for fucks sake leave breastfeeders alone

[ohmeohmy]

aaargh, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7867686.stm twunts.

I don't see the problem with the article. It highlights the problem, looks at the causes and offers suggestions of how the situation could be improved.

There is no suggestion that BFing is bad or that mothers should start FFing.

There should be more support, new mums should be better informed of the risks.

I agree with Liath. New mums in UK are discharged very quickly. In Germany I was in hospital 3 days after DD and 5 days after DS (CS). That gives a lot more time to establish BF and get help if there are problems.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggg

Foxy
I am sorry for the trauma that you suffered after the birth of your DD. Clearly the midwives and other medical staff were badly trained and negligent to let things go on so long.

Your experience does highlight the fact that we desperately need trained BF nurses.

The BF care in the hospital that I had DD in Germany was good, the midwives were well trained in helping establish BF.

The article claims less than 1% of mothers brestfeed for 6 months.

I find that hard to belive.

Foxy,

So sorry you had such a dreadful experience. I hope that the research pointed to in the article is a useful step in making th case for much better bf support in hospital.

Foxy - your experience is similar to that of my SIL after her first baby in 2006.

Can they do a parallel survey into FF babies with gastro bugs and publish the findsings bound together?

I'm sorry Foxy

I hope your MW's have since received BFI Unicef training as they would have known better I hope.

Its terrible you and your dd were so badly let down.

Very sorry you had such an appalling experience foxytocin. DS was readmitted to hospital at 2.5 weeks with jaundice and dehydration - when I took him to the GP, the GP thought he was fine , but thankfully lovely experienced community mw insisted I take him to A & E despite this. Reading this article makes me feel particularly grateful that mw was so insistent. I partly attribute DS's problems to poor advice on discharge - DS had loads of formula top-ups in hospital, but I wasn't advised I needed to phase out the top-ups gradually whilst my supply increased, but encouraged to believe that I could go straight back to exclusively bfing.

"Your experience does highlight the fact that we desperately need trained BF nurses."

I totally agree. we need midwives who are properly trained in supporting the initiation of breastfeeding and beyond.

They also need enough midwives to give women and babies the care they deserve.

Not to waste money another fucking study to show them what is already in front of thei bloody eyes. To show them what they can already see if they dare but look. Not another study which will only be used to point fingers and further demoralise the badly trained and overworked staff.

And certainly not some useless platitudes from a neonatologist who I would bet my bottom dollar on to say that he knows eff-all about how breastfeeding works.

My experience made me phobic about going to hospital, any hospital, to give birth to dd2 so I fought Sunderland Royal for a home birth. I had to fight for one!!!

In fact, by the time I finished fighting for this home birth, I didn't even want NHS midwives there because my experience to date had eroded my confidence in their abilities so much.

Moi? Issues? Oui.

I don't think there's a problem with the tone of the article - I think it's important for first-time mums intending to bf to realise that it's not always plain sailing. Would have been helpful I suppose if the article had discussed bfing counsellors/NCT or La Leche support as well as roles of MWs etc in supporting women with difficulties bfing.

So sorry to hear of your experience, foxy

I don't like the scaremongering tone of the article (agree with whoever said that all medical reporting is phrased like this these days - very frustrating). However, you only have to look at MN and other parenting sites to see that this isn't really taken seriously as an issue. People are always told 'your baby will not starve!', 'it's nonsense to say that a BF baby isn't putting on weight' etc etc.

I gave my son his first bottle of formula because I was so worried that he hadn't been able to get a proper feed for days from me (due to extreme mastitis and the beginnings of an abcess). All the HPs involved kept saying 'don't worry'. But I bloody well was worried. Even when I cried down the phone to the HV that my son was screaming after latching on for just a few minutes...that the milk I was expressing was absolutely full of blood...that I had such a violent letdown I think he just wasn't able to enjoy a feed and therefore didn't want to feed...I was just completely poo-poo'ed, like I was an over anxious, silly first timer.

That's why i never feel guilty about FF-ing like some mums do. It was either that or my DS would have starved.

I think it is about time this was highlighted.

Nobody would help me latch on my vulnerable IUGR baby in the delivery suite. The midwives there just kept saying that "skin to skin" was the best way and they would leave us to it. I could not get her latched on and she never did the breast crawl. Hours later, after being transferred to a normal ward a midwife responded to my begging for help by shoving my DD on the breast. She told me to "leave her there for twenty minutes and then move her to the other side" She wasn't latched on properly and it hurt like hell, but after twenty minutes I moved her to the other side and failed to get her to latch on again at all.

I asked for help, but there were other problems, like no functioning lights around my bed which the stressed midwives addressed first and told me they would help me get her latched on again three hours after the last time she had been latched on - though nobody had bothered to really check that latch. Three hours later my DD couldn't be roused and had extremely low blood sugar and low body temperature. She spent the next few days in the SCBU being tube fed formula as a result. If only I had been aware of the risks I could have hand expressed colostrum for her. Giving her a bottle of formula would have been much better than allowing her blood sugar to crash so severely that it may have caused brain damage. Her very tiny size should have been an indication that she was at risk of this.

Five weeks later, I still have problems getting her to latch on and can't get anybody to help with what may be a bleb or may be a nipple infection. The pain is unbearable and yesterday at a breastfeeding group I was told to bring breast to baby instead of baby to breast and use a hairdryer on that nipple. That there was no need to do anything else for another week and that there was no reason I could not just feed my DD adequately from one breast in the long term.

