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...

Yes GaelicSheep I take your point and I hope that you appreciate that I really do but your case was more about problems relating to the failure to diagnose tongue-tie rather than you not knowing enough about the benefits of breastfeeding was it not?

I thought that the problem you had was with women generally not being given enough information about the benefits of breasfteeding, or not feeling supported in making a choice to breasfeed.

I still think that there is ample information out there for any expectant mother to make an informed choice about feeding methods. Midwives and other HCPs, such as GPs and HVs, are generally clued up enough to be able to answer the general questions that most expectant mothers would have about feeding options and to point them in the right direction to reserach into the subject more, should they want to.

Ultimately it's horses for courses and people will find out as much as they want to, if they want to.

11 years ago I can tell you that I certainly had more than enough inforamtion at my fingertips to enabale me to make an informed choice about feeding. I was bombarded with different baby packs and so on antenatally with pamphlets etc and there were loads of baby magazines/books on sale and in the library too. There was no internet in those days of course, so I can only imagine that nowadays there is even more info available for those who want more than what is offered by their midwife and other HCPs.

No, it's not lack of information about the benefits of breastfeeding. It's lack of information about and support with the reality of breastfeeding that is lacking. Yes there are shiny leaflets handed out to new mums, posters on the walls, but none of that compensates for the complete lack of knowledgeable professionals ready and available to help as and when problems arise.

It is very very easy to make an informed choice to breastfeed or not. It is nowhere near so easy to access the information and support required to continue breastfeeding if you are not one of the lucky ones that find it straightforward. That is my point.

I weaned my 18 year old at 3 months my four year old and 14 months year old at 4 months No issues I also BF my eldest til 18 months, 4 year old til 12 months and I am still feeding my 14 month old. Common sense comes in to play and baby lead weaning

i made an informed choice, Genevieve, i just got bog-all support to actually do it. so much for my 'choice', then.

See now, that's why Aitch is a blogger and I'm not.

arf.
anyway, as i said before, on my blog, this isn't a bfing thing, it's a weaning thing. and it's extremely cynical of those scientists to have framed it as anything other than that.

But then, as someone pointed out on the rude titled thread, they're challenging the WHO 6 month recommendation which doesn't really apply unless you're breastfeeding. (And it's more headline worthy). It's the newspaper coverage that is really really pissing me off.

No, you're saying it was cynical of them to even frame it in those terms aren't you? Why not just look at weaning without bringing the WHO stuff into it?

Oh I dunno. My head hurts.

only insofar as they ignore formula completely, which is completely unhelpful.

no you were right first time.

It seems so difficult to get clarity here - Ryoko thinks that what she remembers reading on the Yahoo news page is what this discussion is about and whatever she read did not explain this is not about whether mothers bf or ff, it's not about whether mothers 'should' choose to do one or the other. We have posts thinking this thread is a good platform to slag off the bf 'mafia'...and so on.

It's depressing.

I wish people would read what this is about :(

Aitch - the scientists ignored formula, because that was not the question they were asking. The question they were asking was 'does the WHO feeding statement about excl bf to 6 mths still apply in a UK context or do some papers which WHO ignored/assessed as being poor quality/could not read as they had not been published mean UK advisors to the UK should have another look at the issue?'

The WHO feeding statement was never about formula. Maybe it could/should have been, but that's not the issue.

Actually, the scientists were very clear they were not questioning support for bf. The media chose to read it as something that challenged breastfeeding.

But as we see many times a day on mumsnet, the reality is not that women are not informed of why they might choose to bf, but that when they do bf, they may not always get the practical support to do it. FF mothers too experience the same - questions about which brand, how to prepare safely, and so on come to mumsnet - in a country where 95 per cent of babies have formula at some stage, and where everyone has a midwife and health visitor whose job it is to share this information.

Everyone - bf or ff or mixed - stands a pretty high chance of being let down, I think.

Hay gaelicsheep my boy (8 months old) had a 100% tongue tie, 4 membranes anchoring it apparantly, the doctors in the hospital never noticed he had a snake tongue despite examining him twice, woman at the tongue tie clinic said good thing you are bottle feeding him.

made me even more pissed off about being pressured.

anything that challenges the current "recommendations" on anything to do with caring for a baby is good no matter what it is, it shows the pushy midwives and the like that what they say may not be right, thus they may be less forceful and more forgiving in the future when giving such advice.

who the hell waits 6 months anyway, feed the kid when they are ready, there comes a point when they start showing an interest in wanting to eat and they just can't get enough milk in to satisfy, what kind of idiot would ignore the signs because the doctors told em a magic date. mine started around 4-5 months .

the scientists couldn't have been clearer about their support for bfing, in fact. amazing that this could ever have been turned into something else.

they knew they were 'setting the cat amongst the pigeons', so imo they should have looked at formula as well. because without doing so, they leave a vast swathe of the population, 99% in fact, without a clue as to whether they too are doing the right thing by their child in waiting until 6 mos. this is imo highly irresponsible.

i wish i had met some pushy midwives... i met the ones who didn't believe in bfing and am horrified to think that they now have extra ammunition courtesy of The Sun newspaper.

