Patronising messages about formula feeding on formula websites!

[Gemmy96]

This is a bit of a rant so let me know if it would be more appropriate elsewhere.

I exclusively formula feed my child for good reasons. Unavoidable, not-a-choice reasons. When I was researching different options, I came across something that has really pissed me off. On every website I go on once you click "infant formula" there's an incredibly patronising message displayed that requires you to agree that "breastfeeding is best" before you're allowed to see the page! I'm assuming this is due to some kind of regulation. Screenshots attached below.

Am I wrong to think that men would never be expected to click "accept" or "I agree" to this kind of infantilising, shaming nonsense?! Why do we accept this rubbish? I DON'T agree that breastfeeding is always best, fed is!

People have all kinds of reasons for not being able or not wanting to breastfeed and it's often difficult enough without constant reminders that you're apparently not doing quite enough for your child. Sigh.

@Peaceandquiet9276 that's the point though, isn't it? Allergies, intolerances, eczema, asthma are all far more closely connected with genetics (and also where you live eg traffic pollution) than how your baby is fed. Yet women get told repeatedly that it's vital they BF to avoid all of these things!

Because the message isn't true and is extremely upsetting for people who had the opposite experience?
Breastfeeding nearly killed my baby, there is no way it could be considered 'best' yet I have to read that when I go on a formula company website to check something.

Of course it’s true, in a normal scenario.

It sounds like yours wasn’t a normal scenario, in which case the message shouldn’t upset you - you did the best thing for your child.

It’s not that difficult to understand.

To take another example - the safe sleeping advice for babies is to put them
on their back in a cot. The advice to do this is absolutely everywhere. It is based on medical evidence that cot deaths are reduced if babies sleep like this. Health visitors and midwives advised me on the safest way to sleep with my baby and the safe sleeping advice is easily available online.

However, I made the choice to cosleep with my baby because it worked better for me and my family.

But I don’t feel any shame about my own decision and seeing the advice doesn’t upset me. I don’t object to it being printed everywhere and I don’t object to the NHS advising other women about it. I don’t care if other mums judge me.

I don’t post on forums saying that the safe sleeping advice shouldn’t be available and I don’t try to deny the scientific evidence that proves that it is. I would certainly never claim that I “didn’t have a choice” about how my child sleeps, simply because I’ve been advised of the benefits of an alternative.

For me it's more that there's a time and a place for promoting breastfeeding and I don't see the value in promoting it to women whose milk has dried up for example. What good does that do? It's targeting the parents rather than the formula companies. Why not ban follow on milk adverts if we want to normalise breastfeeding?

You could equally say that there’s nothing wrong with follow on adverts because it’s not like someone who ff can start bf at 6 months+.

The point is that a message like that makes it (or should make it) impossible for formula companies to say or imply that their products are superior to breastmilk, which they absolutely would otherwise do - they are a profit making enterprise.

Not everyone looking at a formula website has stopped bf - women may look at it when pregnant or in the early days when making their minds up. If someone has already stopped bf for whatever reason then quite clearly the message isn’t aimed at them and they should just ignore it.

Someone who wanted to bf and couldn’t will be upset about that whether or not the message is there.

The problem with the follow on formula is that it's not obvious to casual watchers that it's not the same milk as newborn formula milk. Haven't they even been accused of using babies younger than 6 months in the adverts.

In my case I managed to resolve my BF issues reasonably quickly and phase out top ups but I'd have found it really distressing if I hadn't and I'd had to keep reading that message when there was nothing I could do to change it. It's not enough to tell someone in that state to just ignore something.

I completely agree with you re follow on milk.

And sorry but public health messages need to balance the needs of the many vs the desires of the few. It is better to ensure that the correct information is available to all those who need it than to spare the feelings of the proportionally few who don’t want to see it.

I do agree that sometimes you have to hear things that you don't want to.

