breastfeeding drove me mad WHO got on my tits!!!!

[Suzy4321]

Long story short.... Was planning to breastfeed, it was drummed into me all through antenatal . Every class was the same boob is best!!! Great baby born. Very small could not latch on and could not suck! In hospital midwives kept insisting baby on boob it was awful she was screaming I was in tears and they kept on and on . In the end I asked for a pump. Begrudgingly they gave me one, baby couldn't suck from bottle so she was syringe fed. This went on for weeks. It was terrible and I was made to feel like I was doing something wrong. Then came the words World Health Organisation recommend this. Baby had sever lactose allergy and reflux you would think she was being fed acid. Doctor turned around and said formula. With zero not reduce lactose in it and she lapped it up. I am so angry with midwives not listening because WHO recommend boob. It's not always the case you can't feed baby this way and they make you feel awful for not doing so! Fuck of WHO!!!!!

Thanks Suzy. Luckily that was the only time I saw that midwife and all other visits were done by HVs who offered advice, but the damage was already done.
I understand breast is best, but surely not at the expense of the mental health of the mother?

Fight the right battles! The WHO has nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. It is an international body which advises governments and other agencies on public health matters including infant nutrition. It does not say 'breastfeed at all costs' but 'enable women to breastfeed by having the right support and training of HCPs in place' - its role with individual women and babies is zero.

What is described here is shockingly poor maternity care. Any hcp saying 'i am not allowed to give you advice on formula feeding' is simply not doing their job. They are being negligent. They should be trained, or sacked.

A baby - like the OP's - who is congenitally intolerant of lactose is really, really rare (so the HCPs can be forgiven for not recognising the condition straight away), but it's horrifying that the condition was not recognised for weeks. Nothing to do with WHO, who do have guidelines as it happens on safe formula use in situations where a baby must have formula (and this includes situations where the mother chooses to use formula).

It is insulting, and wrong, to say no one needs help to formula feed, because the instructions are on the tin. Some mothers need emotional support, for a start, and guidance on teats and bottles. They need to know that formula all over the world has to comply with international standards and brands are not that different - in the UK especially where regular infant formula is always added-iron free, the brands are pretty homogenous....but faced with several different formulations all claiming to do wonders, many parents need the informed help of an HCP.

Having said that, the ludicrously florid language on this thread does not help. The phrase 'formula is not poison' (when no one sensible says it is) combined with exagerrated accounts of HCPs fleeing at the mention of formula, and the excess use of !!!!!! take poetic license towards divisive territory.

All mothers need support, and they need tip-top care and information, however they feed.

Railing against the WHO is the wrong target!

But what do people want health professionals to say about formula? NHS advice about ff readily available online.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/pages/bottle-feeding-advice.aspx

Formula is a commercial food product, not a medicine. Obviously NHS health care proffessionals are not allowed to recommend any brand of formula over another. Ditto with any brand of bottle over another.

I think op has received a lot of sympathy and lots of level headed replies from people. as someone else said upthread, WHO have a job to do and they do it well wrt bf policy.

I do agree though that all health professionals who look after pregnant women and new mothers should be well trained in bf and be able to troubleshoot problems as early as possible. I think GPs, HVs and midwives need to be completely up to scratch with bf, which they aren't. Lots of GPs don't know much about bbd at all and many health visitors, especially older ones have no experience of bf and not enough training in supporting mothers.

• bbd - bf

Bf is the normal food for babies. The health system should be tailored to supporting all women with the general aim to bf, which it is in a way. However all HCP should be also proficient in detecting issues and providing appropriate care and support, for example in cases where the mother is on medication, the baby is lactose intolerance or has oungue tie or reflux or other issues. I do think that bf should be promoted / supported differently but i definitely don't think there should be any focus on ff. FF is not the biologically normal food and should be treated as that. Parents should be able to work out how to make up bottles and there is information on the NHS website.

The focus of UNICEF babyfriendly www.unicef.org.uk/BabyFriendly is shifting from promoting bf as a perfect source of nutrition for most babies to emphasising the benefits of attachment. As part of this I think they do encourage new mothers to ff in a way that increases physical interaction and skin-to-skin is just as important for babies who are ff.

