help with the practical positives and negatives of formula feeding

[KnackeredMerrily]

I'm currently breastfeeding my week old but we are struggling with putting weight on and jaundice.

I've been here before with my first son, and the first months of his life with feeding him 20 times a day and expressing top up feeds. The idea of doing it again makes me want to curl up into a ball and weep.

But, I've never gone through the practicalities of formula feeding either. What is it like? How do you make feeds up in advance? Is it a fiddle travelling with bottles and keeping them warm and wondering how much they've had? Is one formula better than another?

I am well aware of the benefits of breastfeeding so I don't need to hear that slant. I'm just wondering what the day to day life is like when FF

You can get insulated bottle bags that keep cold bottles chilled, or take a clean sterilised bottle and a carton of ready made formula?

If you use Dr brown bottles, buy the travel caps!! I use the screw travel caps when preparing the formula so you can shake the bottle well, sadly they are not provided with the bottles. For weeks we were making a right mess lol

Oh and I have always made 4-6 bottles in advance and leave in fridge and walk in microwave for 30 secs before use! I take a bottle up to my room for overnight feed, my ds is 9 months and seems to be doing ok

I formula fed all 4 of my babies. They thrived on it. Very good sleepers, never had Colic, just happy babies. I can't remember the last time any of my children went to the doctors, never been ill at all. So it can't be bad. I don't care what anybody says as long as my babies r happy n healthy is all that matters, I'm almost 32wks with no.5 and will b bottle feeding. I will b using a cold water steriliser this time, and a Tommee Tipee bottle prep machine, it looks ace!

I did try breast feeding tho, managed a week with Dd1 but got Mastitis that put me off, and tried with other 3 babies, it's just not for me, takes too long, haven't got all day to fiddle about with all.

I BF for 14 months but we still used the occasional bottle of formula, e.g. if we were going somewhere where I wouldn't be able to feed her (I wasn't that keen on bf in public because of my OWN issues, I could only do it in a few places and around certain people I felt comfortable with) so we would sometimes get the pre-made cartons.

I'm just always amazed that people will spend more time reading buggy reviews and the instructions that come with them than they will finding out how to safely prepare the sole food product that their baby may be eating every single day for the first (and most vulnerable) few months of their lives.

Seriously - the advice is all there on NHS Choices.

I'll link again:
here

"Yes for compromised babies as I said in my post. Or premmies".

And normal term babies under 8 weeks - like the OP's baby.

My practical advice is to bankrupt yourself and buy ready made bottles.

I would love to know how "common sense" helps you detect bacteria in powdered formula.

Fwiw I fed my ds with formula mixed with room temp water from when he was 4 weeks old and he was fine, as the majority of babies will be. I won't be having any more babies, but my theoretical future ff babies would be given ready made formula (if I could afford it) or I would use my common sense and follow the basic safety recommendations.

Formula feeding isn't a faff really and using a perfect prep machine takes a lot of stress out of it. I FF from the beginning but also expressed so there was some breast milk going for a while. Lots of benefits from formula feeding - for me the main one was that other people could feed DD whilst I caught up with sleep. Not something to be forgotten or ignored!

"Fwiw I fed my ds with formula mixed with room temp water from when he was 4 weeks old and he was fine, as the majority of babies will be."

As were the vast majority of babies put to sleep on their fronts, before the recommendations on reducing SIDS risk by putting babies to sleep on their backs.

You don't see many people here telling mothers they can ignore safe sleeping advice on the basis that 'I did it and my baby was fine!' though.

I recently switched to ff for similar reasons. Just gave a bottle at night at first, which works great for some. I still wasn't coping with feed length and frequency, and baby still not doing any dirty nappies (was still first month), so switched to full ff after a week of both.

My baby (6 weeks) now feeds every 2 hours during day and every 3 at night, so a big improvement on bf. We were keen to still feed on demand which is hard with current advice to prepare bottles as you go, so I'd recommend the Tommee Tippee Perfect Prep machine if you can find the cash. Before we got it, I'd bf baby while waiting for bottle to cool, but no use when my husband's doing feeds.

I use Aptamil on hospital advice that it is closest to breast milk, but not sure how true that is. SMA gave my niece very bad reflux, but suspect that's baby-specific. Have read good reviews of HIPP Organic.

Have found ff when out easier than bf because feed times vaguely predictable and feeds far less long. I use the cartons when out to minimize worries about feed being sterile, and take a flask of boiling water and a bowl to warm bottle through in case a cafe gets all anal about health and safety and won't give me a bowl of water.

I like cold water sterilization using Milton - throw stuff in the bucket and you're done. Steam sterilization appealed because 'chemical'-free, but hospital told us it didn't kill thrush (which baby now has anyway, mind you).

Biggest advantage has been sleep! DH recently did all feeds on a Friday night and 8 hours was amazing! Plus I can now make eye contact with baby during feeds rather than baby just staring at my boob, and I have more time to interact with a (happy) baby.

