I've namechanged as I like being able to ask questions as a clueless mummy on MN and have people not know I am a midwife!!
Tiktok, VS and hunker your input on this forum is hugely valuable and I have learnt much professionally as well as personally from your posts/advice/debates.
I have read this thread with great interest and thought I'd add my own vantage point as a HCP.
In my training we had one lecturer who had a special interest in bf and it was something of a hobby-horse. Her methods of teaching could be alienating and tended to rub students up the wrong way. We received a great deal of time dedicated to bf, but very very little practical training. I can reel off the benefits of bf in my sleep, but if a woman buzzes on a night shift with a sleepy baby who just will not feed, or a fractious, screaming baby who pulls off cracked nipples repeatedly, my heart just sinks. I can advise positioning, know what the signs of good attachment are, and can babble on about 'baby to breast,' 'head and body in a straight line' but after that... hmmm.
Our training is woefully inadequate. Combine me, a new midwife with up-to-date info and a keen pro-bf attitude with older mws who still advocate nonsense such as four hourly feeding and ideas about 'spoiling' babies and 'rods for your own back' and you have conflicting advice and pretty useless mws answering your buzzer in the middle of the night. It is horrible but in one hospital during the report on the postnatal women given at the start of each shift bottlefeeders would be met with a cheer and breastfeeders a groan. As someone known to be pro-bf, I would get a 'that'll be your room then, you won't be out of there all night!' etc.
In my experience, the mws I know fall over themselves so as 'not to make ff women feel guilty'- to the detriment of bf. The UNICEF baby friendly initiative is understood by many mw's as dictatorial and discriminatory.
The answer to these huge debates raised here is so complex- I agree that bf needs to be introduced and discussed at primary school level. Most of all I wish student mws were ggiven the comprehensive, practical training we so need when registered- it is all very well telling a woman about lowered risks of asthma but I sincerely wish I could also give her the actual help to succeed in the face of problems. Even if it is only to have the contact details of BFC to refer on to.
When my own baby was born I did all the stuff I'd been trained to- masses of skin to skin, put him to the breast lots, I knew all about the signs of good positioning and attachment etc etc ad nauseum but I still encountered enormous issues- I just hit a brick wall! In hospital the mw's were just relieved he was feeding and that I presumably knew what I was up to so they could get on with the million other things they had to do. In reality I had a crap latch resulting in cracks that are only just healing now months later. MN and a good BFC helped me and I have learnt so much from my own experience.
Apologies for the waffling, I wish I was as concise as tiktok et al!