At my first peer support training session today, I learned that

[HumphreyCobbler]

When breastfeeding twins, you have to give some formula to begin with. Just until your milk comes in though.

If a breastfeeding mum needs to give a top up of formula, it is important to put the baby to the breast first, then offer the formula. If the baby then drinks more than half an ounce of formula, the mother needs to think about her diet and how much she is drinking.

It is FINE to wean at 16 weeks, mothers know their babies best. Anyway the guidelines are about to be changed back to four months.

It was all most odd. I felt like I had fallen into some kind of parallel universe.

This is very odd.

Who on earth is running this course, HC?

This is really very bad.

How would you feel about going back next week with proper references that show what they are telling you is plain WRONG?

And there is no truth in the statement about the guidelines being changed - I have this in writing from the Department of Health breastfeeding advisers, who are civil servants in charge of implementing policy (as well as being top notch bf experts). They would be very interested in learning who is briefing against the policy...

what a load of old cobblers. who on earth is running this course?

It was a local midwife.

I was gutted, I have been looking forward to this for ages.

I challenged her on the weaning thing, as that came up first, and she just started talking about mothers knowing what is right for their baby, and children having eating problems due to waiting too long to wean. Other mothers then started saying that they weaned THEIR children at 16 weeks and they were fine, so I stopped there, not wanting to cause a real argument.

The other statements I just let pass, I was stunned tbh. She is a midwife, I couldn't sit there saying she was wrong without any references or anything.

I was thinking of phoning up the lactation consultant in our area and telling her what is going on. I will happily pass on some information tiktok, if you are kind enough to point me in the right direction.

that really is appalling, but sadly not very surprising. are you going to formally raise your concerns?

That is just . Please, please make sure you tell someone senior about what she is saying, as this stuff is going to propagate further and further if these peer supporters go out and repeat it.

I was really taken aback.

I will take it further, but by doing that I am blowing my chance of getting the peer support training, and I REALLY wanted to do it.

Why do I know this stuff is wrong and she doesn't? It makes me despair. Breastfeeding rates around here are woeful. No wonder if this is the best support that is out there.

That is awful

I do sometimes forget that most of the rest of the world lives outside of the well informed mumsnet bubble but you'd have thought a midwife who was actually running a peer support training session would know what she was talking about.

I would definitely phone the LC - she will only be picking up the pieces anyway if such bad advice is propagated.

Oh my I would be gutted too I often fight the wean-at-26-weeks corner on non-MN message boards but once you've got a bunch of people saying they did it and it was fine then it's very very hard to say that they don't know that yet ... What do you think you'll do?

Anyone know if there's any validity to the 4 month weaning thing? My HV mentioned something about a 4 month visit to discuss weaning, but did, in fairness, say that the rec was 6 months. Just thought it was odd that we would have a 4 month weaning visit if weaning wasn't supposed to start until 6 months.

They do the visit early to make sure that they catch you in time to recommend you wait if that makes sense.

Oh dear god. That's dreadful.

Humphrey, is this a proper course, accredited by an outside organisation (like LLL, BfN, NCT)? If so they will want to know the trainer doing it is getting stuff wrong.

if it's like the sure start one here it's just midwives who do the training, so kinda luck of the draw if you get a good one

sorry i mean health visitors. when mine came to see me after ds was born she delighted in telling me she was the bf co-ordinator for the area and about the availability of her peer counsellors. then she asked me how often i was bfing ds, and for how many minutes on each side THEN she said to the girl with her who was on a college placement that you should check they're doing 6 feeds a day of 5 minutes each side

Thats shocking!

mad about the twins and formula and the changing the guidelines... It is not proven to be harmful to wean from 17 weeks but is considered optimal to exclusively breastfeed for 26 weeks. I like her attitude that mothers know best but it sounds like she has a lot of her own opinions and is teaching them instead of the actual guidelines which is what she is supposed to be teaching. Some of the things she says have kernels or origins in truth I'm sure but they can't be anything other than her own opinions really.

Hmmm....I don't think anyone should be allowed just to run a course for peer supporters. It should always be an accredited course, run by people who have been trained to lead it, and where the curriculum and the standards can be published so they can be read by others.

This also means you can complain to the organisation if something is not right.

sorry, yes that's what I meant tiktok. That she's meant to be teaching the guidelines not her own opinions (whatever they are or how sensible she thinks they are or they really are) if she is teaching a peer supporters course.

I've just started a bf peer supporters course too... no mention of ff twins or early weaning though, so don't think it's the same one!

I don't think ours is accredited by any of the bf organisations. It's run by the MW in charge of bf at our local hospital.

I did a peer supporter course run by local SureStart midwife last year.

She was very nice and the information was factually correct but I felt the course was pretty crap tbh. It was reminiscent of PHSE lessons at secondary school - we had to do things like cutting pictures of BF out of magazines. There wasn't much actual content to what we did, just a lot of group activities and a lot of handouts.

I dont think it was accredited by any organisation. I'm now embarking on the ABM mother supporter training and hope to go on to do their counsellor training afterwards.

bangs head on keyboard

but it doesn't surprise me sadly. the HV who runs the bf support group for our Surestart comes out with some corkers.

Hello again.

It is Breast Feeding - Peer Support - Level Two - GB82CY07, OCN Wales

Does that help? It is accredited by OCN

One of the learning outcomes is to understand breastfeeding in the context of the UNICEF Baby Friendly initiative best practice standards

It is at the Surestart Centre, and the midwife informed us that only those with a teaching qualification are allowed to run the course, that is why the local NCT group were unable to run it, as they had no one suitable.

I'm suprised the local NCT group don't have anyone trained to teach as they normally run antenatal and bfing courses?

I know our local NCT antenatal course leader was partly attracted to the post as the NCT funded her teaching course which means she is also qualified to teach her other specialisms.

HC, Wales has a national breastfeeding co-ordinator and regional reps on an all-Wales advisory group. You could find out who your regional rep is, and just call them....express your worries about what you have experienced. I think you do need to do something - probably fairer to approach the midwife with your concerns, first, but that's up to you.