So today I learned that gorillas nurse their young until they are 3 or 4....

[georgimama]

That's it really. Was at Bristol Zoo and the lovely keeper gave a talk about all their gorillas. They have a 23 month old baby and he is still nursing and apparently will continue to do so until he is about 3 or 4.

I just thought that was lovely. Seriously cute gorilla baby.

[mabanana]

Sorry, but I'm really not misinterpreting anything. I know perfectly well the AAP statement was just that, a position statement and not a study. It is however, clearly the Academy's view that current studies do NOT show "uncontroversial, long-standing and robustly evidence-based links between ff and cot death." There may be a link, but certainly so far, there is not enough evidence to prove this, and even if there is a link, it is clearly not a very strong one, unlike, say, the link between tummy sleeping and SIDS.
I do think that when talking about something as potentially frightening and guilt-inducing as the deaths of babies, it is important to be as accurate and unsensational as possible.
Nobody here is arguing that breastfeeding is a not a good thing - quite the contrary, I think in an ideal world everyone would be able to breastfeed their babies. But some claims made for breastfeeding, that it is very important for preventing allergy or preventing cot death for example, have not been proved, and in the case of allergy, have turned out to be wrong.
It is safe to say formula feeding increases the risk of various infections in babies, that it appears to reduce the risk of diabetes and even leukaemia in children. Also breastfeeding can provide some protection against breast cancer, which I certainly think is worthwhile, but it's not a massive effect.

THis is what Breakthrough Breast Cancer has to say about it:
The protection against breast cancer from breastfeeding is relatively
small. We?ll try to explain this by describing what happens in 1,000
women who did not breastfeed and 1,000 women who breastfed for
a year during their lifetime.
First think of the 1,000 women who did not breastfeed. By the
age of 70 we would expect, on average, that about 63 of them
would have been diagnosed with breast cancer at some time
during their lives.
Now think of the 1,000 women who breastfed their child or children
for about one year in total. By age 70 we would expect, on average,
that about 60 of them would have been diagnosed with breast
cancer at some time during their lives. So the benefit or protection
due to breastfeeding for about one year is to prevent about 3 out of
1,000 women from developing breast cancer.
We say ?on average? because it?s not possible to predict exactly who
will end up getting breast cancer. But we do know that, on average,
women who breastfeed have a slightly lower risk of developing
breast cancer than women who do not.

[tiktok]

mawbroon, no one on this thread has even hinted that feeding method is 'very important' in cot death or in allergies for that matter (I think with allergies, the evidence is growing that it is a factor, but effective bf protection will probably turn out to be only if bf is exclusive for the first several months. But I will watch the research on this).

Nor has anyone suggested there is a 'massive' effect with breast cancer.

This aspect of the debate came about when Rhubarb challenged the notion that any deaths resulted from ff in the developed world. And some of us posted research links to show she was wrong.

There has been no 'sensationalism' with this.

I find it enormously frustrating to continue to try to debate like an adult when I'm told that I am making 'important' or 'massive' or 'senstionalist' claims when I am always careful not to!

[mawbroon]

Hey tiktok, I don't think you mean me

[mabanana]

Well, I'm afraid in my opinion you did make an exaggerated claim regarding possible links between SIDS and giving formula. You did say the link was proven, and, I quote again (so please don't try to suggest that I misquote you) was "uncontroversial, long-standing and robustly evidence-based", which I think you will agree is not true. It is controversial, unproven, and the evidence on the issue is extremely mixed. I think when making claims about dead babies it pays to be cautious and accurate. I think women who have lost babies to SIDS and gave formula need to know that there is really no solid evidence that this was the cause.
I also think it is valid to point out that the protective effect of breastfeeding in breast cancer, while real and backed up by a great deal of solid evidence, is quite small.
I also think you really must stop assuming that every single thing I say is somehow aimed at you personally. When I said that "some claims made for breastfeeding, that it is very important for preventing allergy or preventing cot death for example, have not been proved, and in the case of allergy, have turned out to be wrong." and when I said that the effect of breastfeeding on cancer was 'not massive'. I was merely making a true statement. I was not referring to you, or quoting you and I cannot really understand why you think I was. This debate is really not all about you.

[Rhubarb]

Tiktok, I have every respect for you, you have given me great advice in the past and it pains me to have this kind of debate with you. I hope that we can have differing views and still remain friendly.

The reason I took my original standpoint is because I strongly disagree with people looking at other nations and saying "well they do it so that proves it must be good". As someone said early on in the thread, the developed world and the developing world have very different cultures. Reasons for bf in the developing world DO differ from reasons here. I don't think anyone can argue that it is much easier to ff in this country. If you are on a low income you get your formula for half the price or less. Our tap water is clean and sanitation generally good - i.e. we do all have access to flushing toilets.

In fact many people in the poorer areas of developing countries aspire to bottle feed their babies, believing it to be healthier thanks to companies such as Nestlé and because it's a symbol of how wealthy you are.

I don't see those assertations as racist, in fact I think that believing that developing countries breastfeed more and for longer is ignorant. In fact according to WHO, just 39% of infants from 94 developing countries were exclusively breastfed for up to 6 months. Much more than in the UK, but still not as huge a percentage as some people might think.

