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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to ask why you would put your 'hungry baby' on a diet?

94 replies

ICBINEG · 25/02/2013 16:47

I don't understand the logic...please help me out.

Hungry baby milk has the same calories per 100 grams as normal, but takes longer to digest....or in other words hungry baby formula is a diet food....it makes the baby feel full longer and hence reduces their daily calorie intake, by reducing the number of feeds.

Similarly with introducing solids. Mashed potato or whatever has about the same calories per 100g but they are almost impossible to digest. Again the baby feels full longer but gets less calories in a day because they will ask for less feeds.

So would you respond to thinking your baby is hungry by:
a) feeding them more often so they get more calories
b) feeding them diet food, so they get less calories

OP posts:

OHforDUCKScake · 25/02/2013 16:53

Ive never heard good things about HBM tbh, Id never have used it.

I bf, and when the baby went through growth spurts he'd feed up to every 20 mins in the day and not much better at night. I ordered my breasts to make hungry baby milk, to no avail.

My point is, if the babys hungry you feed him/her more often.

However, I have little/no knowledge of ff.

Original poster

ICBINEG · 25/02/2013 16:55

I think formula companies are just being their usual gittish selves but the whole weaning early because they are hungry thing is odd....there is a growth spurt at 4 months that seems to trigger a lot of people around here to put their baby on the mashed potato diet....many of them then express surprise that their little ones are losing weight all of a sudden....yeah well they will....

OP posts:

IneedAgoldenNickname · 25/02/2013 16:55

I've never heard good things about hbm either, but like ducks BF mine wherever they were hungry, which felt like always at times.

SecretNutellaFix · 25/02/2013 17:10

Maybe because otherwise they would be drinking litres of formula?

I do think that they disrupt "normal" feeding patterns, but if the alternative is for an infant to be drinking 6 8-ounce bottles a day at three weeks, then it serves a purpose.

Only anecdotal, but that was when my mother stuck me on hungry baby formula because I was draining my bottle in minutes and still hungry.

I was fed every 2-3 hours.

ilovepowerhoop · 25/02/2013 17:12

I used hungry milk for ds from about 14 weeks although he never actually took any less milk in his bottles and never went much longer between feeds - he did seem more settled between feeds though so I felt it was worthwhile using it.

seeker · 25/02/2013 17:18

"Maybe because otherwise they would be drinking litres of formula?

I do think that they disrupt "normal" feeding patterns, but if the alternative is for an infant to be drinking 6 8-ounce bottles a day at three weeks, then it serves a purpose."

Why shouldn't a baby have that much milk? Genuine question- mine were bf. but if a bf baby is hungry you give it more milk- why is it difference for formula fed?

SecretNutellaFix · 25/02/2013 17:25

How distended would their tummies become?

We all know that people who eat significantly larger portions have significantly larger appetites, and it's a vicious circle.

Especially if the child then gets rewarded with food, and encouraged to eat everything on their plate.

I know it sounds as though I have issues regarding the way I was fed as a baby and I do. I am now struggling to get my mother and sister to understand so the same mistakes aren't made with my nephew.

It is only as I have begun controlling my food intake that I see the damage done by overfeeding.

shellshock7 · 25/02/2013 17:26

seeker I don't know but that was GP advice, too much liquid is dangerous? DS went on HBF to delay weaning as he was having 'too much' formula at 12 weeks, when I switched from BF for a few reasons..one of which being he couldn't get it down him quick enough so would scream unless I expressed and gave it him in a bottle...he defo was a very hungry baby

monkeysbignuts · 25/02/2013 17:30

i used it with my second baby. i have breast fed all 3 kids but my second i just couldn't keep up with. at 12 weeks she was needing feeds every 2 hours day and night. i started 1 bottle at bed time of standard milk, by 15 weeks she was draining a 9oz bottle before bed! i swapped to hungry baby to delay weaning while still managing to do the rest breast feeds.
we got to 20 weeks and i started weaning her. when she was 6 months we started swapping boob for bottles and just standard baby milk. she would drink 3 7oz bottles and have 3 meals a day. she really was a big hungry baby and is tall and slender now she's 3.
all babies are different.
my third baby wakes every 2 hours for milk at night. thankfully if he has formula he manages 4/5 hours.

