Do you think attitudes will ever change?

[tyler80]

From another forum I frequent (not parenting based, very male) but perhaps more indicative of the general mindset?

"Agree with the don?t fixate on breast feeding point, My Missus went mental trying to get it to work, if you can great but most women have some trouble, almost all supplement it with formula, Not all women are Super-lactating, Earth mothers types, and in all honesty bottle fed babies aren?t growth stunted, midget, thickies like the ?Brest is Best? brigade would have you believe, Obviously Dad can share the feeding workload with formula which is actually a massive help, we wound up doing shifts early on and it meant that she actually got some sleep?"

Do you think we can ever get to the point where breastfeeding is considered normal?

See I don't think the situation has got better.

I had children in the 80s and in 2007. In the 80s most of my friends BF and it just seemed normal.

When I started making new mummy friends with DC5 I only found one other who was BF. All the mums at Toddler group were FF and a colleague from work who had her baby 2 months before mine said she tried BF, couldn't get the hang of it so gave up, on the first day

Several of my 80s mummy friends now have grandchildren and even though the new mums themselves were BF, without exception they are all FF.

My own 3 yo who is still BF and has never had a bottle has picked up the culture around her and thinks that babies have bottles. I was very to hear her say that.

I do wonder if a big part of the reluctance of new mothers to BF is this culture we have of "getting on". Women don't seem to be prepared to spend the early weeks just sitting feeding their baby (even with the first) but have to dash about getting their homes showhouse clean, and expect to go out socialising without the baby from very early on. Perhaps the sleb culture is a big part of it?

slhilly - re formula not being banned, just not paid for - what rubbish. That is like saying that food for the mother is not banend in hospials, you just have to bring your own. I'd have been pretty hungry after a two day stay with no food!! It's simply not practical anyway; the formula you get in hospitals is pre-sterilised. As on a ward there aren't sterilising facilities available, how am I meant to pay for my own formula? I'd be happy to pay per bottle if that was the policy, but what was being suggested was the hospital simply wouldn't provide it.

And as far as I am concerned, the general public has no right to be concerned how I feed my child, or how I give birth to / educate / do anything else with my child (obviously short of actual abuse and neglect).

Actually LolaKnickers the poor breastfeeding rate in this country is a huge public health issue with huge cost to the nhs with treatment and hospitalisation of childern with illnesses not associated with breastfed babies(the list is long and doesn't need to be revisited) so of course readily providing formula milk is inappropriate and shouldn't be paid for by the nhs as slhilly said. Obviously the individual has the right to feed their baby however they choose but artificial feeding shouldn't be encouraged in the same way that hcp s shouldn't promote smokoing for adults.

pommedeterre - the WHO guidlines are not just aimed at third world - they are world wide.

Yes and doctors prob can tell the difference between bottle and breastfed babies cos they prob mostly see bottlefed children as breastfed babies dont generally have the same health issues.Sorry but its true.

pomme - no one sensible makes a distinction based on what they can see. I don't suppose any doctor could tell by looking at your baby whether you smoked in pregnancy, or always looked twice before crossing the road, or drank neat gin from a mug every morning before breakfast...this arguement that 'no one can tell' is utterly spurious!

Swine flu recommendations and infant feeding guidelines - how are they the same, then?

There are many public health specialists who are satisfied that swine flu precautions were sensible and justified.

But whatever....infant feeding guidelines are based on things that have already happened.

Doctors can sometimes tell if a baby's breastfed. Bf babies don't come in with constipation or ear infections, for instance.

Pomme, I'm a bit surprised that you don't lump in the enormously powerful and wealthy formula companies in with Big Pharma and the WHO.

A ff mum in my baby group was amazed to find that I do not feed dd in public toilets as a matter if course, or indeed at all. If she thought that's where one bfs a baby, maybe it's no wonder she gave up after a week.