I FF 3 ,2 of them from birth. I had an electric steriliser and made up 4-6 bottles for the day. I used cow and gate. It used to take about 10 minutes to do the whole thing.
Advantages - each baby quickly fell into their own routine, I never had to sit on the settee cluster feeding ,no sore nipples or leaky boobs, other people could feed ,etc etc.
Disadvantages - I didn't really find any, except for having to get up during the night to get and warm the bottle, but all my babies slept from 12-6 by 5 weeks old, so I didn't have to do it for very long.
Being honest, there probably was the odd occassion where the bottle wasn't immediately ready and the baby had to wait for a few minutes. If you like to feed at the 1st 'whimper', immediately on demand, so to speak, then I would bear that in mind.

"I use Aptamil on hospital advice that it is closest to breast milk, but not sure how true that is. "

It's completely non-evidence based and midwives have no business telling this to parents.

Can I point out that you're not going to get a clear picture of how the practicalities of ff compare with bf, if you base your assumptions about what breastfeeding is like on the first few weeks when a) you are still just getting going and b) when you are not getting expert help to resolve your breastfeeding problems.

It's like comparing a holiday in Greece with a holiday in Italy, despite having never got further than leaving the airport in Greece.

;-)

Useful thread. I didn't know about the perfect prep machine. Agree with others re: convenience of just using the Milton sterilising tablets (in a big plastic box with a lid) rather than a machine.

I bf DS1 (with some mix feeding) but expecting DS2 after Christmas and considering ff this time, and will certainly be mix feeding to some extent from the start.

Totally agree about the convenience of the ready-made bottles/cartons, especially if you are only using formula for once a day or so. They are super easy (though expensive) and if you have a baby, like DS1 was, who doesn't mind them at room temperature you don't even have to worry about heating them up.

Bottles should be made up with recently boiled, very hot water then cooled. I mix fed and when DS was small we would make the bottles "to order" as they can be kept completely safely in the fridge for two hours and that's as long as he'd ever go between needing them! As he got older I might make two at a time and leave one in the fridge for a couple of hours. We always had cartons for middle of the night and out and about, so just needed sterilised bottles and the carton as DS was fine with it room temperature. We had a steam steriliser (for the microwave) that was fantastic, just took 4 minutes.
In practical terms being out and about for me was a million times easier ff. I never felt comfortable bf in public so spent hours in various nursing rooms if we'd been out for a bit and my boobs got full. bf also took me ages whereas ds would have a bottle quite quickly. I think a lot of the "faff" has been removed by the availability of cartons. You can also get back to non bf friendly clothes. Partner/mum etc can help out with night feeds
Practically speaking bf is (usually/often) cheaper- the cartons do not come cheap. It was easier in the middle of the night to get a boob out rather than get/make up/pay for a carton (though not as easy as rolling over to OH and say "your turn" on a Saturday when I stopped bf!!). If your baby has refux or for whatever reason needs comfort milk, it does not come in ready made cartons so you do have to have hot water etc when you go out.

Root OP has bf before, she's asking for advice on the practicalities of formula feeding, not trying to compare and contrast bf and ff.

Just to add a different perspective on this issue - comparing what breastfeeding is like when it's working well and you're past the first few weeks:

• availability: no need to get up or even sit up in the night to feed.
• no need to plan or make any preparations when you go out for a day/holiday
• barely woke up to feed in the night and went back to sleep immediately (yay for prolactin) so didn't get over tired
• no paranoia about making up a feed wrong and making my baby sick
• no need to calculate how much baby is feeding - if you can't see you can't worry about it, as long as baby is putting on weight
• no cost (I got by without needing feeding clothes, pads or bras)
• can feed anywhere
• less constipation (exclusively breastfed)
• no one taking over feeding the baby so you can do stuff which is less enjoyable, like cleaning.

"not trying to compare and contrast bf and ff."

Oh well, sue me.

Just to be a bit more relevant in that case, on the subject of whether one formula is better than another:

There is no standardised independent testing of formula comparing brands. Therefore you can't know which one is best tolerated by the largest number of babies.

All formulas have to have the ingredients proven to be important for growth and development of babies in them BY LAW.

If a HP tells you that one formula is 'closest to breastmilk' then you can generally assume they've been got at by formula company reps.

With regard to which formula-they're all the same so no one is "better" than the other. Anecdotally some mums prefer one over the other but this has to be trial and error. We tried the cheapest one that they also sold at our local shop!

Root try reading the OP?

"I am well aware of the benefits of breastfeeding so I don't need to hear that slant."

This is a "tell me about the practicalities of ff" not a "beat me over the head about bf" thread.

BTW, I never had any paranoia about making up formula, or worried about how much the baby was feeding, so I think that's a couple to scrub off your list.

And you can scrub the last ond off your list as well. Yes you can do cleaning, you can also do lots of other things that are more enjoyable .

Root your posts aren't relevant to the thread and are quite condescending.

Hi Rootandbranch, it sounds like it never did get better for OP before, even after the first few weeks - that's why she's posting in the first place. She's asking whether ff is easier than ongoing tricky breastfeeding. (And it's assuming the worst of people to think people have not sought specialist help: e.g. I was re-admitted to hospital to get specialist help with bf probs and saw more than 10 different bf counsellors and midwives. Their advice was directly conflicting. I ended up so severely sleep-deprived that I was admitted to a psychiatric ward. It's not always as simple as pushing through to when it's easier.) And as for cost, breast pumps, fenugreek capsules, feeding cups and syringes all add up.