was this a stupid thing to say?

[robinrednomorenowemptybreasts]

my cousins just had her third baby, baby is a week old, when talking to my mum after mum had been to visit, mum said the baby was going every three hours, and that she got to have a cuddle after the baby had been fed.

when mum said the baby was being bottlefed, i said oh thats a shame, mum got quite annoyed with me.
i would not of said that to my cousin or aunt or anything.
and now im wondering if i was out of order saying that.
please be honest, i won't mind if you say i was, i just thought it a shame

Of course anyone is allowed to disagree. I very much value hearing others opinions. What I don't like is others who think mine are based on lack of research or experience. We must all make our choices in life and as long as they are informed (and not based on stats which terrify us even though they may not be showing the whole, true picture) we should be satisfied that we are doing what is right for us and our children.

Sorry, don't want to appear as though I'm jumping on you, but those studies you accept, but the ones about bf/ff you don't?

Not being vulture-like, just continuing the discussion...swmum is fine about it, anyway

Experience is not a good guide to health choices, really - it's a powerful motivator, but it's not a way to make an informed choice, if by that we mean looking at the evidence, not of our own eyes and lives, which are going to be very limited, but of the research and the science. We can use common sense as well - why on earth would using another animal's milk be anything like using a species-specific milk? But beyond common sense, we have the world wide body of scientific literature.

I too find it contradictory that someone would eat organic and bathe organic and smell organic for themselves, and then not use human milk for their baby, on the basis that they themselves and the people they know are 'fine'. Contradictory, but not odd or strange because feeding choices are cultural and social and even emotional...and those forces can be more powerful than anything. Then we see the unconvincing attempts to justify it all, in the only way possible - by simply disbelieving the science and research, and believing that personal experience trumps the science and research every time....

OK, this is my first foray into a bf v ff thread, so here goes

swmum, I'm very glad you've not had any health complaints - long may it continue!
But when the bf experts on here talk about the increased risks of illness, allergies and hospital admission that come with ff, that's because it is a fact, not a cheap point-scoring exercise. It's very easy to point to examples of ff babies who are fine (I am one!) and easy, too, to find counter-examples (my ff dsis and db suffer various allergies, IBS, etc). Impossible to say whether those problems were directly caused by ff, of course - just as it's impossible to say that my 5mo ds's lack of problems so far are down to him being bf. But surely that's why we have proper, clinically controlled scientific studies of such things (and the best ones do take account of other factors, swmum)? Personal experience goes only so far.

Of course every mother should have the right to choose how she feeds her child, and of course the feeding method is just one part of parenting. But any real reading on the subject can surely only lead to the conclusion that bf is better for the baby and the mother on health grounds. Whether you then choose to opt for ff for other reasons is up to you. But to argue, as some do, that there's no risk involved in ff is misleading. To claim that ff is as good as bf doesn't make this a "balanced" debate.

Thats what I mean cola. There are so many other things to consider. What socio economic background were these people from for a start? What did they eat during their pregnancy? What did they feed their children after they stopped bf? Personally I think those are just some of the things that would have influenced the out come of any study more than just bf or ff.

I understand that not all mothers feel an instinct to breastfeed - but then the majority of mums who choose to initiate breastfeeding do so for reasons of their baby's health (at least according to the last DOH Infant Feeding survey - at 75% this was the single biggest reason for choosing to breastfeed) so as Tiktok says - instinct to breastfeed isn't the primary motivating factor.

I find it fascinating how this issue is presented to mums. I've got into the habit of turning to the 'breast or bottlefeeding' section of new parenting books when I pop into Waterstones to see what angle they take on the subject. I find they almost always take the same approach, which is something along these lines: they talk about the 'benefits' of breastfeeding - but they NEVER go into details with facts and figures. So for instance they might say 'breastfeeding reduces a baby's chance of developing diabetes', but they won't tell you what sort of difference it makes in terms of numbers. They don't talk about the evidence, they don't go into detail about the health issues surrounding mixed feeding - ever, except maybe to say in passing that 'exclusive breastfeeding' is desirable.

I have never ever seen a parenting book or magazine that acknowledges that there are risks to artificial feeding, and I have never heard of anyone being spoken to by a midwife about this either. Which is suprising really, given that almost every modern midwifery textbook on breastfeeding includes a chapter on 'the risks of artificial feeding', and every BFI hospital has a policy that 'parents should be informed of the risks of artificial feeding'.

I do think that parents should ask themselves why the concept that there are signficant risks to artificial feeding is common currency in modern midwifery literature on infant feeding, but is almost never acknowledged in parenting education materials........

I haven't read all the comments yet but I think your mum might have been upset about your comment as she didn't bf you and felt that you were judging her as well as your cousin.

I remember that when my sister had a baby she bf exclusively and made some comment about how awful it was that people bottlefed and my Mum later confessed to me that she had been very hurt as she had bottlefed all her children as it was "the done thing" when she had us. Even 30+ years down the line comments about bottlefeeding not being the best start for a child could upset her.

Just a thought...

