Breastfeeding is not best - Dr Karleen Gribble

[fabsmum]

Love this video

I meant...

ALSO if many women had had this information, that bfing is normal and you could damage your child's health and put your own health at risk if you did not BF, then I believe that MANY of the women who move onto FF would have chosen to persevere with bfing.

bb99 - totally agree. I am bfing ds2 and yes it was hard and at times painful and tiring but is also beautiful and amazing and i know that he has had all good things in him and i am giving him a flying start. I bfeed ds1 and i plan to bf ds2 (12 weeks old) fully.

bfing isnt the easiest thing in the world and it is far easier to make up a bottle and let someone else feed but this is something that i can do for my child exclusively and it is something that nature intended for my child and every child imo.

I get so frustrated when i hear peopole say i couldnt make enough milk, baby was hungry and wanted ff, nipples too sore. THere are reasons for these scenarios and with the right support and inclination i believe that these problems can be overcome.

I was bfing ds2 in playcentre yesterday and a lady from korea sat next to me and started feeding her 7 month old ds. She has only been in this country for a matter of months and was shocked at how few women bf and also peoples attitudes to her bfing. In Korea it is the NORM for all babies to be breast fed.

If formula wasnt around would all these women let their babies starve or would they perservere?

i couldn't make enough milk. come and tell me how frustrated you are with me.

Also ds1 (8 years) cam ehome from school and said that a girl in his class asked how i feed ds2. Ds1 said breast. The girl said that breastfeeding is gross and that she will bottle feed her babies. She is 8 years old and obviously doesnt understand but she was ff and imo learnt that attitude from her mum.

I was ff and my mum didnt understand all the importance of bf and she was encouraged by health professionals to ff. Thankfully one of my sisters breastfed her dd and gave my support when i fed ds1. One of my other sisters was of the opinion that bfing was disgusting and why on earth would you want a baby hanging off your breast? She still doesnt get it.

Aitch - i dont 'go off' at people for not thinking they made enough milk but i feel frustrated because often there are ways of boosting milk supply and the support network isnt always there, nor is the information readily available.

actually i took every galactologue going including domperidone and had excellent support (after a few weeks) so it's not the case that problems can be overcome in every case. frankly i defy anyone to try harder than i did. but yes, i am always a wee bit mystified as to why some people don't give it a good shot, but then i come from a family where bfing is the norm, so i can't really comment.

Aitch - it is good that you got the support and sorry it didnt work for you.

I have friends and also spoken to lots of mums who have ff who say i didnt make enough milk, they havent tried resting, increasing their own food and drink intake neither have they seemingly gone down the road you took. My close friend for example had a really unsupportive mum, hardly ate or drank adequatley when got home with baby (never knew at the time but all she ate was mince pies as was xmas baby and people just kept visiting). She regrets giving up and with her next baby plans to really make sure she looks after herself and perserveres with bfing. I wish i had been more supportive but i didnt want to offend her or put pressure on her to continue to bfeed. She would have liked me to i have since found out.

I am not saying that there arnet times when there are real problems with supply but i do believe there are many cases where with the right support problems can be overcome. I mean the human race survived without formula for many years. I like the other thread about donating milk to milkbanks as this is certainly a better alternative to formula imo.

BB99 your posting is absolute hysterical nonsense.
You think your sister in law is going to die prematurely because she didn't prolong the breast feeding of her kid?

my aunt died at 42 from pre-menopausal cancer. she didn't bf either of her kids. did these two things have anything in common? I don't know but a woman who doesn't bf is 33.3 % more likely to develop pre-menopausal cancer if she doesn't bf.

of course like your harvard grad lawyer who was ff, my example means nothing, really.

If you go to the hospital for breast screening they ask you if you bf your children & for how long.

nancy - i think your post is uneducated/uninformed nonsense

Babieseverywhere, thank you very much for your links. I found them very interesting indeed.

Earthmummy, I disagree. I think it's entirely feasible that one day it'll be possible to engineer formula milk that is as responsive to a baby's needs as breastmilk is. Not now, not soon, but one day.

What's more, I feel that it's our duty as a society to achieve this, for all the babies whose mums want to bf but can't for whatever reason.

But we haven't taken even one step along that road and nor will we, until a) people stop denying the drawbacks of formula and b) the formula companies disclose what they're currently putting into formula and why.

that would be cool, wouldn't it? cloned milk.

Sings (loudly and not necessarily in tune):

I need a robot mum to call my own....

