Out of curiosity..

[Charleney]

What is wrong with Formula feeding?

I'm 3 months pregnant with my first so havent done either!
But would just like to know why its bad?

I agree with oncemai

I BF my DD and FF my DS. I would say DD caught slightly fewer colds and stomach bugs during the first couple of years but other than that no difference overall.

If I have another baby I will definitely try to BF again, but if I'm unable to I won't lose any sleep over it

Playing devil's advocate, the idea of being glued to the sofa whilst a baby b/feeds for a long period of time may not be everyone's cup of tea.

Had I done so, particularly with my second child, no clothes would have been washed, no ironing done, no floors hoovered or mopped and I wouldn't have had much of a life either.

I've just deleted a longer post because it's pointless. You are completely misinterpreting what I said.

Breast milk is the biological norm for human babies. It is not superior, it is normal. Thus formula is inferior and it is impossible to say that formula won't harm your child. If breast milk is perfect then anything else is potentially harmful in some way.

Of course, all things carry risks and sometimes the benefits out weigh those. Naturally, it is not possible to categorically state that breastmilk will not harm your child although, seeing as it's designed for human babies, it is rather unlikely.

We need to stop thinking of breast milk being something "aspirational" and start thinking of it as being normal : your child isn't X times less likely to suffer Y if they have breastmilk, they are Z times more likely to suffer if you use formula.

There will never be a definitive answer to what the risks of formula are because breastmilk has no multi-million pound budget behind it and there is no profit in proving anything about it. I can't see a formula company publishing research saying their product is in any way harmful, however small.

• I don't care how you or anyone else feeds/fed your/their baby

• Everyone needs to make an informed choice, which is impossible given the whole WHO guidelines/advertising thing

• The only person who can make you feel guilty is you.

• I was formula fed. do I hold a grudge against my mother? No. Does she feel guilty? No. Is it possible to say whether my apparent genetic disposition to diabetes would have been negated had she breastfed me? No. Is it possible to say that formula will have caused any of my past and future health problems? No.

• You can feck off with your "can't you find some empathy" bollocks because that is, quite frankly, insulting. If it were a thread asking for support, that is what I would be giving. This isn't a thread asking what to do about XYZ problems a new mother is having, it's a question asked by someone who does not even have a baby yet. Should we skirt over the undeniable fact that breast milk is the biological norm just to avoid hurting someones feelings?

Please don't feel the need to reply as I'm hiding this thread. Given that I'm being misinterpreted and accused of being unsympathetic and lacking in empathy, I really have no wish to revisit it.

There is nothing wrong with ff.
But there is evidence to suggest that bf is better if possible.

That's all.

Bf for 6 months will measurably decrease your risks of breast cancer.
It also enables you to eat a I
slice of chocolate cake every day and still lose weight.
And having seen how much my DD suffered with gastroenteritis once I weaned her at 8 months I'd do whatever it took to minimise the risk of a tiny newborn getting the same

i've done both.
after the first 6 weeks, bf is much easier. and free. and nicer. and pisses my inlaws off.

and regardless of feeding mode, mum usually ends up doing the bulk.

"So, is human breast milk not superior to modified cows milk for feeding human babies? Are there no benefits, health wise, to giving your baby breast milk?"

That is your call to read the studies in the areas of interest to you and decide for yourself, based on whar you consider to be significant differences when it comes to real world risk v benefit.

My litmus test is to read studies and ask myself ?if the same level of claimed potential benefit were ascribed to formula feeding, would I go back in time and not breastfeed ??

Tiny percentages of difference (IQ+obesity), ?seems to reduce ? (ashma) and ?weak evidence, of borderline statistical significance? (childhood cancers), ?no suggestion of a protective effect? (another study on childhood cancers) ?only marginally lower? (ear infections), ?similar frequency? (Respiratory + gastrointestinal infection) ? has done little to convince me me to say yes, I would have made my life hell with a feeding method that didn?t suit either of us, instead of sticking to my boobs (which worked beautifully for both of us) if that were the case presented AGAINST breastfeeding.

And if it is sauce for the goose?.

Nothing wrong with FF. Quite understand and agree BF is best but hate fact that with all tha NHS "Breast is best" campaign there isn't the support of brestfeeding advisers etc and
I hate the way it's a guilt trip to FF. Some mums can't or have to give up e'g SCBU babies or mum needs medication or....