LolaKnickers: the baby does have food available -- and what's more it wouldn't cost the mother a penny. I'm sure that if there were a medically valid reason for not bf'ing the baby, the hospital would be providing formula. But the hospital is not going to be complicit in encouraging you to FF, and nor should it. Asthma is bloody expensive, after all, and the taxpayer also pays for your NHS care. I'm sure that if you go private, you can have formula brought to you. The state-backed system may be more interested in the collective good than in your individual preferences in this particular instance.

Why the hate against businesses making money? Without that there would be no money for child benefit/tax credits and the ilk.
Our precious babies will eat food coming from the big 4 for the rest of their life and will hopefully grow up to be useful productive members of our society helping generate money to pay for the NHS and all the welfare benefits on offer in this country.
Tax payers money also pays for all the midwives and precious breast feeding counsellors up and down the country.

slhilly - ok, then on that basis, hospitals shouldn't cater for vegetarian or special religious diets on the basis that there's food available and they should eat that. No choice permitted!

Erm, asthma?? My child doesn't have asthma, thanks all the same. Nor did the hospital encourage me. I asked for formula - words came out of my own mouth having been formulated by my own brain.

By the by I did go private when I had my formula brought to me. I don't see why you should have to opt out of NHS care in order to exercise free choice though - I could afford to, not everyone can.

What amazes me about this debate is that my original point wasn't BF vs FF - it was to disagree with the OP in thatthere isn't really an attitude problem and in my experience it's been live and let live, feed your baby what your want, no negativity whichever choice you make. The problem with negativity against BF is precisely because in some cases, HCPs try to ram it down your throat and , as above, refuse to provide formula. This does not encourage BFing - it hardens the stance of FFers, totally counter-productive!

Interesting that the all-knowing WHO is quoted - haven't they just performed a gigantic u-turn on their anti-caesarean stance??!!

Exactly Lola - the WHO (as per my swine flu point) are not an all reliable all knowing organisation. Many, many GPs will tell you that the guidelines are aimed at third world/depraved areas because that is where the majority of babies in the world live. GPs/doctors are more likely to be a better source of information on medical baby issues than anyone else.
Attitudes may well not change to bf for people who feel that society does not accept them. This is the society we live in. if you want to bf deal, if you want to ff deal.
What is wrong is the whole 'Breast is best' campaign to the exclusion of any ff info and with no real support.
HOWEVER, following on from my musings from earlier if the choice is between a functioning NHS and great state schools and breast feeding counsellors I know where I'd like my hard earned tax money to go.
Not stocking formula in many hospitals is a cost cutting exercise. it was identified circa 2002 that they could save £1 million a year by doing this. Cutting benefits to scroungers would save a lot more I would propose.

Agree with pomme. If people perceive they are not accepted then from their point of view, attitudes will never have changed. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Just because more people FF in this country, it doesn't mean BF is not accepted as a social norm.

On the "formula in hospitals" point, I would say that I wouldn't actually mind having to pay for formula in hospital - you have to pay for it when you get home, so I don't have a problem with charging. But simply not providing it is downright dangerous because of the sterilising problem.

pomme - most of the "precious breastfeeding counsellors" in my county are voluntary. If the Nhs used taxpayers money to support breastfeeding a little mroe effectively, there would not be so many children taking up valuable resources by being treated for ear infections, gastro-enteritis etc. (and other conditions later on in life).

The hospital I gave birth in stocked formula and gave it to my baby while I cried, saying "I want to feed him myself". I had no problem feeding him after I had talked to a breastfeeding counsellor. I wish there were more breastfeeding counsellors!

I don't have a problem with companies making money but I do object strongly to formula companies aggressively marketing their products to women who don't need them.

Breastfed babies have health problems too bananas. All children have ear infections and to pretend otherwise is setting yourself up for disappointment later down the line.
I have one friend who was breastfeed for a long period of time and she is the one person I know who is clinically obese. Since the 'Breast is best' campaign children have got fatter and more unhealthy. this is due to their lifestyle post the baby stage which is the more important determinator of their health.