SchroSawMargeryDaw · 25/02/2013 17:31

I brought this up with a friend on FB recently as she was weaning her 12 week old because she 'hungry' and had been on HBM since birth. She posted saying that someone (a doctor I think) should go back to medical school as he doesn't know anything and she knows her baby best.

I tried to offer the studies and told her about the same amount of calories and being harder to digest and she should try just giving more normal milk.

She went mental, started posting bitchy posts about me on FB and getting her friends to join in and blocked me!

shellshock7 · 25/02/2013 17:34

Btw I never switched fully to HBF, for the reasons stated by ICBINEG, we just gave him enough to cut down the quantity of milk he needed...he ended up with 3 of his bottles being HBF by the time we got to weaning

seeker · 25/02/2013 17:37

So what happened before there was "hungry baby milk"?

Trazzletoes · 25/02/2013 17:39

Both mine were mix fed (1 bottle a day but otherwise BF) but i would imagine that if a ff baby was drinking that much milk all the time it would become mind- blowingly expensive for the parents to as well.

shellshock7 · 25/02/2013 17:39

I honestly thought seeker what would I have done with DS before expressing/bottles etc was invented? He would just scream and scream it was horrible....I guess he would have eventually drank as he got to starving point, but luckily I never had to take it that far

hm32 · 25/02/2013 17:40

I weaned at 20 weeks - food in addition to milk, not instead of. Didn't cut down the milk feeds at all, and certainly didn't slow the weight gain. What it did, was normalize the bowel movements so DC happier and not constantly constipated. I bf btw.

Trazzletoes · 25/02/2013 17:40

seeker they just weaned earlier, didn't they? My DM says my DB was started on solids at 8 weeks

shellshock7 · 25/02/2013 17:43

Ah yes trazzle of course! I was weaned at 12 weeks and my DH at 9

propertyNIGHTmareBEFOREXMAS · 25/02/2013 17:51

Thank God for tits. Thanks to mine I did not have to worry about which type of Formula was most appropriate for my dc.

DrCoconut · 25/02/2013 17:58

My mum and MIL have talked about babies being on solids before leaving the maternity hospital. Apparently if they weighed 10lb or more they were considered too big for "just milk", especially BM, and automatically given rusk or even mashed potato in a bottle with milk, the teats were poked with a knitting needle to make the holes big enough :( They still don't really see anything wrong with it. After all, their kids grew up fine in the 60's and 70's! (though I was a tiddler at 7lb something and was weaned from 12 weeks not birth). I do wonder how many adults have gut issues as a result of ridiculously early weaning.

seeker · 25/02/2013 17:59

There wasn't hungry baby milk when my dd was a baby, and she's 17. 4-6 months was the weaning advice then- I weaned her at 6 months.

PolkadotCircus · 25/02/2013 18:00

To answer what they did before they cut a hole in the teat and put raw egg and rusk in!

Well that's what my mum did very early on with me so kinda think hungry baby milk could be seen as an improvement.

applepieinthesky · 25/02/2013 18:01

seeker I don't know. I FF and when DS is hungry I feed him. I take little notice of time, if he's hungry then he's hungry.

PolkadotCircus · 25/02/2013 18:01

I was one of those babies,got the constitution of an ox!

SecretNutellaFix · 25/02/2013 18:03

Seeker- they were weaned from a stupidly early age.

Bogeyface · 25/02/2013 18:04

I had to put DS1 on hungry baby milk on the advice of the HV as he was so hungry he was draining a bottle, screaming for more, draining that and then throwing up. HBM meant that he was actually keeping more of the calories as he wasnt screaming for more and then over feeding.

That said, I do know of it being used purely in order to get a baby to sleep through the night

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