Someone from that favourite site of mine, mumsnet, posted about a blog post they had written outlining what they’d learned from their experiences of breastfeeding. I think its really well written and covers so many excellent points that I wanted to link to it. So here it is
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Why we hate the Daily Mail
Today there was a thread on mumsnet pointing out this typically dreadful Daily Mail article
There are so many points in this article that make me angry. I have submitted a similar comment to the site but there was a 1000 character limit so I am expanding on it here.
The use of the terms ‘extremeists’ and ‘obsession’ to describe the proponents of a natural and normal activity, and the promotion of that activity is both sensationalist and insulting to breastfeeding mothers and to those that try to provide facts and help to mothers. I know it is typical Daily Mail behaviour, but how can promoting something so normal be extreme!?
Clare Byam Cook, the subject of the article, identifies one of the worst problems perfectly:
“Some mums are discharged from hospital without ever managing to successfully breastfeed, but are reassured by some midwives and doctors that “it will happen in time”, or “your baby will feed when he or she is hungry enough”.”
A friend of mine went through this, was readmitted a few days later with a baby who was losing too much weight – the problem CBC complains about. She was told to express and bottle feed – what CBC suggests. It wasn’t long before she found it all to much – which I really can’t blame her for – and she switched to formula.
Contrast this with my own experience. I had a fair few drugs in labour so Rowan was pretty sleepy and didn’t feed properly for nearly 3 days. The midwives in the hospital helped me express and syringe feed at 2am, and continued this until we got the hang of things. After 3 good feeds they let me go home and despite some latch problems and soreness, we both got the hang of things and are still going strong.
To advise mothers to be prepared with bottles etc is just preparing them to fail. Surely it would be better to campaign for mothers to have proper support before they leave hospital rather than encouraging expressing and bottle feeding. This can threaten milk supply and can cause nipple confusion. This is before the stress and hassle involved for an already exhausted and emotional mother.
She is supporting the incorrect claim that lots of women cannot breastfeed :
‘This idea that every woman can breastfeed because she has a pair of breasts is ludicrous,’ she argues. ‘It’s like saying no one should become diabetic because we all have a pancreas.
‘Dairy farmers have prize milkers and duff milkers. That principle applies to humans, too.
If this is true how do 98% of women manage to breastfeed in Norway. How do 90% manage to continue to 3 months? I don’t want to make women who truly can’t manage, or those who formula feed due to poor support, feel bad, but they should know what is possible!
Also, claiming that breastfeeding counsellors are the wrong people because they managed to feed to 6 months. I know from experience that they’re not all people who found it easy, True, they all got there, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t find it hard along the way. I am going to be doing some training (hopefully soon, and more on that later) and although we haven’t had it too hard, we’ve been through the cluster feeding and the sore nipples, and I’ve spent time ‘talking’ to struggling mums both online and at our local baby cafe. You learn about the problems you didn’t have from others!
I’m not going to comment on her technical issues with the way breastfeeding is taught as I don’t feel qualified to do so, but I may do some time 
Lastly, her comments on educating people on using formua. I guess I can agree that this can cause problems, but I don’t think providing it in advance would help. Aside from the ‘preparing to fail’ argument, I don’t think that its easy to think that far ahead when you’re pregnant. Surely midwives should be providing this advice, or access to it.
Anyway, writing all this has worked out the anger. Please comment on the article itself if you agree wih me.
‘Momsicles’
Its a very american term, and sound very odd but Its something we’re going to try if/when the weather gets hot again. The basic idea is that you freeze breast milk so your baby can suck on it in case of hot weather or to help with teething pain.
What’s all this then?
I’ve had a blog for some years – most recently over here. However many of my interests have changed since having a baby just over 4 months ago, and we’ve got a pretty good readership of codepoets, thanks to David’s technical articles, and it just doesn’t feel like the right place for what I want to write.
Similarly, Rowan’s site that I started didn’t seem the right place to me to be writing some stuff from my perspective.
So what I actually want to be writing is about all the things I’ve got enthusiastic about since becoming a mother, and which I’ve become very good at boring people about. These are going to include things like breastfeeding, weaning (particularly baby led weaning), maternity and postnatal care in the NHS and other fascinating things.
So if you’re interested, there’s an RSS feed around here somewhere, please come back and take a look.
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