Tell me I am right and this is tosh - GP tells me I must drink at least 2 pints of milk a day to 'make milk'.

[jennifersofia]

Didn't do this with my other 2 and that seemed fine..

Mrsbadger, I've read research on it before slightly more up to date too, that research is 23 yrs and 13yrs old. Going on that if you read what I said, I am still correct. There is an increase and reduction,not a statistically significant one - which is what I said- "most would not notice it..."

Using only 10 mother and infant pairs, is not conclusive research by any means. nor is it good research. It proves very little. Nor does research using 26 women. you need a much much larger number of women as a control group, as well as the 'research' group. A peer review would be daft, on such a small research group. It does, of course show that there is a really valid reason for further research in this subject. maybe I should do it!

realise a lot of what i've written may come across as arsey possible, totally not intended. Just wanted to reply, and being distracted by DD (14 months) , who is as i type trying to get to the chocolate tin my fault entirely. See, I produce chocolate milk.

God, I wish I hadn't got into this thread, i'm too tired for it.

The thought that your GP could be being paid £125K a year to hand out advice like that.......

What rot.

Hercules do you mean medical shock??
FWIW, I certainly felt that when I was tense and sat down to b/feed, that feed was difficult - may well have been loads of milk there, but just wouldn't come out - like the letdown response was inhibited. When I was relaxed with my feet up at home say, the milk flowed.. Thinking particularly of a time when dd was very little and I'd been back in hospital very ill, so had 'issues' with having to restart b/f and lots of people offering opinions...not quite a bereavement but I guess it was quite traumatic.
I suppose some women might have all sorts of (perhaps only semi-conscious) stuff going on - thinking how complex the brain-body link is - which could have same effect as I experienced - and for some, if they experienced that effect several times they might well draw the conclusion that b/f overall 'is not working', and give up..Hence, stress could be seen to affect b/f.Does that make sense?
(Sorry, tired and have been writing essays so not coherent any more)

I am finding this a bit depressing tbh. First my GP whose advice was plain dangerous, now yours, whose advice is probably less immediately dangerous, but still could be fatal to a bf relationship in a Mum who felt overwhelmed with yet another thing she has to worry about in order to maintain her milk supply (in addition to not exercising, eating 5 fruit and veg a day, not smoking, not drinking, not getting stressed, downing fenugreek and special tinctures... oh the list is endless, apparently ).

Why is it that everyone on MN knows these GPs are talking horlicks but the same crap keeps getting spouted out? Can't someone just do a mass mailing to ALL GP surgeries with a few BF myths factsheets, or Dr Jack Newman's "how to tell a HCP isn't supportive of bf"?

And then there's the legions of HVs, MWs, Nurses and other HCPs who also spout crap... there are good ones about but they must get so fed up with being tarnished by their less than knowledgeable colleagues... surely?

Been a lot of sighing the last few days.

I was about to say the same as purplejennyrose, very often (less so now) I can't get a let down and it becomes a vicious cycle.

I wonder if when people "don't have any milk" whether they actually can't get a let down. It's awful, I really feel like I have failed DD when it happens.

Anyway, my crappy GP story is that she said that I didn't need to use contraception when bfing, which I know is true to a point but she said it without any caveats as to how often DD meant to be fed (i.e. at least every 4 hours or something or how long for) and just touched wood and said she had never had any accidents yet!

That bit about crisps making the milk crunchy - I must confess I didn't make that up - I read in on a similar thread months ago. (didn't want one of the more "established" mnetters pointing out that I had pinched their joke)

Duff advice.

However, as a couple of previous posters have mentioned- most doctors have no training whatsoever with regards to breastfeeding.

I had no teaching about BFing in med school, when working as a obs and gynae SHO, when working as a paediatric SHO or as part of my GP training other than the basic hormonal part of it and drug interactions. Everything that I have learned, I have picked up through my own experience of BFing and my friend who is a very pro-BFing midwife. Having said that, in the 3 years I have been a GP, I have had no consultations about BFing problems as hardly any of my patients BF .

I think a formal complaint is a bit OTT.

I also find interesting the number of posters who have assumed the sex of the GP to be male, despite the OP making no reference to it.

Oh lord what shite. Tell that to all the mothers near starvation level in the third world who manage to feed their babies.

Bah what rubbish. Famine struck mothers keep their children alive without drinking milk. I am always amazed at the rubbish you hear from so called professionals sometimes.

Sorry to say, he was male.
Actually he was very nice and professional in many other aspects, and very thorough in his check of the baby,and washed his hands first, which is more than the 5 minutes I got with my 2nd dc. I don't want to rubbish him completely - I am afraid I just nodded in a dazed fashion while my normally extremely sensible dh (who has expounded on several occasions about the lack of necessity of milk in the human diet) brought me a glass of milk right then and there!
I think it was the calcium levels, and lots of liquid, and just being a bit old fashioned. But it wouldn't be helpful to mothers that don't know better, would it.

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I've been told that if you are breastfeeding and drink too much cow's milk, you can increase the risk of colic

I was told this as well when DS1 was a baby (14 yrs ago) He was 7 weeks premature, and I was desperate to breastfeed. So there I was merrily downing gallons of milk to apparently provide the milk for my baby.

The result was that he was often very sick after being fed and ended up in hospital at 5 weeks and 6 weeks for a couple of nights at a time. Then at 9 weeks he was very ill, severely dehydrated and we had to force the doctor to admit him into hospital. He was on a drip for 5 days and then they did an allergie test on him which showed he was allergic to cows milk. They made me give him soya milk (bearing in mind I was 20 and this was my first baby - live baby as my first son was stillborn 13 months before) and I found out a few weeks later that had I stopped drinking so much milk he would have been able to have carried on breastfeeding. It broke my heart tbh, having lost his brother, all I wanted to do was the very best I could for him. The hospital did phone a week after he was discharged and actually apologised for not testing him for cows milk allergies at 5 weeks.

Like I say, I was only 20 at the time, had gone through an awful time with my first baby and was in hindsight very naive. I had DS2 9 years later and things were very different and subsequently DS3 2 years after that.

I'm afraid now that after my experiences with my first son and DS1 (I say it this way so as not to confuse, I do class my first son as DS1, but it does confuse people) I will now do what I think is right, not what doctors/HV's say.

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I don't really now, but I certainly did then. I felt totally stupid for not realising that if I cut out the milk from my diet, then it couldn't be passed on to him. He grew out of his allergy at around 3 and a half (though still can't have too much dairy) and is a very healthy boy now (taller than me too

Squirdle sorry to hear that. There seems to be a lot of ignorance about this still, drinking cow's milk when you're bf really can have a devastating effect if your lo is allergic to it.

My DD is allergic to cow's milk protein and dropped right off the weight charts from around 10 weeks old - she was bf and I was drinking around 1/2 pint of milk a day and eating cheese regularly. We didn't twig until we experimented with formula (and yoghurt when she was older) and she was violently sick each time. She was referred to a paed who diagnosed cow's milk protein allergy and we weaned her on a dairy-free diet. Even then I wasn't advised to modify my diet when bf and she didn't really gain weight properly until I stopped bf at 14 months. I don't know definitively if the dairy in my diet affected her weight gain, but it does look likely in retrospect.