I think it would be better to make formula companies have mandatory warnings about potential bacterial contamination of formula. I've never been convinced that telling parents to "just read the instructions on the tin" is good enough. Lots of people still think that it's the water that's the risk and as long as it's been boiled it's fine even if cooled down.

That information could potentially make parents feel guilty too but at least there is something positive to do about it.

It’s funny that you use co sleeping as an example because all over mumsnet co sleeping is generally recommended despite the guidelines and usually in the next breath they are judging other mums for not breastfeeding or for putting baby in their own room before 6 months.

It's actually refreshing to see someone acknowledge that it isn’t recommended but it was done because it suited them and their baby more. It certainly isn’t the norm on here.

Yeah it’s a good example I think because it’s another area where the medical evidence and advice is clear and midwives and HV advise parents in accordance with that evidence, but many parents make the choice not to follow the advice (or are unable to follow the advice) because it doesn’t work for them or their baby.

Most rational adults understand that the facts on a population level are one thing and a parental decision in the context of your specific circumstances are another thing entirely.

Cosleeping v not cosleeping against advice is not the same because there is some research that, in fact, the data is entirely skewed by unsafe cosleeping practices (sofas, duvets, baby next to Dad in middle etc) and cosleeping safely following guidelines is likely just as safe as not cosleeping. Rates of SIDS are lower in many Asian countries where cosleeping is universal, and some research suggests this may be due to the regulation of breathing. It's just that the NHS target the lowest common denominator so they don't cover the 'other side' of cosleeping research. There's also the fact that for many breastfeeding mothers cosleeping is key to functioning safely throughout the day! With formula there is no research data suggesting it is preferable to BF although of course it may be in specific individual circumstances such as very low milk supply, baby unable to latch etc.

Yeah it’s not identical obviously but come on - it’s a pretty good analogy for these purposes.

There’s also some research that some of the benefits of breastfeeding are overrated, especially in a country that has good healthcare and access to clean water.

I do think it’s similar in a lot of ways.

But safe sleep advice and feeding are very different.

The research and very strong evidence all show that sleeping in a clear separate cot is safest. And the decision to put baby down in it is taken every time they go to sleep. A parent can choose anytime to do something different. The parent accepts that risk, having looked at the evidence and thought about what works best for them. And it's not public. Most people won't have a clue where your baby is sleeping in the house.

The evidence for BFing being better is nowhere near as good - not when looking at high quality research. There is no information handed out about the risks of BFing - that it puts your baby at risk of dehydration, jaundice etc and EBF is now the biggest risk factor for hospital readmission - or who might be particularly high risk (it's highly unlikely I'd have ever been able to EBF). All HCPs put loads of pressure on to EBF without any balanced information available so you can't make an informed decision to do it. And feeding is often quite public, so if you do use formula you get vilified for it.

All I want is for clear, evidence-based information to be available to all families about the pros and cons of different methods of feeding. Not trying to coerce everyone into EBF by making out it's the best thing ever.

@RidingMyBike I’m saying (again) it’s analogous, I’m not saying it’s identical.

The formula companies have spent millions on research trying to disprove the statements that they are obliged by law to include on every formula pack and on their websites and haven’t managed it. I think it’s safe to assume that if it wasn’t correct, they would have challenged it. But perhaps if you think you know better you could give them a call and help them
out?

The “risks” you mention are not risks of breastfeeding - they are risks of breastfeeding not working. You could equally say that those are the risks of formula feeding. Any baby that doesn’t get enough milk will become jaundiced and dehydrated. The problem there is lack of breastfeeding support, which is absolutely a problem, I agree.

Im sorry you’ve clearly had a difficult time of it.

Sorry but baby becoming dehydrated is absolutely a risk of EBFing! How could it not be?!

BFing support doesn't magically increase milk supply or rectify milk delay. I had absolutely loads of BFing support - lactation consultant in hospital, two more in the community, midwives in a hospital accredited to the highest level of BFing support, BFing support group with lactation consultant and peer supporters. Extended family obsessed with normalising BFing...