Formula companies are banned from advertising their from birth milk so I don't see how it's aggressively marketed. I needed formula so that i could feed my baby without weeping all over her. I needed it, eternally grateful it exists.

Well, yes pomme, all childen have ear infections and of course lifestyle makes a difference. My breastfed baby has had countless ear infections and he also has serious food allergies but that doesn't alter the fact that breastfed babies generally have fewer ear infections and allergies.

In this country, formula companies are banned from advertising milk for babies under 6 months. They get round this by advertising follow-on and toddler milk, which has exactly the same branding. There is no nutritional need for either of these (they just contain more waste products such as excess iron). It's a blatant advertising scam.

In other countries, where the WHO guidelines are not enforced, formula is aggressively marketed to women who cannot afford it and find it difficult to get clean water to make it up with. Sometimes a tin of formula costs a whole month's wages, which puts the whole family at risk of malnutrition. How can that be okay? Do you seriously feel these companies are doing nothing wrong?

What?? There's no nutritional need for cheese, but advertising it isn't banned.

I'm not aware of any studies that show a causative link between breast feeding and health outcomes (in developed countries - third world issues with dirty water are different). The studies I have seen show that breast fed babies tend to have better health outcomes, but the sample groups are not neutral as regards other factors. BF rates are higher among the middle classes (look no further than the numbers on mumsnet, compared to the general rates of BF in the population) and these children have better health outcomes. But health outcomes are ALWAYS better among higher socio-economic groups - it's not necessarily BFing.

That said, I think it's great if people want to BF and they should be encouraged / supported. But formula isn't the poison some people would have us believe.

Guidelines cannot be enforced. They are not 'enforced' in this country. We are free to do as we wish. We do.
Those people in third world countries are still making up their own, adult enough to make babies minds to buy that formula. Companies cannot make us do anything with advertising. The 'blame' culture in our world today is pathetic.
So, if your bf child has had ear infections, how come it's all the ff babies that are taking up valuable resources with their ear infections? Bf children deserve those resources more??

I am not being catty just curious but the dentist looked at my ds teeth and stated I see he is bf he didn't look to me to confirm I was flobbergasted. Any idea on how he knew that?

My dentist in Oz said that bottlefeeding can interfere with normal jaw development slushy, there is a completely different action/movement needed to get milk from a teat rather than a breast.

I think the teeth / jaw thin can be a FF issue depending on which teats you use. As a FF, I'm not offended by some of the potential issues with FF - it's a fair point for discussion and in my view far more productive than alleging I am feeding my child poison, or that Ihave been brainwashed by Nestle and am not making a free choice.
You can buy special orthodontic teats which are much better. My daughter's teeth and jaws are fine - really straight lovely teeth (unlike mine, which required lots of trips to the rthodontist as a teenager!!)

Doesn't matter what's in the bottle I would assume, just that the action is different and as they are growing their jaws and learning how to move it I can see why dentists can tell.

Lolaknickers - On the research issue I agree. there can never be a true scientific bf vs ff experiment done because of the delicate nature of the test. You can never have a 'control'.
The dentist thing (which I have never heard about before) is however the one thing I have heard so far that makes perfect sense!

Thanks I see so if I expressed all the time and gave in a bottle it would still have the same effect.

My mother used the orthodontic teats on my sister how are they different to normal teats then? .

I don't know anything about teat differences slushy, your dentist might though.

And yes, as I said it isn't what is coming out of the teat it is the teat itself as I understand it, so if you solely expressed it would have the same effect.

To get milk from the breast they need to lift the tongue, squeeze slightly with gums and suck at the same time, to obtain it via a teat they mostly need to suck which uses different muscles, so different muscles get developed changing the shape of babies jaw etc.

pomme doctors and gp s aren't the most informed necessarily when it comes to babies and children. I ve had personal and professional contact with some who talk utter rubbish particularly about breastfeeding.