As i said before we are very lucky that ff is pretty safe here in the UK but it is an alternative feeding method and in many parts of the world ff is not safe but kills babies.

Correct formula feeding is not just about making the bottles properly, and ensuring that you don't include the volume of powder being added to the volume of water to get your overall volume correct. But other things like over feeding. Recognising when a baby has had enough and not encouraging them to finish a bottle because the box said 4oz and the baby only drank 2. not every baby is on the same centile, some will want more or less than others, depending on what centile they are on. Some cultures believe it is best to fatten a baby up and add extra scoops of powder because in their opinion babies should be very bonny. Some people still crush rusks Into bottles to help babies go for longer. These things happen.

There are studies that show formula fed babies are at a greater risk of being overfed and becoming overweight compared to breastfed babies. A baby that is breastfed will stop feeding and their mothers don't waggle their nipple in their mouth like a teat trying to get the baby to take more milk. So just reading the back of the box and not following babies cues can be dangerous actually.

But that aside ramming home breast is best all the time is going to alienate mothers from attempting breastfeeding. Absolutely it causes pnd and makes women feel like failures. That is why we are not allowed to do it in my health authority. However I can't discuss formula feeding unless the mother asks me first. I am to assume that when a mother comes to me with an infant feeding problem she wishes to breastfeed, ultimately in the long run its in the health interests of mum and baby to at least attempt breastfeeding. It is hard to establish.

But It's like giving kids juice, chocolate, sweets etc and sticking them in front of the TV/IPAD we all know it's not best for the child, but sometimes life means you have to crack somewhere no one is perfect. If a mother told me she wanted to stop trying to breastfeed and asked fir information on formula I would empathise and assist her. None of us know what that person has gone through to get to the point of asking for that kind of help. Especially if that woman had her heart set on breastfeeding ever since she saw the first faint line when POAS.

If you look at international rates of breastfeeding, it is clear that the problem isn't the WHO guidelines but is a very UK-specific problem. While the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada all start out with initial breastfeeding rates in the region of 80%, by 4 months, around 40% of babies in Canada, NZ and Australia are exclusively breastfed. In the UK, only 5% of babies fit into that category. At 6 months, around 10-15% of babies in the comparison countries are exclusively breastfed. In the UK, the figure is so tiny as to be statistically insignificant. The USA doesn't even have maternity leave and they have much higher breastfeeding rates than the UK.

This suggests to me that there isn't a problem with women who can't breastfeed being pressured out of formula feeding, but rather that there is a problem with women and babies who have potentially solvable breastfeeding problems not having those problems properly investigated, diagnosed and treated.

In Hungary, 40% of babies are exclusively breastfed at 6 months. I don't think that biology differs all that much between mothers and babies in Hungary and the UK. I think that mothers here are pressured into trying breastfeeding, but set up to switch to formula feeding whenever they encounter anything other than very slight problems, and given virtually no help whatsoever in coping with the emotional reaction to that transition.

Even with fabulous breastfeeding support, there will always be parents for whom formula is the best choice. But what I would really, really like to see would be a system where women who could breastfeed with some support/adjustments were offered the opportunity to get that help, and women who couldn't breastfeed were given a proper diagnosis explaining why, and women who fell into that grey area in between would be able to make a genuinely informed choice about how much work/effort/change of medication/extra pumping sessions/excision diets etc it would take to be able to make breastfeeding work so that they could confident in making the best decision for their circumstances.

Lovely post Jasper and I agree with every bit of it.

I would be interested to learn why bf rates are ridiculously low in the UK compared to many other countries and also why women from lower socio-economic settings are the least likely to embrace bf but would be the ones to benefit from bf the most in terms of health equity and even social mobility.

What I can imagine is that ff has been the norm in the uk for the past 50 years partly due to the availability of formula and also because historically the British placed a lot of emphasis on routine, discipline, modernism wrt child rearing. Other countries definitely do not stress these factors as part of a 'proper' upbringing in this way and may be more 'baby-led'. Is there any research on this?

I think most of you are correct there is a lack of understanding by the nhs staff. They do not seem to have any interest like I say they say WHO recommends bf.

