sorry to bring this up again, but

[MathsMadMummy]

a couple of bits in this annoyed me. though overall I'm glad they published it.

"Mother & Baby has received scores of letters and emails in praise of the piece. Reader Emma Dwight emailed: "I love your article! Not only does it completely sum up the minds of us formula-feeding mothers, but does it with humour and respect for those breastfeeders too.""

um, no.

and:

"we have made readers feel 'normal' and less of a 'failure' for not managing to breastfeed ? a situation which is incredibly common"

again, no. the original article is talking about not being fagged. not the many women who try to BF but 'fail' (due to lack of support) and spend months, years even feeling guilty about it.

sorry, rant over.

I formula fed my first daughter and breast fed my second.

I didnt want to breast feed my first daughter but did my second. For me it was a relief to read something that was honest and that showed some women choose to formula feed.

TBH I was shocked when I saw it in the magazine because everything is usually anti formula feeding.

Its a free world, if women dont want to breast feed so be it. So long as the baby is fed and is healthy - Isnt that what really matters?

Yes, okay it doesn't mention the many women who try and fail but the bottom line is, there are just as many women who choose not to bottle feed because they simply don't want to and the author of the article obviously falls into that category.

Formula feeding is not the end of the world, yes breastfeeding is better and more support is desperately needed for people who want to breastfeed but people who don't want to breastfeed shouldn't be chastised.

If it makes any difference, I intend to breastfeed my 1st but if it doesn't work out I refuse to feel guilty, how I feed my child is just a small element of their raising and I'm not going to beat myself up if it doens't work out.

I am upset still that anyone could not want to breast fed their baby, and even sadder for all those who try but have to give up due to lack of support.

Did she give birth by c-section as presumably fanjo used by lover for sex so not really appropriate for baby to use it too?

MumNWLondon, not very sensitive comment to mums who've had CSs for many, many reasons.

I agree with mathsmadmummy. the article in the magazine was a woman saying she couldn't be arsed to even try bfing because she found it creepy, and her breasts were for sex not feeding a baby.

It's fine (if, in my opinion, a little divorced from reality/nature) to find breastfeeding creepy etc, but less fine to publish it in a magazine that is full of formula adverts - where is the pro-breastfeeding aspect of the magazine? There's so much money thrown at advertising alternatives to breastfeeding, but the minute anyone says 'breastfeeding is natural' or (heaven forbid) 'breast is best', folk jump down their throats shouting 'nazi!'.

If another article said 'I find feeding non-human milk to a baby human creepy and depressing', it would be totally unacceptable (and stupid), so why is it acceptable to say that breast feeding is in the wrong?

and bikerunski - I think the point mumNWLondon is making is that this woman presumably CHOSE to have a c-section to keep her nether regions unchanged - it's nothing to do with women who cannot have a vaginal birth for whatever reason. Likewise she CHOSE not to try breastfeeding, rather than trying it, not liking it, and making an informed decision to bottle feed.

/end rant
/apologises for inevitable offence causing

MumNWLondon - I would advise not to waste emotion over people you don't know and their babies. They don't want or need it. How patronising.
I'll say it again - would so liked to have seen this article make no reference to bfing at all and just be about ff and how that can be lovely and satisfying.

I don't understand how ff mothers can feel heartened by this article. The writer suggests very strongly that the reason mothers give up breastfeeding is because they have the same unhappy views about bf being 'creepy' as she does, and they stop because they 'can't be fagged' to continue.

There is nothing I saw in the article that says ff can be lovely - as of course it can be, and mothers and babies can enjoy the shared experience and the contact it brings both of them. The article is just a rant about how horrible breastfeeding is.

Well, they aren't exactly going to publish the letters of complaint they got, which I would imagine were quite a few.

Can't see how one woman's irrational disgust of b/fing is comfort to anyone

Tiktok - I think any reference to other people ff heartens us ff-ers a little sometimes! Have been thinking hard about how you'd structure what the article should be (about how ff can be really lovely and close) and without mentioning bf at all it comes to no conclusion, no end. I would love to read an article on just ff but making the piece have a point is hard without doing what this writer did.
So, just lazy journalism scratching the surface of an otherwise interesting subject.

Why is it important not to mention bf at all in your 'ideal' article, though, pomme??

Because ff is always referenced in relation to bf (as second best for the reasons we all know off by heart now) and because whenever you meet a ff I find the first thing we all do is explain why we stopped/couldn't bf.
I would like to leave all that to one side and maybe deal with the whole 'bonding' part of feeding and the fact that it can happen just as well with ff. That is the part of the literature and research that needs challenging imo but it does not need to be overt and aggressive. No need to offend.

they're doing it on the wright stuff i think

I see what you mean, pomme. I do agree that mothers who formula feed need information, but some of the things about formula feeding that can be made 'better' do need to be supported by relating what it is like to breastfeed....to take just one aspect, not forcing a baby to take more than he seems to want or need. That comes from breastfeeding, really.

There is very little research on bonding and breastfeeding - what are you going to challenge? Breastfeeding certainly encourages and supports behaviours in the mother and the baby that enable closer attachment/bonding, but I don't know of any research that says definitively that breastfeeding = better bonding than formula feeding. Too many variables

erm, I'll wade in here with something surprising that I found out on my LLL course. during the Child Protection session we were told that statistically the chance of any child being on the CPR is significantly lower if they are BFed

surely the socioeconomic factors of the family are more relevant - and breastfeeding is more common in wealthier families, whereas children being on the CPR is more common in less wealthy backgrounds. So, yes, breastfed children may be less likely to be on the CPR, but the act of bfing is unlikely to be the most important factor. (I may be talking gibberish here, but that's the way I would read those stats!)

Of course that's true, MMM....this is one of the variables I am talking about.

Let's take a hypothetical example. Mum A's partner, Dad B, is violent, and both A and B have serious drug issues. She did not want to become pregnant and has shown no interest in the baby or the pregnancy. She has already had two children removed into care because of neglect and abuse by a previous partner.

Is she going to breastfeed? Highly unlikely.

But it's her social, psychological and relationship factors that mean the baby is put onto the CPR. If you could somehow 'get' her to breastfeed, these factors would not disappear.

much much more eloquently put than me tiktok! I was trying not to offend, can you tell

no absolutely BFing is not going to suddenly change things. but what I heard about was specifically abuse/neglect from the mums which is much less likely from BFing mums.

always hard to know though isn't it, cause, effect, correlation, blah blah blah

I still don't understand the whole being able to forcefed an ff baby though Tiktok. I'd love to be able to get more into my 1.5oz every 40 mins snackpot! I do think duff advice is given by HV's to ff mothers - along the lines of encouraging them to get into a regular 3-4 hour schedule and ignoring them if they're hungry inbetween.

Argh, just feed the baby safely with breast or bottle when it's hungry. What's the issue??

I think bonding with baby is on the pro bf leaflets handed out as an advantage of bf.

Why is it that less wealthy mums are more likely to ff? It costs a flippin fortune!!!

that's an interesting one littlemiss.

you can get healthy start vouchers on very low income which with a baby equates to 1 tin of formula a week. so that may be a factor.

it's a minefield, that particular topic. I'm doing a breastfeeding peer supporter training course, and we discussed factors in whether a mum might breastfeed. Age, race, PND, loads of others. But I asked about income... and the leaders got a bit flustered and changed the subject!

I bf dd, then after 3 months with ds1 ff for a number of reasons and couldn't believe how much i was forking out

3 months on with ds2 and still bf'ing - saves a fortune and i'm too lazy to do all the bottles