Mumsnet undermining breastfeeding again.

[Redebs]

Just read the Mumsnet article on caring for newborn babies. It's sponsored by a bottle manufacturer.

Much of it is misinformation that will seriously interfere with mothers' success with breastfeeding. For example trying to get a feeding routine for a two month old baby. This is totally against normal practice for on demand breastfeeding.

Anyone aiming for regular naps will be seriously frustrated and will think there is something wrong with them and their baby. Night feeding is treated as if it's a massive burden that should be shared by using a bottle.The massively negative impact of inaccurate information and expectations is aimed at discouraging breastfeeding.

There's a 'helpful' link to another article on 'combination feeding' aka introducing formula, along with references to a whole lot of bottle feeding products you should buy.

The WHO condemns companies that use misinformation and pressure on mothers not to breastfeed. While it may be subtly disguised, that is exactly what articles like this are doing.

And for money.

No. Just you needlessly interfering with other women’s choices, because their circumstances are all different. Don’t play the victim here, we’re not the ones who have supported a thread demanding information be withheld from other people because of ‘what you want to see.’

@Letstaketotheskies It really is, yes. We've been pitted against each other and nobody emerges better for it.

The problem is it’s not good impartial information, it’s an advert. Some of us have been saying from the beginning of the thread that accurate up to date info on formula feeding and combi-feeding and transitioning from breastfeeding feeding to combi/formula feeding should be freely available without judgement from impartial sources.

And from the other side, we have breastfeeding mothers attacking mothers who formula feed.

on this thread:

• it’s not that you can’t breastfeed it’s that you can’t be bothered
• you’re more likely to get cancer because you didn’t breastfeed
• you haven’t done what is best for your baby
• you are too stupid to see through advertising of formula companies and realise they’ve influenced your decision
• formula companies have killed babies

on other threads I’ve seen here:

• your child is more likely to get leukaemia because you’re formula feeding
• you just want to get back down the pub
• you’re lazy and don’t put your baby first
• You’re going to get breast cancer
• your child will have ill health
• you've no experience of really breastfeeding and it’s laughable you think you know anything about it (to a combi- feeding mother)

and every time a mother wants to formula feed or research formula feeding they have to click on a disclaimer or read a package that says it would be better for their baby if they were breastfeeding.

I would wonder at the point by which someone is already formula feeding what the benefit of that is if not to just try being down formula feeding mums and make them feel guilty.

A lot of the adverts/articles on Mumsnet are in bad taste. As someone who’s had failed IVF I find the IVF video constantly popping up really intrusive and upsetting. I don’t appreciate the patronising sex toy ads either:

Mumsnet should constantly ask themselves “Would I say this on the school playground to a woman I hardly know?” This would help them a lot. Like you might bring up “What’s the best buggy” or “How do you help a newborn sleep” but you’d never say “Have you done IVF” or “Do you need a sex toy”. And you wouldn’t go on about formula feeding to a woman without knowing her situation.

What we really need, is societal level changes that support women in their feeding choices no matter what their postpartum experience is like, in such a way that breastfeeding rates and society level attitudes towards breastfeeding improve

If you believe women really are making their own choices, then why would the rates improve? You can’t believe in freedom of choice yet have an arbitrary ‘acceptable rate’ in keeping with what you want to see.

The country can’t afford more breastfeeding support anyway, it isn’t cost effective.

@Zarqon that may be true but MN can't make everyone happy.

@Moonicorn this is what you're doing too. You're needlessly interfering in people's choices too!

What I want to see is impartial evidenced information. Not adverts. I want to see women who WANT to breastfeed being given the support they need to achieved THEIR feeding goals. I don't want women being told misleading information which can and does influence choices. Some of that information is so clearly not based on scientific evidence (e.g the woman I met who's family told her that she would make her daughter gay by feeding her past 6 months - and gay was seen as a bad thing by them or the TV doctor saying that children will develop psychological problems if they are fed beyond 6 months or the women who are told that formula will fix their newborn of feeding little and often)

FWIW I don't talk about the health benefits of breastfeeding because I agree that on the individual level it's just not as important (individual is important here because for my child formula was bad for his health but my child is not every child) formula feeding has some health risks which are managed by the accident of where we are. That said you still see people on here giving information about making up formula which could create a health issue.

I would also like formula to be regulated, unbranded and free / cost price for those who want and need it. I don't believe that something like infant formula should be in the hands of commercial companies that have consistently put profits ahead of health.

@Twizbe but you don’t like ‘impartial information’ when it comes to breastfeeding do you? When I stated accurate information about the breast cancer risk, you accused me of ‘saying breastfeeding isn’t worth it’. You want ‘accurate balanced information’ when it’s simply ‘breast is best’ or ‘it lowers your cancer risk’, but don’t want that scrutinised too closely because it turns out the benefits are nowhere near the impression you want to give people.

And you can say ‘No, YOU are!’ all you like but I will repeat I am not the one who has supported a thread started to deliberately interfere in the choices of other women by demanding information is withheld. You have. You say you ‘care about women’ but stick your fingers in your ears when told about dehydrated babies put on drips, women on the brink mentally with pain and exhaustion. You kick it all under the rug because it doesn’t suit you.

Then, when all your nonsense is called out, it’s ‘blah blah Nestle’. Like posting about a sad series of events years ago on Mumsnet, a site used by primarily British women, is going to ‘do’ anything. It isn’t, its just you trying to sneakily make formula feeding mums feel guilty ‘for supporting such horrible organisations’. You say as you probably sit there in your sweat shop clothing and eating foods laced with unethical palm oil.

Seriously the arrogance of posters like you is really quite breathtaking.