So maybe my title is wrong.

I do find it interesting that so many are left to feel as if they have failed. And formula is complicated and it's very short sighted to say read the can.

There are inherent dangers in over and under feeding. There are dangers in consolation etc. And bottles can be complicated e.g different teates for different formulas etc.

Bless you, it's not WHO at fault but the sheer lack of support and listening you experienced.

If only people would remember that mothers generally know their babies best. It was something I instilled in students as a HV ...listen to what the parent is telling you.

*due to the availability of formula - and of course due to the incessant and heavy (often extremely unethical) marketing machine of Nestle etc.

I do sometimes wonder if the likes of Nestle use social media / MN etc. to covertly promote ff and discredit bf. I have seen various threads over the last few years where i thought this.

Back to the OP. Did your HV really talk to you about the WHO? I find that odd as in my combined years of having babies and bf not a single person has mentioned the WHO... I think it is a bit patronising of a health professional to quote the WHO policy to struggling mothers. Is this really what happened op, could you clarify?

In the end of the day it is a shame that the OP had a rough experience due to feeding issues and I am glad that she and her baby 'landed on their feet'.

However this is her personal circumstance and i think it is a bit self-centred to try and discredit the WHO's feeding policy, which promotes to improve health and prevent death for countless babies all over the World.

I also find it interesting that evidence shows the NHS would make serious financial savings if more people did EBF until 6 months. Given this fact, more resources should be put into normalising bf, exploring public/private partnerships to provide comfortable places where mothers are welcome to stop by and feed their babies (which ever way) when out and about, provide all HCPs who engage with new mothers with evidence-based infant feeding training so problems are picked up early and solved effectively.

Hi hazelnut

Back to the OP. Did your HV really talk to you about the WHO? I find that odd as in my combined years of having babies and bf not a single person has mentioned the WHO... I think it is a bit patronising of a health professional to quote the WHO policy to struggling mothers. Is this really what happened op, could you clarify?

My HV only ever said the following :-

HV only ever says :- WHO recommendations are breastfeeding .... Formula is your choice.

My HV is still in training which dose not help. However the ones in the hospital sorry midwives in hospital were very harsh and rude as I explained I previous postings.

This attitude is apparent at my mummas meeting which there are different HV attend and have same attitude. A lot of mums there have raised complaints regarding their attitude and lack of support.

In the end of the day it is a shame that the OP had a rough experience due to feeding issues and I am glad that she and her baby 'landed on their feet'.

We are a baby is a beautiful full up little monkey.

However this is her personal circumstance and i think it is a bit self-centred to try and discredit the WHO's feeding policy, which promotes to improve health and prevent death for countless babies all over the World.

I am not trying to discredit WHO I am pointing out that through their guidance the NHS seem to ignore FF.

I also find it interesting that evidence shows the NHS would make serious financial savings if more people did EBF until 6 months. Given this fact, more resources should be put into normalising bf, exploring public/private partnerships to provide comfortable places where mothers are welcome to stop by and feed their babies (which ever way) when out and about, provide all* HCPs who engage with new mothers with evidence-based infant feeding training so problems are picked up early and solved effectively.

Antenatal was literally bf classes - leaflets, talks, video and quizzes oh and a boob pillow to hold and feel. On the last 6th class did the midwife actually say is there anything else people would like to know and she was bombarded with questions, nappy changing, sleeping, bathing etc as these were not talked about during any of the classes.

I am not bashing the WHO as I appreciate they have a job to do I am however saying that the recommendations of bf should not dictate to nhs only following their guidelines.

Sorry hazelnut on my phone your bits were highlighted. But now seem to have blended in with my comments. But I hope it makes sense

Of course people need support with ff. Yeah just give them all a box of formula and tell em to get on with it eh?
What about people who can't read? What about the false information that gets passed around about ff. About safe preparation? Just because breast is best does not mean that ff mothers don't need support.
Refusing them this support smacks off spite. Like the woman are basically being told you made your bed now lie in it.