But good science does take into account all the other stuff. That's what "controlling for variables' means! You don't need to seal people up in a germ-free room to show that formula fed babies have more risk of (for example) hospitalisation, diabetes, ear infection, chest infection, etc etc etc - all you need to do is control for the confounding factors. This is GCSE science, not rocket

It's not that I feel I have to justify my position, I just don't believe a lot of the stats. I'm not saying that so I can hide away from the truth.

Well if that is true tikok I'd like to actually see all those factors in print along side the claims. I want to know that the women in the studies hadn't smoked for example, or that their children weren't being fed chicken nuggets or whatever. I want to see that the only thing they ever did 'wrong' was ff and that's what led to their children being obese or them getting cancer. Do you see where I'm coming from?

What about the formula milk being contaminated from the plastic bottles? Have you thought about that. Or the huge environmental that formula feeding has in general? Why bother buying an organic apple for yourself when you are destroying the enviroment with your pastic bottles and throwaway tins of formula.

Impact...I left out the word impact.

but, swmum, could that not be the case too with the research you trust regarding the impact of additives upon the skin. Or research into the impact of insecticides?
Yet you believe that research but not the multiple and extensive studies into the health risks of formula milk.

swmum, you said, 'There are so many other things to consider. What socio economic background were these people from for a start? What did they eat during their pregnancy? What did they feed their children after they stopped bf? Personally I think those are just some of the things that would have influenced the out come of any study more than just bf or ff."

This is what I mean - the variables in a study are controlled for. The socio-economic background in particular is highly influential - so you control for it.

It's harder to control for diet in pregnancy, or what the kids eat after weaning, but there are ways of studying whole swathes of a population so you isolate the infant feeding differences only.

SWMUM, my links were about plastic baby bottles, not BF vs FF.
If you're going to FF fine, but please consider glass bottles.

Unfortunatley, science is not as precise as it would like you to think, for instance outliers, are always removed from statistics, because they interfere with the results, people lie because of how society will view them, a child or adult is made up of millions dna strands from countless ancestors,genetics are responsible for alot you would be very surprised how much science is flumuxed!!

Poobah I was simply considering the health issues, not the enviromental ones. But eh, recycling would be my answer to that.

I would imagine that they're not individual case studies. More like larger scale (epidemiological?) studies. So possible confounding variables (such a the socio economic status of the mother) would be counterbalanced rather than removed altogether. ie socio economic groups (which you can't remove of course) might be equally represented in both conditions.

How do you rate the validity of the studies you mention about cosmetics?

So are you saying then that all science is potentially flawed, or just the studies into the health risks of formula milk? So for example, do you believe that smoking has health risks? Or that cannabis use can lead to psychosis? Or that putting a baby to sleep on their front can lead to cot death?
Because the way I see it, unless you have looked in depth into each and every study into the health risks of formula and found them wanting, while at the same time doing the same thing with studies into SIDS, smoking and drug use, to choose to believe one study and to discard that relating to formula risks is contradictory.

I can understand why people don't believe the stats on some things, where the science is often contradictory and frequently poorly (mis)reported. But - and this is a genuine question - is there a single reputable, properly conducted study that has found formula to be less risky/better than bf? AFAIK the merits of bf over ff is not a matter of great scientific contention. And swmum, re your note on skin products etc "The reason we don't know much about this is because the cosmetics industry is so incredibly powerful"... well, the formula industry isn't particularly meek, but it still doesn't seem to be able to suppress the uncomfortable evidence on its products

Tiktok I do see what you are saying but I have never seen a proper break down giving me the info I would like. Maybe I should have a good dig around for it. I understand what you are saying and I can see your reasoning, but I don't think it's a cut and dried as it's made out to be.

I agree with cola. Not just because she too is a ff mum but because I genuinely think she is right.

And thanks for the tip on the glass bottles - very useful.

swmum - you say "Well if that is true tikok I'd like to actually see all those factors in print along side the claims. "

Any decent research paper will have as much detail about their subjects in as you want. Probably more. You can read the methodology, and the way the subjects were selected, how and if they were randomised.

You are protecting yourself from the truth, swmum....saying 'I don't believe the research' is not what intelligent, grown up people should be doing.

If you don't want to breastfeed, then don't. I don't belong to the group that are 'sad' for your baby, or 'sad' for you - in fact, I think educationally, you are doing your future baby a disservice in starting off with a dismissive attitude to science, to be honest, and maybe I should be sad about that

But in the interests of honest debate, it's better to say 'I know what the science says, but my comfort and my lifestyle is more important to me at the moment', don't you think?

yes colacubes, there is such a thing as publication bias... but what possible gain is there to be made from falsely claiming bf to be better than ff? theres no money to be made in bf...

swmum, the evidence that formula milk has risks is cut and dried. No one is exaggerrating it, or pulling the wool over your eyes. The evidence is easily available, and Google is your friend

Well I was Johnsoned up to the eyeballs, including talc and it's never done me any harm
The other factors will have been CONTROLLED
Does smoking increase your chances of cancer? If you believe that, how on earth do you think it was proved.
It has been - it's not a matter of opinion, it is sturdy, scientific, measurable, reproducable PROOF