Positive changes wrt the way breastfeeding's spoken about on MN

[hunkermunker]

I've just been thinking - when I first joined MN, there was a bf/ff dingdong every couple of weeks. The OP would say something controversial, by accident or design, the thread would peak and trough through the old arguments and it would end after 1,000 or more posts (before thread-capping) with everyone licking wounds, no further on than before, but with a kind of muttered agreement that what's needed is good support and better-informed healthcare professionals.

But now, although the dingdong threads still exist, albeit less frequently, there's a more vocal "kind" side to them.

But what's really changed is there are more and more threads where people are asking how they can help, what they can do in their communities, who they can write to to make things better - I'm proud to be a part of MN and I really think that good things are being done all over the country, because when women get together, we rock.

That's it. As you were.

(Oh, you might want to read this as well though - very important)

Oh and also, thankyou to Hunker and Tiktok for giving me a bit of a telling off when I wasn't as tactful as I should have been

I feel I've learned so much here (not just the practical stuff) that now I'm too scared to go and search my oldest postings because I'm sure I must have been tactless in one way or another...

Have been ignoring the Vicki woman but that makes me SO cross.

No time to MN at the weekends but will go and have a look later - by the sounds of it, not very good for the blood pressure?

who's Vicky?

Hey hunker et al - posted this on another thread but thought it worth putting here too to counter the cries of "Sell out!"n (or at least try to )

Hi all,
Many thanks for raising the issue of alchohol and breast milk. As someone who dumped quite a few precious ounces of EBM down the sinks at UCH, because I thought I'd had one too many Saki for my premmie twins - it sure was news to me (and something I wish I'd known before).

Anyway we'll pass this onto Vicki Scott and I'm sure she'll be back to clarify and if necessary modify her advice accordingly.

On the issue of whether we should have experts on MN at all, it is something we've done for a bit. Over the years we've had quite a few expert online chats and more often than not they've been promoting something, whether it be their books eg Annabel Karmel and Tanya Byron, or some corporate association - eg Angela Buttolph the fabby style woman who was sponsored by a bank. We don't see that it necessarily devalues the great advice you can get from Mumsnetters or the people who give it - just a bit of additional input.

Clearly it's important than any advice which is labelled as expert is accurate, particularly in an area such as breastfeeding. So as said we'll put it to Avent and Vicki Scott and get back to you.

Thanks,
M Towers

Justine, promoting stuff is fine generally, but we all know that mixing vested interests with breastfeeding is a disaster.

A disaster for babies.

If I thought my child might have an infection I wouldn't ask advice from the people who market antibiotics. I'd ask a doctor who has no vested interest in whether my child gets expensive treatment or no treatment at all.

When it comes to serious breastfeeding problems that need more than just a bit of encouragement, the advice should have the same status as other health advice. It must be impartial. It must come from people who are knowledgeable in their field, and who can back up what they say with evidence.

This is what we already have on mumsnet from the likes of tiktok and hunker. Vicki does not meet that standard.

If I were googling for bf advice and I came across Vicki as my first contact with mumsnet, I'm afraid I'd probably just dismiss mumsnet as a marketing gimmick for Avent and move on.

You really need to be careful about this.

hear, hear welliemum.

I'm voting to get rid of Viki Scott.

I don't think you have sold out, Justine. I love MN, I am a firm believer in the good things it does, I think it's an excellent way to reach other intelligent women and discuss all sorts of things (and piss about a lot too ).

But I would be selling myself short if I didn't say "er, hang on a mo" about this sort of infomercial - it's a bit glib, a bit lightweight on the info side of things and a bit too "cut and dried" for my liking. The discussion's where the good stuff's at with MN - and if you have an expert pronouncing things and they get it a bit skewy, or there's not clarity of intent, that's a problem.

By clarity of intent, my feeling is Avent knows damn well that MN is a cut above other parenting sites. I would imagine they figured putting a "figurehead" on their campaign was a good idea, because she's a midwife, "a mum like the ordinary posters" and looks friendly enough.

I have nothing against VS personally, but alarm bells ring when she's saying things like "start as you mean to go on" wrt sleep and feeding habits - because it's not that simple, as a raft of threads on MN demonstrate.

If they'd managed to persuade Mears to do it, for instance, they'd have been onto a surefire winner because of the trust and genuine warmth of feeling MNers have for her. But I'm not sure they'd have managed to, because she has more integrity, I think.

I think actually challenging vicki scott and saying 'that's wrong' then giving her the opportunity to prove otherwise could do more for the argument against 'pumping and dumping' than if she hadn't mentioned it at all tbh.

We (mn as a collective) know that what she said was wrong, we know the LLL, NCT etc know what they're talking about and we know (or if you're new will likely get pointed straight in the direction of) the MNers who know a great deal about bfing. We also know they aren't doing it for an avent promotion so are more likely to believe them.

Justine, I think asking her back to 'defend' her points could be even better than if she never came.

(just to claify on this thread VS is vicki scott, not VictorianSqualor )