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??

I EBF my now 7 month old baby for 6 months.

She slept through from 6 weeks from 10pm to 7am and after the first few weeks fed quickly about every three hours. She has been a dream baby. My house is very tidy, everything is well organised and when people come round they always ask how I manage it (and fit in work as I'm self employed and average about 21 hours a week at present).

I think it depends so much on the individual baby. Far easier to breast feed than prepare bottles and sterilize everything. It's a myth that all breast fed babies don't sleep through the night! By all means FF if you want to but if you want to BF (and there are plenty of benefits) then don't let the thought of constant feeding and lack of sleep put you off!

Now she is onto solids it is much harder. I wish I was brave enough to do BLW but that's a whole new topic.

Maninawomensworld - I suspect that your BF friends being stressed out is more because of their personalities than their feeding choices.

I have friends who did BF, friends who did FF, and didn't notice the BFers being any more stressed. My most laid back friend BF all 3 of her kids (and did manage to go out without them from time to time).

Far easier to breast feed than prepare bottles and sterilize everything

Only if breastfeeding is going well. If the breastfeeding mother is in pain / exhausted or the baby is failing to thrive, I think it's far from easy.

Manin - I suspect that the reason that your friends are having a nightmare time is everything to do with them as parents and little to do with feeding method- fwiw I have found that militant bf types who look down their noses at bottle feeders tend to be the ones with clingy whiney babies and will be the very ones still complaining about how hard it all is when child is way past the baby stage ; whereas those mums whether bf of ff,who take a rather less dogmatic approach to parenting seem to have an easier time of it:)

I totally agree with you op
I've ebf 7 babies of varying temperaments and think twould have been so much better if bottle fed but then I also suffer from d mer