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??

Bf my two. One was a clingy, non stop, non sleeping nightmare ... And the other wasn't.

I do think it makes it harder esp. if the baby won't take the bottle, as it's all on the mum then. Also as BF babies comfort suck, feed to sleep etc. it is not just feeding for nutrition and it does sometimes feel like a dark pit - I have never felt lonelier and more down than in the middle of the night feeds or spending hours in the bedroom of an evening with DD cluster feeding and trying to get her to sleep.

I felt completely shattered and after 13 months I was sooo happy to get my body back to myself, especially after 9 months of pregnancy as well. I do think bf affects you both mentally and physically although I'm sure that if you want to Bf and are unable to, there are also mental and emotional issues to tackle. However for me there are many issues intertwined and for those reasons, I would bf again if I have another but not as long and not exclusively. Interestingly DD always refused the bottle with EBM but eventually took it with formula so next time I would try that first.

For me it's how time consuming it can be, especially having a toddler as well. Ds4 8 weeks does take a bottle though and has since a couple of days old.

Dp gives it him at night so I can go in the bath in peace. I still spend most of the afternoon/ early evening cluster feeding though and about an hour after he has the bottle I feed him again and put him to bed.

Luckily he's only waking up once in the night now ( most of the time) so it's not as bad as in the beginning when he was feeding every hour and a half

Hi

I havnt read posts. I bottle fed ds1 and bf ds 2.

I must admit bottle feeding is easier. I found u can hand over feeding to someone else, easily have a day off from baby for some mummy time, they go longer between feeds, I was more likely to let ds1 cry as knew he wasnt hungry as I knew how much milk he had taken.

My bottle baby slept through at 2 months where my bf baby it was 7 months after some sleep training - basically he was weaning so knew he wasnt hungry.

I did use a dummy after 3 weeks with my bf baby otherwise I wouldnt have kept bf as he was really sucky baby.

Moomins - yes, I forgot to add that. With a 19 month old DD1 when DD2 was born, I did not have the luxury of sitting on a sofa all day to breastfeed. I felt much more capable, able and safe looking after both girls using bottle rather than breastfeeding.

I think a lot depends on the individual baby. FF certainly doesn't guarantee sleeping through the night.

DSis formula fed both her babies - DN1 didn't sleep through until he was almost a year old. DN2 is about 3 months old now, so too young to tell really, but according to DSis, he hasn't managed to sleep for more than 3 hours in a row yet.

I think some babies are just poor sleepers, regardless of how they're fed.

I BF my ds for 2 weeks. Latched on great, suckled away. BUT my god did not stop crying for boob. You never know how much milk they are getting. Honestly better off with formula. At least you know where you are and it fills the baby up. If it was bad for the baby it would not be on the markt. Make life easier for yourself. My ds is 12 yrs old and 'touch wood' is very healthy. Ignore the breast is best brigade. Happy mum is a happy baby. Good luck. There are plenty of good formulas out on the market.

You could look at though as a very tiny part of your babies life. Does it really matter if they are demanding? We are so obsessed with babies that 'fit in'.

YANBU: If I have another one I will use a mixture of bf and bottles. There is so much pressure to exclusively feeding though.

excusive breast feeding I meant.

My 6 month old has been breastfeed since day 0, never had a bottle or formula and she's slept like a dream from about 2 weeks old, wakes up once or twice for a 10 minute feed then back to sleep until 7 or 8am.
She's a very easy, content baby in general so it's nothing to do with the feeding method.

I switched to bottles after 2 weeks as DD just couldn't get the hang of latching on properly. She also had a dummy.

My DD was colicky, woke at least twice a night for the first six months and was a dubious sleeper until last year (she's 8.6 now!).

They are all different - you may have a totally different experience with bf your new DD.

my BF/FF vomited loads all the time, my EBF has been sick about four times in total since birth ( 6 months ago), I have not had to use any muslins with her at all or bibs!
She is also a brilliant sleeper but we co sleep with side car cot.

all babies are different.

i am finding BF easy except for when out and about. Now she could hold a bottle, if she starts crying and we are mid way somewhere, i cant do anything about it - whereas if she took bottle, i could hand it too her.

Girloutnumbered

I agree, with DD1 I panicked and tried to " apply" things to her, even baby whisper books makes you panic, with DD2 I follow her lead, and it just feels right. I feel much more connected to her.

I follow her lead and she has slept through since a few weeks old, its been easier and better - for "me".

The only people I have seen stressing are those trying to force the baby to go down etc when they simply do not want too. My baby just naturally falls asleep at 8pm. If I tried to force her to go at 7pm there would be problems!

I am a bit at your post villagebird. I accept your view that ffing is easier, but don't think it's helpful to ignore the fact that bfing is the healthier option. Why fool yourself? I say that as someone who has both bf and ff at different times btw.
Babies want to suck, it's natural. My parents were determined I woudn't have a dummy, but I was also fed every 4 hours. I was a thumb sucker until my teens, which I think is probably linked to that.
At the beginning, they do feel like they are permanently attached. It is hard. Learning to feed in a sling is helpful I think, but there are no easy solutions. As one poster said, it is a very short time out of your life, though it doesn't feel like that!