Well I don't know when they started I've only got my 8 month old, but they were extremely pushy I was told nothing about formula even tho I told them I wanted to use it several times infact they only shut up when I told them I was going mix feed, looked up stuff about how to do it properly on the net and on Miltons website etc, thank god for brands TBH if the brands my mother used 31 years ago where not still around it would have been a lot harder to look the things up.

All I ever got was why don't you want to breastfeed it's the best for your child, it's perfectly natural etc, such utter crap trying to guilt people into thing, had the Spanish inquisition about why I didn't want to take the downs syndrome test as well despite me saying I don't care, no point risking miscarriage over a test for something that makes no difference because I wouldn't terminate if it had it.

Shows how much they care guilt trip you over your childs health and then question you repeatedly about a test that could kill it or lead to a termination for no good reason.

I got the same inquisition over the tests Ryoko. As for the pushiness - I think, if you had decided to breastfeed, you'd have found that the enthusiasm for b/f among those MWs would have very quickly dried up. It is box ticking, and in their very limited training they seem to be taught very little about sensitivity.

Limited b/f training I meant, if that wasn't clear. They are brilliant at guilt trips - HVs too, about everything. Solutions they find a bit more tricky.

i don't really do guilt, tbh, i just try to do my best and then try to forget about it.

I don't think sensitivity is very high on the governments lists over anything, it's do as we say nanny state rubbish.

it's amazing in this day and age of chalk boards and telling kids it's not the winning that counts, that they think it's perfectly fine to do things like this.

Woman suffer from depression a lot anyway it's all just one more thing to push people over the edge trying to make you feel like a poor mother because expert says this and your baby should be doing that at x age, and insinuating that FF makes kids fat and stupid is only going to depress the 20+ year olds who are fat or didn't do well at school, it's more pushing people down telling them they are worthless because of something that had nothing to do with them.

They are constantly doing it, constantly telling people they are too fat, too thin, eating wrong, leaving having kids until too late, having them too early, working too much and not seeing the kids enough, working too little and claiming too many benefits, it's constant put downs to keep the population too depressed to bother asking questions of there leaders.

You're lucky Aitch.

God, I wish I had known 2 years ago that the 'experts' change their minds all the time! Like many other posters, I struggled to BF and was harshly criticised. I also weaned at 17 weeks when my DD showed she was ready - this time I wasn't criticised as I was so fearful that I lied to everyone about it. So you can imagine how supported I felt! I just hope that U turns like this help mums realise that guidelines are just that, guidance to help you but not rules you have to stick to for fear of being a bad mum.

It is, at the end of the day, your child and your decision how/what to feed them. What we need to do is to make sure that every woman has access to the right information to enable them to do this in an informed manner.
I weaned at 4 months and like you Lola felt fearful and didn't tell people. I had however read round the subject a lot and had a clear strategy involving introduction of foods (no gluten, dairy or meat/fish until 6 months). I spoke to one mother who told me she was fearful of giving her baby solids even 48 hours before he turned 6 months for fear of hurting him. How can anyone logically think gut development works like that..? Overnight magic switch? She was a highly educated lady who was returning full time to a very good job as well. Odd how some people leave logic at the door when it comes to their children. I think the guidelines don't help with this at all.
I didn't manage to bf as long as I would have liked but can honestly say that I never had any guilt trips from HVs. It maybe in the way it's presented to them? If you're presenting it to them in a way that's asking for their opinion/support then maybe what they reply will feel like a guilt trip. if all your doing is informing them of a decision for them to scribble about in your red book then they have no room/need/desire to offer an opinion.

There has been no 'U turn'.

The experts have not 'changed their minds'.

Guidance on solids - which was never intended to apply to every individual anyway - has not changed and will not do so in the light of this current article.

It's not a study. It's not new research. There is no need for anyone to feel relieved, smug, angry, or frustrated.

Of course things change as new knowledge and new research is assessed - we'd want all knowledge and research assessed, I think, and set into context, and evaluated for validity etc etc, before changing guidance.

This article is suggesting investigation of further studies.

It's not telling anyone what they did was wrong, or right. It's actually not 'telling' anything. It's an academic opinion piece, in professional journal, aimed at professionals. Happily, we can read it for ourselves, too. I wish people would do this instead of reading headlines only.

on that note, tiktok, here is the paper itself

and it looks like what they are concluding from the more recent research is on distinctly shaky ground