To suggest that ff babies are generally more content than breastfed babies?

[mrsb26]

...because they are fuller for longer?

Following on from an article I read recently regarding a study that suggested that of its recipients, the ff babies were generally deemed to be more calm, easy to settle to sleep etc than breastfed babies.

I know this is bound to be a taboo subject, but I must say, as a breastfeeding mother myself to a 4 month old dd, I have considered whether she'd be more satisfied on formula. She's not the easiest of babies and, to me, seems fussier and more demanding than her formula fed peers.

For example, she is really hard to settle to sleep for naps. She will sometimes feed to sleep, but not always (I know this is a debate on itself). I have never been to the shops or out for a walk for half an hour without her fussing (even if it's just for a little bit). She will sit on my knee or go to someone else for five minutes tops before fussing and starting to cry.

I'm not doubting the benefits of the quality of breastmilk, obviously. I guess I just feel like I'm filling up a tank that's emptying as quick as it's filling^^ and that she's never fully satisfied. I know breastmilk is digested quicker, but still.

She has no issues re: reflux, tongue tie or anything either.

Of course there are behavioural differences amongst all babies, but as a general rule, what is your opinion? Interested to hear from anyone who has perhaps breastfed one baby and formula fed another.

Fatty wouldn't the baby just be sick?

Mine pushes the bottle out when he's had enough:

Yeah mine pushes it out too.
I presume they would be sick, just like if an adult ate too much.

I got accused of "over feeding" when he had reflux until they figured out that was why he was sick, so I'm assuming that's what happens

There are guidelines bambini but all health visitors that ive met encourage feeding on demand as babies know what they need. No one these days would advocate leaving a hungry baby to cry for food.
The only time I've had the mathematics whipped out on me was when dd dropped from the 91st to the 50th centile quite rapidly at around 5mo. In this case they were checking she was being offered enough, not worrying about over feeding, and when they determined that she was they didn't say any more about it

I got accused of overfeeding because DS feeds a lot. And she said i had to leave him to cry as he wasnt really hungry. Then when he was weighed, because he had dropped ever so slightly below the 98th centile she told me i wasn't feeding him enough!

I'd like to know how leaving him hungry would help though. If She wants me to do that she can bloody well deal with him.

Fatty my DS is similar but it's complicated by he refuses bottles because of reflux but is extremely hungry and wants to take an 8oz. Im happy when he takes enough and doesn't throw up

I've never had to deal with reflux. They were all a bit colicky as newborns but that sorted itself pretty quickly.

All of mine have been hungry babies. They are also very active and bottle fed so the whole "formula makes them sleep" makes me want to offer up my children so they can test that theory (and I get to sleep at night for once!)

DS1 didn't sleep through the night until he was 4.

Fatty they're all different aren't they! Aside from reflux DS is chilled nd sleeps through all night and has slept for 6-8 hour stretches from about 7 weeks.

Do you want to swap for a night? Mine doesn't sleep for very long at all.

Fatty youll end up covered in sick though!

I can handle sick! If we are swapping babies though, I have 2. So you get a 2 for 1 deal.
I have DD who is nearly 2 but she usually sleeps. She's a good baby, she slept through (11-6) pretty much immediately. She only wakes when she's ill.

Meh.

I do get a bit when people try and claim that there is no difference between breast milk and formula. Of course breast milk is better - it is specifically designed for a baby, and has evolved over thousands of years to be optimum for a human infant. Formula is powdered cows milk with stuff added. It is how much better breast milk is that is the question.

I teach 7 year olds. There is no way I could line them up and tell you which ones were breastfed, and furthermore No. One. Cares.

When there is a child who is average in the class, we don't think 'ah well, they could have reached a B3 if only they had been breastfed'.

When a child gets 100% attendance because they are never ill we don't say 'ah yes, that'll be because he was breastfed'.

In the grand scheme of things it just doesn't matter. How you feed your tiny baby is just one of the hundreds of decisions you will make for them, and one that really makes little difference in the long term. I think its so emotive because its the 'first' decision you make for them, and also its a happening at a time when you are already emotional and very.vulnerable.

I think comparing it to vaccinations also doesn't really work. Vaccinating your child doesn't just lower the risk of your child.becoming ill (as breastfeeding does) it almost.completely eradicates the risk of.your.child (and everyone else's child if everyone does.it) catching diseases which can be life threatening, and which, years ago, killed people on a regular basis. Breastfeeding can't do that, and yet often the most staunch anti vaxers are.also very.pro breastfeeding.

