Breast feeding documentary on tonight..

[snowboarder]

On bbc 3

'Fun yet compelling' apparently....Hmm we shall see!

[Lochie]

Am hoping its not stereotyped ...

"Along the way she meets Jess, a teen mum who never even considered breastfeeding and has formula-fed all the way with no worries at all"

[Lochie]

should add that i'll be watching!

[Ruth_Baldock]

I have a feeling this is going to make me very angry (so not good for my BP!) but like the telly addict I am, will be watching anyway...

[Vik]

Ditto Ruth.

[snowboarder]

I know. The breast vs formula issue never normally comes across as 'fun'....

[bluesuperted]

Currently in the car so can't watch... (mad idea to drive 6 hrs back to London from north Yorkshire in the night with baby so we get more sleep time out of him as he hates the car... So far he's slept for one hour and is now wide awake and only calmed by wielding an empty plastic bottle, the irony for a staunchly booby boy!!).

Anyway I digress, I'll be watching this thread to live vicariously through you sofa dwellers...

[LauraHW]

Only 10 mins in but it's a pile of shite

[bluesuperted]

Thought it might be. Oh goody :(

[citizenED]

Naturally, like virtually all subjects getting the telly-treatment it is not an accurate review of the situation. But fair play, we get a baby called Coco and a dweeb dad called Humphrey. Breastfeeding for the Hello generation.

[sylviamaria]

I found I was getting more and more frustrated watching this! I m pretty speechless at the ignorance really...

[damzel]

I'm trying to work out what the program achieved. Did it promote breast feeding or potentially scare people off. Did it make mums who didn't breast feed feel rubbish or good about their decision. I watched right to the end hoping to glean *something* which is unfortunately because that's 1 hour of my life I'm not getting back! What a load of tosh.

[Polly D]

Hmmmm I'm going to try and defend the prog and the presenter. I watched her other progs a while ago re giving birth, getting married, and getting pissed and found her very watchable.

Saying that, I'm not sure what the prog was trying to achieve exactly apart from showing how different people feed their babies, and hopefully some people could relate to some bits.

What surprised me was how it seemed that lots of people - whether pro boob or bottle - felt chastised almost for choosing to breastfeed. She should have come to east dulwich! It wasn't particularly balanced on that score.

[Ruth_Baldock]

Whilst I felt for Cherry and her guilt over FF, I really felt like the program didn't really highlight anything we didn't already think about bf; i.e. 'teen' mums never BF because it's not 'cool' etc. What did it really show us? Nothing.

Felt SO bad for the Mum feeding her babby in the loos; I remember being that nervous about feeding S in public. I hope she gained enough confidence to feed her baby wherever/whenever.

[Polly D]

Meant to add, as Citizen ED said: this will always be an emotive topic, and that this prog felt like it was about Cherry, the presenter, going on a personal journey to assuage *her* guilt for stopping breastfeeding her daughter at 3 weeks.

[Ruth_Baldock]

I agree, Polly. I hope she managed to stop feeling guilty; although I do have strong view re: breastfeeding, I totally agreed with what Mum 'Tijen' said; BF/FF= it doesn't make you a good/bad Mother by any means.

[bluesuperted]

Yes she should have come to East Dulwich. But ED is not at all representative of elsewhere in the UK, I'm heading back from a long weekend in the midlands and north Yorkshire and despite seeing many tiny and older babies on the trip, I was the only one breastfeeding...

From what I can glean here and elsewhere online, not a very useful addition to the breastfeeding debate. Sigh.

[Ruth_Baldock]

I don't think there was a debate at all, tbh. Just 'look, she's breasteeding- she's an earth mother...' or 'look, she's breastfeeding her 3 and 5 year old- ick' or 'she's a teen mum and isn't breastfeeding, as is the norm'. She should talk to my Mum, BF my brother till he was EIGHT.

