Advertising, marketing, the whole world in trouble etc...(deep!)

[Lizzer]

Hello all, going to break this big message up as I've been having problems posting, so bare with me...

This started on the celebrity b/feeding thread and it was just a comment from me after I was asked to expand on my opinion that formula milk should've only ever been used in circumstances where it was required to help a child survive and not stocked on the shelves at the supermarket. This has spiralled me into depths of the big old money-making and general-public-screwing machine known as advertising and how it has caused a lot of damage to our health, lifestyles and outlooks. I want to have a full on discussion about this and no holds barred. HOWEVER THIS IS NOT A SLAGGING OFF BOTTLE FEEDERS THREAD or BREAST FEEDING IS BEST THREAD and I don't want it to turn into one. Would be interested to hear if anyone agrees/disagrees with me though...

Oh goody i think we've got somewhere! I'm really pleased someone pointed out it was getting into a breast v bottle debate. I really don't want this to happen. There's no point in the b/feeders getting irate and 'hollier than thou' on the benefits of their milk. There's also no point in formula feeders thinking 'daft women don't know what they're talking about my child is perfectly healthy and balanced.'
The point was, if part of the human race hadn't let their egos grow out of control by trying to rival nature there simply wouldn't be a choice on feeding your child.
But now, as we see throughout the world (and prophetically embodied in Mary Shelly's novel Frankenstein) now man has created his 'monster' (I'm now generically refering to a whole host of idea's gone wrong here, not exclusively formula) He has to destroy it in admittance that he was wrong, it wasn't as good as the original version. Man must learn to get to grips with the fact that we are merely guests on this planet and the best idea is to start treating the world with some respect.

Eulalia, I (unusually) disagree with scummy about your posting - reading about the little-thought-of negative effects of formula on the world's resources gave me more food for thought. (No pun intended) And I often don't look at links as I'm plain lazy with a v slow computer!
Just seen your last message and I agree again. If the world provided us with purely enjoyable, pleasant experiences how would we ever know what real joy was? How would we cope with any kind of pain?

(Just re-read the message I just posted before this one and its full of lots of confusing parentheses (sorry about that!))

Just got a train of thought here as well. Its a bit bizarre but bare with me... In regard to women who don't feel 'maternal', don't want their lives to change after children, who don't really want children etc.
In terms of the options being offered today a woman can have a birth where she didn't feel pain. A feeding system that caused her no pain, that made her baby sleep better due to the composition. A place to take her child where other's can look after it for her while she gets on with her life.
Basically we have lots of women who are mothers and who don't really want the negative aspects of it all. In fact does anyone? What I want to know is what happened to these women when we didn't have a choice at all? I mean before our civilisation existed...

I think these women were just very unhappy and so, probably, were their children. I am very pro b/feeding if it is at all poss, but - I remember saying to a HV, before my first son was born, 'if formula didn't exist, then you'd have to b/feed', thinking that there would be no problem. But when he came, he just WOULD NOT suck, as eulalia says, it's up to the baby. So he became dehydrated and would have had to go on a drip if it hadn't been for formula. He got the hang of it after a few weeks and breast fed, but because my supply had dwindled due to his early farting about, I mixed fed him to 8 months.
Not so with DS2 - he sucked like a good'un, and I got severe breast pain. It's all easy-peasy now, he's a beautiful breast-feeder, but for the first 8 weeks, it was agony. It righted itself overnight - one day, the pain just vanished, shortly after I'd been down on my hands & knees praying that I just couldn't go on a minute longer.
Sorry to be dramatic, but that's how it was!
There's no point to this post, I'm just gassing.

Lizzer ? I suppose women just got on with it uncomplainingly or otherwise... I don?t know does formula help out those who have horrors of breastfeeding or want to have a more independent life?? As sexless said earlier, she actually didn?t want to breastfeed.

For me it just came part and parcel with pregnancy and I viewed it as a seamless transition from feeding my baby inside to outside and I would never have considered giving formula (although ds did have a few bottles in the early weeks) given with much reluctance)) whoops slipping into parenthesising here... although I know not everyone thinks like me ...