Dixie definitely not shopping! I have enough thank you

Toby's mum - the 5 or so extra IQ points you might have got from being fed on human milk could have resulted in you being able to understand what the research on IQ development and infant feeding suggests, and why the possible impact of infant feeding will always be indiscernible at an individual level.

What utter shite. You can't tell me it's not noticeable at individual level but that it makes difference to an individual of 5 points. I mean rofl. I obviously started at a much much higher point

"You can't tell me it's not noticeable at individual level but that it makes difference to an individual of 5 points."

At an individual level the only way you might be able to see what impact breastfeeding might have across a whole range of outcomes would be to fully breastfeed your child for 6 months, taking careful notes of every episode of illness, weigh and measure your child weekly, have their brain MRI scanned, and tracked their health over a lifetime. Then you would have to in a time machine with them, go back to the day they were born and do it all again but this time formula feed, while doing everything else exactly the same.

In other words you can't perceive at an individual the impact your choices have on your child. This would also be true of smoking in pregnancy, and feeding your children a completely and utterly shit weaning diet. You can't SEE the difference it makes because you have no 'control' with which to compare it.

That doesn't mean that there IS no difference.

Which is why these threads are always such a pile of pointless bollox.

Does

"I teach 7 year olds. There is no way I could line them up and tell you which ones were breastfed, and furthermore No. One. Cares."

Nor indeed can you tell which ones had mothers who smoked all the way through pregnancy.

So should nobody care about that either?

If you can't see, it doesn't count?

The NHS, UNICEF, the RCM, the RCM, the American Academy of Paediatrics, the WHO, says it matters, even in developed countries, that it keeps many babies out of hospital and GP's surgeries, and saves some lives - both mothers and babies.

I'll put my faith in their opinion, rather than the opinion of some random on the internet whose main aim is to engage in a popularity contest.

scan

.., and for those of you who think that it doesn't make much difference how a baby is fed, how do you account for the fact that researchers can now actually identify how a baby is fed using MRI scans of their brains?

This research was done at Brown University in the US:

"Researchers looked at 133 babies, between the ages of 10 months to four years, from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. The babies were divided into three groups: exclusively breastfed for at least three months, fed breast milk and formula, and fed formula alone.
They performed baby-friendly MRI scans to capture the images of the brain at different ages and compared the older infants to the younger babies to follow white matter growth, which is the development of the tissue that helps different nerves from various parts of the brain communicate.
The team essentially found that exclusively breastfed infants had the fastest growth of the myelinated white matter, with the volume of matter reaching a significant amount by the age of two, while both breastfed and formula-fed babies also showed more growth than infants that consumed formula alone."

Well, I've read the recent study from Goldsmiths (Stumm and Plomin, September 2015) which concludes:

In a large sample of British children from TEDS, girls who had been breastfed had a slight advantage in early life cognitive ability after adjusting for covariates; however, the effect was statistically very weak and not significant in boys. Furthermore, breastfeeding was not associated with IQ gains from early life through adolescence for both boys and girls. One might understand these findings to support the notion that breastfeeding has nutritional benefits for intelligence in the first few years of life given that breastfeeding was slightly associated with early life intelligence but not with later cognitive growth. However because the observed effects were weak and at best modest, we interpret the findings as evidence for the lack of any benefits of breastfeeding on cognitive development from early life through adolescence.

Sophie von Stumm was quoted by The Telegraph as saying:

It’s almost an accusation these days that [by not breastfeeding] you’re purposely harming your child. That’s not the case, and it’s not helpful for new mothers. Kids do lots of things that have an influence on IQ. Breast-feeding has no effect that can be distinguished from family background or socioeconomic status.

I think that sums it up quite nicely.

mini is right but I certainly don't think any mother who doesn't manage to breastfeed should beat herself up over it. Theonly reason the cow's milk feeders get in such a state on these threads is they know breastfeeding is better so that kind of hurts their soul but they shouldn't let it get to them. There are plenty of other ways to benefit a child.

However in more general terms the UK has really bad low breastfeeding rates and that is terrible. We need to improve those rates if we can for the good of babies.

SquirrelledAway I thought that the NHS summary had an interesting sentence in their explanation of the TEDS study:

"the children in the study, 62% were breastfed for an average of four months."

I'd like to know a lot more about any possible dose effect - does breastfeeding for longer than 4 months (eg 1 yr, 2yrs) have any more effect? Perhaps the study covers that already? An average of 4 months seems like some may not have breastfed for very long - how much breastfeeding was considered to be a breastfed baby?

No, parents who have used formula defend themselves on these threads because smug arseholes tell them that they don't care about their children, they are selfish, they are detached from their babies, they are lazy, I could go on.