Has anyone complained about midwives or health visitors advice about breasfeeding or weaning, and if so what response did you get?

[rolandbrowning]

Just interested really as I recently complained about the midwives advising me to eat cream cakes to increase my milk supply. I was told the individual midwives involved had been spoken to and will be retrained. As so many people seem to get bad feeding and weaning advice, are they complaining and if so were you happy with the response? I am also now a bit worried that if i hav another baby, they may know it was me who complained about them!

There's no excuse for HCPs not being up to date.

Even if their initial training was lacking what's stopping from attending study days (in their own trust or at Uni), reading professional journals & guidelines, asking more experienced/senior colleagues for advice/support, attending regular updates (the mandatory one and the ones they think they'll benefit from) reading forums like this one to see what parents are struggling with, being aware of local clinics/helplines that can offer them and their clients more info/support, etc...

Specially health visitors as they have to be qualified nurses or MWs with at least 2 years experience before they can apply/be accepted to study as a HV.
They are required to be responsible for their learning needs and how to meet them. So saying they only had 1 day sitting in a classroom to learn something is the reason why thy don't know more in a subject is a very bad excuse...

If parents are not happy with the care they receive they should complain. Maybe it's a communication problem as some posters said wrt eating more, maybe the HV needs further training/updating. But being more vocal is the only way things can change.

Having said all this I must also add there are some great supportive and knowledgeable professionals out there and it is unfair to generalise.