I missed your post earlier gillymac - sorry but I don't understand - you appear to contradict yourself. You say "I'm well aware that for mother and baby 'breast is best'" but then go onto say "I also think it's unhelpful to imply that bottlefeed = poorer health and that if a bottlefed baby is healthy then it's a matter of luck." But you just said yourself that you thought breastfeeding was best for baby!? Also I am not implying anything about bottle-feeding, it is a documented fact that bottle-feeding babies are sicker ? why do you think there is so much promotion about breastfeeding, why bother if there isn?t any difference? Sorry to be harsh but your comments don?t make sense. I totally agree with you about the environmental effects in general of our lives ? I suppose that is why manufacturing bottles is just one more (possibly unnecessarily) thing to deal with.

As for your failure ? I said earlier that women shouldn?t feel inadequate particularly if they have tried, I had a very difficult baby first time round but the next was very easy (same mother, different babies) breastfeeding failure/success is often down to the baby.... sorry repeating myself again.

Some of the health of a baby is luck, some is due to housing conditions, cleanliness, genetics, exposure to illness etc. In the Western world f/f babies will thrive because they have less problesm to deal with but even in the best of worlds they will not fare quite as well as a b/f baby under the same conditions. Don't forget that fmilk doesn't contain any antibodies.

Regarding the whole scenario which is often mentioned of guilt and breastfeeding - I kept on being told I shouldn?t feel guilty when I was having breastfeeding problems with ds and quite frankly I found it patronising. Sometimes you have to feel guilt in order to learn anything. If one is ignorant then one shouldn?t feel guilty because one has to know if one has done something wrong, or could have done otherwise.

As you said gillymac there is so much ?breast is best? campaigning about and it seems that women know only too well about breastfeeding being good for your baby. All very well to know this fact but it has to be put into practice (I mean learning to read is good for you but no-one would expect you to do it alone!)

And so to allay feelings of guilt, HVs and likewise fudge the issue a bit and say ?there there it doesn?t really matter?. However a vast majority of women who didn?t want to breastfeed have wanted to do it. Perhaps women are too harsh on themselves but to me this means asking (and getting) more support. Rather than struggling alone with breastfeeding, and consequently feeling bad if you?ve failed it would be better to have had the correct support and possibly avoided the failure (sounds bleeding obvious but policymakers don?t seem to have cottoned onto this).

This means recognising that breastfeeding is a good thing and not saying ?oh well it doesn?t really matter? because if people think it doesn?t really matter then women are never going to get that support. Sympathy is never going to solve anything and merely masks what went wrong, and the woman goes away thinking it is her fault and the true problem is never addressed. Hence a mystery surrounds the breastfeeding failure, which means the next mum comes along with very little knowledge and she too fails, someone says ?it doesn?t matter? and so on, and on....

Anyway, I?m off for a lie-down ... feeling a bit overposted!!!

Ok - consider the cat in amongst the pigeons - first off I bf for a year, had a nightmare establishing bf, cracked it by pure chance the day after giving up and going on to bottles (but that's another story)- but if there simply wasn't a choice on feeding your child, as of days of old, IMO we'd have a much higher level of infant death in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd world than we do now... oh yes and we'd have wet nurses still too. Some people can't breastfeed - my mother for one - she tried, she failed, she was not producing enough milk to raise a kitten. I was premature and 9+bottlefed and probably wouldn't be here if I hadn't been.

ignore the 9+
.ds is trying to join in

Lizzer, maybe the 'non-maternal' women who had babies in pre-civilisation would have had an extended network of family/friends to hand them over to?

Willow, I guess in olden times you would't even have survived premature birth so the question of feeding wouldn't have arisen. But in an ideal world, when you were born and your mum wasn't able to feed you, a wet-nurse or a milk bank would have provided you with nutrition.

I think the assumption that formula in 3rd world countries saves lives is wrong. So many babies die because they are artificially fed, through lack of clean water and sterilisation methods, cost of formula etc. Our maid earns about US$50 a month while formula costs around US$6 a tin. It isn't difficult to see that watering down the milk to eke it out or giving the baby rice water would be tempting options. There is no NHS here so any treatment for resultant illness in the baby has to be paid for. And that's assuming the mother isn't paying off a hospital birth which costs about US$100 - two months wages. Sadly, the formula companies here in the developing world use the same tactics they employed in the west and lure parents into thinking that formula is better and that ffing is a lifestyle statement that you are middle-class and therefore superior to breast feeding mothers.

