I wish people wouldn't be so quick to advise others to mix feed

[NineUnlovelyTinselDecorations]

I know I am going to get jumped on for this but I am going to say it anyway.

I have noticed a few threads of late where a BF mum is struggling and asking for advice or support to carry on. Some posters have said something along the lines of "I know it's not advised, but I introduced a FF at bedtime/mixed fed and it was fine." It's not that people aren't entitled to share their own opinion and experiences, but it worries me sometimes that new mums/people struggling with BF will not read the It's Not Advised part but only the It Worked For Us part.

There's a reason that it's not advised, which is that it very often inteferes with the supply/demand of BF and one FF often turns into more and the end of BF. I know that it works for some people, but my own experience of exclusively expressing EBM for my son was that I was able to build up and maintain a plentiful supply by expressing 4 times a day. But for the vast majority of women that would not be the case (I would have followed advice and done it 8 times etc if I hadn't been very ill). Therefore I don't tell women who are struggling to express for their babies "It's okay, it's not recommended but I only expressed 4 times and we were fine". Because I think that would be doing other women a disservice.

What do you think? Shall I get me coat?

I think that's a really important question, redadmiral - and thank you for you nice comment

I did a lot of reading about this 3 years ago because dd1 was slow to gain weight in the first few weeks, and I've been interested in this point ever since. I was more or less bullied into giving dd1 some top-ups, and if I hadn't found MN and kellymom and sorted out the supply issues myself, I'd have ended up unwillingly ff for sure. I read everything I could find about undernutrition to check that by phasing out the formula (instead of fattening her up with it) I wasn't taking risks.

As you've already mentioned, the balance of concern seems to be with feeding to induce catch-up growth which it seems fairly clear is a Bad Thing, and there seems to be far less concern about calorie restriction.

Quite recently there was a study published where they measured cardiovascular risk in teenagers and found that the highest risk was associated with the fastest weight gain in the first 2 weeks of life and vice versa.

It suggests that babies are adapted to not getting much nutrition while bf is being established, which is what you'd expect really.

It would be a bit odd if cardiovascular risk was protected at the expense of brain development, so it's reassuring on that score too.

That's just generally - obviously making the call for an individual baby is hard. I think it's fair to say that the evidence is suggesting that the threshold for bailing out is far too low at the moment.

It would be interesting to find out what criteria are used in places with very high breastfeeding rates - my guess is that these babies would be overtly unwell rather than underweight.

thanks Tiktok, interesting reading. I'm a social scientist so obv anything that explains things with ref to social, policy, historical and economic circs hails well with me!

Anyhow, makes me realize how much this is endlessly debated on MN and beyond and makes me want to get more involved in doing something about it... will post separately

Welliemum - i may well have missed the gist of what you were saying and also did not see the other thread that you mentioned, but I did want to clarify that, yes, in an ideal world, exclusive bf will lower transmission rates, but, because that is not happening, the guideline is still that ff is best at reducing transmission as opposed to anything else.
But, as you said, another discussion for another thread.

Thanks for the replies everyone. (Sounds like you and I may have had similar concerns, welliemum.)

Today my eldest (age 8) has eaten cheerios and a packet of cheese wotsits which she found left over from DD2's birthday party. Don't know why I'm getting on my high horse about infant nutrition

The other day I was pontificating about parental supervision and responsibility and while I was posting that, dd2 was being fed dog biscuits by dd1...

LOL