I feel for you OP. I had a horrible experience with breastfeeding. One midwife actually shouted at me and my DP for not trying hard enough. My DD was losing weight and my nipples were bleeding. Seeing blood on your baby's mouth is horrible. All she did was scream from hunger. My DP bought some formula and the midwife shouted at him for not supporting me enough. He kicked her out. I got horrible PND from the guilt they made me feel and I still can't think about her early days without feeling like shit. This was 10 years ago and I still cant have my nipples touched either! It makes me feel ill. I'm pregnant with my second now and I'm going straight to FF. Thankfully I'm a little older and hopefully won't be made to feel as bad. They have started talking down to me already when I said I was planning on FF though. I just smile and nod.

I think Danny that second time around you have a different attitude and more positive and confident in your own actions. I will be the same . Good luck X

Thank you suzy for your replies.

"Antenatal was literally bf classes - leaflets, talks, video and quizzes oh and a boob pillow to hold and feel. On the last 6th class did the midwife actually say is there anything else people would like to know and she was bombarded with questions, nappy changing, sleeping, bathing etc as these were not talked about during any of the classes.

That's very different to my NCT class, where there was one session on bf. Did they not talk about birth at all? I didn't like my NCT class for another reason, it was all about vaginal birth and nothing at all about c-sections. As it turned out half our group ended up with emergency cs and were totally ill prepared in dealing with the aftermath, and felt like utter failures because they didn't have this amazing natural birth experience. It was very much portrayed as, if you do everything right you can have a pain-free, perfect birth, which is nonsense.

I think antenatal classes should be less evangelical about vaginal birth and breastfeeding. They should be more realistic. They should talk about the common problems people encounter and that they can be overcome most of the time but not always. They should point out all the support available after the birth and encourage parents-to-be to trust themselves and do what's best for them as a family.

I think the patronising attitude of some hcp wrt bf is a symptom of an overall patronising, top-down and prescriptive medical system, in which we are told what's best for us, often as if we were children ourselves. Very often the same hcp are not fully knowledgeable about bf but pass on what they have been instructed by the NHS trust they work for. MWs are totally overworked and often grumpy.

After I had my emergency CS with dc2 I received utterly shoddy aftercare on the postnatal ward. I was bf my baby and pretty self-reliant as I did it for the second time but some (not all!!) of the staff treated me like dirt. One shouted at me for not immediately checking how to deal with the umbilical cord whilst changing baby's nappy (first night after CS). I was standing over the crib and asked her if the cord goes under the nappy (yes, daft question) and she just laughed sarcastically and shouted "this is your second child and you don't know how to change nappy".....

sorry, now I am ranting.....

Suzy, if your antenatal classes did not meet your needs, then tell whoever was providing them. The content of the classes sounds fine to me - what would be wrong with showing you videos, leaflets, and doing quizzes, and letting you hold a pillow? The things you wanted to know more about are better 'taught' in detail after the baby arrives - but if you feel you would have done better to do more on nappy changing and so on beforehand, then let them know!

NHS has tons on formula feeding - there are leaflets on safe preparation and a lot on the website.

You say the NHS should do more than follow the WHO guidelines - really, WHO does not dictate UK policy on this, though it is one of the sources that help inform policy.

WHO does have guidelines to inform governments and health services worldwide on formula feeding
www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/micro/pif_guidelines.pdf .

What I'm trying to say in a long-winded way is that I also felt patronised by MWs but I bf my baby. So maybe the attitude is not because of bf but a general way of treating pregnant or postpartum mothers.

Hi ticktok. No I disagree the classes were one hour each only on breastfeeding. They were not portrayed that way when booking them. And I do not think six hours (1hr per session on solely bf is antenatal. There is more to it than that. Hence nearly every mum and dad baring a couple have complained.

Hi ticktok. No I disagree the classes were one hour each only on breastfeeding. They were not portrayed that way when booking them. And I do not think six hours (1hr per session on solely bf is antenatal. There is more to it than that. Hence nearly every mum and dad baring a couple have complained.

If they were actually breastfeeding classes and covered nothing else, and you thought they would be more conventional antenatal classes, then of course you were right to complain.

Yep the right up in the leaflet hospital gave us said it would cover bathing, holding, breastfeeding , sleeping and 101 other things. Hence lots of complaints but not had any replies nor has anyone else

Complain again!!