I would also like formula to be regulated, unbranded and free / cost price for those who want and need it.

If that happened your next thread would be ‘They’re encouraging formula feeding by giving it away for FREE! AIBU to think it should be expensive to put people off using it?’

They already do give it away for free on prescription and to low income families ....

You misunderstand. It’s not the taking time to recover that’s privileged. In an ideal world we’d all be able to do that. What’s privileged is speaking from a position where you assume every woman has somebody to look after her, who doesn’t simultaneously need to be put earning a crust. That really isn’t the case for lots of women, who are stuck at home on their own with nobody to cook, clean, bring them snacks or drinks etc.

I get what you’re saying about other cultures, it sounds good in many ways, but surely you realise this just isn’t the set up in the UK? Not anymore, at least.

How do we magic up these helpers who somehow don’t need to work, or look after their own homes and families?

So?

• it’s not that you can’t breastfeed it’s that you can’t be bothered

Extremely unhelpful way to look at it. Some women want to breastfeed and can’t. Some women don’t want to breastfeed. Some women start out breastfeeding the decide formula feeding is a better fit for their family and switch. ‘Can’t be bothered’ is emotionally loaded/implies judgement and is unhelpful.

• you’re more likely to get cancer because you didn’t breastfeed

Women who breastfeed have slightly lower rates of breast cancer. The length of time you breastfeed for correlates with the size of the reduction in breast cancer risk, but the overall reduction in risk remains quite small.

• you haven’t done what is best for your baby

Always always an unhelpful thing to say/imply.

• you are too stupid to see through advertising of formula companies and realise they’ve influenced your decision

Advertising affects us all, even when we know it’s advertising. It’s like the placebo effect. It works even when we know it’s a placebo. We can control advertising and therefore influence (but not control) the discourse around infant feeding.

• formula companies have killed babies.

In the 1970s (I think, I’ll check dates), one formula manufacturer was found to be promoting formula in unethical ways that contributed to the death of babies, notably in places where it was difficult to safely make up formula because of poor infrastructure like unsafe drinking water. It is one of the reasons the WHO developed their recommendations on restricting formula advertising.

I actually haven't commented on the stuff about the breast cancer risk because your lifetime risk of breast cancer is dependant on so many factors. On an individual level the health benefits of breastfeeding are dependant on so many factors. I'm not one of the posters on here that have said that.

That said on the individual level there are few health benefits to formula feeding (and before you say it, for every mother who found her mental health improved from ff, there's one who's mental health improved by bf) but formula won't make the general baby (so not talking about prem, unwell etc) healthier than breastmilk.

It is comparing fruit and veg. Both nutritious, no one would argue with eating, but they aren't the same.

I have talked about my ethical issues with the companies who make it and if profit was taken out of the equation we might have more balanced information.

As it is a commercial organisation will advertise and their advertising isn't always ethical. I also consider any advertising that relies on making the other choice look bad as poor advertising.

I’d be all for this.

Impartial, non-judgemental advice on all ways to feed, from an agenda-free source.

It is comparing fruit and veg.

No, it’s comparing regular veg with organic veg. Which I trust you feed your DC by the way?

And I don’t care what you think about the companies. Go away and write to them 🤷🏼‍♀️

Choices aren’t made in a vacuum. Attempting to influence the societal level discourse on a subject to behaviors that have health benefits is not denying people the right to choose. This is what public health campaigns have always done. You can try to improve rates of beneficial behaviors and even create arbitrary targets whilst still accepting that 100% uptake is impossible and very high rates may be undesirable because of the cost (not just monetary) it would take to get there. The current ´breast is best’ public health campaign is also causing distress to new mums. It needs revamping. Some of the more heavy handed stuff like having to tick boxes to show you know breastmilk is nutritionally superior to formula in order to order formula is ridiculous and should be replaced with other messages - maybe messages like ´It’s normal for newborn babies to wake frequently in the night’.

Omg are you really doing that?

Fine organic with non organic healthy food.
Though if you do that one I could say that the pesticides on non organic food could present a health risk on a population level. And your comparison must be that organic is breastmilk (as its nature made) and formula non organic (as it's man made)?

I’ve hesitated to weigh in on this, as Merry seems to be having a really tough time, but I can’t let this go. As an ex sufferer of CFS/ME (before having DD, I just could not have done so while I was still ill), breastfeeding through the night sounds incredibly unhelpful for her health. CFS:ME sufferers need good quality sleep and it’s hard enough to come by anyway, without optional wake ups.

In the kindest way possible, I wonder if Merry is making a clear-eyed choice for the health of her whole family (including the breastfed child), at this point. For a newborn/toddler, maybe breastfeeding is better overall. But by this stage in the toddler’s life, the balance would have tipped some time ago, for me. Mum’s physical well-being is important to the health of the family overall.

It is, of course, for Merry to decide for herself and I wish her well whatever she does. I just hope she’s not doing what she is because of inappropriate guilt, driven by all the pro-bf guilt-tripping.

Yes I am. However I doubt I will see a thread asking for the restriction of ‘advertising’ of non organic produce. Or anyone really caring. But, breastfeeding so 🤷🏼‍♀️

There has been debate around the advertising of organic vs non organic including the price ...

Twizbe · 04/08/2020 22:40

I combi fed DS and hated it so wanted to EBF DD when she came. She helped by feeding well and hating bottles (even though we introduced them the same way and time as for DS)

Hooray! You can go and focus on that I can get on board with cheaper organic food.

Wow ... a post from over 2 years ago ...

Do you want to know why I hated it? Do you want to know my personal formula situation? Is it unthinkable that I didn't enjoy using bottles?