I know you're all going to say that nobody cares about bl*dy Alphamummy anyway, but I still have to express my ANGER...

[emkana]

...at this

haven't a clue, hunk. One was attached to the Royal Free Hospital in London (such a great maternity unit...not!)), the other was attached to the community midwives unit in Camden. I'd definitely think about contacting La Leche in future, though. Have heard great things about them (nothing Nazi-ish)

Have a look here, you can write to the Chief Exec to ask why they're not Babyfriendly

Worth doing, IMO.

Message withdrawn

LoveAngel, thanks for replying

The way you describe the breastfeeding counsellors' behaviuour and what they said to you makes me think they were not 'real' breastfeeding counsellors.... honestly. We are mother-centred - all the vol orgs train their counsellors in more or less the same way - and a holstic approach, with the human element always there, is the only way to do it.

It's just wrong to tell someone rubbish like the stuff they told you - it's not true that giving up at 6 weeks means you might as well not have bf.

Where were they from? If a local PCT, then complain! If a vol org, complain to them. It's certainly not too late - 3 years might seem a long time but the experience has stayed with you and they may be going round perpetuating the same old rubbish

I'd like to tentatively support LA's point. A good friend of mine had her first baby 18 months ago and bf'd her for eight weeks, during which time she had three (count 'em) episodes of mastitis, plus endless thrush through the antibiotics. (I didn't know about this at the time or I would have suggested LLL or breastfeeding counsellors.) She had what sounds like very perfunctory advice from MWs and HVs. Speaking to her DH about it afterwards, he said that she had been half-crazed and weeping with pain, getting almost no sleep at all, but felt that she had to carry on for her DD's sake. Now, of course this is as much an issue of bad advice as it is bf-ing evangelism, but he did say - very angrily - 'Not one of them told her to just stop.' He (and she) obviously did want someone to tell them that - to give them permission I suppose - because they had both taken on board the 'breast is best' message very strongly. (Of course, they did make their own decision in the end.)

I am an extended bf-er, please don't hurt me...

X posted with LoveAngel's reply to hunker.

It would be very unusual for a breastfeeding counsellor - a "real' one - to be attached to a hospital or a community midwives unit. A handful of real ones do work in this way, but the vast majority do not. I wish they would bloody well stop using the name unless they are 'real'.

I think you have seen a midwife or healthcare assistant, with a bit of bf training thrown at her - maybe she's done one of the 1-day courses.

I wish BFC was a protected title. Is there any move towards that, Tiktok?

The midwife I saw when DS2 was 5 days old or so had done the UNICEF training.

So she told me "they don't recommend giving both breasts at a feed any more"...

The people you send on these courses have to be intelligent enough to understand what's being said, I think...

PW, I think it may be appropriate in some instances for a midwife or HV who knows a mother well, who has an ongoing clinical responsibility for her, to deliberately raise the issue of stopping with a mother - not to tell her to stop, for goodness sake, but to bring the topic up.

But breastfeeding counsellors are different.

I had a real bad breast feeding nurse when i had dd1. DD was only 5lb and wasnt strong enough to suck. I wanted to bf her but had had C section. She used to tell me to call her every time dd needed a feed to show how i was trying to latch her, she would pull me about and me and dd ended up in tears
In the end I did it alone and feed for 4 weeks.
This time was easier to start with, although have been pumping and dumping for last 2 and half weeks due to being very unwell in hospital.
Its a choice you need to make on your own, but bfing can be hard and good support is great.

hunker, I spoke to a mother the other day who had developed a very painful bout of mastistis in one side when the baby was aged 2 weeks. As far as I could tell, this was entirely due to the fact she had been told never to offer both breasts at a feed - was amazed when I told her this was quite incorrect and is in fact what's suggested when the mother is overwhelmed with a too-generous supply

Note: some mothers only ever feed one sided and that can be ok. But it's not how you start off bf....not if you want to support bringing in a good supply and avoiding mastitis.

I want to add my support for the midwife that helped me latch my newborn baby for three hours at stupid o'clock in the morning. If it wasn't for her I don't know what I would've done, although sadly some of the midwives I saw in the hospital had no idea, some did, and I am thankful for this.

Is there any kind of programme making sure that people on maternity wards are given the best help they cna get if they wish to bf?? I know not all mothers would be aware of the NCT/LLL and those first few days can be the most crucial times.

Tiktok, I wonder if it's becoming something that's "the in advice" then - I wonder how it's explained at the UNICEF course?

(Do you remember that poster on here - was it Daisy something - who said she'd done the UNICEF short course and was therefore entitled to use the title of BFC?!)