I used the sanitation and water hygiene statistics for these poorer areas when I made my assertation that ff babies don't die because they have been ff in this country. In developing countries such as Ethopia and Sudan, children are more likely to die because of the poor formula mix, because of the high contamination factors (see China) and because of the mix of dirty water and poor sanitation facilities, making diseases easier to catch. In this country, we don't have the same sanitation problems and we have access to clean water. But as hunker pointed out, our formula is just as likely to be contaminated. However our breastmilk is likely to be more contaminated than the breastmilk of mothers in developing countries because of our lifestyles. Uses of toxic cleaning products, paints etc etc have all found their way into our bodies and alarmingly, come out through the breastmilk.

It is rare that a baby in this country would die as a direct result of contamination of formula milk. It would be a huge scandal if it did. The formula may contribute due to the contamination, but the links are not proven.

The cot death debate runs along the same lines, that a bacteria present in formula milk may contribute to cot death. But again evidence is scarce and atm it's all hypothesis. Yes we should be aware of this, but my opinion is that ff mothers are bashed enough as it is. There are many reasons mothers choose to bf, for some it may not even be a choice and so I think that banding around statements like "your baby is twice as likely to die from cot death if it is formula fed" to be callous and insensitive.

As PhDiva said, I feel I am batting away random attacks that have nothing to do with my original argument.

I hope this can end on a friendly note. Even though I am naturally devastated to have lost the respect of vvqv!

[Rhubarb]

Sorry, that should read "formula may contribute to an illness through contamination"

[tiktok]

whoops, sorry, mawbroon

[tiktok]

Mabanana - I have never said anything about 'proven' or 'unproven'. I have explained what I meant, and I stand by these links being based on strong evidence. I don't know how anyone can say a link is proven anyway - so telling me not to say it because you have shown it to be unproven makes no sense. I resent very much your accusation, mabanana, that I said ff was a cause of SIDS - I don't know how I could have been more clear that I was not saying it was a cause. You may say 'I didn't mean you, I meant other people, and it's not all about you, tiktok'....but it's clear which side of the debate you are targetting your posts at, so I make no apology for assuming I was 'in' with the others

Rhubarb - I haven't taken any part in the debate about other countries on this thread. I can't respond to that part of your post, even though you direct it at me. I think that part of the debate is confused and not very well-informed so I am staying out of it!

However, I have to ask you again to do some reading. You say, "The cot death debate runs along the same lines, that a bacteria present in formula milk may contribute to cot death" - there may be some speculation somewhere that formula milk contributes to SIDS via bacteria (and I think I do recall some discussion some years ago - pure hypothesising, and in any case if the baby died of an identifiable bacterial infection it is not SIDS). The 'cot death and formula' debate centres on the epidemiological links between formula feeding and SIDS, and how strong they are. I don;t think anyone on this thread has ventured to suggest why the link would be there - the speculation that does exist about the link that I think is worth taking seriously would be the way ff babies tend to sleep longer and more deeply which is not physiological, and which may mean that a vulnerable/sick baby may not rouse sufficiently to alert his carer. But this is speculation.

[Rhubarb]

Sorry tiktok didn't mean to aim the whole developing countries debate at you.

I've tried to find article using your quote as a search term in Google, I can only find this that mentions bottlefeeding and it states that the findings are inconsistent.

But then I suppose whatever links there are that support your view, there will be other links that discredit them. Therefore we appear to be circling each other!

Sorry, have to go, roast duck ready!

[mabanana]

Tiktok, I think it is very sad that you see something as important as SIDS in terms of 'sides'. It's just this sort of inappropriately polarised thinking that causes a lot of people's problems with breastfeeding promotion. I am not taking 'sides' - I am, if anything, a facts pedant. I don't like it when people say things that are not backed up by good evidence be that 'the worldwide average age of weaning is 4.5years' or "I am reporting uncontroversial, long-standing and robustly evidence-based links between ff and cot death" when those any possible links are indeed controversial, and the the evidence is far from robust, and is indeed very mixed and contradictory. At best, the studies which do show a link say it is 'weak'.
While I'm sure you are usually extremely well informed, on this single point you made a mistake and perhaps inadvertently exaggerated the strength of the research, and that's fine. We all make mistakes. What I think is less fine is to pretend that to challenge it to take 'sides' (I'm not even sure what 'side' I am supposed to be on, actually)
As for my pointing out that the protective effect of breastfeeding on breast cancer is quite small, why are you so annoyed that I pointed that out, and why do you assume it's about 'sides' again? I felt as some people were saying that 'hundreds (thousands?) of mothers were dying because they didn't breastfeed', this might be scary or guilt-provoking for some women, and it would be interesting for everyone to see that the effect may well be smaller than you might think, and it is very unlikely indeed that not breastfeeding will mean you will die of breast cancer at at age when you will leave your children motherless. I really don't see why this is a bad thing that needs challenging. It's simply true.

[SharpMolarBear]

she was talking about sides of a debate, which this is. I don't think she meant any more than that.

