>Heather wrote;
>>  Sorry, Pam, I'll throw in a UK perspective here. In the 50 and 60s,
>>  most UK women who delivered in hospitals were ordered to bf. > > Most of
>them ended up bottle feeding within a short time....
>
>Heather, there must have been variations round the UK.  From UK cousins and
>acquaintances, who delivered in the West Country (Devon) and Portsmouth in
>the mid- to late1960s, "how are you girls going to feed?" meant "which
>brand?"


You are right, Virginia - I really should have said this happened up
to the early 60s. The scenario you describe was indeed common in some
places, probably many places,  by the mid to late 60s. We know that
by the mid 70s initiation of bf was a minority - from memory of the
surveys that exist, I think it was probably right down there at 25
per cent....with the urban middle class hanging on to it longest.

I don't know if there was a cut-off point...while I think I am right
about the 50s and early 60s, there would no doubt be a rise in
initiation of formula feeding in that time, so that by the mid to
late 60s it was normalised.

Already in the 40s and 50s, there were substantial numbers of mothers
who were ordered 'not' to bf, alongside the ones who were 'ordered'
the other way! Mothers ordered not to feed would include my MIL
(babies born 1950 and 1953) who had had pre-eclampsia and forceps the
first time, and then anaemia the second time (ordered to top up at
every feed that time).

Increasingly dogmatic routines - 10 mins a side, 4 hourly feeds only
etc etc - would have demonstrated to staff and midwives how
unreliable bf was;  the increase in birth interventions (more
caesareans, more forceps) which almost always led to separation of
mother and baby would lead to more formula feeding, too. My mother
(babies born in hospital in the 50s) remembers severe mastitis and
breast abscesses being common. Once you had mastitis, you 'had to'
stop bf.

Midwives and nurses made up the formula in milk kitchens. I think we
might find a further drop in initiation of bf due to ready-prepared
formula becoming  widely available at low cost or free to maternity
units....I think this would be in the mid 60s and early 70s.

>  One acquaintance was the only breastfeeding mother in a large
>teaching hospital and she told me the students had to see her, while there
>was a BF mother there.  Neither of my cousins breastfed their children.  It
>wasn't fashionable.  (I can quite see why, with the failure of breastfeeding
>for the generation or two who were subjected to the regimen of restricted
>feeeds and crying babies.)  Looking at an Oxford survey, published in the
>BMJ in 1953, even then there didn't appear to be a lot of breastfeeding
>beyond the very early stages, in that locality, and attitudes in the report
>(and ensuing correspondence) were not positive.


Absolutely...... my point exactly! bf would be started, and then
stopped, and there were definitely hostile attitudes to it, both
inside hospitals and outside. There was a large rise in hospital
birth post-war; it was certainly becoming the norm by 1953,
especially for first births, especially in urban areas. I would guess
that BMJ survey would show something like 70 per cent initiation in
hospital/at home then a rapid fall off....what does it say?

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK

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