Clare Byam-Cook is getting way too much exposure as a BF 'Expert'

[kiskidee]

People will start to believe this woman knows enough about bf before long.

Pooka thats such a great story!

My mum was bullied by the advice at the time I was born of only feeding a new born every 4 hours. I would be whimpering with hunger yet she would worry about bfing me because it wasnt "time". Luckily my granny who had bf'd 3 babies stepped in - her phrase was "what would they do in the jungle" ie with no books or "experts" telling you what to do. Mum followed that and so did I. Seemed to work, mum bf'd us for 9ish months, dd gave me up at 11 months.

Although I made the mistake of reading some of the baby guru books (wont name). All they did was make me feel undermined. I felt whenever I had a bad night or something went wrong it was my fault for not following their advice properly.

I always remember my dad's mum telling me about how she wasn't 'allowed' to feed her baby (my dad ) more often than 4-hourly and if he cried she just had to hold him until it was the 'right' time. 50-odd years later she still felt upset and guilty about it

I suppose that in terms of how to deal with an infant's needs, cats and jungle animals have it pretty sorted.
Mum was very much of the "what's natural and works" school of thought. I do think it rather funny though that she was essentially looking to her cat as a parenting role model. But preferable to some other models around today.
But hey, it worked.

When my grandmother had my father and his sisters, everything was incredibly rigid. Depended a great deal on social status, and for her, she had a maternity and night nurse to help, but really hinder in some respects. So everything was very un-instinctive and unnatural. Feeding by the clock. She was knocked out for his labour (called the midnight sleep or something - actually put under for some time). You could buy contraptions to put on the cot to prevent the baby sitting or standing up in the cot. All horrible and really sad.
My mother's mother was of working class, family oriented stock. Coucln't afford new fangled contraptions to pin your baby down, couldn 't afford formula. Relied on family for advice and assistance. And all breast-fed and followed the baby's lead.

I read this book and the problem is some bits are quite sensible and good and some are a load of old tosh but you can only know what is what with benefit of hindsight so quite dangerous.
I was a sucker for gurus during my pregnancy. I have every single book going SWMNBN, BW and What to Expect. I really wanted to be informed and am not good at trusting to instinct but somehow I never got the other side of the story. Maybe just the prevailing zeitgeist but it seemed all the bookshops, all the books anyone talks about are all into routine.
Might also be that my image of myself did not allow me to buy anything by LLL or similar. (I have never knowingly worn Birkies, don't like lentils and have trouble giving an arse about the environment although I sort of know I should.)
I only really started to enjoy my baby the day I chucked all the books out along with my Excel spreadsheet recording all her feed times and just fed her when she started crying. I really regret that I didn't start off that way but not sure I would have listened if anyone told me. Perhaps you just have to learn by your mistakes shame I increased their sales figures on the way though!

I wish I had read Clare Byam Cook when I didn't have enough milk and I wish I'd given up earlier, that's the truth. But people told me that pumps don't get milk out of breasts and things like that. Pumps get lots of milk out of plenty of breasts - my friend who had to express for her premature baby was filling bottles in minutes; I produced a pathetic amount of milk, and I don't think I'm that uncommon. I used her DVD and it was very sensible and reassuring. I actually managed to make my baby latch after watching it, after every hospital nurse, health visitor and then breastfeeding counsellor had shoved my baby's little face into the middle of my massive tit until she screamed, or pulled and pressed the pair of us for weeks with no success AT ALL. This was weeks and weeks into my attempts to breastfeed. But in the end I didn't have enough milk for it to work.

I guess a lot of people here won't like the fact that her next books are top tips for breastfeeding and bottle feeding.

macneil, most hvs, midwives and hospital nurses don't know enough about breastfeeding and some of them have just enough knowledge to be dangerous so I understand why you did not get proper support from these people. Correct me if a am wrong but i believe that your baby was born in Canada and you moved to the UK fairly recently?

Which breastfeeding charity was the counsellor from who shoved your breasts in your baby's face? The 4 bf charities in the UK have a lot of quality control and will be interested in your feedback whether positive or negative.

As for you assumption that folk on her don't like CBC because she talks about bottles, too. Well that is simply speculation on your part, however, from what I have read in her book, I would most definitely never recommend it. too much of it would ruin an otherwise happy, exclusive bf relationship for most women... and probably let the majority begin to supplement with formula when it would be totally unnecessary - but they would have never known that it was totally unnecessary because the title and content of her book leads to a self fullfilling prophecy.

macneil - your experience was crap.

CBC's book is not all bad. But there are many misleading and plain wrong aspects.

No breastfeeding counsellor from any of the 4 vol orgs would even touch you or your baby, except in exceptional circumstances, and only with your permission. I never, ever put mother and baby together in the way you describe, and if you can remember which organisation did this to you, then post here or else let them know.

Yes, I gave birth in Canada. The maternity staff in my hospital just pressed her face into the breast until she was practically up to the ears in breast. I consulted an independent breast-feeding counsellor and called LLL. LLL just gave phone advice, which wasn't really any help. I also saw a doctor at a special breastfeeding clinic - all she did was breastfeeding. She said 'Some babies get it, some babies don't get it', and tried mine on a shield, weighing her before and after and deciding that my baby wasn't getting anything out of my breast. All this time I was spending 6 hours a day pumping, and getting less than half her feeds from the expressed milk and taking domperidone. From about day 3, my friend was expressing pints, never having breastfed at all. I can only conclude that some women, as CBC says, produce a lot of milk and some do not. As I said, this kind of guilt-free advice was by far the most helpful I received in helping me come to terms with failing to breastfeed, because it made me feel less responsible and less useless. If I have another baby, of course I'll try to breastfeed, but I don't think I would ever spend the months immediately after birth doing 6+ hours of expressing every day again, and I wouldn't encourage a friend to. CBC's was the only advice that seemed to explain what was frustrating and perplexing, and, because I had a new baby, very upsetting.

