I heard something that upset me today...

[aurorec]

There have been a few threads recently about breastfeeding and the pressure to stop.

Well today at my French baby and toddler group (I'm French based in London) there were 2 new mums with infants.
They were both FFing, one mentioned that she'd tried nursing for a couple of weeks but it was too tiring and inconvenient with a toddler to look after as well.
The other one just didn't want to nurse. She was fuming about the fact that for the whole of her pregnancy she was subjected to (in her words) 'propaganda' about BFing from her MW.

Propaganda... Oh and she was also outraged that her HV asked her why she'd decided not to nurse. I nearly butted in but they were new and the group could do with new member money so I kept my mouth shut

SlightyMad - agree you should have had the discussion!

I don't agree - for what it's worth - that listing a whole lot of risks of formula feeding is tactful or wished for (which is why I was sceptical when lostinnanppies appeared to ask for a list of pros and cons!). It is never interpreted as anything other than a doom-laden prognostication at best, and a personal (and sometimes quite wounding) criticism of ff mothers at worst.

It also risks sounding not a little ker-azy....as if ff or bf was (as flufflebum says) was the sole determinant of all sorts of health outcomes. It's not, of course.

"comments like this are not helpful"

This comment was lighthearted.

Seriously though - how do you defend a decision about something so important to a child when it's made simply as a gesture of defiance? Surely it's fair to say that only a very immature or ill-informed mother would make the decision not to breastfeed simply to get back at a health professional? Not blaming someone for being ill-informed or immature - can't be helped, especially if you are actually only 14 and don't know a single other person who's breastfed!

thanks tiktok....

wish I hadn't mentioned it now.

2nd part of my post was directed at VS, not Slightly.

VS - that was not a good thing that you did.

You wanted the pros and cons.
I'm sorry if it makes you upset but you can't have it both ways. If there is to be total blanket acceptance of what mother's choose to do regarding their babies feeding then there can't be any hidden information.
I'm not judging anyone's decision, just stating the reality of it.
This is why I say informed choice. Everyone should know this before they make their decision.
If you choose to formula feed then you choose to accept those risks. That choice is yours.

msdemented

I feel it just adds to the negativity surrounding ffeeding

of course i am not defending someone choosing not to bf out of spite

tiktok Here here.

I hope I was sounding like a completely pro FF either! I would have love to have BF but looking at both my kids (and other that have been BF) they are children for gods sake. We want to love and support them all and whether you BF or FF that will not determine their future regardless of what we might think!!!!!

The idea of informed choice is infuriating!

BF will not make your kids a genius people are naive to think it will!

When kids get to sixteen put them all in a room and tell me who was BF and who was BF if it really makes that much difference!

Sorry that should read who was BF and who was FF!

VS
totally spot on, there should be no hidden info.

but neither should there be long posts that attack formula feeding like that either, perhaps yout wording was too harsh

Oh my god bad typing too and I was BF!!!!

VS - you are a good supporter of women and bf, and informed and feisty. There are indeed places where lists of risks can be shared and debated - but not here, on a thread where we are exploring, mostly supportively, women's feelings about themselves as mothers, in relation to feeding. A number of women whose feelings are still raw are posting. You were unkind to disregard that, sorry.

The tone of 'well, tough shit, you asked for it!' is something I don't think you will find in your training

AS for a choice, I go back to what I originally said is it a choice if women are not adequately supported to BF?

VS is right, she did just post the facts. I'm just being honest about my responses, not meaning to shut down discussion - just the opposite, in fact.

No-one chooses to FF with those things in mind, I don't think. Most right-thinking parents clearly want the best for their children, and would not go out of their way to consciously choose to risk harming their children.

With that in mind, those lists of facts do read like judgements, because we all know that we want to avoid the risks.

For those of us who chose to FF (and I actually felt eventually that I didn't really have a choice) that is one hell of a rock and a hard place situation.

oh no not another thread like this

if we cannot be understanding to each other on here then what.

I reckon all but a very ignorant 5% of ff women on mumsnet knows breast is superior. And the rest of the world does not see what we post and if they don't care that bf is better then that is not the fault of ff mums on here. they do not need to be told this and time and time again they end up feeling like the worst mum ever. I have bf my ds for 11 months but can imagine what it must be like to be made to feel like a bad mum.

and as tiktok rightly points out the outcomes listed by VQ are not exactly guaranteed. If you ff because for whatever reason bf did not happen, yet you feed your child a healthy diet later in life and take them for exercise every day your child may well have a better life expectancy than one who is breastfed but then driven to McDonalds on a daily basis.

Just feel sad that we are going through the exact same thing again.

VS - you say : This is why I say informed choice. Everyone should know this before they make their decision.
If you choose to formula feed then you choose to accept those risks. That choice is yours.

and how do you make an informed choice?

your MW won;t have time to tell you

your HV might not see you until 10 days PN which might be too late

your friends/family might have no idea

books are not usually as direct or blunt , so as to preserve people's feelings

so what do you do ?

very often mothers don;t know about the breastfeeding helplines etc until it is too late

the information has to be easy to find and open to all and accesible

how???

