It could be said that addressing the incredibly sensitive subject of cot death on primetime TV will raise awareness. The topic has grabbed media headlines and is being talked about in many staff rooms across the country. But parents who live with the grief of losing a child have accused Eastenders of making cheap TV out of a painful issue which, for them, will last a lifetime not just the four weeks that it took to film – ‘the most horrific four weeks’ of Samantha Womack’s life.

They also regret the storyline being taken to such extremes with the character turning into a psychotic babysnatcher. Portraying the raw grief that comes with the death of a baby would have led to hard-hitting viewing without this ridiculous plot twist. As many bereaved parents have commented, they simply wanted their own baby back, not someone else’s.

The plot is not just implausible but also insensitive to these grieving families.

In the following days he’s been branded as ‘naive’ and his parenting decisions have been questioned.

Official advice, released under the Labour Government, does state that it is best for mothers to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months but has campaigning gone too far when people are criticised for not breastfeeding?

Gone are the days when mothers were nervous of breastfeeding in public. Now it’s practically taboo for a mum to whip out a baby bottle in their local coffee shop.

My sister was devastated that she couldn’t breastfeed. A nurse even told her that her son would have asthma and allergies if she gave him formula, both things that she (a breastfed baby) suffers from. My nephew’s now a happy, healthy six-year-old.

There’s enough stress and worry associated with having a new baby without the guilt of not breastfeeding being added to the heap. Just last week a friend nervously ‘admitted’ to me that she’d stopped breastfeeding after a month and another two are exhausted from battling with expressing and bottle feeding because they struggled to breastfeed and midwives aren’t empowered to tell them that enough’s enough.

Statistics do show that there is a greater chance of a child developing asthma, various allergies, heart disease and becoming obese if they are not exclusively breastfed but having fraught, tearful, guilt-ridden tussles at the start of a baby’s life can’t be good either.

There’s tonnes of support available to help mothers with breastfeeding, which is wonderful, but where is the support for those who ultimately are unable to do it for whatever reason? I know of one mother who was asked to leave a breastfeeding cafe because she was openly bottlefeeding her child and setting a bad example. She had gone there for help and, not surprisingly, never returned.

From now on will politicians be driven to shuffle out of supermarkets with tubs of formula guiltily stuffed into brown paper bags?

With this fresh in my mind, the irony wasn’t lost on me when I read a childminder’s profile on Facebook this morning – a day trip to the Healthworks Museum followed by lunch at McDonald’s. Talk about giving children mixed messages.

OK, so both of these incidents are American, it’s not surprising that the USA tips the international scale when it comes to numbers of overweight children, but there is still plenty of nutritional ignorance in the UK too.

Halting the rise of overweight and obese children is one of Sure Start’s aims. In my area there are great weaning workshops, nutritionist talks and healthy eating cookery courses for families. I just hope the funding remains for these initiatives to continue. Matching the USA’s epidemic obesity proportions is not something for the UK to aspire to.

The Coalition Government may be ripping into the National Health Service and state education, but some things are obviously sacrosanct – witness the recent bumbling over free milk for children under five in daycare. No sooner had health minister Anne Milton suggested that the £50m scheme could be scrapped, than David Cameron leapt in to pledge the Government’s unswerving support for the mini bottles.

The move was obviously prompted less by a conviction that the milk is a good thing for children’s health, than by nightmare visions of the chants of ‘Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher’ that have pursued the former PM ever since she abolished free milk for over-sevens in 1971.

Ironically, those of us who actually drank the stuff as schoolchildren several decades ago shed few tears at its loss. It was part-frozen in winter and halfway curdled to butter in the heat of summer. Either way, it was to be feared rather than relished!

But the climbdown is a small victory for public opinion. Perhaps those looking to save other services should come up with a handy rhyming chant incorporating Cameron’s name to aid their lobbying.