Why the 'Breast is Best' Campaign is Totally CRAP!!!

[highlander]

I'm damn angry about this.

DH's cousin gave birth last week. Had no intention to BF, but persuaded by the midwives to give it a go. So she did. 2 days later, my MIL phoned me to say that she's a bit worried about the baby as she sleeps all the time. Apparently mum has voiced this concern to the hospital staff - nothing done. Baby screams for hours on day 4, midwives say the doctor will call on Monday morning. Doctor says baby has lost too much weight and must be switched to formula as she 'clearly isn't taking to BF'.

At no point did anyone suggest that the baby needed to be fed every 2-3 hours etc etc.

Breast is Best, but it's fucking useless unless hospital staff are trained properly.

I know it's against MN policy, but don't rely on advice for BF in Antrim Area hospital.

Flounce, rant over.

PS off out for a walk, don't be miffed if I don't contribute for a while

vess, there is no excuse for people caring for you to be impatient with you. The skin to skin contact you were given with your baby after birth is known to help with bf and the relationship between mother and child, but there is no need for them to insist on a feed - supporting you to offer the baby a feedm being gentle with you and with the baby, and enabling rather than insisting, is the way to go.

highlander - I can appreciate the dilemma. Your dh is worried you will wind everything and everyone up. However, your cousin in law (CIL ?) is a grown up and has a right to know she was let down. She may not want to hear about it at the moment, so you can only carefully raise the issue. She can, after all, relactate....it's still early days. How about you emailing her and saying 'sorry to hear about the feeding problems you had - sometimes hospitals don't know what they should be doing. But you can start breastfeeding again if you want to - there's a few numbers you can try [and you insert the helpline nos) or call me and I can tell you a bit more. Glad the baby is doing well blah blah blah....'

If she wanted to breastfeed, even a little, and then found she could do it even after stopping, and no one had told her....how's that gonna make her feel?!

Tiktok - the reason it stuck in my mind was because I was so shocked by it. But perhaps I read it somewhere unreliable, or it was referring to a hospital or area rather than national, or it was just a misprint - or maybe I'm losing my marbles - perfectly possible (and frankly atm, quite probable! ). Quite good that it was wrong, actually!

FairyMum, I also suggested to the hospital I was at, that every hospital ward needed a BF counsellor, and was told that they didn't like that idea as it would de-skill the midwives.

I can understand the logic of that in an environment where mw's know as much about bf as a bf counsellor and have enough time to do what a bf counsellor does, but in the real world, where mw's are rushed off their feet and bf is only one little part of what they do, that argument simply doesn't stand up imo.

I hear this kind of thing ALL THE TIME and it really makes me angry. The NHS simply pays lip service to BF, but does sod all about it. My DS was also screaming none stop on 4th day (I didn't know it was hunger at the time), but as I had attended NCT BF session before he was born, I was aware that babies DO NOT STARVE even if they have not latched on for the first few days of life. They DO eventually latch on with help.

On the 4th day, in sheer desparation my DH called a friend who had BF her two sons and she came round to our house and helped DS to latch on. DS and and I have never looked back, he is now nearly 8 months old and still BF. And I will BF until my baby decides he no longer wants my boobs !

And yes, babies do lose weight in their first week of life, this is true whether they are formula fed or BF.

As a lawyer (who happened to work for the NHS for a few months) I am fully aware of how paranoid the NHS is about litigation. I am certain that much of the panick about "give baby formula or he/she will starve" bollocks is to do with the worry that they will end up in court if something happenes to baby.

This is specially true for C-sections (I wrote a 5 page birth plan and made sure DH had been drilled in not allowing a C-section unless baby or I were on the verge of death) as well. I also refused to give birth in a hospital (I had DS at the Edgware Birth Centre (EBC)- it is run totally by midwives) because I didn't want any doctors with fancy gadgets around when I was in labour. The EBC is very boob-friendly !

I hear so many awful stories about BF and the rubbish reasons given to mothers to give up( I get all my knowledge and info. about BF from scientific websites on the internet and would NEVER go to a so-called health prof. for advice) that I have told my unmarried, still childless sister-in-law who is 28, who lives 1000 miles away in another country, that if she ever decides to have a baby (she is committed to BF) she must call me immediately and I will visit her or talk to her over the phone so that she will not have to give up BF for some totally mythical reason.

I am now convinced that health profs. can not be realied upon, unless they have been properly educated and trained in BF.

Sorry, I forgot to add, re. discussion below on BF figures for the UK and worldwide comparisons, go to the UNICEF breast-friendly website. The figures are very interesting. Only around 14% of mothers in the UK are still BF at 12 months. That's extremely low compared to some other countries.

