Why can't we just all breatsfeed?

[pupuce]

Seeing the recent debates on breastfeeding, I didn't want to take part in the discussion as I didn't feel I could add to the debate but I was reading this and thought.... why is it that so many women who ended up bottlefeeding have stories of "not enough milk", "baby not thriving", etc.... so we have a BF rate in this country of barely 1 in 2 babies breastfed after 1 week (that's not impressive if you do know that breast is best)... why is it that the Swedes have 98%....
I am sure it's a combination of factors.... but it does mean that too many people in this country have a "wrong reason" for not BF.... surely many women have not enough information about milk production to feel that they truly didn't have enough milk....

OK - am I starting world war 3 ??? hope not

That's human beings for you moondog, they have emotions.

moondog - agree - a baby is like a trump card when getting on a plane. Also trains - can clear lots of extra space (if there is any to be had!!)

Ok Puff, so Cardigan's formula joke is cruel is it? (But would you deny that it is true?)
So...... give us your moral verdict on the following:

Is it (delete as appropriate)

Cruel to those who choose to bottlefeed?
Very/Slightly/Hardly/Highly Amusing

Cruel to those who mix feed?
Very/Slightly/Hardly/Highly Amusing

Cruel to those who give the occasional bottle?
Very/Slightly/Hardly/Highly Amusing

Hey, I'll tell you what! Some b/feeders I know think it's very very cruel and discriminatory that some bottle feeders get milk tokens!
One or two even want counselling to get over the hurt.

Cor, Moondog, you're brave

Here's another "flippent" comment" - could spend cash for bf on processed food! - can't afford it at present.

moondog

Yes, with the amount of breastfeeding I've done, I could afford a fortnight in Barbados no probs!
(Still got to tussle with the air travel issue though!)

Realise now that I feel really sidelined and ignored when I am surrounded by smug women talking about how many bottles their babies have a day. sad sad sad How dare they try and make us poor breastfeeders feel so inadequate! It's not my fault that I've never had a positive loving experience with a tin of Cow & Gate!!!! envy

moondog, sorry I am unable to complete your questions. Due to being formula fed from birth, I lack the intelligence required .

Well that depends......
Were your formula fed by choice or necessity?

pupuce, you sounded tired and drained and fed up in your post last night. I just wanted to add that the opinions you talked about are part of the reason why I was not up to facing contacting a breast feeding counsellor. I wanted someone who was going to give me unemotional straight up factual help, not an evangelist. I asked my MW & HV for help because I knew and trusted them, but I didn't want the risk of someone who was not going to listen to my problems, but follow one of the many lines you have highlighted, which I feared would make the situation worse. If I had faith that a breast feeding counsellor was going to take a balanced and reasoned approach I would have called one. A thread like this makes me feel that I probably wouldn't call one this time round either.

Going back to the original discussion here: sweden vs UK, maybe the ratio of children per women in Sweden is much smaller than in the UK and their health system (midwives etc) is better equipped to encourage breastfeeding there because there are less women to support than there are here, so their 98% equals say 48% in the UK in terms of exact numbers of women. maybe their whole post-natal care and health system in general is better than here. Could it be as simple as that?

Fisil, at risk of sounding like Pupuce's representative on earth I assumed she was sort of satirising all the things people read into others comments on Mumsnet sometimes, without actually meaning any of them. I am certain that neither she nor Tiktok would ever be oppressively evangelistic - I think, personally, that Tiktok's posts on the 'don't make enough milk' thread shows that.
On a more personal note, I found the breastfeeding counsellor at Kings to be a fantastic person. Really normal, practical, kind and intelligent, and an absolute oasis for me when I had a string of frankly not so nice midwives pressurising me to give formula and telling me I was 'starving' my baby (very emotive word, totally untrue, and for a woman who had just had an operation, really wanted to breastfeed and EXTREMELY hormonal, absolutely devastating - dh had never seen me cry like that before. I felt like I was being accused of child abuse by all of them. Totally ganged up on). She just came in, very cheerful, looked at the colostrum I could express, said that everything was OK, ds was healthy and chubby and that I would have milk and the colostrum was plenty enough for him until my milk came - which it did, lots of it, when dh got fed up and made me come home . So please don't feel put off if you want to breastfeed (ignore me if you don't). I had such a good experience. Loved my obstetrician, had a fantastic Irish midwife looking after me before ds was born (we talked wistfully about gin quite a bit!) but my after care midwives were, frankly, not so great, and if it wasn't for a very jolly paediatrician and the bfc, I would have come away with a much sourer view of Kings.

resorting to sarcasm is not useful or intelligent.

