My sister has a toddler and chose not to breastfeed, which is completely fine and she had her reasons! Individual choice. She has been asking me (loads) how I plan on feeding my baby. I intend to breastfeed, I’m researching into it as much as I can before baby’s arrival and really hope we can be successful. If it doesn’t work out for whatever reason I’ll move to formula. I have looked at this too and know the brand we’d go for, and how to safely prepare a bottle and sterilise the equipment.
My sister is repeatedly saying that I must buy 8 bottles, steriliser and tubs of formula just in case. She won’t let it go. I try and change the subject but she finds a way to bring it back onto that whenever we talk about baby prep. She keeps repeating, ‘trust me, breastfeeding is not the easy option from watching my friends, it’s so limiting’. It’s making me feel a bit awkward actually. We live very close by to a 24 hour ASDA so it’s not as though we couldn’t nip out and buy everything we need if we had to. I feel like if I have formula available it will be easier to give up when it is inevitably a bit tricky in the early days.
When it’s not that, it’s how all of her friends had a really traumatic birth, she was never expecting parenthood to be so hard, they nearly got a divorce…
Observationally her DH doesn’t seem to help very much and never has done. My DN is a very easy going toddler with a placid temperament and has slept through for 11 hour nights since about 4/5 months.
I’m not naive enough to think it won’t be really difficult at times (beyond my current comprehension, even) but I never understand why people have to tell you this when you are pregnant almost like they are basking in the experience of having done it already.
Anyway, AIBU to not buy bottles ahead of time? I would worry it would be money wasted. I do have a couple of small ‘Mam’ bottles gifted from the Boots parenting club so not entirely without.