to think breastfeeding makes babies harder to look after?

[doingitagain2013]

I EBF my DD for 6 months, then combined this with solids till 10 months and at 10 months moved to formula. For the first 6 weeks DD fed up to 20 times in 24 hours. From 6 weeks until age 7 months she fed on average of about 12 times in 24 hours. I found it exhausting, she did not have a dummy either. She was a lovely happy baby but it was a constant round of feeding, changing and being sick (after some feeds) and lots of crying and sleepless nights. I was the first of my friends to have children. Two friends have since had babies. One bottle fed from the start and uses a dummy between feeds and has found mother hood a breeze and is always out and about and looking great. Her baby sleeps through the night. My DD has just started sleeping through (most) nights age 3. My second friend had her baby and breast fed for 3 weeks and said she felt like she had no life and just fed all the time and did not get much sleep. She then switched to bottles and dummies and said her baby is so much more peaceful now and sleeps through the night now at 5 months old and before that just had one bottle a night. When I visit he is happy sucking his dummy and never cries and her house is so clean and nice. I am pregnant with DD2 and want to breast feed again, hopefully for one year this time to save money on bottles and formula as well as for the health benefits I think my DD enjoyed. However I am jealous of my two friends who bottle feed and how organised their lives look. Are breast fed babies just harder to look after or am I doing something wrong??

Breast fed not breathed

I bf both of mine and then switched to bottles later (ds at 6ths and dd at 3mths) ds was pretty easy on both breast and bottles. dd was very difficult on both breast and bottles. I don't think how you feed them is the deciding factor., and just imagine how many bottles you would have had to make up if you had ff your dd. Sounds like she would have been exhausting whatever feeding method you opted for. Lets hope you get an easier time of it next time:)

I partly blame bf for my baby's poor sleep, even now at 22 months. I found it hard to read his cues and out of desperation resorted to using the breast to comfort (had no support and little experience with babies). He was very unsettled and slept badly for all naps and night.

I would like to ebf any future children as I feel it is so good for them. Ds has never been sick apart from a couple of mild colds and has never even needed to visit the gp or have antibiotics. Both dh and I had many courses of antibiotics as babies and children. Also we both have a lot of allergies/exema in the family and ds has also escaped these so far. Could be a coincidence?

So what I hope to do is to use a dummy and bottle of expressed milk next time from birth (we waited till 6 weeks as advised and ds refused both)

Quite early on I would like to move to ebm only for night feeds after 11pm and then comfort other ways to resettle at night.

Ebm=expressed breastmilk

My breastfed baby was harder to look after than my bottlefed baby.
I could rarely leave her with others, did all night feeds, never hardly got a break or a good night's sleep till she was weaned at 2. I was exhausted. My bottlefed baby was frequently babysat by doting family, slept through the night, etc.
Fastforward and I have a better relationship with the breastfed baby and we were/are closer. I aso find it easier to connect with her and soothe her.

I often found breastfeeding relaxing and peaceful, once I got the hang of it (which took weeks, I struggled, but was determined to breastfeed my baby). Always slept well, I never had any sleepless nights. I was never tired, even though he woke up next to me every few hours for another supply, it was easy to get back to sleep. No getting up in the middle of the night and messing about with bottles.

Both mine were bf, but I've often wondered if bottle feeding would have been easier. I guess bf is harder in the sense that only you can do it and neither of mine would accept expressed milk, so it was pretty much just me who could feed them.

My mum looked after my DB's baby for her first year and said she thought bottles were way more work. When she had us it was acceptable to make up all your bottles for the day/night and keep them ready in the fridge. She found doing it according to the current guidelines a lot of work.

Bit silly to blame BF for "bad" sleep when BF is the biologically normal way for babies to be fed and so surely if FF babies sleep "better" this is artificially induced.

YANBU although of course people who enjoy bf won't agree with you. I have found FF no more 'faff' than making a cup of tea and it means DH can really help out - in fact he leaps at the chance to feed DD when he gets home from work and we did the night feeds on a rota in the early days. I certainly don't have an immaculate home but FF gives me a bit more control over the feeding process and therefore time to do essentials like empty the bins -- there are a number of household jobs like that DH simply doesn't 'see' that I'd rather get on with while he feeds! I also wanted my body back after 6 years ttc including many treatments, then pregnancy and birth. However, I suspect DD would have slept well however we fed her, as she is quite chilled, but I'd just as rather not be her sole source of food/means of comforting herself to sleep thanks very much! Although tbh if the NHS etc didn't bang on and on about breast is best without any acknowledgment of the difficulties, I might have tried harder.

All the best OP - do what's right for you and try not to compare.

Also FF babies (or at least my one) do know when they're full - they push the bottle out or sit there grinning while the milk dribbles out the sides!

It really doesn't have anything to do with feeding.

I FF DS1 - hideous sleeper, hideous eater. Drove me out of my tree for the first year

I BF DS2 - still not a great sleeper but woke less frequently and slept better, brilliant eater. Did give him a weekly FF and he happily took to both so I could go out, etc. Generally a chilled out little chap for the first year and I had a great time!

Each child is so different. You must try not to compare with your friends. Their future children could still be nightmares and your next one could be blissful!

DS1 was BF, I found it convenient because I always had a feed to hand. He didn't sleep through til about 12 months.
DS2 is adopted (we've had him since birth though), so he was bottle fed. He didn't sleep through til about 16 months.