I also think the numbers of women on Mumsnet who are still very upset about not breastfeeding long after their children have passed babyhood indicates why it is important to give more effective support to women who want to breastfeed but find it is going wrong. That obviously does not mean bullying or manhandling breasts or babies, but doing what makes it possible for women to feed without trauma. I think Australia has much higher rates of successful breastfeeding too. Has nobody really researched what actually makes the difference?

Why can't we alll just think that we do the best we can for our children and not delight in trying to make other people feel like crap?
Mumsnet (or at least these threads) have turned really evil over the last few days.
Moondog, i don't think that it's cause all bottle feeders are paranoid , i think you just miss some of the hurtful things people say. I have nothing against breastfeeding, think it looks lovely but couldn't do it myself!
However, in the last two days it's been said that bottlefeeders are
"ignorant, lazy, uneducated, can't be arsed parents who didn't put themselves out enough to use birth-control" I can see by your attitude here that that may actually be quite funny to you but it isn't when you'r on the receiving end.

Apologies to those whose nerves i'm getting on but i will have my say too!

(Aloha, that wasn't directed at you at all, posts crossed! )

Fisil - I was only making a satire.... thoughtb it was obvious as it was taking the pxxx off all the arguments we read on here !
BF counsellors are not trained to be evangelical! We actually make sure that they are not. As a BF trainee mentor it is an issue I face and work on with the trainee.

Half the calls I take on a BF helpline are about weaning off the breast and believe me..... they all get the info they needed for that I don't go and preach : Oh come on love you don't want to do that do you???? Do you realise how bad formula is? Are you so selfish that you can't BF any longer " - This is a satirical comment (just in case that wasn't obvious!!!!)

I support - as a doula - women who mix feed, I challenge you to find one that has felt un-supported in her desire to mix feed. I have helepd women relactate too as it was their desire.

A BF counsellor's role is to LISTEN, ask questions to understand (as sometimes the initial quiestion isn't really what the mother wanted to know - some are shyer than others), give factual information and support in NO WAY is it to make women BF if they don't want too or to make them feel inadequate !

Hopefully you will give us a try next time.... HV and MWs can be judgmental too (and definitely mis-informed) as we have seen here... at least there is a good chance that the BF counsellor has up to date information and constant update of skills (including counselling skills). BTW - we are all volunteers and have trained for 2 years and continue to go to study days. but yes we care about BF and we want to help those who want to BF to do so easily.

I think most of us (certainly me included) have felt terribly upset about some of the things said about all sorts of things to do with parenting - in my case people saying that dummies are 'disgusting', that children who don't get out of their pushchairs by the age of three are the result of couch potato parents, and that if your partner was left by his ex it's probably because he was a wife-beater or terrible father or something (I probably exaggerate, but that's what we do when we are upset).
As it turns out, my son seems to have some very specific sensory needs which made his dummy very important to him and his happiness, and some motor planning issues that mean he is not nearly as good at walking and running as his peers. But the people posting their opinions don't know that about my ds and weren't trying to upset me at all - it wasn't personal.
I am sure that if you cannot/could not breastfeed for whatever reason but wanted to then it's easy to feel personally wounded by breastfeeding threads, just as I have by other threads. And just for the record, of course I don't think formula is evil - I fed plenty of it to my newborn son. I do, however, think that breastmilk is healthier and more appropriate for human babies in most cases (though not all). I think in my case, feeding my son nothing but breastmilk for the first months of his life would have been the very best thing to have done nutritionally. I didn't do it for lots of reasons, but I still think it would have been healthier. That isn't a judgement on me or anyone else. I think it is the ideal, but most of us aren't ideal parents. I'm certainly not. That doesn't mean that we should just ignore all the people who did want to breastfeed, found it went wrong, couldn't get help to sort their problems (thrush, mastitis, poor latch, supply issues etc etc), stopped breastfeeding and feel sad about it years later.

fisil - I need to echo pupuce's outline of a breastfeeding counsellor's training, which is lengthy (often more than 2 years), involves self-awareness and personal growth, and teaches (and tests) listening skills. I know there are times when this may not be obvious to people, but a breastfeeding counsellor who persistently fails to show this will be made aware of her shortcomings and training offered....we are all supervised, have to undergo updating in order to stay registered, and submit written work to be assessed every year. I would hope no one would be worried about contacting a bfc in case they were unreasonable or judgemental. If you feel judged or criticised or not listened to by a breastfeeding counsellor, make a complaint to their organisation.

Like pupuce, I find many of the women I speak to are already using formula and some want to stop breastfeeding completely. Some want to work their way back to full breastfeeding. Some want to continue mix feeding and need to know how to maintain some breastfeeding. They'll get information and a chance to talk through what they want and how it will work for them.

