MoMa Breastfeeding

[ChristinaXYZ]

There is a new Community Interest Company to support breast feeding mothers. "We are a mother-led breastfeeding support organisation." https://momab.org.uk/

and from a post on X "We are a single-sex mother-to-mother breastfeeding support organisation. The only males in our meetings will be very young ones!"

https://x.com/MoMaBfing/status/1927703163697496387

Fantastic. Good for them.

This is great news. Thank you.

I should add they are gardening - you can suppoprt them on their website.

Great initiative. Really glad to see it.

Fantastic news.

That’s brilliant 🥰
I’m not on TwiX, what’s on the comments?

If you copy the link, and take out x.com and replace it with nitter.poast.org you can see the Twitter post, but through Nitter, including the comments

"As a small group of experienced breastfeeding counsellors trained in mother-to-mother support for breastfeeding, we saw that skills and knowledge were being lost through changes in language and the abandonment of mother-centred practice. "

Yes!!!!

Thankyou Datun

Excellent news!!!

I saw this, want to donate but also want to do due diligence.

They registered as a community interest group on companies House in January 25.
Have a website
Appear to have one session a month advertised on Fylde Mother and Baby FB group

So appear legit if very small. I hope more local mothers find out about them.

I just saw their post on X. Very positive replies and when our old chum Fishnet Fred attempted to smear them he got a very robust response from many others. Heartening! I wish them well.

That is nice and I'm glad of it - but just wanted to point out that away from the public eye these things are still common. My local children's centre has a weekly breastfeeding support and the language on the posters is women centred. Never heard of a man turning up trying to bf. With the local demographics that we have, I expect any man trying to do that would be yelled out of there.

Apart from the big names like LLL, breastfeeding groups that are "inclusive" (of men...) I think are the exception rather than the norm.

My local one does it without a song or dance, is run cheaply with mostly volunteers and one paid leader I believe, so I'm wondering why this one makes a big deal on twitter and is asking for donations. What's to spend on?

Finally, a group where the only guys allowed are under two feet tall and can’t talk back

I'd want to be sure any money I'm donating actually directly benefits breastfeeding mums.

I think the money is required for training more breastfeeding counsellors. Probably publicity too so that women wanting a women only service know that one is available. Being able to pay someone to develop the service. LLL promotes chestfeeding, which is about gratifying a male fetish, not about supporting mothers and their babies. LLL is not fit for purpose.

I'm in full agreement with you about LLL, I thought that was clear in my comment but perhaps not.

So I actually contacted a couple of local organisations to try and sign up for training to be a breastfeeding counsellor. [Edit to be clear - not recently, a year or two back]. One didn't reply and the other said they didn't require any more sign ups at this time. This left me with an impression that there's no shortage of breastfeeding counsellors, certainly not in my area.

As for "publicity"...
"Publicity" for my local breastfeeding support mostly consists of a line in the children's centre schedule, as well as some printed out A4 pages stuck up around the children's centre. I would not want it publicised more widely as I wouldn't want anyone other than genuine local mums turning up.

Sorry to sound like a negative nelly but I am cautious and cynical by nature especially to do with anything where vulnerable mums are concerned

Glad to see this in the public eye. Breastfeeding women need to know that if they wish to avoid the fetishistic men colonosing LLL, there are options out there.

I understand the skepticism and the concern about money. But my thoughts here are that a larger, national, group advocating for breastfeeding is good to have as it keeps the conversation wider and more public. They can advocate and support not just individual women but can work at a population level.

Losing LLL to genderwang has lost the leading voice that policy makers and media listened to on issues specifically related to breastfeeding and if a group has ambitions to fill that gap I’d absolutely support them.

As an aside, I was so frustrated by being pushed back at that because at the time I was going through a phase of feeling like I had a skill I wanted to share. But then I realised, actually I still can - I helped my SIL when she had mastitis, I helped a friend's wife when her baby had feeding refusal. I am active on the breastfeeding channel on mn (under this and other name changes).

My (long winded) point is that breastfeeding support is something that can and should be done by and for mums at a granular grass roots level. Mum-to-mum. As soon as politics and ideology come into it, I start to wonder what the motives are, even if I do personally agree with the politics and ideology in question (as here). After all that's how LLL sunk into the mire in the first place, they got political and flag wavy and forgot who they were there for.

Sorry if I'm sounding negative, I don't know that much about this particular organisation and I'm not criticising it specifically. I'm just very evangelical about breastfeeding and very cautious of vulnerable mums being exploited for political purposes [which is not necessarily happening here but I just wanted to be a balancing voice]

Edit because my grammar goes all over the place when I'm passionate about something haha

@RobinHeartella thats such a positive lookout from you and I bet your SIL really appreciated your support.

Thank you :) and thank you for understanding my point about the money. I'm afraid I came in sounding too critical initially so I felt I had to explain.

Thanks for this. Just donated.

My reading (which could be wrong) is that this is a group of very experienced breastfeeding counsellors (Leaders, as LLL would say) who left or were forced out of LLL.

They wanted the same level of training (which is rigorous, for LLL) and a network of groups for mutual support (Leaders often have a specialism eg cleft lip and palate, which other Leaders can call on as needed), so they’ve mirrored the LLL set up but in a sex-based way. That would explain why they’re dotted around the country.

Yes this was set up by some of the LLL women who stood as trustees in LLL to try to pull it away from chest feeding and moob secretions, and were kicked out for it.