My house was equally messy with both!

yabu. my ds was exclusively bf until around 3 months. I then introduced ff during the day and eventually stopped bf altogether in the vain hope it would help him sleep longer. He would wake every 1.5-2 hrs day and night. Made no difference what so ever! I was quite sad that I stopped as it made no difference! and at 2.5 yrs now he still wakes in the night most nights.

completely depends in the child no matter how they are fed imho.

I don't think you can generalise like that. Bf babies are harder in that they usually feed more often and tend to have a bit of a make it up as y

I am finding FF DD2 much easier than BF (I BF DD1 to 9 months).

The main things I think are better for me are (a) no cluster feed in the evening, (b) DP and our lovely parents can do the odd feed and (c) I never found BF relaxing or easy...I'm quite an impatient highly strung person, so never mastered feeding lying down and never felt the Zen that some seem to experience with feeding.

I make a big effort to do lots of physical stuff with DD2 like massaging her, baths together, long cuddles in bed to give her the snuggly side of BF.

Sorry pressed post instead of return. Bf babies have more of a make it up as you go along routine. But then you don't have the faff of bottles/powder/water at the right temp/sterilising. Also, a lot depends on the baby, ds was a colicky bottle fed baby who also had reflux and was hard to keep settled and happy until he was 6 months old. Dd1 was a very demanding bf baby, who would feed 2 hourly all night and fed every 1.5 hours And screamed all day. Dd2 is a happy easygoing bf baby who goes 2-3 hours in the day and 4 hours at night and is settled and smiley in between times and sleeps really well wherever she is. I feel like I'm living a dream at the moment she is so easy in comparison to my first two children. (yes I know she will probably be a nightmare toddler!)

I EBF both mine for 6.5 months, except for the first four weeks with dc1 when we struggled to get bf established and he was mixed fed, and went on to bf them for four and a half and three years respectively incl 2y tandem feeding. I dread to think how I would have found it had I FF, tbh. Especially with dc2. I just stuck him in the sling and let him sleep and feed and could then go on long walks/trips etc with dc1.

We co-slept (safely!) and the night feeds were just part of life for me. What did get hard is when they were still waking well into their 2nd year. But that eventually stopped too.

Bf provided instant comfort too. Tbh it often seemed a bit like the path of least resistance. But it was fine that way for all of us.

All babies are different but personally I do think how you feed them has an impact on certain parts of their 'behaviour'. Because bm is so easy to digest I think you do find yourself feeding them more regularily and you do have less time in some ways but that is not the complete picture for me.

Going anywhere with a bf baby is so much easier. We co sleep so a visit to granny involves a few outfits and nappies, no bottles, no steriliser, no formula tins, no cot just off we go. My 2 bottle fed babies were definitely much less healthy than my bf ds. When ever they got sick and it was a lot, I always felt there was more I could have done to prevent them from getting this sick and I felt guilty. I also did not have that catch all answer to parenting that bf offered either. In addition those really cute smiles at the boob made bf something I would have hated to have missed out of.

My early few months of bf were incredibly difficult but it has been all worth while now as he is getting older.

Mine was EBF from 3-6 months (he was mix fed from birth to 3 months) and then re-introduced formula at 6 months). He never fed all day, and mostly stuck to GF's routine himself, even though I fed on demand!

YABU - depends on the baby you get :)

YABU - I ebf 3 babies for 7 months and they were all different but not harder because of the way I fed them.

I used a dummy and strict routine with ds3 and he was pretty easy to look after!

I found breastfeeding to be very demanding too, DS just wanted fed constantly during the day, but he did sleep through the night from a few weeks old though. I switched to formula at about 4 months and did find it much easier as his dad could feed him when he was home rather than only me, but warming bottles and making sure they were ready on time was also a pain.

YABU - all babies are different and it's not just down to the way that they're fed.

Ds was EBF until he was 13 months (introduced to solids at 4 months cos that's what the advice seemed to be at the time ) - but he slept through from two weeks actually too early and had to be woken up to be fed

He was a dream child - we used to say that if/when we had another one (unfortunately I wasn't able to), we'd have to have signs up around the house, "Remember, they're all different"

Ds also used to have a dummy from about 3 weeks to 6 months, as he used to comfort suck on my boobs a lot (rarely had to "break the seal" to get him off). Stopped the dummy at 6 months 'cos I read somewhere that it's easy to do then but then much much harder until they're older, so I didn't want to have a struggle with him.

I've bf for 5 years in total and tandem fed for 2 years so I know a thing or two about breastfeeding but of course not a lot about FF.

I do know babies are pretty hard work for about 6 months but DD1 was particularly demanding and DD2 has been pretty laid back. Both have woken up a lot, one is a good eater, one eats like a sparrow.

Juggling two children of different ages has been the hardest bit for me ( oh and dealing with a toddler first time round).

BF(once I got the hang of it- first two weeks there was a lot of pain, cracked nipples and even some blood) has always been the easy bit

I BF all four of mine. It was hardwork all the way but once I got my head round the fact that it was never going to be easy, I found I accepted it! One year donated to each child for breast feeding may seem like a long time but it really isn't. The second six months is mixed feeding, isn't it. I fed them two hourly day and bloody night but to me, it more than just feeding them. I had to work at it with each child. It never just happened!

I've not done either yet, but from observing friends it does seem like FF babies sleep better, however, like so many people on this thread have said, maybe they just have babies that sleep better.

Either way, I'm just glad that there's a thread about feeding babies that hasn't descended into vitriol and bile.

I'm hoping to BF my baby when it is born, but I'm finding out as much about both kinds of feeding now, and the things that might be challenges so that I'm informed for when the time comes. And if BF doesn't work, I'll learn to FF my baby and be happy that the baby is nourished too.