Annabel Karmel, not content with making weaning sound complicated, has turned her hand to breastfeeding

[hunkermunker]

Words fail me

And yes, there are snippets in there that are true/useful - but HOW you dredge through the stuff that's unnecessary/nice to have but not essential - who knows?!

[MrsJamin]

TheCrackFox - totally agree with your (last but one) comment that AK is going to bring out her own breast pump in the next 12 months, I bet. It's tricky to see how else she can extend her market with just weaning especially now BLW is gaining apace. Please, can we stop AK spouting this rubbish about checking your supply by expressing? Total codswallop and dangerous.

[AitchTwoOh]

[smellen]

Oh vomit (with reference to Aitch's link).
Some people are so far up their own bottoms there's nothing left. Thank god my life is not a marketing campaign.

[Poledra]

"We were chatting in the kitchen and I said, "It's good you've got all these recipes written down. Because when you're married, your wife will be able to cook the same food you had at home, and your children will be able to cook it and it will live on."

And wtf if the matter with him cooking the blardy meals himself for his no doubt long-suffering wife? DO you think she'll have an interfering MIL when it comes to raising the children???

[thefortbuilder]

she'll be bringing out specially shaped bowls and containers for blw food....

no, more money in breast pumps if she carries on spouting this crap on her site

I too fell foul of the expressing as a measure of how much you are producing advice

[AitchTwoOh]

she's no dummy. despite being a devout BLW denier her latest book is ... ta-dah!

[liath]

She cooks 4 different meals and lets her kids choose?? I am gobsmaked! What a f*cking doormat.

[PinkTulips]

thank you aitch.... i haven't laughed so hard in a while

how sad that she's so involved in her little baby food empire that she hasn't even taught her own kids to cook.....

she sounds pathetic quite honestly

[VeniVidiVickiQV]

She/her children are obviously victims of her own hype.

Do you think they were fed jars of AK food and ready/microwave meals as they were growing up?

[morningpaper]

That interview is quite SAD isn't it?

She's raised a godawful boy who can't cook his own meals and rings her on his way home from university so she can have his dinner hot on the table

W
T
F

[pigletmania]

What is Anna Karmel saying about bf is there a link anywhere.

[CMOTdibbler]

Apart from everything else, what you can pump with different pumps is hugely variable - I pumped 5 days a week for a year with my Lactaline. Could do 240 ml in 15 min no problem. I also had an Avent pump. Never managed more than 10ml with that.

[hunkermunker]

In the OP< Piglet - but here too:

Funny, I thought CBC didn't like the walnut analogy...

"To begin with he will only take quite small amounts as his stomach is only about the size of a walnut but if your baby is allowed to feed as often as he wants he will be telling your breasts how much milk he needs." (in case it gets edited)

Interesting, eh?

[theyoungvisiter]

Oh. My. God.

I am just. I can't. I mustn't.

I am gutted, HOW have I managed to bf for three years straight without doing a single breastfeeding recipe?

Will my breasts fall off due to dangerously low levels of beef lasagne?

[Poledra]

True, CMOT - I always failed miserably with my handheld Avent pump. DD3 was in SCBU for 5 days after birth with an NGT, and I managed to pump up to 100 mls in 20 minutes with the hospital's industrial-strength Medela pumps (once my milk came in, of course ). I'd forgotten about that till I saw your post.

[VeniVidiVickiQV]

Does it suggest toast as a finger food by any chance?

[AitchTwoOh]

lolol at 'dangerously low levels of beef lasagne'

[PinkTulips]

yes... hooray for the scary big electric medala pumps they have in scbu..... i felt like a dairy cow but by god it dragged the milk out of my boobs kicking and screaming

never had any luck with handheld pumps at all unless i was fit to burst from the engorgment in which case i find it as easy and less fiddly to just hand express.

[mamaowl]

I had the unfortunate experience of having Clare Byam Cook come over to my house 3 days after I had my LO. 15 minutes later and 160 pounds poorer, I found out that I had no milk and should give my baby formula. (all this she determined from the pump). Luckily, I didn't listen to her and am still breast-feeding my DD 10 months on. She pretends to be an expert when in fact she has no idea what she is talking about. I hate her.

[mummyfuss]

The thing to remember about CBC is she ff her children due to being a "duff milker". Whilst we all know she could genuinely be one of the tiny percentage of mums with a poor milk supply, it does suggest (imo) that she has a few personal (guilt)issues and there is a bit of projecting her own insecurities thing going on here.
Feel sorry for the woman and recycle her books is what I say.
I wonder what AK's bf background is?

[Poledra]

PinkTulips, my DH arrived to visit one morning as I was expressing and the first I knew of it was when he went 'Moooooo!' over my shoulder. Luckily for him, DD3 was much better by this time and I was able to take a joke, rather than dissolving into a soggy heap of hormonal tears

[theyoungvisiter]

thank you for your LOL Aitch

More seriously, how much of that advice is just WRONG WRONG WRONG, as oppose to stupid stupid stupid?

I really don't care what she says about arranging bits of haddock into smiley faces so little Foo Foo Trixibelle can hurl them onto the kitchen floor with a terrible oath, if people are silly enough to spend time on it, that's their lookout. That is, if you like, stupid advice.

But giving out advice like the stuff about expressing is dreadful, I know numerous women who simply can't express, and yet fed their children fine. And what does forcing a baby to take more milk from a bottle after he's finished his breast feed tell you, other than that you can force a baby to overfeed if you try hard enough?

It's preying on women at their most vulnerable.

Clearly there ain't no such thing as a free lunch these days, even if you are a fully breastfed baby.

[moondog]

Lines like this from CBC's website get my thicko detector beeping madly

'Yesterday I spoke to one of London's top Consultant paediatricians.....'
Rather lkie people who describe themselves as 'fully qualified'.

[snickersnack]

Lordy lordy. I was so baffled by dear Annabel's schedules and charts when I started weaning dd (diligently, by the book, PFB and all that) that I nearly stopped feeding her altogether. And I am a sensible woman with several degrees. I remember wailing to my mother "it's so complicated" and she looked baffled and said "just give the child some food". If Annabel had had a hand in my breastfeeding adventures, I may never have got beyond day 3 in my addled postnatal state.