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What are your views on this?

My friend has a 4 week old baby who she now exclusively bottle feeds but..........well, here's the story and quite frankly I would complain to her MW team about lack of info etc.

When her babba was born she really wanted to BF but was told she was 'not producing enough milk' so was told to mix the BFs with formula feeds. Well she was happy to do this as she is prone to PND due to a history of depression and the frequency of the BFing was getting her down a bit. HOWEVER, what her MW team did not warn her about was that mix feeding too much would cause her BM supply to dwindle. She went on holiday for a couple of weeks and, because she was busy and had to leave babba with other people for a time and found it difficult to express, basically just bottle fed him through the holiday. Of course her milk then started to dry out and now she just has to bottle feed as she does not have nearly enough milk for her babba.

I am just dissappointed that (a) her MW team did not give her adiquate advice about mix feeding and (b) they did not offer her propper support when she told them that BF was getting her down and just told her to up the bottle/formula feeds if that was the case!

I don't wanna make her feel bad about bottle feeding but I am FURIOUS about the lack of interest/time her mw team seems to be putting in esp as, when she was pregnant I seemed to be telling her more stuff than them and my LO is only 9 months so I'm not exactly an expert!

Replies

  • Just in addition to thst - just found out she's had literally NO support as she was also getting annoyed cos of how often he wanted to feed (every 2-2 1/2 hours) and was told to put him on formula because he was feeding too often.............Surely that is average for such a young baby...... ike I said I don't wanna make her feel bad about formula feeding but I just feel that she has 'given up' too easily due to such a compleate lack of support and info....It actually makes me wanna cry as I would have given up in the early days too but didn't as I had loads of support and I'm so glad I did carry on BF
  • Unfortunately I think stories like this are way too common. You'd like to think that however people choose to feed that the support was there for them but this seems to be rare.
    Your friends story is just a list of bad advice, how can health professionals tell someone that they need to give formula to a new born because they don't have enough milk? No one has enough milk untill their milk comes in :roll:
    I agree with you, it makes me very sad, like you I was lucky enough to have loads of support, but I think this is rare.
    xx
  • I agree, that this isn't good enough from the medical profession. they obviously didn't have sufficient training to do their job effectively. Plus, they should have been able to spend time with your friend to hand express so they could feed this to her baby - as this is what happened to me when my lo didn't latch on. They were more interested in me hand expressing even the littliest amount so my lo would take it. I would write to complain if I was her.
  • Thanks for the replies so far. The trouble is she doesn't want to complain as she trusts the team and her and babba are happy. I am so pleased that she is happy and at end of the day she's gotta do what is right for her and I have nothing against formula feeding. But I just wish I could complain on her behalf as I know (well can have a good guess that) they were not giving her correct advice. I'm going to talk to my Bf councellor friend next time i see her and see what she says!
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