OK, what I am about to say may unpopular, but I am going to give it a go anyway. I have NEVER in my 18 months of motherhood heard anyone criticise Ffing in RL. In fact, I have often heard many people make very supportive comments to mothers who are FFing. Whereas, I have heard HEAPS of comments in RL that either undermine Bfing or are even anti. In many cases, these comments have been made to me by friends, family or other mothers.

I don't care how another mother chooses to feed her child, I really, really don?t. SO, why IME, do so many FF mums feel the need to undermine me and my choices? I really don't want to make any other mother feel bad - no matter what there choices are overall about mothering. So why, do so many FFing mums seem to want to make me feel bad by passing comment negatively on how i feed my child? I have sat with other mothers who all said how glad they were they weren't Bfing, it was such a faff, how well their baby slept compared to mine, how much easier life is FFing (really??!!) and the continual 'when are you going to stop'.

I appreciate that FF mums may not agree with me that this happens. And i also appreciate that many Ffing mums are made to feel bad by HPs, but on the plus side for them, society at large accepts and condones Ffing. Our society is all geared up for Ffing as the 'way' parenting happens when you Ff a baby (bottle warmers in shops/restaurants etc). Society does not accept Bfing in the same way. And certainly does not accept the way many Bfing mums mother our children (how many kids over one do you see being BF in public? how many mainstream childcare books/TV shows do you see that advocate co-sleeping to help bfing etc etc). In many ways as a Bfing mother, i think you have to fight to have your way of mothering accepted.

Look, I better stop now as i know I am going on and i know I am going to be flamed for something and I really really don't want any FF mums to think I am attacking them - because I am not. I'm just saying that this state of affairs baffles me. And really, isn't it just that whichever position you are in (either as a Ffing or Bfing mother) you feel at odds with what society is saying to us.

It quite possibly will have made a difference throughout their lives though.
They may have been hospitalised due to gastroenteritis, they may have allergies or atopic conditions that they otherwise wouldn't have had.

Of course people who were BF may still have had those things happen, but they are at less risk

Why is the idea of informed choice infuriating?

lostinnappies, I wasn't meaning to attack formula feeding, tbh I was right in the middle of something when you asked about pros and cons, I copy and pasted something I had written on a thread about formula advertising previously, which is why it was worded that way.

I did formula feed my daughter, and I have been able to overcome any guilt surrounding that because it was the right thing at the time. I do sometimes think 'if only' when I see her eczema or she has yet another chest infection worsening because of her asthma, but as I said it was a choice I made, and risks I (kind of) accepted (I say kind of because I didn't know everything then and buried my head in the sand about what I did know)

and i wanted to add, why can't we all be a bit more sisterly and supportive?

oh and I am with fufflebum. in order to make a choice you need adequate info and support

and yes, bf is made to look easy on NHS posters, all about saving money and losing weight. not my reality. bf a newborn with colic who at the same time does and does not want to latch on? It may have looked like small fry after NICU and SCBU but it was not.

That's kind of my point Lulu, we can't and shouldn't endeavor to force any woman to breastfeed, but we should make sure they know all the facts before they make this decision.

flufflebum (how daft do I feel typing that username! ) : no you can't go into a room of 16 year olds and tell which of them has been breastfed...but why would you? You can't tell which of them has won the lottery, got 10 brothers and sisters, has diabetes, has a parent with alcoholism, is being abused, was an asylum seeker, is loved and adored by his granny....etc etc. Many life-changing experiences do not show on the outside

However, if the room was big enough and you could take a detailed medical history of all of them, you would find differences between the ones who were ff and the ones who were bf and the ones who were bf for longer. You could throw in an intelligence test as well.

You would not be able to look at an individual profile and say for sure 'I know how you were fed as a baby' - but that's because bf and ff are not predictive enough as a sole factor. But how you were fed does make a difference, and it's incorrect to say it doesn't.

the way i see it, FF is just another lifestyle choice made possible by science, much like taking birth control pills (or using other contraceptives).

these choices can bring enormous benefits, but there are drawbacks too.

Balthamos, I genuinely never heard anyone criticize BF with my first two, it was assumed by all concerned that I would BF, and that's what happened. I was very blessed in that it came very naturally and problem free for them. My first I fed for a whole year.

But I do know it happens, and happens a lot. I'm 100% supportive of BF mothers, and wish there was more support (and I do hope to be a part of that eventually).

But supporting BF mothers shouldn't mean that FF mothers (for whatever reason) end up being utterly terrified that they've condemned their children to a lifetime of disease and malnutrition (Hyperbole alert, in case it wasn't clear).

tiktok My point is really that the BF thing is only ONE factor in how children develop in to adults. I know plenty of BF kids with eczema or FF kids who have had chest infections.

The BF or FF is one factor, genetics, lifestyle, parental interventions, diet I could on will all play a part in what makes people human.

I wonder whether we are really all wasting a lot of energy having this discussion when the real problem lies with lack of support at the pre birth and post birth stage?

fufflebum is a silly name too!