"spoken to lots of mums who have ff who say i didnt make enough milk, they havent tried resting, increasing their own food and drink intake "
I think tiktok keeps pointing out that diet, rest and stress does not affect your milk supply, apart from in extreme circumstances maybe. Allowing this myth to go unchallenged adds to the general impression that bf is a bind, you have to eat 'good' food in optimum quantities, avoid certain things and the slightest bit of stress will cause milk to dry up!

ippyteedoodah on Sat 22-Mar-08 13:24:05

"Of course the media can pick out individual studies and write what they like, quoting "scientists" without any requirement for a balanced view. Many journalists are great, some may be less rigorous than they should be."

IMHO, the problem with a lot of health issues is that journos with little scientific or medical training, do try to give with they imagine is a balanced view, giving near the same amount of attention to contrarians as the scientific consensus. The observer has even got their sports correspondent to write a front page scare story about autism

When it comes to parenting & breastfeeding issues, the people writing the stories will be heavily influenced by their own experiences and choices.

Awen,

Like SPB wrote below, diet and rest have nothing to do with amount or quality of breastmilk you produce.

As an extreme example, I spent 7 days in hospital where I could not eat at all, just saline drip and I was bright yellow on the verge of liver failure and stressed out of my head at being seperated from my 4 month old baby, but I still managed to express breast milk for my DD.

Your friend could of breastfed on mincepies quite happily if she wished to.

Your assumption that everyone's problems with breastfeeding are fixable is also inaccurate. As Aitch shows, some mothers can not nurse even with support/drugs etc.

Though I get your basic premise that with better support more mothers could continue to breastfeed. After all the stats show that most mothers wanted to breastfed longer than they did, so good support would help in this area. Have you seen the new goverment sponsered telephone number for breastfeeding support ?

You asked what would happen in the past if mothers couldn't breastfed and as for babies in the past, they would either die, be wet nursed or fed a basic formula homemade of boiled cows milk and sugar.

Welliemum,

Babies who were wet nursed were less likely to be as healthy as those who were nursed by their own mothers. And that is with human milk!

Please explain how you think that a milk substitute could be as effective as mine.

earthmummy, WHO says the following rating of infant feeding.

1. Breastfed direct from mother (Optimal solution if possible)

1. Breastmilk from mother given in another way (bottle, cup)

1. Breastmilk from another mother (i.e. Wet nursing)

1. Formula Milk

I am interested in "Babies who were wet nursed were less likely to be as healthy as those who were nursed by their own mothers" Do you have any links etc ? How much less healthy would a wet nursed baby be ? I would of thought they would of been very close in health to a breastfed baby, perhaps with a lower level of antibodies.

bb99

I see your point.

Look at all the info we are given on Vitamin K for newborns-leaflets handed out saying our babies could bleed to death, the history of concerns over MMR, living near pylons, mobile phone masts..etc...

All these things that we are informed about, and FF, well...

Also Welliemum, put effort and money into providing a system that supports the initiation of and continuation of full breastfeeding. This would surely bring more benefits to maternal and child health than a new fangled substitute. Imagine the cost of trying to re-invent the wheel.

Awesome article.

I was on lithium. It keeps me, erm, sane.

Not a day goes by that I don't wonder if I should have weaned from it. Certainly wish I'd looked into donation.

Well earthmummy, I find it easy to imagine that one day molecular biology will have progressed enough to describe exactly what is in breastmilk and how all the feedback loops work.

When that is fully understood, the next step would be to design a system which can monitor the mum and baby on a day-to-day basis and cook up the right milk for that day.

Just because it's very complicated and we don't understand it now, doesn't mean we'll never understand it.

However, I did say it wouldn't be happening soon....

There will always be a need for breastmilk substitute - although as you say the first step must be to enable all women who can bf (and want to) to do so.

Once those women are sorted out, there will likely be a (small) minority who can't or won't. Their babies deserve a good start in life too.

It's true that a poor diet and no rest will have no effect on milk supply - breastfeeding mothers do not need to drink more, eat more or rest more in order to breastfeed perfectly well. Some mothers have great difficulty in making enough milk in order for their babies to grow well, and these mothers need support and ideally, when needed, supplements of human milk for their babies.

To imagine that in the future formula milk will be made that is in any way close to breastmilk is a bold thought - but it is about as likely as the manufacture of artificial blood or lymph or cerebral fluid...where artificial replacement body fluids are made (like insulin) no one claims they are as good as the body's own.

This notion makes the error of thinking that it's 'all about the milk', and it just isn't. Breastfeeding enhances and enables a normal emotional, physiological and nutritional relationship between mother and baby...while this side of things can be replaced with loving, responsive bottle feeding, and of course feeding is not the only part of loving, responsive care, it's easier to get it all going with happy breastfeeding (and yes, harder, with unhappy breastfeeding).