"'Breast is best' bias blamed for hundreds of dehydrated babies"

[beef]

let battle commence!

I'm saying nowt!

A hell of a lot more babies are suffering and dying because of ill informed artificial feeding than are suffering because breastfeeding women are poorly supported.

What can I say when md and hm have expressed what I feel so eloquently! Happened to see this yesterday as we were at the in law's bloody torygraph shite. A really badly written article which deserves to be taken apart.

Ok my point is taking the fact that BF failed and the baby became dehydrated because of this. There could very well be several reasons for this, I can think of two alone, tongue tie and jaundice. Does jaundice always follow dehydration? Or are jaundiced babies dehydrated because they are for all intents and purposes semi concious? Although DS had this I have to admit to not knowing an awful lot about it, but I do know he was never much interested in feeding.

i do feel my baby could be hanging limply off my 32aaaaa boobs whilst I snort charlie off his head and the health visitor would still say 'breast is best'

I don't think the problem there is breastfeeding, not at all, but I met a woman in my postnatal group and another one from my group of friends whose babies became severely dehidrated (as to spent their second week of life in the hospital) when they were trying to feed in demand. Both thought they had ended up with good sleepers until midwife alerted them about the situation. Now, I'm not saying that feed on demand it's a bad idea but some simple guidelines should be provided for women who decide to follow that route (i.e. young baby has to have a feed at least every X hours).

Don't know about the woman in my baby group, but my friend spent few days in hospital begging the nurses to allow her to give the baby a bottle of her own expressed milk, and was told continuosly to push baby against breast until he latched (WTF?). When I went to visit on the 5th day she had just had a go at the nurse because she could apreciate the baby couldn't breath properly but nurse insisted to keep pushing baby against the niple. From what I saw, she had so much milk (not a problem in itself) but baby was trying to latch into something as round as a ballon, I only mentioned what my midwife had told me, very basic advice and the baby latched. (from me of all persons, who failed misserably at BF!).

So, I guess they should stop shoving the phrase "breast is best" to poor us unsuspecting mothers to tell us "breast is best and we will show you how to do it!"

"breast is best and we will show you how to do it!"

I like that v much. Very constructive.

Only if they have the first clue how to help though.

The help offered by many, many health professionals is shit and a fast route to bottlefeeding, sadly.

Obviously that's the problem Hunkermunker, what we are told is not really very helpful.

I find it irresponsible to make so much fuss about breastfeeding and then not providing adequate advice. I felt miserable for weeks for failing to establish breastfeeding but now that I see the problem in retrospective... I really needed more info about how to do it, although I really tried to make the most of printed and online info about how to do it, I had no experienced mums who I could ask for advice (like family, friends with children or Mumsnet), and by the time my post natal group started meeting my milk supply was well ... gone.

Don't know how to do something about it though, Chandra.

It seems there are lots of midwives who simply pay lip service to breast is best and shove a bottle at a new mum who is having the first sign of a problem

Obviously with the current economical state of the NHS is not time to ask for all HV/Community MWs to be trained as BF advisors, but I think that we should campaign for at least one going around the post natal wards.

Well it is all very interesting in my book - as the cycle of events described was exactly what happened with my second child. I was an experienced mum, had exclusively breastfed my first child past 12 months and had no intention of doing anything other than feed my second child the same way.

But, breastfeeding with ds established itself very well for the first 10-14 days, exactly as with dd, then ds started to go longer and longer between feeds, no wet nappies, green poos, lost weight, I took to bed and fed him every second I could - tickling, stroking, sponging with warm water, to keep him awake long enough to feed -he became jaundiced, lost more weight and panic started to set in!

BF counsellor suggested expressing to feed - and on no occaision did I express more than 1 oz - and that would take hours - hand expressing, machine expressing - didn;t make any difference.

It's all too easy to dismiss if you haven;t been there! Sometimes, it just doesn't work out, and to dismiss it as 'inexperienced mothers who are lacking in support' is actually sometimes wide of the mark!