BF DD1 for 5wks EBF DD2 for 3mths still mainly BF at 4 mths but looks like increasingly mixed feeding now as back to work a.m and already topping up at night

"Bf for 6 months will measurably decrease your risks of breast cancer."
If you have a family history of the disease. Although there possibly also a question mark over whether this benefit is restricted to women (with a family history of cancer) who start breastfeeding at a younger age (24 or less).
One study suggested that engorgement and inflammation in non breastfeeding women (who are predisposed to an elevated risk of breast cancer via family medical history) may be the reason why. Potentially different management of those issues may level out the risk factors without women having to breastfeed to gain the additional protection if it turns out that is where the problem lies.

Worth bearing in mind also that European Breast Cancer Conference said "A longer duration of breastfeeding may predispose women who develop breast cancer to a more aggressive case" (longer in this case meaning more than 6 months, very cheerful reading when you breastfed for a year).
It's all a bit more complicated than the simplified and overstated headlines that you tend to see in promotional materials, newspapers, articles and opinion pieces.
It can't be reduced to a sound bite like "breastfeeding protects you against cancer" and remain accurate because the devil is in the detail.

Some women are, to some degree, but we don't know why yet, so there may be a specific key issue that is being overlooked due to a focus on breastfeeding as opposed to other breast changes during pregnancy and birth.

Although I am now thoroughly depressed cos there is no history of breast cancer in my family so I get no protection points for the first six months of doing it, but get an additional risk factor of what sounds scarily like IBC for the last six months of doing it, if I do go on to buck the family trend and develop breast cancer. I?m not looking at the stats for that. Do not wish to scare self silly right before bed.

Gore - exactly. I formula fed with no guilt and great results, but of course I accept breast milk is 'best', or perhaps the ideal is a better way of putting it.

Whoever said earlier I was irresponsible for saying FF-ing doesn't harm babies because my evidence was 'purely anecdotal'...anecdotal?? They are my fecking kids!!!

proudnscary

I don't want you to go all scary on me (have pity, just found out that breastfeeding will probably kill me, have tendancy to panic about health issues and feel doooooooooooomed in totally irrational manner), but the reason why it was anecdotal was because...they are your kids ( =

As it happens "proof" that ff harms babies is also anecdotal.

So far nobody has been willing to come up with a case where properly used,hygenicly prepared, unadulterated formula has harmed a baby.

So you were well within your rights to say that FFing doesn't harm babies, thanks to the lack of any evidence to the contrary.

^ WHAT ALL THESE PEOPLE SAID!!^
Our poor OP has run away in terror... or, most probably, fallen asleep, if I remember those knackering first 3 months correctly...
Most definitely TRY, if you can, OP.
I would have loved to have BF both mine for longer than I did - (4 months with eldest + formula topups too - he was titchy! And just 2 weeks with my youngest, he was an ECS, dodgy ticker, bless 'im) but I had a go.
My youngest is such a Mummy's boy I reckon he'd still be having a tootle now - he's 3.5!
But yes - do give it a good try. And don't be afraid to ask for help.
I wish I had.
I also wish I'd had a baby sling - I could've breastfed and still Got Stuff Done. In all honesty: that was part of the reason I stopped so soon with youngest: husband going back to work...eldest was nearly 2 and very active ...housework to be done, meals to be cooked...no able-bodied family or friends around to help...so sitting on bum BFing all day not really an option!
As I say, I wish I'd bought a sling!!!
Ho hum

I have a question about breastfeeding...

How long do you have to do it for to make sure the babies get the antibodies? It's something I have never really understood.

I firmly beleive that breastfeeding has sheilded me from pnd this time round- easier, more bonding, better for your hormones (not so much of a massive crash after being pregnant) and less tiring as you can sleep much more easily when bf. (Very easy to sleep in bed with boob out and little baby nuzzling away, much harder to balance a bottle and keep having to get up and make a new one)

I also firmly beleive it has helped me feel happy about my body, which I was struggling with after two sections.

However, I do mix feed my 11 month old these days, and I mix fed my DD1 pretty much from birth, giving up breast at 4 months, so I know that neither is awful.

I am doing a three hour train journey tomorrow, just me and the baby, and it would be a lot more daunting of I didn't know I can just give her a boob and she will be content for a lot of the way.

Basically, bf is the default normal option, like vaginal birth. However, sometimes bf and vaginal birth don't work out, and we are lucky enough to have medical substitutes these days- ie sections and formula. Not 100% ideal, but at the same time, very very unlikely to be a problem either.