The sad thing is, for years and years the formula companies encouraged women in the poorest countries, Africa in particular, to give their babies formula. Those companies have alot of baby deaths to answer for. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) some 1.5 mil babies a year die because they were not BF, i.e. they did not get the natural immunity to diseases that mother's milk provides.

No one has yet been able to "invent" an artificial substitute to breast milk that provides the immunity and "brain food" (AHA amino acids) that breastmilk provides. I am not a Human Rights lawyer, but if I were I would be taking alot hospitals and formula companies to court for causing so much misery and unnecessary death, especially in the world's poorest countries.

Unfortunately it's not common, I have a friend whose newborn was sent to hospital because he got dahidrated. My friend spent a week in hospital, begging them to allow her to give her expressed milk in a bottle but they told her not to do it as that would confuse the baby and ruin breastfeeding. The problem she had was that the baby was not latching at all and though everybody was so concerened about ensuring the continuity of breastfeeding nobody told her that she needed to express a bit of milk out so the baby could latch to her very full breast. Nobody told her either that the baby should feed at least every four hours and when she mentioned the baby was sleeping all the time they congratulated her on her "sleeping" newborn baby.

Another example about laying the law without understanding the principles, I guess.

You are so right karaj about the NHS paying lipservice to the importance of breastfeeding.
My trust recently invited a rep from Unicef in to talk about 'Baby Friendly' status in the vlocal hospital with a view to going down that road.

A few weeks later, the Surestart board I am a member of had a funding request in for one of the community m/wives to attend a b/feeding conference. (Would have cost a couple of hundred quid at the most.) When we queried why the Trust weren't funding it, the answer was the due to an ongoing (and very well known) litigation case, all training was suspended for the foreseeable future.

An absolute disgrace!!!

I feel very angry and disappointed about my experience re. breastfeeding support when ds1 was born (in hospital). We didn't get much help to latch him on in the hour after birth (which is supposed to be pretty important). He screamed loads on days 1 and 2, which I now put down to just being rather hungry, and although midwives said to ask for help whenever I tried to latch him on, in practise they weren't really around. Or when they did come over, they just shoved his head onto my breast rather than helping me to do it. And at one point one of the midwives told me that I was probably making him worse by being too stressed out, so she took him 'off my hands' for a while. Then on day 3 he stopped screaming and slept - for a very long time - and started going floppy and also had convulsions at one point. Guess what, his blood sugar levels were too low. So they offered to give him a bottle of formula, but he was too weak to drink much. He ended up in special care for about 5 days. The breastfeeding support in SCBU was actually very good - but if I'd had proper support in the first place he wouldn't have had the problems he had.

Plus nearly 3 years later he still has a cow's milk protein intolerance and I can't help wishing I'd refused that bottle of formula. I'm interested in karaj's comment about the NHS wanting to avoid litigation - of course it would be harder to prove a direct connection in this case but I have certainly heard that there is a higher prevalence of CMPI among babies given formula milk in maternity wards even if they are subsequently fully breastfed.

I've seen the UNICEF baby friendly site and I'm very interested in the pre-written letter for sending to your hospital in support of their status OR to ask why they aren't baby friendly yet. There's a part where you can add your personal bit and I think even though it's a few years down the line I will write to that hospital.

I would also like to add that second time round I paid for an independent midwife and the biggest difference was the postnatal support - in particular, the help with establishing breastfeeding in those first few days.

SamN..
Glad it was better for you the second time. point is though we shouldn't have to pay for this should we?!

haven't haf time to read all of this, but as a mother of a 9-day old baby who has been having difficulty with getting b/f established (though it's getting better now) i've noticed that all the advice i've been given via various MWs and BFCs all working out of same hospital by the way has been inconsistent, everyone is advocating diff positioning, diff attitudes to latch/pain etc -- everything, even down to the sort of chair that's needed

Glad to hear things still on the up bp!
You're right, advice is all different but isn't that the case with everything. in the end I went with the person I trusted the most,the community m/w.

no, moondog, we shouldn't. and I didn't make the decision to go private until I was about 35 weeks pregnant and was suddenly given some money.

Chandra "Nobody told her either that the baby should feed at least every four hours and when she mentioned the baby was sleeping all the time they congratulated her on her "sleeping" newborn baby."

ermm - no they don't need to feed every 4hrs - they feed when they want to - a close friend of mine was initially told that when her BF daughter started sleeping through at 2 days old and she was worried she wasn't getting enough milk. She was advised (initially) to wake the baby up for feeds............so tried that and ended up with a VERY unhappy baby - went back to letting her sleep and feed as she wanted to and BF went well after that.