I still ended up with a baby who only narrowly avoided brain damage or worse because of dehydration and milk that didn't come in for eight weeks. All the BFing support did was make me feel awful and forced into carrying on with BFing. It didn't actually help me feed my baby.

And I do think nobody would even need to go on a formula company website and see the patronising messages if there was proper support available for formula feeding and combi-feeding.

There is BFing support available in copious quantities via the NHS, NCT, children's centres, maternity phone lines, other phone lines before you even get to the paid-for private lactation consultants.

Yet when I was forced to combi-feed because EBF failed us so badly there was precisely zero support available for using formula. The HCPs in hospital refused to tell us how to sterilise bottles or make up formula as they could only support BFing. The HV won't support formula feeding - just kept signposting to the BFing support group(?!), the groups only exist for BFing, anyone using formula is looked down on.

No websites or patronising material were going to change my mind - I was going to use formula from day one.
Breast feeding information is everywhere but I’d never held a baby before, let alone safely made up a bottle. More practical support is needed for those using formula.

You’ve obviously had a tough experience.

But it should be blindingly obvious and go without saying that when midwives, HVs and formula companies say “breastfeeding is better for babies” they actually mean “breastfeeding that is working so that the baby is actually getting milk is better for babies”. Surely no one actually needs that spelled out for them?

Dehydration is not a risk for ebf babies any more than it is for formula fed babies where breastfeeding is working well. If it’s not working well then that is a completely separate issue and entirely unrelated to the information that is printed on the formula packs.

PS it’s interesting that you describe it as “ebf failed us”.

There is no shame at all in trying something and it not working. You obviously gave it a really good go. It’s not a failure at all, anymore than someone who needs IVF or other assistance to conceive is a failure. Sometimes our bodies don’t do what we want them to do.

That doesn’t change any of the science around the positives of breastfeeding when it does work. It often seems to be the women who feel disappointed that their feeding journey didn’t work out the way they planned who are most anti-bf afterwards (understandably). The people I know who ff from the start are all very relaxed about their decision.

@Grinchinlaws but it is not always obvious when breastfeeding isn’t working well. This was the case for me, I had multiple LCs and midwives telling me all was going perfectly. It wasn’t. My son spent the first days of his life starving and dehydrated and this is far far more common than many people realise.

It is certainly not made clear that the risks of breastfeeding not working in the early days can be serious and lifelong for the child.

Breastfeeding not working = baby isn’t getting any (or enough) milk = starving the baby. Do you really think people don’t know that starving a newborn is a bad idea?

I and everyone I know was given very clear advice about how many wet and dirty nappies we needed to see each day in the first few weeks and had to get my babies weighed until they were back to birthweight. It sounds like you weren’t given this advice which is a real shame. Again it comes back to lack of proper care by the people who should have been helping you, which is sadly very common.

@Grinchinlaws I was given all that information and it was used to convince me that my baby was fine when he wasn’t.

A baby can deteriorate extremely quickly in those first few days - we were still in hospital and all the HCPs were saying his wet and dirty nappies were fine. His deterioration happened even before the first time he was weighed and a lot of the early signs of issues were dismissed as normal behaviour for EBF babies.

The line between normal EBF behaviour and a baby who is not getting enough milk is not always clear cut in those very early days of life and some will be unlucky and have serious complications.

It should have been obvious to the people treating you that there was an issue. It’s not a fine line at all. Either the baby is producing sufficient wet nappies and maintaining (or not dropping too much) weight or it’s not. It sounds like you had a very poor experience of care at best and negligence at worst.

That is really awful for you. And it is really bad that most health care professionals aren’t equipped to support women in the early days with whatever their feeding choices are.

But none of this is relevant at all to the question of whether formula companies should be obliged to inform customers that their product is inferior to breastmilk.