Hmm, villagebird, I really can't agree with anything you have said. And if there was one banal phrase that I could ban the use of it would be "a happy mum is a happy baby". It is meaningless and is used to back up any and all parenting decisions whether good, bad or indifferent!

Interesting.
Leave out the rights and wrongs of BF vs fomula and it is pretty clear that BF is a total pain.

We have several friends who are real militant breastfeeders, they really look down their noses at those who bottle feed. However, they're the most stressed bunch of mothers ever, really uptight, always knackered and don't really seem to have anything resembling a life away from their babies. One's marriage is also on the rocks as a result of the stress as the baby (now about 3 yrs old) is totally unable to spend any time away from her mother - even a couple of hours is a problem so the couple haven't had a night out or anything in 3 YEARS.

Time will tell if the sacrifice was worth it for them but neither my wife or I were BF and we're both Doctors so it's done us no harm.
I know what we'll be doing when our 1st is born soon!

And several years on far weightier issues really make the bfing obsession look a tad ridiculous.

If I could turn back time I'd have switched to formula far earlier.Those first few weeks I spent years battling for are just a memory of misery and agony.Not sure I spent much time enjoying any of them as my heart sank every time they wanted a feed.

Given all the parenting choices further down the line such as getting 5 or 10 (I heard was actually what it should be)a day into them,banning processed meat,screen time,getting enough fresh air and exercise,going back to work,school choice,how to discipline effectively,how to parent effectively.......... bfing turns into small stuff not to be sweated over.

I don't see how you have drawn that conclusion maninawomansworld? The previous posters have had a variety of opinions. I don't agree that the weight of opinion is that BF is more hassle than formula.

Has it occurred to you that BF might have nothing to do with how these mothers that you know parent their children? For all you know they could have been the same or worse if they had FF. You are making large assumptions about the cause of their issues.

FWIW it is perfectly possible to leave a BF baby for more than an hour. I recently went to work for the day leaving my 8mo with his GPs. He was absolutely fine. I have also been out with my DH of an evening, several times.

Babies (and parents) are all different. How they respond to each other us based on many more complex aspects than simply if they are BF or FF.

But that's to do with the parents' character and not the fact that the breastfeed

Despite the fact that ds took 7 weeks to regain birthweight and we had issues inbetweentimes (which included me being re-admitted with a nasty infection and needing IV ABs) and ending up for a while expressing and giving every 2nd feed as EBM, we were still relaxed and went with the flow.

Ds slept like a dream and was a relaxed and happy baby (actually, too relaxed as we had to wake him until we were confident with his weight gain :))

When I switched from breast to formula, it was easier in that my twins drank a bottle far, far quicker than it took to breastfeed them. 10 minutes compared with a good hour and a half of messing about. But it didn't make any difference to their feeding pattern. They didn't go any longer between feeds, didn't magically sleep through the night. I suspect a FF baby who sleeps through would have done the same on breastmilk.

I leave my bf 9wo with my mother one afternoon a week so I can go ride my horse. Dh also does a night feed 3x a week, and mil is coming to stay this weekend and I'm planning a meal out with dh. I don't feel particularly tied, other than expressing so she can have a bottle. Im tired most days, but not to the point where i cant enjoy myself and function normally, probably because the night feeds consist of change nappy, lift top, latch on, fall asleep, wake up, latch off, put baby down in sleeping place. If I don't express enough for when im out she can have formula, it's not poison. Technically I suppose I'm mixed feeding. She settles without me fine and takes a bottle fine, long may that continue (appreciate not all bf babies are like this, but then that's kind of the point of this thread, all babies are different, bf or ff there's no hard or fast rule)

I haven't read the whole thread so ignore me if you've moved on or I'm just repeating!

I've got 5DC, soon to be 6. I have BF all of them. They have all been different. Some slept through from 4 weeks, one didn't sleep day or night until 10months! 2DC were only BF for 3 months due to other issues so I switched to formula. In my personal experience I can honestly say BF has been SO much easier than FF.

I don't think you can generalise as every baby is totally different and whatever you find works for you and your baby, just go with it.

Missed a couple of the posts where it was claimed that it wasn't possible to leave a bf baby eg with grandparents even for short periods.

FWIW - dh and I went out for a meal when ds was less than a month old, leaving EBM for him, we went skiing when he was 4 months old and left him with a nanny during the day (leaving EBM and also going back at lunch time), I went back to work f/t when he was 4.5 months old (and left EBM for him) and when he was 6 months old, went away again for 8 days and left 8 days worth of EBM for him () and expressed while I was away.

Again, all babies are different - I was fortunate in that ds took to EBM, which meant I was able to continue to bf until he was 13 months old (nothing like the convenience of breastfeeding when a plane is delayed taking off and we then spend two hour on the tarmac ) - not all bf babies are that good at taking a bottle.

Maninawomensworld have you looked at any of the evidence around the benefits of breastmilk. To blithely state you and dw are both doctors therefore bottle feeding is just as good really beggars belief.

Apart from anything else much of the beneficial effects of breastmilk are around maturity onset conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cvs disease which I am guessing wouldn't be relevant to you or dw yet. Breastmilk is stuffed full of probiotics and antibodies. I am that a fellow hcp should have your attitude. You may also find once the baby arrives your wife wants to bf.