[hunkermunker]

"I appreciate what hunker and tiktok are saying, but I think that their views are a little extreme regarding cot death."

Have I said anything about cot death? That's a genuine query - I can't be arsed to search the thread, but I don't recall saying anything, extreme or otherwise. My point was and continues to be that you cannot say that no babies in this country die because they're ff.

[tiktok]

mabananaa, the disingenuous, faux concern you express about me supposedly taking 'sides' on baby deaths is actually quite unpleasant. The sides I was referring to were related to the debate about whether it was ok to even mention links or not - as you well know.

I have never said anywhere what I think of the strength of the links between ff and SIDS - I entered the discussion to point out that many robust studies have found the link exists, and that is still the case.

Fine for you to report that the link between not bf and br cancer is small - my objection was that you pointed it out, you said, in order to counteract suggestions that the link was 'massive' - and no one, least of all me, had made that suggestion.

[tiktok]

And just for the record, not all sources agree the links between infant feeding and breast cancer mean the effect is 'small' .

The Lancet paper that published the results of the most extensive study to date on this had a different view. Cancer Research reported it as 'breastfeeding provides major protection against breast cancer' - here is the full report [[http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/news/archive/pressreleases/2002/july/40356

There are 2 ways of looking at this issue -
i) the public health view, which calculates the effect on a population level : " If women breastfed each of their children for an extra six months, it could prevent over 1,000 cases of the disease in Britain each year."

ii) the effect on an indivdual woman, which is impossible to calculate and for whom the increase in protection/risk is bound to be smaller

[mabanana]

Goodness me, Tiktok, how much can you misquote me? Are you going for a record? I most emphatically did NOT say that anyone had said the protective effect was "massive". You cannot find where I said this, because I did not. I merely said that at least one poster (no, not you) had raised the issue and talked about hundreds of mothers dying, and I merely wanted to put that in perspective and give more information from a highly reputable source.
You say, "The sides I was referring to were related to the debate about whether it was ok to even mention links or not - as you well know." Nope, you didn't give that impression at all, but of course, as your comment was rather obscure, and I felt, snide, it was hard to tell, hence my genuine bafflement as to what 'side' I was supposed to be on. As it happens, I thought, though was unsure, that you meant being pro or aginst breastfeeding. I still think the use of the word 'sides' - as in 'we know what side you are on' during a debate about babies dying is in poor taste.
I am hardly against giving information, am I? All I disputed was your description of the links between formula feeding and SIDS being (here we go again) 'robust' and 'uncontroversial' where 'possible' 'controversial' or 'unproven' might have been more appropriate and accurate words to use.

[mabanana]

Tiktok, you actually said, "but it's clear which side of the debate you are targetting your posts at, so I make no apology for assuming I was 'in' with the others" - I don't know how was supposed to guess your apparently very specific meaning from this! And you know, putting a smiley doesn't really make it any nicer.

[mabanana]

And I reiterate, I'm not on any 'side', whatever it is supposed to mean. I find the whole concept of it when discussing cancer, and the deaths of women and babies really so inappropriate.

[ghosty]

WE ARE TIRED OF BEING 2ND CLASS MN CITIZENS

WE WANT COMPS!



OverseasmumsnetteRsunIteForfaIrtrEatment

[tiktok]

I said 'side of the debate' - couldn't be clearer. The debate was whether it was ok to mention links or not - I am surprise that this was not clear but there you go. On Sat 12.03, you said the effect on feeding on br cancer was 'not massive' - this was in a post which countered previous posts, so if you did not mean to imply someone/people had implied it was massive, then I have misunderstood, sorry.

[mabanana]

Well it obviously could have been a bit clearer! Especially as I had no idea which 'debate' you were referring to. This has been a long and wide ranging thread (or debate) covering many different issues. It has not in any way been confined to whether you exaggerated the strength of any links between formula feeding and SIDS. Even in the post in which you mentioned 'sides' you covered different issues, and implied that there were two (to me mysterious) 'sides' involving many people of whom you were just one. I simply do not see myself on any 'side' on this issue. It's too important for that.
I saw one poster (not you) suggest this thread was all about 'formula feeders having issues', and I found that tediously reductive and inaccurate, but as it is a theme that tends to recur on these threads, it did occur to me that I was being lumped in with a so-called 'anti-breastfeeding 'side'. So maybe I should point out here that I've spent around three and a half years breastfeeding, loved it and felt I was doing the right thing for my babies and for me. I would love it if that cut my risk of breast cancer massively. I could do with something to counteract the grim possible effects of my wine habit, and my tubby tummy.

[mabanana]

And I'm very bored and tired of fighting about it and I'm sure you are too!!

[sweetgrapes]

[mabanana]

cute breastfeeding gorilla - don't look Expat!

[onwardandupward]

Great picture. I like the MIL gorilla in the background, clearly gearing herself up to shout "BITTY!" in the bf gorilla's ear

[Rhubarb]

Don't say "bitty" onward! That's rude dontcha know!

Hunker, I believe I addressed the points about ff babies in this country. I've no wish to go over them again.

Glad this has ended peacefully!