Swing back to the bottle reversing the rise of breastfeeding that followed 1983 ban on advertising baby formula

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All three of my children were breastfed from birth until they weaned themselves. They went from breast to cup at around 12 to 14 months of age, and none ever had a bottle. From about six months of age, they started taking increasing amounts of water by cup and less milk by breast until their last breast feeds were the night ones.

For many mothers, breastfeeding is much easier than bottles. There is no messy making up of formula. No sterilising of bottles. No need to make up batches of bottles if you are going out. No need to worry about heating the bottles too much and scalding the baby. And when my children were babies, in the 1990s, “breast is best” was the Plunket mantra of the time.

While we knew and accepted that some women either could not or did not want to breast-feed, most of the mothers in the same Plunket groups as our children also breast-fed. Gone were the days when mothers had to hide away while breastfeeding. By the 1990s you could do it almost anywhere.

How times change. Last week, the Government felt obliged to launch a “national plan of action for breastfeeding”, because more and more mothers today are turning to the bottle, especially once babies are more than six weeks or so.

According to the Ministry of Health, at six weeks, the exclusively breastfed rate is 66 per cent, including 70 per cent of Pakeha babies, 59 per cent of Maori babies, 57 per cent of Pacific babies and 55 per cent of Asian babies.

At three months, the exclusively breastfed rate is 55 per cent overall, with 60 per cent of Pakeha babies, 45 per cent of Maori babies, 48 per cent of Pacific babies and 53 per cent of Asian babies.

At six months, it has fallen to 25 per cent, with 29 per cent of Pakeha babies, 17 per cent of Maori, 19 per cent of Pacific babies and 25 per cent of Asian babies.

The ministry’s targets for its breastfeeding campaign is to raise these numbers to 74 per cent at six weeks, 57 per cent at three months and 27 per cent by six months.

These rates seem to be down somewhat from when my children were babies. In the 1980s and 1990s, breastfeeding rates went up strongly, after they had fallen to tiny numbers during the 1950s and 1960s, when formula companies like Nestle scandalously promoted formula feeding as better than breast milk. I was one of five siblings raised in the 1960s, only one of whom was breastfed and I think that was because he had an allergy to formula. But in the 1970s, the World Health Organisation promoted an international ban on the marketing of baby formula, because of the serious illnesses formula was causing in developing countries where it was often mixed with dirty water.

Since 1983, a WHO code has prevented advertising of under-six month infant formula in New Zealand. I suspect the rise in formula use in recent years is because working mothers — of whom there are many more than only a decade or so ago — find it very hard to breastfeed while remaining in paid work. A colleague who recently had a baby goes to the crèche round the corner from our office a couple of times a day to feed her infant, but I think she is one of the valiant exceptions.

The Government has announced legislation to require employers to provide somewhere for mothers to breastfeed, but this initiative is already under attack from the usual suspects, who forget that Ruth Richardson was a breastfeeding pioneer in Parliament and suffered criticism for her determination.

Over in Adelaide at In a Strange Land, Deborah says she can’t help thinking the Government is tinkering round the edges. She writes: “If the government is really committed to supporting breastfeeding, then it needs to fund maternity wards properly, so that women can stay in hospital for more than a day or two if they need to, in order to establish breastfeeding.”

Indeed. But I can’t help wondering if the recent norm of forcing new mothers out of hospital 24 hours after giving birth is a result of the College of Midwives, having won its campaign to force family doctors out of childbirth, being annoyed that an overwhelming majority of mothers still insist on going to hospital to have their babies rather than opting for a college-decreed Home Birth Without Pain Relief. But that’s another issue.

The six-month breastfeeding target in the ministry campaign is an interesting one. Mothers who breastfeed still seem to encounter disapproval the longer they keep feeding, even if their friends and extended family were delighted and supportive when they started off breastfeeding.

This issue is canvassed by breastfeeding blogger Undomestic Goddess in an article on her Real Mummy blog, who notes that people lapse into an “uncomfortable silence” when meeting someone still feeding at 12 months.

“I think that it is no coincidence that the general societal acceptance of weaning onto formula at around six months occurs at the same time that formula is allowed to be advertised,” she writes. “Currently formula companies cannot advertise new born products. Most maternity carers are very limited in the information they give, so they can push breast feeding. That means that many people who need advice on formula early on, when their milk supply is low or non-existent for example, cannot access information easily. Then at six months they suddenly come out of the woodwork – ta da! Formula time! So it becomes more normal to give formula than to breastfeed.”

It is a shame that the WHO code only forbids the marketing of formula for children under six months of age, because, if a mother is able to feed successfully to that age, there is no physical or nutritional reason not to continue until the child weans itself to a cup, bypassing bottles and formula altogether.

Undomestic Goddess also raises the issue of mothers stopping feeding because other people find it uncomfortable: “Why does this happen? Why is it great to start feeding your baby, but then have to move onto a formula so that other people feel comfortable? And why do some people feel uncomfortable about such a thing anyway?”

After the great strides in breastfeeding in the 1980s and 1990s, it seems, sadly, that we are going backwards.

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Tags: baby formula, Breastfeeding