LOL at Pooka's post!

I saw Clare when My DS was 6 weeks old and breastfeeding had turned into a nightmare from hell! - I had more than enough milk for him but every time he tried to latch on to the left side, he started screaming. The more he screamed, the more I leaked and then he screamed even more - it was truly horrible and left us both in tears. Clare was the only person who realised that DS had suffered neck compression due to a ventouse delivery and so was unable to open his jaw properly - she recommended a cranial osteopath and 3 sessions later, DS was feeding like a champion. Without Clare I would almost certainly have resorted to EBM - but DS and I had a wonderful BF time for nearly 7 months, although I never read her book. I realise that people here have very polarized views when it comes to BF vs bottle, but this smacks a little of a witchhunt to me. Surely the point is that you end up with happy mummy and happy baby -

As has been mentioned already, different people need different approaches. Personally I dreaded being told to/it being suggested that I give up as in my fragile state I would have seen it as an accusation that I wasn't doing the best for my baby and was "selfishly" perservering for my own purposes (and yes I know it sounds mad but I think we're all a little crazy in those early weeks).

The optimistic, sensible approach of my bfcs was a godsend. CBC wouldn't have worked for me and would have almost certainly led to my ds being ff.

Re: not enough milk, while I acknowledge that this is a real problem for some people, I think it's a fear that we all have at some point and it's important that the professionals don't make this fear bigger than it needs to be.

(DaisyMOO - when my mum had me, the hospital would weigh the babies after every feed and if I hadn't gained the amount they wanted the nurse would plonk a bottle of formula on the end of the bed for topping up. Luckily my mum was told by an old hand in the next bed to just say the baby won't take the bottle and she was left alone. Funnily enough most other people had given up by the time they went home because, you guessed it, they "didn't have enough milk" or their milk was "too watery")

macneil, sounds like a nightmare experience. I have bf both my dc's, and could not express milk at all. I was probably doing it wrong, but the only way I could ever get any milk out was to have my ds or dd bfing on one side while I was using the breast pump on the other. It was farcical!
I had loads of milk, but only my baby's could make it come out. That might have happened with you.

I used CBC's video on bf to help me get my positioning right with dd2 and w/out it I don't know if we'd have got there, but we did and I bfed for 22 mo. She had some other good tips on thye video but mostly I ignored the antenatal class bit.

Think she's like every other 'guru', you take a bit from each until you get something that suits you.

kiskidee, I have got to take issue here. I don't think it's helpful to say that a book title "lets" people mix feed "when it would be totally unnecessary".

I mix fed for the first few weeks because I simply had to. DS simply would not latch on initially and he had to have what EBM I could produce and formula top-ups or he would have starved. I needed something that would provide help and support with that and CBCs book was the only place I got it.

For that matter if people feel that they want to mix feed they shouldn't need to be "let" do it by anyone. They should be given the space to make their own choices whoever they are being advised by. Whether it is for medical, practical or personal reasons women shouldn't feel that they need anyone else's permission to make whatever choice is right for them.

I know of 2 friends who were told by mw and bf counsellor that they weren't "allowed" to mix feed and both gave up bf altogether. Perhaps a book that would have "let" them give formula top-ups could have saved their bfing, albeit non-exclusive.

This is where I always get riled... Women should have lots of good honest information to help them make their feeding choices, but too often it becomes polarised, with pro-bf info glossing over the downsides and leading to people assuming it's all going wrong because it's not so easy as the book or the hv tells them.

Don't get me wrong, I am very much for bfing, I have strongly encouraged others to persevere with it and taken part in bfing workshops to help out other bfers, but I really feel that the overly rosy and sanitised information and advice that gets passed out from official sources can lead to a lot of people giving up when they aren't prepared for cracked nipples, cluster feeding, growth spurts, exhaustion, thrush, mastitis, the joy of being hooked up to a breast pump, ugly ugly nursing bras and having norks the size of your head that won't fit into a single piece of clothing you own.

See...here I go ranting again... but as I've said before I feel let down by the help and information I was given from official sources, and I have seen many friends go through the same thing of being bewildered by what is normal bfing and then threatening to give up because they think it's going wrong and they are harming their baby by trying to carry on. I know that advisors from the voluntary organisations are a whole lot better and give really good advice, but it's too late for a lot of people by the time they get that far. It's only those who are really bloody minded about making bfing work that go the length of getting in touch with them.

It the govt wants BFing levels to improve, then properly trained bf advisors, without the rosy spectacles, should be seeing all new mothers within hours of delivery, if not sooner and be on hand at all times in the hospital and on easy request in the weeks thereafter.

Sorry for going on... again...

Just re-read all of that... and really sorry for ranting again.. I got very much off the topic eventually, but it is all heartfelt.

pseudonym, I think something got lost in translation when you read my post.

When I said mixed feeding happened with it was totally unnecessary , I meant that given the misconceptions in CBC's book, women who would have otherwise chosen to exclusively bf, if they were given evidence based advice instead of the myths she is perpetuating, end up mixed feeding (which in many cases leads to full ff).

nothing else.