aibu to love this blog post about why formula feeding is brilliant?!

[girlwithasecretsmile]

I think it's great to have a post talking about good things about formula for once but part of me feels bad for laughing so much.

passmethebottleblog.wordpress.com/

Besides, having formula (or other cow's milk) after you've started solid foods is not quite the same as it being one of the first foods that a baby ingests.

Unless you are going to bf until school age all babies end up drinking formula Anyway.

Wrong.

Why would you think that.

DC who are breastfed to a year will drink breastmilk and then add cow's milk to their diet at 1.

I was determined to BF. The message that breast is best had got through loud and clear. Anything else would have been failing my baby AFAIwasC.
And I did it x 2 DC. But both times the first 2 months were awful. AWFUL. I still shudder at how miserable, confused, pained etc. Iwas.

DC1 fed constantly, for c1 hr at a time, I was feeding 20hrs a day. No advice/support. Useless hv. It was utterly miserable.How i didn't totally lose my mind, i have no idea. By 2/3 months, all was well, and I went on to bf until DC self weaned at 12m.

It was all going to be so different with DC2. But i had the opposite problem. DS just didn't feed, slept constantly, and lost shed loads of weight. I had mastitis many times. I ended up mix feeding at the suggestion of another crap hv. Again no bf support. I went on to mix feed til 11m, and was sad when DS stopped bf.

I fully support bf. I loved c75% of my bf experience. But it was a DARK time for the first few months. Not a wonderful experience. As much as I eventually loved bf, I sometimes wish I'd ff, and I 100% understand why people do. And tbh MN can be shockingly unsupportive of negative experiences to bf.

Nomoreangst
So sorry you had that. I was so lucky with my HV and I know it's not been the same experience for other people.

in hospital however, those were my dark days.

DrKrogersfavouritepatient ok cows mild. Formula/cows milk. Tomato/tomato.
Meaning babies will end up drink milk anyway unless you bf until school age

Milk*

Are you saying that it's only worth breastfeeding if you wean your child onto a dairy-free diet? Because that's a rather nice opinion. Why do you hold it?

NerrSnerr you are hindering your child. Why would you want to avoid certain milks. 1 and 2 are still babies IMO and still need milk beyond that.

GreenDay - because her child is allergic to cows' milk, which is a pretty good reason to restrict it. And the specialist formula for cpma is pretty disgusting and expensive, so avoiding it if possible seems like a good idea.

Greenday we avoided cows milk because she was allergic to it! That's what CMPA is. She was breastfed and had soya milk up until age 2 (dietitian recommended) and she finally grew out of the allergy before she was 3 so she's now back on cows milk. No hindering here!

NerrSnerr ahhh ok. Apologies I haven't read the thread

No worries

I don't believe that makes much sense tbh. If one looks at the process for the manufacture of infant formula there's nothing that makes me, for one, want to ask for a peer reviewed paper about the appropriateness of giving human milk to human babies.

Sure, if I'd said anything about judging the appropriateness of giving human milk to human babies. Nice straw man, though. Exactly the sort of bullshit that prevents reasonable discussions about this issue.

I was responding to a poster who was saying you didn't need an evidence base to compare the relative benefits/disbenefits of breastmilk and formula because it's milk for 'a completely different species' and therefore it was 'bloody obvious'.

You can tell I was responding to that poster because I quoted them.

Risks / benefits on a social level don't always, of course, map across to individuals. People can smoke 40 a day and somehow not get lung cancer; others get horrific cancers despite eating organic mung beans all their life.

Sorry I wasn't really clear: I mean social as in, eg, how others react to a breastfeeding mother, which is as much part of the cost/benefit analysis as physical factors. So basically, changing the culture so women who choose to breastfeed get less criticism, unhelpful comments, whatever (and if we could stop those sort of comments for all women who formula feed too, that'd be ace).

I didn't mean on a societal/population level, which is frankly pretty irrelevant to individual women when making these choices - I certainly didn't think 'I must keep feeding to drive up Britain's breastfeeding rates!'