Those of us who tried relentlessly to make it work and still had to settle for 'second best' deserve a bit more than this off-hand condemnation!

Babies do end up dehydrated and on drips in hospital- they aren't making it up you know- why would they?

It does go wrong though as others on this board have said. A mother in my ante-natal class gave birth 5 days before me. She went to bfing classes beforehand, she was kept in hospital (like me) for 5 days to ensure she was feeding right and the baby was latching. All was well when she left the hospital, she loved bf and the baby seemed to feed beautifully. But her boy was losing weight - after 2 weeks he was 3 lbs lighter than when he left hospital. The local bfing counsellor came to see her to try and see if there was a problem with the feed.....nothing was wrong. She simply didn't seem to produce enough milk.

I think it does women a disservice to new mothers to pretend that bfing is always easy or even possible. It's the ideal but it isn't the only way. And I think that it's unfair to say that there isn't enough support - in many places there is. Sometimes it simply doesn't happen for whatever reason. Saying that if a woman gets enough support and gets the right latch she will bf successfully is like saying that if a woman has sex at the right time of the month she will conceive. Not always. I'm a great beleiver in bfing. But there are times when it doesn't always work.

However I am sure that the majority of problems for these babies was mothers thinking that they have to be all GF about feeding schedules - 'you can't need another feed...it's only 3hrs 50 seconds from the last one !'It is hard to beleive sometimes how often a new baby needs to feed and if heat makes them feed more often I can understand mothers thinking that there babes were only crying because it was too hot and they were uncomfortable. Being a very lazy mother I fed to stop mine crying so the problem would have naturally solved itself.

"And I think that it's unfair to say that there isn't enough support - in many places there is" And in many many more places, there isn't. It's not unfair at all to say there is not enough support - you only have to read some of the threads on MN to realise how woeful the support is. Also, in the "many places" that supposedly have good support, the support might be good but the advice quite frankly appalling. Again, as shown by many threads on MN.

qoq - I agree, women ARE put under pressure... but what with wanting to bf it wasn't an issue for me.

DD was born 2003 heatwave and although I was changing her to bottles, I actually gave her top up/starter breastfeeds for longer than I planned so that she stayed hydrated as i knew she'd take it more than water.

Support round here is useless (well was in 2003) - Psychomum came and helped me with my latch in hospital. I learnt the rugby hold by myself, and then when I saw a chiropractor for colic THEY asked about my feeding, and pointed out that there were latching issues if he could only feed laying the same direction.

More support is the only way to fix this, and more knowledge. Not every breastfeeding woman is bright and logical. TELL everyone that they need to feed more frequently in this heat to keep the child hydrated. Lots can work that out for themselves, but if you tell EVERYONE then it covers those who aren't able to realise for themselves.

Article says baby's are dehydrated as mum having probs with bf - surely better to correct the bf probs? Why not have the resources to help mums rather than putting bf in a bad light.

If it was formula babies having probs you wouldn't see this type of article as formula companies have advertising & load on money. Bf costs nil and so can easily be rubbished - but bf is the best for a baby and this should be valued and mums helped.

I saw a poster in an antenatal clinic the other day saying "On benefits? Want free milk?"

I wanted to write "Breastfeed then!" underneath, but I didn't.

Between 500,000 and 600,000 live births each year in the UK (or England? I think it's the UK.) Therefore approx 9700 a week. So their estimate of 250 infants per week would = about 2.5% of all births, which to be fair is a lot. I note that this is an estimate and we're not given much info on how that estimate is made. I may say that ds is one of the 2.5% I guess, in that he was readmitted from losing weight/jaundice. I was desperate to get out of hosp due to lack of sleep and wasn't encouraged to go to the breastfeeding clinic - something weird about the clinic, which nobody in the JR seems to recommend, ever, and in fact one paeds nurse actively discouraged me from going. finally went at 11 weeks where they took one look, said 'ah' and showed me a picture which caused me instantly to understand what i was doing wrong.

