To be shocked at the price of formula milk?

[Souredstones]

It's been 9 years since I was last pregnant and this time round I'm not going to attempt breast feeding because for my previous pregnancies I produced no milk and wasn't able to feed them. So I'm not stressing out I'm going straight in for the formula. I have medical reasons for doing so.

I get that they've put the price up to deter formula feeding. I know why. I agree breast is best. But from what I saw today it's now a sneeze under £10 a tin.

I'm lucky we can afford it, but what if you're on the threshold of not receiving help and find yourself, as I did, unable to bf even with the full intentions of bfing and being unable to afford this price.

Is there a reason it's doubled in price in the last decade? Have production techniques changed that much?

What about those who are unable to breastfeed for other reasons?

YABU. All commercially produced food is extortionate these days. I don't see why babies would get a free meal ticket.

LOL at the idea that it's expensive to 'encourage breast feeding'.

That's the last thing formula manufacturers want to encourage...!

They want you to formula feed and they want you spend as much as they can possibly get away with wringing out of you, so as to line their big fat pockets to kingdom come and back.

parkin2010 Sun 07-Jul-13 21:36:16
Willowisp how patronising is that?

Precisely what I thought.

I also failed to bf as I didn't produce any milk. Even the midwives at the breast feeding clinic admitted that DS 'stripped me of milk' then fell asleep as he had no reason to feed as there wasn't anything there. Turns out I had an under active thyroid but didn't get diagnosed until a year later. DS is allergic to dairy and on prescription formula now anyway.

I resent anyone that thinks they have the right to tell someone they should have tried harder. Piss off.

Audrina you made me do a LOL. That baby's so young I can still see a thin sheen of vernix on its head.

I BF and think I probably spend almost as much on cake as I would on formula. Cake for me, not baby, that is. I need those extra calories! So not sure it is much cheaper (although I am slim and eat cake so woo).

Yep, I can really see this capitalist Tory government funding cheap formula for the families on low incomes to help feed their babies.

Ha at vernix

When I was feeding DS who wouldn't touch any other milk for a year, I kept KitKats in my bedside drawer and inhaled them at night, I was so hungry. Stayed slim but that will end up costing a fortune in dental fees. And they are made by Nestle. I'm a crap BF nazi

YANBU to be shocked at the cost.
It is a disgrace, but as others have said, they charge the highest price they can pay, to sell the maximum number of packs, to generate the most profit.
The marketing spend / budget for the likes of Danone is astronomical.

I think FM is only available on prescription in Sweden (I may be wrong) maybe that's the way to go and then nobody would have to pay for it.

Anyway is £10/£12 a week really a lot to feed your child? It'll cost you a lot more when they start eating real food.

when the twins were born I assumed I would bf them as I had with my DD, and had no idea about the cost of fomula .... both dt's had very bad toungue tie and we had zero support in trying to help them feed. In the hospital there was a bf support worker but she spent 2 hours with the woman in the bed oppersite us ignoring us and our plees for help despite me and the babies trying and failing to get them feeding.

The hospital insisted they went onto 'top up' fomula .. even at BF clinics and we went to quite a few we were told they wont feed and we should just ff.

we spent £80 - £100 a month just on fomula for the first year, and every time I bought a tin I always felt I had failed my boys as I really wanted to feed them :(

Applauds MiaowTheCat

I think FM is only available on prescription in Sweden (I may be wrong) maybe that's the way to go and then nobody would have to pay for it.

It's available in the supermarket, just like in the UK.

WestieMamma - I am rather enjoying your posts, as the Nordic countries are always touted on here as magical havens filled with breastfeeding mothers. Very interesting to hear this isn't quite the case.

Are the people saying it will cost more when they eat real food ignoring my post about feeding 3 people on £15 a week right now? I had to cut back on our food as we just don't have the money for more but it costs that to feed baby alone.

I still watch UK tv and see the Nordic countries being touted as some sort of heaven on earth. It makes me laugh as the reality is often very, very different.

Like the tories at the moment aspiring to have an education system like the Swedish one which is apparently so much better, what with all the privately run state schools and the top grades children get. What they don't seem to notice, or choose to ignore, is that children are graded by their teachers not by national exams. There are only national exams in maths, Swedish and English but even then teachers have the discretion to adjust the grades if they don't match with what they think the child should have got. The Daily Mail would implode if they tried to bring that in in the UK. :o

Although to be fair, I do see a lot more breastfeeding mothers when out and about here than I did in the UK. But it really isn't everyone.

I would have loved to have BF, but I had pre-eclampsia with each pregnancy, resulting in organ failure, emergency c-sections, premature babies and then blood pressure that gave me postnatal pre-eclampsia and required medication that wasn't safe to breast feed on to save my life... so despite weeks of expressing I still couldn't breast feed...

It's pretty amazing that anyone could believe that 'they've put the price up to deter formula feeding'.

The companies are in it for profit. The profit margins on formula are huge.

All food is expensive these days, not just formula. The price of everything has gone up. Should the govt also make govt-produced bread and sell it cheaper than supermarkets? After all, there aren't many ingredients and it isn't hard to make.

Ok. Take your example of bread. Imagine that the bread manufacturers got together and decided that they would set their price at between £6 and £7 a loaf. Even though the cost of making it was 15p.

I can only imagine that the OP got confused about the 'no promotion' rule for formula made for babies under 6 months. That only means they can't discount it from it's usual price, offer BOGOFs or give reward vouchers (Tesco clubcard points, nectar points, Boots points). It has nothing to do with that usual price that the manufacturers choose to sell it at.

I just can't get aerated about it when a) 95% of babies don't need it so for the majority who buy it it's a discretionary spend; b) people on low incomes get help towards the cost of it and everyone else earning less than £50k gets child benefit as an income top-up anyway; and c) that's how capitalism works. I don't much like it but there are other things about capitalism that I absolutely despise that actually cause massive inequality and hardship, and no-one seems to give a damn about them.