Hi again, Eulalia. I think I didn't really explain myself clearly enough regarding the "enjoyment" point. I agree that breast milk is a good thing nutritionally for babies. However, IMO it is only one among many "goods" that lead to positive family relationships. I suppose the "man does not live by bread alone" saying could be scaled down, as it were, to "babies do not thrive on milk alone". Feeding just isn't everything. It's the ties of love which are the important thing, I think, though I realise that sounds a bit nauseating. I'm perfectly prepared to concede that a mother and a small baby breastfeeding can be a wonderful expression of those ties but I do believe that for some women it can, in contrast, lead to those ties becoming taut and strained and miserable to varying degrees. Who can say why and if more support would help? Certainly it should be available. However, there are plenty of lovely sounding, well-informed women on here who have indicated that breast feeding just was not a positive experience for them and their babies. I think a mother who is generally content is a more important "good" than optimum nutrition. That's just a personal opinion.

Can I just say that I want my ds to have new things, and I am not a young, easily led mother. I love Baby Gap, but won't buy anything unless it is in the sales. I wanted my first baby to have all new things because it meant something to me, but if I ever have another, and it is a boy, then he will get all of ds's hand-me-downs!

I also felt pushed about breast-feeding. I fully intended to try, but when asked by mid-wives etc, prior to the birth, I always said I would be breastfeeding 'if I can'. As it happened, I did feed ds until 14 months, but the first month was bloody hard. I nearly gave up several times, but the thought of all the hassle about bottles and preparing the milk etc was just too much. So I persevered, and I am heartily glad that I did, as I eventually loved the experience.

However, I totally feel for people who try it and just can't do it. I also understand that some people don't even want to try, and don't judge them for that. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you choose, if you are happy, then it means that your child will also be.

Gillymac, I'd be interested to know why you didn't fancy b/f your first? Were you less aware of the benefits? What changed for you?

I'm afraid I'm inclined to agree with those who think that b/f is just like pregnancy, morning sickness, getting a big tummy, nappy changing etc, something that automatically comes with having a baby for good or bad. I don't think enjoying it is at all necessary (though it's nice). I did hear a professor on the radio describing mass breastfeeding as 'the biggest experiment ever performed on the human race' as we have no idea of the long term outcome of going against nature. It seems, for example, the essential fatty acids in breastmilk may help protect against depression in later life. Of course there are many wildly healthy and clever and happy bottle-fed babies/adults, but the truth is b/f is good for the health of the baby (&the mother). I know there are people like Ionesmum who really tried to breastfeed but was unable to because of her and her baby's illness, and it's hard to say these things because they sound like moral judgements, but I don't think they are. As for formula in the third world, I think Babymilk Action suggests it is directly responsible for many, many thousands of babies dying. It is diluted (as SueDonim says) or mixed with impure water and it doesn't protect against the gastroenteritis that is much more common in developing countries. No more Nescafe for me, thanks. Anyway, that aside, I would very much like to know if the countries with very high b/f rates have always had them or have managed to raise them, and if that latter is the case, how?

Hi Eulalia,
sorry if I seemed to be contradicting myself. I think that what I'm trying to say is that, yes, research does show that b/feeding is better for maternal and infant health but, if for whatever reason you can't or don't want to b/feed then bottle feeding is still a viable option which can imo also produce healthy babies at least in the developed world. I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with the breastfeeding despite not enjoying it part of your thread as I think it's better, for both mother and baby, to have a happy f/feeding mother than a resentful, unhappy b/feeding one.
Anyway, better go now and referee dd2 and ds's fight in next room!

Back again. Fight now over. Dd2 has shut herself in her room and ds is here pestering me to hurry up so he can go on the CBeebies site.
Aloha, I don't really know why I didn't want to b/feed dd1. For some reason I just thought it was a bit 'yuck' which is stupid and irrational, I know but I was quite young and not particularly happy to be pregnant and just wanted my body back asap, so that may have had something to do with it. Maybe by the time I had ds, 10 years later, I had just grown up a bit more and at least wanted to give b/feeding a try.

Gillymac, I can understand that. I suspect it's much easier to turn yourself over to child 'body and soul' from day 1 when they are much wanted and waited for. My friend who didn't even try to b/f was an accidental single mother whose boyfriend pissed off before her child was born and has never even seen him - not once.
On a wider note, maybe the fact that we don't live in a particularly child-friendly society (see Do-Gooders thread) has something to do with the lack of breastfeeding.