Loving that thing about the Unicef programme costing 'up to £15,000'. If the hospital is doing its job it should hardly cost anything BECAUSE THEY WON'T HAVE TO CHANGE ANYTHING. if it isn't, then surely that's a good use of money...

I think its largely a cultural thing. You don't see enough mothers bf around you and you often don't have many positive role models who have bf successfully. If you do see somenoe bf in public, they are so covered up you certainly dont see the baby latched on and if you did the chances are the police would soon be called to deal with the "situation".

Just seen this article and it makes my blood boil! Let's accept the figure of 250 hospitals each needing £15 000 to get baby-friendly status - I make that £375 000 to cover all the hospitals in the country. Peanuts compared to the millions of pounds it costs to care for formula-fed babies hospitalised each year with diarrhoea (to name just one risk of not breast-feeding).

What about an article entitled:
' "Formula is just as good" bias blamed for thousands of hospitalised infants' ?

The real scandal is widespread ignorance about breastfeeding amongst healthcare professionals leading to a lack of informed support for mothers who wish to breastfeed.

And note the ad for "Breastfeeding advice" - from Milupa-aptamil at the side of the article!

How many trained Breastfeeding Counsellors are there nationally (NCT, LLL, ABM etc). How many of them are mothers of school-age children? How many would jump at the opportunity of working within school-run hours regularly attending post-natal wards. They would be available to help from the very beginning, rather than waiting for a problem and for the mum to contact them - if she even knows about them. One BFC could probably support a whole maternity unit, two if it was a particularly large or busy unit. One part-timer would hardly cost £15k/year, surely?

Or am I being too naive and optimistic here?

I wonder if breast feeding councillors on the ward would be seen as pressure to bf though. Seems like you cannot win. If you promote bf it is pressure to bf and if you don't it's lack of support. I don't actually think the support from HVs, Mws etc is that much worse in the UK, but again I think it's a cultural thing. Lack of friends and family who bf and many negative attitudes towards it means you are even more reliant on health professionals.

OK. So if everyone agrees that there isn't enough support out there (and by 'support' I include advice SD) what do we mean by support? Info on how to latch, advice about feeding on demand, places to go to be with other bfing mums? What would really help? I would love to know what others think should be done. I had all those things (OK...I was lucky to know other bfing mums so could supply that bit for myself) and I STILL had problems. I was in pain, tired and convinced things were wrong inspite of plenty of help and support from bfing counsellors, midwives and to a lesser extent HVs. I got over the initial problem and never looked back but the first few weeks were touch and go.

I think that bfing must be promoted and promoted again. So that when you hit the problems (and I don't beleive anyone gets it 100% right the first time) you are so determined that you carry on. The stigma that still exists about bfing must be done away with so that no-one finds it embarrasing to feed in public. And it should be made clear to pregant women that although bfing is the best option it isn't always easy - so that when they hit the difficult phase they don't give up because they think they are doing something wrong.

What support does anyone else think would help?

Formula companies forced by law to contribute some of their profits to promoting bfing. More pro-bfing articles, adverts, etc to normalise it all. More bfers 'obviously' feeding in public. More 'really well done' for bfers even if they only manage it for a couple of weeks.

My bid for 2 bf counsellors per 4 mothers on the ward 24 hours a day (i.e. 6 individuals, not working 24 hours a day....) 2 jobs and 2 jobs only - 1. to support their mothers to feed effectively in the method of their choice before discharge and 2. to train all colleagues dealing with new babies in best practice bf.

Sorry but where's all the 'militant attitude to breastfeeding'? People perceive there's that attitude, but in the real world for breastfeeding mums its more like a lack of support (which is probably why people are not geting the technique and babies suffering). I've breastfed for 8 months (having to gradually stop now due to a nasty case of mastitis), but feel so proud that I sustained my baby all this time on my breastmilk (ok, supplemented by solids at 6 months).

Agree with the Clare Byam-Cook woman that there is not enough post-natal support for women, which would incorporate feeding.