Promoting breastfeeding and pressurising new mothers to do it without providing adequate support is the worst of both worlds. It risks babies' lives and adds greatly to the stress of becoming a parent.

Thanks everyone. and sorry for venting on here. something i never do on MN. (i think)

but the best part of the story is that DD2 arrived 5 minutes before the midwives did which I was totally ecstatic about.

I was on an adrenalin high for days weeks after that.

Sorry that this is touching a raw nerve for you foxy

When I had DD, I had a section and was helped to b/feed in recovery. DD then lost all interest in feeding, and every midwife had a different method or message. On my third day in the hospital I was frantic as she had only fed once a day, and hardly seemed to take any milk. One midwife sat with me for a long time, helped me express and fed DD from a cup as she had started to be jaundiced. But then another midwife wouldn't get my stored milk from the fridge and instead gave a lecture. I asked another midwife for help latching on and was asked how I expected to cope at home.
The best thing for me and my DD was to be at home and trust my own instinct, and not get stressed if DD didn't get it first time, because we weren't being watched iyswim.
I managed to b/feed until she was 18 mths (including a year of expressing at work so she could still have b/milk at the childminders) but I do still get upset at the shaky start.

It's not just midwives that need training, it's just as important that maternity care assistants, healthcare assistants and nursing assistants working in maternity are given adequate training.

In our local hospital MCAs will do perhaps 60-70% of the breastfeeding support on the postnatal wards, yet many of them will be doing it with no training whatsoever, which is absolutely shocking IMHO.

Strongly agree that "it's just as important that maternity care assistants, healthcare assistants and nursing assistants working in maternity are given adequate training."

The point of my rant below is that my story suggests the danger of breastfeeding not working is not being taken seriously - even in high risk babies. And there is little in the way of decent ongoing support.

I think this article was right to highlight this issue.

When I had DS 3 1/2 years ago, all we heard was breast is best and so on and I so wanted to BF. I knew it was the right thing to do. But the first few days whilst in hospital, I knew feeding wasn't established ,and although the staff tried, they clearly had not been trained. There was a breast feeding counsellor but despite asking for her she never arrived. DS lost over 1 and a half pounds in the first week. He must have been close to being de-hydrated. I ended up mixed feeding after that for a while as I was too scared that I wasn't giving him enough.

All I needed was properly trained support from that first day and these issues wouldn't have arisen and it appears I'm not the only one either.

The sentiment expressed by the paedeatrician that women should get better support with breastfeeding is all very well, but I can guarantee that in practice it will mean more babies will get topped up with formula

There does seem to be a distinct lack of knowledge in the area of poor milk supply. I had this problem with ds (my only child). I was very motivated to bf and somehow managed to for 7 months but at a huge cost to me (felt totally drained emotionally and physically). I could never express more than an ounce. I fed ds every hour. He would go 2 hours between feeds but fed for an hour. Maybe that was because it took a lot of time to get the milk? I don't know. I suspected my milk supply was poor but mws poo pooed this as ds was gaining weight (though was on 5oth centile for weight and 99th for height). Anyway, fast forward 3 years and finally I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism; which quite feasibly I had since the birth. I think the only reason ds didn't get dehydrated was because he was always on my breast.
I also had an epidural and I gather this can cause problems with milk supply - though didn't know that at the time.

I think that the money would be better spent training MWs and assistants/auxilaries etc. I went to help a twin mum with feeding at a central London hospital. I was told by the Nursery Nurse there that I didn't need to be there because they were all trained in breastfeeding. When I got back to my client the next day every single woman on that ward was ffing their babies, incl my client who told me she'd been pressured to because twins can't get enough milk

So if the money is to be spent anywhere it should be on good breastfeeding training, not a quick half hour tucked away somewhere.

Ladyhelen: that article highlights the issue but states that breastfeeding as the problem.

It makes it out that breastfeeding is the cause for the rise and further reinforces this idea with the rubbish spouted by the ignorant neonatologist.

the problem is with the poor staff training.

The article highlights and issue. And it seems a ligitamate problem, nothing that basic education could not sort out. Women probably spend more time agonsing over buggys and nurserys than they do about reading about BFing. But they know darn well the fears mothers have about thier babies 'not getting enough' and I am confident that this will result in some expectant mother in not choosing BFing.

But breastfeeding does not produce 'revenue'. The same way that there is an attack on the use of vitamins because they cannot be patented and produce 'revenue'. Sick people produce 'revenue' in the form of providing jobs for doctors, and the need for drugs from pharma's. Breastfeeding is the on thing that dramatically reduces ill health in babies.

This thing about 'breast is best' is a iron fist in a velvet glove, my experince with Doctors is 'if you are having a problem, put them on formula'. Only people who are for it are midwives and some HV, as they SEE the benefits.

This article seems perfectly reasonable to me. Surely it is a very good thing that this problem is being highlighted, and it is explicitly stated that the answer is more support for breastfeeding, not more formula. I don't really understand the problem here.

sorry to hear of your experiences, foxy.

the threat of this condition was what made me supplement dd1's feeds, we were nearly re-admitted and made to come back every two days for checks. i kept being told my bfing was fine and just to feed and pump loads. no support was offered as to how to get dd off the supplements, unfortunately, so i was stuck with them.

it's not the worst article i've read, though.