Exclusive BF for 6 months may be harmful

[Longtalljosie]

Oh bloody hell

The problem is it's only one study but will be seized on even if later it's put into context.

The other problem is the way it implies that breastfeeding is in some way a problem.

The third problem is the possibility they might turn out to be right, because I loved BLW and want to do it again...

I can hear certain members of my wider family from here...

Organix baby rice contains wholegrain rice and a trace of Vitamin B1. I would not use baby rice fortified with iron.

TCOB, the Daily Express's headline was even worse "Mother's milk "may do more harm than good" "

suzi - she is well now, with some mild delays which may have been caused by other things e.g. severe hypoglycaemia due to refusal of the hospital staff to help me feed her, or they might be nothing, and resolve themselves with time. It adds to my pre-existing bitterness about NHS support for breastfeeding - they should have given me some minimal help, or suggested a bottle of formula when she was initially born, they should have warned me that she was at increased risk of anaemia, given that I was determined to exclusively breastfeed a baby with a low birth weight. I might write an angry letter, once I figure out who to address it to.

Gaelicsheep - the problem is that, as the bmj article points out, iron deficiency anaemia is "linked to irreversible adverse mental, motor, and psychosocial outcomes. The lack of a screening programme in the United Kingdom to detect such adverse population effects is a further concern"

I am outraged with BOTH of the following statements:

"Breast is not best"

"Breast is best"

They are both forms of bullying and are not helpful.

Everyone here knows the health benefits of breastfeeding because it is rammed down all our throats all of the time and the truth is that there are there are pros and cons with both breastfeeding and bottlefeeding.

Here in the First World, where we have access to clean water, excellent and very well regulated infant formula and sterilising equipment - here we are able to make a safe and informed decision whether to breast-feed or bottle-feed - and I am very grateful that women here have that choice.

To all you absolutely brilliant mums who are out there; to those who are breastfeeding, to those who are bottlefeeding, to those who start weaning at 6 months and to those who start weaning at 4 months - please can we stop the horrible "breast is best" brigade and support each other as mothers. :)

No-one is dissing bottle feeding. That is not the subject under discussion. Please don't let this thread about today's vitriolic attack on breastfeeding turn into that old debate again.

I was just genuinely shocked to see a headline

"Breast is not best" in the SUN

How dare they say that ! Suggesting that bottle feeding is better !

And stirring up breast v bottle amongst women.

They drive me nuts !

I think the Herald Scotland wins with the worst headline so far:

"Prolonged breastfeeding 'may harm babies' health'"

www.heraldscotland.com/news/health/prolonged-breastfeeding-may-harm-babies-health-1.1079856

fuckwits

Worst of all is that I got an email from my father this evening patting himself on the back for weaning us at 8 weeks and basically telling me that he knew all along that we were all wrong to ebf to six months. Hmm, I'm wheat and egg intolerant, my sister is coeliac, my next sister down is nut and wheat intolerant, and he's feeling justified???? Compare mine and my sisters' children- all 8 of them perfectly healthy so far (apart from my baby who is looking like she might have a small wheat problem), all ebf until 6 months.

I still think "Mother's milk 'may do more harm than good'" takes the biscuit.

My mother-in-law is going to love this.

Ah sod it, I'm still going to breastfeed DS2 as I did DS1 and wean at 6 months, no earlier.

Hear hear Brockbaby. I hate the way that mothers are so quick to judge one another. We're all mothers trying to do the very best we can for our children but ultimately the world is a big place full of different people with different views and ideas and what is right for one person will not always be right for the next person.

Things and times change so much.

When my DS was a baby 4 months was the cut off point for weaning but now it seems that the goalposts have moved and now it's 6 months? As it goes, I started weaning him onto solids at around 3 months (which I guess is the eqivalent of starting to wean him at about 5 months these days).

Anyway, he was bottlefed more or less from birth, after only about 6 days of breastfeeding, and is now a strapping healty young chap who only ever has the routine bog standard colds, coughs etc and is well above average intelligence for his age in school. He's a total credit to me.

The one thing I didn't do personally was rely too heavily on commercially produced jars or packets of baby foods once he was on solids, preferring to cook all his food freshly myself as much as I could - but that was just my choice and might not suit everyone. I did use the baby breakfast cereals though and the odd jar of fruit.

I've no complaints and don't regret anything I did as regards feeding him when he was a baby.

I hate all this militant breasfeeding stuff too - it's so counter-productive when women should just be supporting one another as mothers rather than judging all the time.

"As it goes, I started weaning him onto solids at around 3 months (which I guess is the eqivalent of starting to wean him at about 5 months these days)."

No, the two things are not equivalent. I know there is an ongoing study into early weaning, but at the moment all the evidence points to weaning before 17 weeks being potentially harmful.

what militant breastfeeding stuff?

My sister has 3 children.

2 mixed bottle and breastfed until about 6 weeks then exclusively bottlefed and weaned at about 3 months - both have no signs of any allergies of any description, excema, asthma etc.