But Willow2 - we wouldn't have much higher infant mortality if more people breastfed - look at the example of Norway already cited. More babies don't die there do they? Also as I said earlier it is rare to not be able to breastfeed at all. The body is adapted to sustain pregnancy and feed baby straight after birth - you produce colostrum before the baby is even born. Yes problems can arise but they are nearly always solveable (again hence high b/feeding rates in countries such as Norway).

Gillymac - yes indeed at the end of the day for some babies in the Western world having f/milk could just mean all the difference of a few more tummy upsets or a cold that goes on a bit longer .. hardly life or death issues. However there are other factors for the Western world linked to formula which have been highlighted recently such as more long term problems such as heart disease, high BP, diabetes, to name but a few. And it seems that every week some new benefit of b/f is discovered and there is probably a lot more that we don?t know about ? not even all the constituents of b/milk have even been identified yet.

ScummyMummy/gillymac - yes of course there is more to mothering than feeding, surely this is obvious. If b/feeding makes you miserable then don't do it but to my mind it means there is probably something wrong rather than the breastfeeding itself and I would seek to deal with it. I think the support thing is a big issue, in some societies women are cared for properly because they are feeding and family members/friends take over with the care of other children/housework. Whereas here it can seem like an awful lot for a women to do everything and breastfeed the baby. Trouble is b/feeding is often sort of fitted into a bottlefeeding/mechanistic world ...

I don't blame people for not wanting to b/feed and can understand the hassles that it can involve. I agree also with aloha our society isn't supportive in general and also individuals such as partners/mothers can interfere. Also many people just aren't properly informed (myself included). However breastfeeding can also be very very easy and one often doesn't know that till the baby is born so worth a try surely?

i;d jut like to say ...... this thread started out really interesting with some very wide issues to be discussed, however they wernt really expanded on and i think that is a shame, however i realise this thread may be informative to some of you.

People give up bf because they find it difficult, tiring etc. Ok, so when they have decided to change to bottle feeding and are still tired because of disturbed sleep and all the extra work of the bottles what do they do, carry on I assume without a second thought, whey not perseve with bf? I think that maybe more information on mixed feeding would help alot of mothers bf longer.

I think sometimes bottle feeding can be damaging, I have seen people measuring their bottles out while chatting and losing count and adding an extra scoop or so, that cant be good for the baby can it?

Eulalia - I think you've misread what I said as I wasn't suggesting for a minute that we'd have higher infant mortality if more people breastfed, I'm sure it would be lower - what I said was that without formula (or a wet nurse)how would babies who can't access mothers milk survive?

They must have formula in Norway surely?

Yes, they have formula in Norway but it is available only from chemists shops, not supermarkets.

Indeed Joe ? some mothers, although I don?t think it happens now (or am I being naïve?) used to add extra powder in a night time bottle to make baby sleep longer. Fmilk is quite ?thick? anyway as it has curds which are indigestible to the baby so likely to give them a sore tummy and more seriously because f/milk contains more metals such as iron, zinc, copper, manganese, and selenium than breastmilk a concentrated feed could cause kidney damage.

back later to respond to other posts.

Eulalia, I don't need you to tell me I should feel guilty for not breastfeeding. I waited for my baby for years. I knew what was best for him. I tried. I failed. I let him down. Maybe I didn't try hard enough. I'm sure I should have looked into it more before the birth. I know I should probably have stayed in the hospital longer. So I'm guilty. OK?

Jane 101, I don't want to speak for someone else here, but as I said in my post, it's incredibly hard to talk about the many medically proven benefits of b/f without it sounding like a moral judgement on those who didn't manage it. But I truly don't think this is what Eulalia was saying. There are good reasons why there needs to be much more support and information around b/f for the benefit of mothers and babies, particularly in hospital.

SueDonim - now that is interesting. I think it's fab that you can't just throw a can of formula into your trolley (& I speak as someone who mixed fed, and had early probs with milk supply and gave a bottle after 3or4 days and might not have thought to carry on b/f except I never had pain or mastitis, was v determined to do it and beleived mixed feeding was possible (also, I saw the b/f counsellor at Kings who was very reassuring). However, I had read all sorts of stuff about how a baby who had an early bottle might never go back to b/f which upset me terribly at the time. It turned out to be total rubbish.

aloha, OK I accept what you're saying. Sorry. I suppose I'm still a bit oversensitive about it. I agree there should be more support to help people establish bf.