UK Breastfeeding initatives - does it help or hinder new parents? What are the pros and cons?

[Jester78]

The UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative has a key focus on promoting the benefits of breastfeeding for mother and baby and actively encourages mothers to breastfeed and provides information to mothers on how to get ongoing support for the continuation of breastfeeding.

I’m interested to know if anyone has thought that this particular initiative has helped or hindered their experience of becoming parents?

I got the talk about babies crawling to their mothers chest and the video too! I got naked with ds all determined to do earth mother. Well did he crawl to chest and latch on? Did he hell! He just stayed in his spot chomping on his fingers, staring. 5 midwives came to manhandle show me how to breast feed but poor DS didn't know what to do, just made little cheek sucking noises. Breastswere red raw from on the pulling, positioning, shoving, fingers etc Were was the baby in the video curling its toes with delight?

I am not supposed to talk about the negatives of breast feeding but if anyone comes for an antenatal 1-2-1 with me at our children's centre, I tell them we are always there if things get tricky. I also signpost them to the infant feeding clinic. I think 99% of the women who come to me though are pretty adamant they want to BF and are basically just asking for latching on tips and a bit of 'what's it like'. I do say there is a lot feeding in the early days/weeks day and night, but you can frame it as a positive. Such as, "if your baby is feeding constantly day or night that's great, she's building up your supply and it's totally normal" instead of, "you're not going to get any rest with a newborn! You will not be able to put her down!"

Tbh it's the mums who have no experience of BF or know anyone who BF, who are completely against BF because they think it's weird, hippy, and they think formula is just as good and are not interested in BF at all. These are the mums who need to be reached if we are going to turn around our BF statistics in this country.

FF is nutrition, BF is so much more, I would like it to be discussed at school in biology lessons. Why not? Its a pretty amazing bodily function that only mammals can do, why don't school kids learn about it? A BF mum could go into school and demonstrate to teena what it's all about.

During pregnancy, I found it quite pressuring. After birth, when we'd been unable to establish a latch and the hospital did nothing to help and told me to "sort it out or give formula" or I couldn't go home, I found it guilt inducing and it made me angry. Why have they poured all this money into some fancy posters rather than actual physical practical support? If people want to breastfeed, they'll try regardless of a few posters in doctors surgeries. What really makes the difference is the support they receive - and as a 19 year old; scared and sore and struggling, without that support i didn't stand a chance. All the shiny posters in the world wouldn't have helped me breastfeed.

And I agree the NCT antenatal class I did on BF was woeful!

Our NCT session on breastfeeding was woeful too. About 20 minutes talking about how natural it was and the benefits (also got shown the baby crawling up and latching video). When one of the dads challenged the teacher and talked about the struggles his ex wife had with breastfeeding, we were told the everyone can breastfeed if they persevere line. The NHS class was useless too we basically just read through the Mothers and Others feeding guide, watched some videos of babies latching and got told the benefits.

My DD is almost 7 weeks old and we've had such a struggle with feeding. A traumatic birth following induction which left me exhausted, minimal help with feeding on the postnatal ward where the help with latching was just different midwives shoving my boob in DDs face, jaundice which meant we had to do formula top ups and feed every 3 hours and a had a 5 day stay on the postnatal ward, undiagnosed tongue tie which we had snipped privately at 3 weeks due to excruciating nipple pain. Now it looks like we have a reflux issue and she's not feeding for more than 2 minutes at a time before pulling off screaming in pain.

I wish I had been better prepared as I feel all this has taken a toll on my mental health and has prevented me from really enjoying my DD in these early weeks.

I think you misunderstand what the current baby friendly initiative is about. Promoting breastfeeding is very much secondary. It's about non pressured, non directive discussions, informed choices for parents, consistent basic breastfeeding support and referral pathways for those with more complex issues, support for formula feeding (this is mandatory now) and information about responsive parenting practices stuff like 'you can't spoil a baby' skin to skin, managing crying etc. They produce some of the best most accurate information on formula.

I think the impact of this initiative is unlikely to be noticed by women. I gave birth in a baby friendly hospital and only noticed because I was responsible for implementing it elsewhere. It's very basic stuff. Feeding 101 for health professionals. It's not supposed to be about anything other than providing consistent, basic good quality care and information around infant feeding with some kind of pathway for those with more complex issues.

Also the people who run it are far from breastfeeding evangelicals. They were for example quite adamant that the hospital should continue to supply formula and very keen on unpressured information. I'll admit though that some of the people implementing it are more of the type you'd imagine but by no means all.