Fed is best. And yes, having breastfeeding rammed down my throat (pardon the pun) made me feel bloody awful.

Can't believe this thread is still going. It really saddens me to see women go back and forth to prove a point when clearly neither side will change their opinion.

We should be raising each other up not judging each other. Just because you ff doesn't mean you are better / worse than if you bf. the same for bf you are no better / worse mother than someone who ff. We are all doing our fucking best.

If you do either of these types of feeding you may do other things that people think isn't good like food, screen time, play time, reading, emotional support etc. So where does the judgement end? What is the point of the judgment? Is it just to make ourselves feel better about ourselves?

As a relatively new first time mother who has previously mentioned my own experience I have found motherhood fucking hard but I love it too. It's not a competition as to having a pain free labour, how you feed, if you do attachment parenting, use a sling etc.

I'm right in the thick of a relatively new baby who doesn't have much support and I find it hard sometimes. To people who find it easy - good for you but maybe show empathy and compassion for people who don't. We don't know what anyone has gone through in life to pass judgement.

Let's just support each other. Please

Why can't people just accept other peoples choices? No need to do snipy blogs so yabu op.
Fwiw when I had my first I didn't even have the internet. I wanted to breastfeed mainly because I am a tight cow. obviously I was also aware of the other benefits.
I had a Dd by crash section. She was fine but it was traumatic. Support for breastfeeding was crap. I was told I was starving her and she was jaundiced so she needs formula. No test was done to say this.
By the time I left hospital I was Formula feeding her.
I felt guilty but I was never meant to feel bad for formula feeding.
Baby number two came two years later. She breastfed with no problems. I gave up at 8. Months. Again no-one criticised my choice.
Cut baby number 3. Breastfeeding was a disaster at the start. I was home and I knew it wasn't going well but the relief midwife didn't even bother to weigh her. The next day we were readmitted to hospital. The nurse who admitted Dd3 was a complete bitch. She basically said Dd3 was only here because starved her and breastfeeding wasn't best. She also withheld access to a breast pump. I really should have reported her. A week of mixed feeding sorted her.
5 years later Dd,3 still has breastmilk at bedtime. I don't do it in public or tell anyone as Once she was six months I have had she doesn't need that from all angles. My family, doctors but mainly in-laws.
So just do what's right for your family.

I feel like the whole Breast feeding vs formula feeding is a debate where everyone likes to thro anecdotes, evidence and opinions around but at the heart of it is the fact that women like to attack other women. Motherhood is hard enough, we don't have to make it even harder by turning and judging each other!! If we ALL (and I mean all) stopped and realised that by being mothers we already have something precious and irreplaceable and we don't need to tear into each other, we'd all be happier and have more friends..

It's not about attacking each other. It's just that trying to make out that formula is better than human breast milk is stupid. I don't care if you breastfeed or not but I do care if you claim that formula is the same or better because it's so obviously not.

@ArgyMargy yes this infuriates me too.

The products are not the same. If people - regardless of how they feed their babies - just acknowledged that with no superiority of resentment, then the debate would focus far more on ways to mutually support and affirm the reasons behind choices and more importantly conserve emotional energy to invest in lobbying improvements in systems and cultures that fail us as mothers.

Breast milk depends on the diet of mother
Breast milk can transfer cortisol to baby if mother is stressed
Baby has to take vitamin d supplements with breast milk
No difference in outcome if bf or ff

In my opinion, formula IS better.

you do not need to maintain a perfect diet in order to provide quality milk for your baby. In fact, research tells us that the quality of a mother’s diet has little influence on her milk. Nature is very forgiving – mother’s milk is designed to provide for and protect baby even in times of hardship and famine. A poor diet is more likely to affect the mother than her breastfed baby.

Breast milk depends on the diet of mother

You can't peddle untruths and expect them to go unchallenged.

Also, the cortisol one is another.