If BF does has health benefits (which I always understood it does) then some babies will be harmed by not having those benefits, by definition. For example, if BFing gives antibodies which protect against illness and FF doesn't, then there will be some babies who get sick who are FF, who wouldn't have done if they had been BF.

However there would be no way of knowing exactly who those babies are - you couldn't say - look, this particular FF baby is sick, and wouldn't have been if s/he was BF, because there's no way of knowing what the outcome would have been otherwise, there are too many other factors involved. But just because you can't easily identify which babies wouldn't have got sick if they'd been FF, doesn't mean that they don't exist. It is just one of many risk factors.

I'm not trying to have a go at FFing, honest. It's great that it exists, and it a great help fpr may people. But people seem to find it very difficult to get their heads round risk / health. Just because a baby looks fine, you have no idea whether something might be causing him / her health problems in the long term. You can't look into to a crystal ball and see what their health will be in thei 50s / 60s, but it was alway my understanding that early diet / nutrition (including in pregnancy) can affect your health later in life.

That's not to say we should live in hermetically sealed rooms! But just that to ignore that there are risks attached to things in life doesn't make them go away.

I live in a house full of stairs. I know that this is a risk to my little one. But I'm not saying everyone should live in bungalows! We still choose to live here - we have made the decision that the benefits outweigh the risks. That doesn't stop the stairs being risky though.

People choose to give their children FF for whatever reason (to keep them alive being a good one! Or make life bearable or whatever) but that doesn't mean that a - probably very small indeed - amount of them will have an adverse affect to their health as a result. To pretend otherwise is wilfully naive. Unless you think that BFing has absolutely no health benefits at all, but that is a different discussion altogether. and not one I have time to research right now.

OP, it's about deciding what is best for you.

Benefits of BF vs FF come down to the mum. Read up on it but if you feel BF is best for you then do it. If FF is best for you then do it. A happy mum makes a happy baby. Whatever you do, don't feel guilty.

Congratulations on your good news.

Just to answer the comments that no babies have ever been harmed by formula...

Babies HAVE been actively harmed by formula milk. See Enterobacter sakazakii, a bacteria that has contaminated formula milk and which kills 40-80% of babiesinfected. Powder is impossible to fully sterilise and the bacteria can survive for two years in powder. It is thankfully rare but there have been a number of deaths in recent years linked to it.

There are also allergies to formula milk. A few babies are allergic to breastmilk but this is rarer.

Take a look at 101 Reasons to Breastfeed for a good rundown of the research supporting the 'breast is best' message.

Ultimately it's your choice. Formula has some advantages - easier for your partner to offer (although expressed milk is an option). You don't have to worry about pumping if you go out.

For me, the advantages of breastfeeding (medical benefits for mother and baby, convenience, price) far outweigh these and if I had the choice, I would and have breastfed every time. Your priorities and needs may be different.

For those who don't have the choice to breastfeed then there's nothing wrong with formula feeding. It's the best alternative if you can't breastfeed.

"Babies HAVE been actively harmed by formula milk"

Asking mothers to reject formula on the basis of potential harm from examples of contamination like Enterobacter sakazakii is no different from asking them to reject breastfeeding because of the potential for contamination from fat soluble toxins (DDT, PCB's, dioxin, trichloroethylene, perchlorate, mercury, lead, benzene, arsenic) or the potential for contracting HIV from your partner soon after birth that could lead to you unwittingly infecting your baby via your breast milk.

One infinitesimally small risk is pretty much cancelled out by another even smaller infinitesimally small risk. (unless you know you are in a small sub group that carries an elevated risk in either direction)

The overwhelming majority of us in developed countries cannot base our real world decisions on such incredibly rare, potential, negative outcomes.

Otherwise we'd end up concluding that if we really wish to avoid exposing our babies to harm we shouldn't feed them anything at all, ever. Which is a bit of a non starter.

I am simply asking for a case study where uncontaminated, hygienically prepared, properly diluted formula has been clinically proven to have caused harm to an infant. Harm that we can conclude would have been avoided had the mother fed her child breastmilk.

If the oft heard strident terms used to describe formula as harmful/poison are in any way justified then there should be a plethora of exactly those kind of cases to choose from.

The only way we will ever know for sure is if you do an identical twin study, one BF, one FF with all other aspects of their upbringing controlled and identical. That's not ethical so it won't happen.

So it's a choice that every mother has to make for themselves.

Personally I feel that the risks associated with FF are higher (because the potential for incorrect preparation exists) but that for some the benefits may outweigh that.