Gwenick - I think that's a bit misleading - a newborn needs to feed at least every two-three hours during the day - if they feed well during the day then it's okay to let them go longer in the night. But you CAN'T rely on the just to wake up when they need feeding.

Yep! Absolutely ridiculous when the staff do nothing to support it. Breast is best but it sometimes needs support and help to get it going . Most bf evidence suggests that babies do pretty well for the first 24 hours or so - even if they don't feed much. However, it's still important to put them to the breast and let them latch on (or help the Mum to do so).
I suspect that much of the crap BF numbers are to do with uninformed doctors, midwives and health visitors giving appalling advice to parents (am a HV so on safe ground here). Coupled with that you have the push from the babymilk companies - go on - just one bottle a day won't hurt.
Dreadful that your DH's cousin has had a bad time.

Mandy

dinosaur - I also think your statement is misleading - this friend of mine DID decide to leave it until the baby woke up and NEEDED the milk (if sleeping happily not sure how one determines that the baby needs milk???) and breastfed very succesfully - just like us adults - babies are all different - mine certainly was - every 1-2hrs he'd have a 1hour feed - day or night!

If a newborn only feeds once every four hours, I am worried....this is not often enough for most. Long sleeps in the newborn period are nor normal. Trouble is, some zonked out babies will sleep for ages and ages in a crib, sleeping off the effects of pain relief or a difficult birth, and not wake for feeds. Sleeping through at 2 days old certainly does risk dehydration. Some babies will be fine, of course, but hospital staff should certainly point this out to the mother, and encourage her to keep her baby close to her, skin to skin.

All newborns benefit from this, anyway, so they can be fed quickly and easily at the first sign they want to be fed.

I was told that if they were sleeping happily, then they didn't need to be woken up, but in ds' case he REALLY did - he lost over 15% of his birth weight and didn't regain his birth weight until about 7 weeks. He really did need to be woken up for feeds, as left to his own devices he became dehydrated, and couldn't wake up for feeds, because as he had less milk he got sleepier.

I feel very sad that so many other mums have had the same experience .
I feel very strongly about this. I think a letter to the DoH is brewing.....

Message withdrawn

tortoiseshell, that is clinical negligence.....babies can usually be allowed to decide when to feed if they are unaffected by labour and birth meds, if they are term, and a healthy birthweight, if they are next to mum's body. These are the physiological norms, and actually very few babies meet all these conditions in today's hospitals. So they cannot safely be left to sleep and sleep, otherwise they risk exactly what you experienced.

It would be worth thinking about writing a letter to the maternity unit, truly.

Gwenick, you got my post wrong, I said at least every four hours NOT every four hours. In the particular case of my friend, the baby would have slept to eternity if they had allowed him: He was severely dehidrated!

Now, have just remembered... there was another woman at my playgroup who had a very similar experience. Some children need to be woken up.

I agree that it's wonderful that the NHS is taking the message of Breast is Best so seriously, I just wish they were better prepared to offer support to the women who want to breastfeed but quit when failing to get the adequate support/information needed in order to overcome some of the likely problems of the early days.

This was one of the things caused me to give up Breast feeding early on with DS (there were other factors too)
With DD I woke her for a feed if she hadn't fed for 3 hours from day one during the day and in the night I let her sleep until she woke in the night for a feed. Obviously if she wanted feeding more often than 3 hourly I fed her ....
As a result she never ever cried from hunger as a newborn and only ever had one feed in the night after 10pm.
In NZ they advise you to look for other signs of hunger first and that crying is the last sign of hunger ... ie DON'T wait until they are distressed to feed them .... Very sensible IMO ...
Your poor cousin Highlander

I really don't see any evidence of Breast is Best in our local hospital. When I had DS2, 4.5 months ago, ok, I had great support in the recovery room. But all the postnatal midwives weren't interested.

We were breastfeeding beautifully, so we didn't need help with that, but I was stuck, post-section, sitting up holding a baby, and did some damage to my back, as I couldn't turn to put him down.

One of them did offer to make me up a bottle, for no reason I could work out. Oh, and the obs/gyne who checked me out assumed I would have my period back for the six-week check.

I am also speaking from personal experience - my DS3 just did not wake up for feeds. It took him ages to regain his birthweight, and he developed jaundice. He just was not getting enough calories and I was not being rigorous enough about waking him up and making sure he was feeding properly, not just latching on and then having another snooze.