reason why more exclusively ff babies need hospital tretment is becasue these babies are more likely to come from less educated parents who aren't as interested in finding out how to maximise their children's health, give them jars instead of fresh food etc etc - obviously I am completely excepting the many women who ff becasue they have no choice like some of the posters here from this sweeping statement. "

You haven't understood the paper - it controls for the confounding variables inc the soci-economic ones and included babies who were not yet weaned onto solids. There is no evidence that giving jars instead of fresh foods increases hospital admissions - if we're talking sweeping statementsm then there's one

The reason it is dose related is mainly to do with the way formula does not provide the same protections against infection as breastmilk and so babies are more susceptible to illness (the ones in the paper studied are chest infections and gastric infections). It's entirely consistent with this knowledge that 'more formula feeding' means 'more illness' - and you get that 'dose related effect'.

I don't think women who use formula for whatever reason should feel pressurised, or judged, but not letting mothers in general know that it matters how they feed their babies is not an option.

Yes, it's difficult and emotional to bf when there is a problem with the baby or with the mechanics of bf - and that's why we need lots of good help around.

Malaleche

Did I read that correctly ?
Pregnant women should be "MADE" to read breastfeeding literature and be forced to ask someone to prescribe them formula (presumably therefore we'd only be allowed it if we had a medical need)

Have you heard the phrase militant breastfeeder or the breastfeeding police or much worse the breastfeeding nazis/gestapo..............?

Can you kind of see how these phrases are derived given your preferred world order ?

If you want ALL mothers to support the demand for better post natal care, specifically better trained support for breastfeeding you would do well not to alienate those for whom breastfeeding was not an option no matter how much literature they had been MADE to read.

Not everyone's cicumstances are such that a long maternity leave allowing unlimited time to establish breastfeeding successfully is possible. I read all the literature but I knew Bf wasn't for me. I didn't want to do it, so shoot me !

"it matters how you feed your baby" some may decide that other things matter more. And that needs to be accepted.

Good breastfeeding supporters recognise that btw- that sometimes other things are more important than whether a baby is breast or forumla fed. I know many expamples of those sorts of situations, I'm not sure repeating ad infinitum that that choice is so much worse than breast feeding is all that helpful.

I'm sure nobody is really interested but whilst this sort of thread would have had me apoplectic two years ago (when it was all still quite raw) it's amazing how the feeling has faded and now I think of it reasonably dispassionately, though with disappointment, obv.

(That for the people who are obviously saddened and angered by the OP (who has apologised anyway).)

I haven't really been involved in this thread because, as I say, the OP is rather extreme and I don't really agree with it. but I think it helps to debate the issues. If you are involved in helping/supporting women with their feeding, whether personally or professionally, or want to increase bf rates then it is extremely helpful to hear other people's experiences and points of view even if (especially if) they don't accord with your's. and I always like to hear tktok's posts because I find them massively helpful for answering people's questions day in day out.
if you aren't so involved, or you don't want to increase blabla, then there really is no reason to get involved in the debate at all.
because tbh it really doesn't help to call people debating the issues "faintly ridiculous" imo .

I completely agree we should be trying to get the rates of bf up - roll on making it illegal in England to hassle women bf in public which also has a lot to do with it I think - but there is absolutely no point piling on the pressure at the top without improvng the underlying problems at the bottom - i.e the frankly appaulling, contradictory and damaging and often wrong advice that vulnerable new mothers get from midwives, doctors and health visitors - in a lot of cases as witnessed by the stories on this post.

"it matters how you feed your baby" some may decide that other things matter more. And that needs to be accepted."

well, of course. who would possibly argue othrwise? that doesn't mean it doesn't matter and that people shouldn't be given a real choice.