I think some distinctions need to be made here -

There are a small percentage like CD who are unable to breastfeed because of medication.

There are others who are on medication but are told (wrongly) that they should not breastfeed because the medication is incompatible, or given other wrong information (a friend of mine was told by nursing staff she couldn't breastfeed because she had a different blood group to her baby!)

There are others who perceive that they cannot breastfeed because of misinformation ("you aren't producing enough milk", "your baby has jaundice" etc

There are others who try very hard but fail because of problems in not getting b/feeding started (usually the fault of misinformation as stated above and lack of support in hospital and at home in the early days).

There are some who just simply don't want to.

I think the whole issue is totally confused by the "some women can't breastfeed" statement which is trotted out time and time again. YES some are unable to like CD and the fact that she gets stick for this is bloody awful. However people like CD are comparatively few taken against the vast majority of women having babies. This "can't breastfeed" tends to get distorted and some women genuinely feel that they are inadquate and havne't got some 'magical' property because their bodies aren't working properly. This is where the guilt creeps in (I know I felt this)

CD's case excepted it would be more true to say that "some babies can't breastfeed" as it is down to the baby to get the milk going.

I do think that some women do look for excuses to stop and these are the ones who may perpetuate myths such as 'some women just can't do it' and they spoil it for others who are trying.

As this thread has already usefully shown several items of misinformation have been given and surely it would be mean of anyone to say that that isn't a good thing to have learned from these experiences, that OK it didn't work for you but that might help a new mum in the future to do what she really wants to do? I thought women were supposed to be supportive of each other!!

I agree as someone said that lots of babies died before formula but they genrally died of childhood illnesses not starvation as there was always someone breastfeeding around to help out. Also the art of expressing was better known. I also agree that health promotion is 'preachy' and more practical information is better.

I read somewhere that in NOrway/Sweden that if someone is bottlefeeding then it is automatically known that there is a medical problem (eg such as CD's) so the mother is treated kindly. Unfortunately we can't have it both ways here - ie have the right to bottle feed or breastfeed without someone making assumptions, ie that a woman is bottlefeeding for genuine medical reasons or just spurious ones.

Sorry for the essay but the fact is that somewhere in between the genuine medical cases and the ones who don't want to breastfeed and who are happy with their decision there are a HUGE NO OF WOMEN WHO WANT TO BREASTFEED and this thread is intended to find out why they haven't and to see what can be done to change the situation. I feel pupuce genuinely wants to help people (she can't help those who didn't succeed this time but there are an awful lot of unborn babies out there ....

Branster - I am no mathematician but the 48% of women in the UK is a percentage of the total no of women. It doesn't actually matter how many women there are... it still represents the difference between those who do and those who don't. Obviously if there were say only 4 women then 2 b/feeding and 2 not b/feeding (ie 50%) is a very small number but we are still looking at large numbers . I think there are about 8 million women in Norway (roughly the size of Scotland).

Eulalia, you have just inflated both Norway and Scotland! I think the population of Norway is about 4 million, so about 2 million women, and in Scotland it's just over 3 million, so about 1 and a half million women

Of course you are right about the percentage - actual numbers are irrelevant. The issue is the gap between mothers who want to breastfeed and those who actually do it happily for as long as they wanted to. And the gap is a big one.

Having breastfed both my children, I am embarrassed. I run a group of venture scouts, and asked the girls what their opinion of breastfeeding was. Their image was of a militant sexless unattractive, rather hairy legged woman with facial hair!! If this is the opinion of some teenagers, perhaps we should look at how to get rid of this idea. I really don't think threads like this help to sell the idea of b/feeding, because from what I can make of it, it seems to be used to bully and intimidate others and harp on about how much holier than thou breastfeeding mothers are. This thread may have been set as a scientific curiosity question, but as the thread has gone on, it has become apparent that this was not the case at all. I think if you put some positive energy into encouraging people who are having difficulty breastfeeding, rather than knocking people who don't it would certainly help to lift the profile of a breastfeeding mother. What is the point in targetting mothers who haven't breastfed - do you expect them to go back in time and start again? This is ridiculous. No wonder b/feeding isn't very popular.

OQC, have you actually read this thread? I think your observations about what young women think of breastfeeding is interesting, if depressing, but I think accusing everyone on the thread of 'bullying' and being 'holier than thou' is a tad unreasonable.

Yes, I have read most of this thread and although not everybody is bullying, there is a certain militant style to some of it. Having worked with teenagers, I know that you can have 10 friendly people, and one bully to trigger off a bad reaction, and having talked to these teenagers about b/feeding, I am afraid to say that this is the depressing opinions that they have on breastfeeding.