VS, best option is to choose a Baby Friendly hospital but even they can have extraordinarily bad things happening. The good thing is that you can complain to Baby Friendly if the bf support is not good, as these are assessed standards.

Midwives and others vary massively in what they know, how much they really accept it, and how they put it across to mothers.

But write to them when you have had a good experience, and when you have had a bad.

www.babyfriendly.org.uk

Hunker, as far as I know they don't teach this stupid 'one side only' thing on the UNICEF course....it comes from people misunderstanding 'finish the first breast first' and even then they think this mean it has to be drained 'dry'

Yep, that was what I got from the midwife I saw. I did gently suggest to her that that wasn't quite right, but obviously I'm "just a mum" and "know nothing" because she'd been "on a course".

I'm in Oxford now, was in Northampton for my DS and both these hospitals are on that site as 'no information'.
I'm actually quite surprised at the JR, not being babyfriendly, they are being absolutely wonderful re my VBA2C and having a brilliant women's centre with milk bank facilites. I have just written to them about becoming baby friendly and will send it off first thing tomorrow, I just can't see it making any difference, although I'm happy to try.

Hello welliemum I just posted on the other thread, but I thought it was an excellent paper and the data were very convincing. The only thing that was missing was any indication (unless I missed it in supplementary online or something) of how they defined "breastfed"- it's very much all or nothing. Still, they got the same results with two completely separate cohorts, and with each of two SNPs and it would be surprising if that happened by chance- very!

I think LoveAngel makes a really important point. I am absolutely pro-breastfeeding, but while on the one hand the message that you must breastfeed to avoid seriously disadvantaging your child is now being poured out deafeningly by the NHS, the level of knowledge amongst the majority of health professionals to whom mothers turn for help is in my experience risible. This can leave mothers in a desperate state.

There are hundreds of examples on this site, and here's another: I was told by a hv that the pain I was experiencing couldn't be thrush because the antibiotics I was taking for my mastitis would have cleared it up . Five equally ignorant health professionals later a GP referred me to the breastfeeding counsellor at the hospital on the grounds that I probably had a bad latch. BC immediately diagnosed thrush.

To cut a long rant short, I suspect that a lot of knowledge about breastfeeding and its pitfalls was probably lost during the bottle feeding boom of the sixties and seventies. There seems to have been a lot of research undertaken subsequently on the benefits of breastfeeding but not on the mechanism, or problems associated with it, so we're left with pretty much nothing but the infuriating "baby to breast, nose to nipple, tummy to mummy" mantra, and the feeling that if we give up we have failed our children in the most fundamental way. If anything goes wrong - and there are A LOT of things that can go wrong, what help there is is often woefully inadequate.

And added to the ignorance, is the belief of so many health professionals that they're actually well-informed. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. As with Hunker's course-attending MW.

Tamum, that does sound good. Have been trying to access the paper but the library computer isn't talking to my work computer. Anyway, I'm not a geneticist!

It's a pity about their vagueness re breastfeeding duration because a dose-response effect would have been even more convincing.

Didn't realise there was another thread - off to look for it now!

Tamum, Welliemum, did you see this research?

Interesting discussion.

kittock, you've summed up one of my points far more eloquently than I managed to. I completely lost faith in the health professionals that provided my 'care' after my whole BF-ing debacle. A midwife, a BF counsellor and a HV all failed to take my mastitis seriously. I was told to use cabbage leaves and basically made to feel that I was complaining unnecessarily. On the day I was taken to A&E and admitted to hospital with an abcess and suspected blood poisoning, my mum actually bumped into the HV in the street. She asked how the cabbage leaves were going. My mum gave her right earful! . To be honest, it was the last straw in a long line of ineptitude and borderline negligence in my ante-natal and post-natal 'care'. I was shocked at the lack of knowledge, expertise and basic human kindness / empathy in almost all the healthcare professionals I came into contact with during my pregnancy and afterwards. And I can't be the only one.

Sorry for straying slightly off topic (I never did actually say - I can't stand Alphamummy!).

Hello hunker I did see it in the Times, but not the actual paper- it sounds as though it was a conference presentation though, doesn't it? The Framingham stuff is usually very well set up and powered from what I know, but I'm not really an epidemiologist.

Just posted on your other thread, hunker - it's interesting and you'd need to see the results in more detail, but it does come from a respected group as tamum says.

kittock, you;re right about the poor level of help given to bf mothers by the health service, but you also say "the message that you must breastfeed to avoid seriously disadvantaging your child is now being poured out deafeningly by the NHS"

Can you give me any example of a leaflet, poster, website from the NHS that really does give this message?

You see, I don't think this is the message. I don't want this to be the message - I want honest, open information and not panicked threats. But I really don't think we have either.