[ontheedge]

Ruth_Baldock Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Whilst I felt for Cherry and her guilt over FF, I

> really felt like the program didn't really

> highlight anything we didn't already think about

> bf; i.e. 'teen' mums never BF because it's not

> 'cool' etc. What did it really show us? Nothing.

> Felt SO bad for the Mum feeding her babby in the

> loos; I remember being that nervous about feeding

> S in public. I hope she gained enough confidence

Wherever/Whenever and also possibly whatever be it breast or formula

> to feed her baby wherever/whenever.

[Trish]

I agree with PollyD - I've liked the presenter's programmes in the past but I was a little disappointed by this one. It made me feel like I should be more uncomfortable about breastfeeding my baby in public than I am. Also, it would have been good to see an example of a more discreet breastfeeding mother rather than a group who pulled out their entire boobs!!! Or maybe go through what clothing, techniques there are to make it easier to keep as covered up as possible when feeding your baby.

[Polly D]

Exactly Trish. When they sat down in that shopping centre on an uncomfy looking bench I was willing them to go to a cafe, find a sofa, get out a muslin, feed the baby and have a coffee and chat. It doesn't gave to be 'in your face' like the ladies in Brighton were portrayed. I say portrayed because she called them (or they called themselves lactivists).

I liked it when she interviewed the Essex footballers and they were shyly nonchalant about the whole thing.

[Belle]

slightly off topic, but given the perceived lack of celeb support for bf has been lamented on the board before, I thought people might be interested: did anyone see the first pics of Orlando Bloom's new baby? they were of his supermodel wife Miranda Kerr breastfeeding.

Also speaking of footballers, I knew some people who worked on the breastfeeding manifesto a few years back (to change the law to mean women can bf publically without being asked to stop etc in cafes) and the footballer Theo Woolcott was one of the celeb endorsers. Turns out his mum is a bf counsellor and he was happy to lend his support. think that's a great message.

[Saffron]

How about Salma Hayek breastfeeding another woman's baby in a hospital in Sierra Leone? So touching.

With the widespread introduction of formula milk's after WWII, and the need for many women to work, wetnursing and cross-nursing began to decline. The real nail-in-the-coffin however, was the rise of the HIV epidemic in the 1980's. In just a few generations we've moved so far away from this practice that many people in the West now regard wetnursing with some disgust, or at least mixed feelings.

Personally, I would have loved it if someone else could have breastfed Little Saff just a few times when she was an infant. As it was, I had very bad postpartum exhaustion partly due to a chest infection (and partly due to postpartum depression that wasn't being ackownledged by the medical profession!), and we had to give Little Saff a few bottles of formula. I don't feel guitly about it, but I do feel sad. Sad that there wasn't anyone else there to nurse her. Sad also for other bfing mothers today who have no other practical option but to give formula when things 'go wrong' with bfing. And even where wetnursing is available, many women wouldn't even consider it, as modern attitudes to this age-old practice have changed for the worse.

So it goes.

[ad2000]

Just wanted to add that after I watched the show I spoke online to an ex-student of mine (I teach secondary students. She found herself pregnant at 16 and now has a 5 month old baby girl. She expressed real anger at how teen mums were portrayed. She breastfeeds, gives talks to other teen mums at the local centre and enjoys feeding her baby. She was angry that the programme suggested that if Katie Price did not breastfed then she, as a teenager, would be influenced enough to follow suit. I also spoke to another teen mum who said exactly the same. Both used breastfeeding councillors and groups.

I think the main point that came up (I went on the bbc3 forum afterwards) was not getting help, both to carry on or swap to formula successfully. Cherry said if she had spoken out at the time then she would have carried on. I too have had 6 weeks of infections and breastfeeding problems with my second baby (bfeed first baby til 15 months) and without help, I may have stopped. Got help both times from some fab groups in area. I also thought they didn't explore mixed feeding enough - formula saved me from stopping and now I mostly breastfed.

(I really like Cherry Healey too btw).

[Saffron]

'...formula saved me from stopping and now I mostly breastfed.'

That's a really lovely way of thinking about it, ad 2000.

xx