1 exclusively breastfed until 4 months (that was the cut off point for weaning when he was a baby) and eventually weaned off breastmilk altogether at about 9 months. He has asthma and is reliant on two different inhalers daily.

No one can conclusively put any form of food allergy or intolerance, excema, asthma other illness (such as celiac disease) down to the fact that you weren't exclusively breastfed or weaned earlier than the recommended age in force at the time. It's just silly and frankly naive.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can we just drop the nasty comments about BFers - this is NOT a BF/ FF debate. That is not under discussion. We all do best by our babies - YES. Now can we talk about what the press has done today to depress, upset, frighten and confuse not just BF mothers but all mothers who wean children.

Yes, gaelicsheep, "potentially" being the operative word there.

Flaming typical!! The human race has been nursed by the milk of Mothers for thousands of years and by accounts has done quite well for itself.

What makes some dude in a lab coat think that just because they've invented formula means that breastmilk is suddenly redundant and dangerous to babies health. What utter tosh!!

I can't believe that they've been allowed to publish headlines like this.

What annoys me about this is the various news headlines "breast is not best" etc which make out you are putting your child at risk by doing what nature intended, ie; breasfeeding.
Also, nothing is mentioned about bottle feeding, surely if the guideline is to wean at 6 months then bottle fed babies would be exclusively bottle fed until 6 months?
I fear that breasfeeding rates may decline due to news headlines like this.
It's a wonder the human race has survived the dark ages before all this advice came along.
Sorry if this post was a bit long but this news story really pissed me off!

It is all rubbish. I strongly believe that we should all make our own decisions as mothers to do what we feel is best for both us and our babies. All mums and all babies are different and we should listen to our instincts more and try to ignore all the external pressures to do the "right thing" or be judged wanting. There is NO right thing. One size does NOT fit all. This type of press makes me really . We all do our best for our DCs and the constant guiltmongering on one issue or another by the British press is just not helpful. Rant over .

I was very careful to include it, because we are talking about degrees of risk and not absolutes. But the guidance today says wean at around 6 months and definitely not before 17 weeks. I didn't post to get at you, merely to point out that a month before 4 months and a month before 6 months are not equivalent in terms of risk.

Yes, but things and times change - as I said earlier.

Science moves on and we evolve as a human race.

What makes me laugh is that people are quite happy to accept the good things about science - like finding cures and solutions to save and protect us from hideous illnesses, diseases and germs but when it brings something to light about breastmilk it's all "we've been drinking breastmilk for thousands of years". Well, so what? Does that mean that it can't possibly be subject to any sort of rigourous scientific analysis and that if and when it is, and findings are that there are good alternatives to it, that must be "utter tosh"?

And what about all the women out there now nursing little babies who are going to wait until 6 months to do it by the book and wean them? What will they think in two years time when the goalposts are raised to 8 months? Will they still feel smug then or will that mean they've potentially harmed their babies by weaning them early?

"Does that mean that it can't possibly be subject to any sort of rigourous scientific analysis "

but clearly 0- this report contains absolutely norigourous scientific analysis.

"Science moves on and we evolve as a human race. "

Except we haven't really evolved, as any science bod will tell you.

Oh, and I guess actually having some rigorous scientific analysis would help, which this opinion piece dressed up as science definitely lacks.

All this 'I was bottle fed and weaned at four days and it never did me no harm' is so much anecdote. But just to balance things up, in 1968 dh was bottle fed and weaned at two months onto meat (apparently the doctor told MIL to give the baby a bone to chew on - seriously).

He has asthma, eczema, allergies to fur, feathers, grass, pollen, absolutely every substance you care to mention apart from food. He is the only person in his family with allergies, apart from ds who has an occasional tendency to eczema. Nothing in comparison to dh, though, who has permanent scarring. Obviously I will never know whether b/f ds made any difference at all. But I'm very glad that by the time ds was born, so much evidence had been found to support b/f, instead of all the crap that was spoken about bottle feeding in the days when MIL had dh.

Maybe not in those terms gaelicsheep but the point I was trying to get across was a more simplisit one maybe that a mother deciding to wean her baby at 3 months when the guidelines in place were 4 months is much the same as a mother deciding to wean her baby at 5 months when the guidelines were 6 months - see what I mean?

Of course I can see that there is a huge difference between 3 months and 5 months in terms of the life of a baby that small but in those days 4 months was the recommended age at which weaning could start.

You say that nowadays they recommend that weaning should definitely not start before 17 weeks but that was certainly not the case not all that long ago.

Who knows, maybe in a few years time they'll have upped that to 30 weeks?

Will that then make the mothers who weaned their children at 24 weeks bad mothers.

With all this constant moving of goalposts no one knows what to do or think.

I couldn't care less what anyone thinks - my DS is absolutely fine and I think I'd know now by his age if he wasn't. I don't regret what I did and I won't be made to feel like a bad mother by you gaelicsheep or anyone else for that matter.