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?!

What a pair!

Roffle Foxy!!

Sadly I know lots of intelligent people, most of them washed, who did buy AK books, and even recommended them to me when I had DS1. I think a lot of the Baby-associated Industries play on people's fears of "doing it wrong" and so even pretty sane, rational people get suckered into buying stuff they don't really want or need.

FWIW I do cook from scatch, but not in a Tana-Ramsey-wannabe-aspirational-lifestyle way, just cause I quite enjoy it and like food. But I didn't need AK to tell me how to put smiley faces on my casseroles. (Give me Big Cook Ben anyday!)

Yes Smellen, the fun and spontaneity and lack of self consciousness about doing it has gone out of the window.

Blimey Foxy - it's not the length, it's the girth!

Am come over all faint and off to bed now...

Mamahobgoblin - I think I might go to that Food festival as my parents live just down the road. Maybe we can have a MNetters against w*nky food meeting

I have a joyful snort at "chicken karmel". Today I shall offer my children "cottage pie ThingOne" and see if they eat more of it.

Oooh I'm going to go, it's not far from me!

What a load of crap. Am so about recommending expressing as a way of measuring bm to see if you have enough - I mean ffs

Was also amazed to see that you have to eat lots of red meat when you are breastfeeding. I'm a vegetarian, how on earth did I manage to bf the dds for a total of 5y6m?

Confidently expecting to see AK's range of breastfeeding drinks and red meat readymeals available at supermarkets soon, with AK branded breastpump, measuring from "Successful!" to "Unsuccessful - you must Top up with Formula!" Making money by telling people they need to buy something in order to bf successfully. I forsee another chapter in the next edition of "The Politics of Breastfeeding"...

Blimey, must stop ranting.

Hey JulesJules - can beat that - I am a vegan and strangely enough the lack of meat has never made a jot of difference!

tyv - I can't believe she says that!!! DD did 5&6 and we ended up co-sleeping which I love, but poor feeder? Not a chance!! Only lost 1oz of birthweight and back within 3 days and gained 11oz one week - not a poor feeder I think. But would not settle to sleep in own bed only comforted by contact.

I don't see how they are indications of poor feeding - indications of a poor understanding of babies and normal behaviour IMO.

DH's breasteeding recipies

Waffles and beans
Chips and veggie burgers (frozen)
Veggie bacon sandwich

Alternated ad nauseum as lunch and dinner for about 8 weeks till I got off the sofa and started cooking again......

Again, made not a jot of difference to my supply, which, though I say it myself, is magnificent, and is on the over supply end of the spectrum!

OMG - he could write a book, market it to vulnerable women who are desperete to breastfeed and make us a fortune!

Actually I'm waiting for her next venture into money-making - how about in-utero nutrition.

BCLass - exactly, both my DSes fed like tiny suction pumps, gained weight hand over fist, never lost more than a few grams of their birthweight and pooed and peed for England.

Any issues I've had have usually been with over supply rather than under.

Yet both of them did their fair share of crying when newborn, rarely wanted to go down in their cots alone and frequently "fed for hours and seemed unsatisfied" (if "unsatisfied" means prepared to come off the boob).

Supply/feeding issues? No.
Normal shouty newborns who just want to be cuddled? yes

my breastfeeding recipes are:

Chocolate (specifically those extremely yummy gu tiffins which have lots of fat and calories important nutrients vital for breastfeeding)

Large bowls of pasta with extra cheese (which contains lots of fat and calories important nutrients vital for breastfeeding)

A chocolate digestive every morning to help combat dangerous night-time loss of fat and calories important nutrients vital for breastfeeding.

Icecream for pudding every night (which contains lots of fat and calories important nutrients vital for breastfeeding)

Can you tell why I haven't lost any weight of my important energy reserves?

pmsl TYV

Her instructions on how to get a good latch go pretty firmly against what I've been taught - she has the mother holding the baby's head (which tends to make the baby push back, and gets the baby feeding in a chin-down position, which is not good). She has the mother shaping her nipple and posting it into her baby's mouth.

Oh, and she says that if the baby is only sucking on the nipple, she'll be getting as much milk as she would from your finger.

I mean, come on, we know sucking on just the nipple is not great, it hurts for one thing, but still, generally, some milk will come out!

much as i hate to defend clare whatername i have always had to shape my nipple to get a good latch.

my nipples are huge and not very pokey outy and if i let baby latch themselves they invariably get a very crooked latch and hurt like hell. i don't do the head holding but i do pinch my areola lightly between 2 fingers and offer it like that.

I have never BF in my life and even I know that whats written on there is a load of shite, sadly some people will take it as fact

TYV your BF diet sounds very similar to mine - but I do add in the weekly occasional Macdonalds

Why do people have to complicate things so much? Ladies in every continent manage to BF without a recipe book!

• wakes and starts crying every time you try to settle him in his own bed

• You can only stop him crying by cuddling him and / or taking him into bed with you

My baby did this while going from the 2nd to 75th percentile.

I had a very generous milk supply and also struggled to get a letdown while pumping. I would get perhaps 30mls. If I had followed this 'advice' I would unlikely to be breastfeeding today.

I really thought everyone knowledgeable about bfing with any experience of using pumps and supporting women to use pumps would know this advice to be dodgy. You just have to know a little bit about how a pump extracts differently from a baby e.g. that tongue/lower jaw wiggle that a pump can't reproduce that stimulates prolactin.

C B-C relies so much on bottles to 'solve problems' it's shocking and regularly inaccurate. A well-fed bf baby will still sometimes take a few mls from bottle at the end of a feed as the flow is so fast. It doesn't indicate starvation. It's amazing the human race is here at all by her account.

I've always found AK acary....mainly because she maintains her own children chug liver back like it's chocolate and for her truly terrifying hair-do and Stepfordy glossy Dye-nasty style family photos. Now she's scary because of the rubbish she is spouting about breasts.