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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to be annoyed when people describe making up bottles as "faffing around"

140 replies

shuffle · 21/01/2009 02:54

It takes 5 mins! You have to follow similar process when expressing (never referred to as faffing around).

OP posts:
Doodle2U · 21/01/2009 08:43

I agree with OP. It isn't faffing and doesn't have to take an age.

tittybangbang · 21/01/2009 08:43

I'm a dirty cow around the house and found the idea passing on germs to my newborn when I was mixed feeding a worry. I washed my hands so much when making up bottles that I gave myself dermatitis, which has never gone away.

I went back to exclusive bf by about 9 weeks and never used formula again - with my first or with the two babies who followed. So much easier in every way. You don't have to think or calculate, or work out how much your baby has had, or when you fed. You just allow reasonable access to boobs and baby sorts it all out for you.

BF is definitely the way to go for slutty, disorganised women.

TheNinkynork · 21/01/2009 08:46

Well if you don't even have to get up from MNing to give your toddler a drink because he climbs up and whips a boob out for you, it is a huge non-faff

He has bottles when we go out and I find that even pouring ready-made milk into them and washing them afterwards a bit too much like hard work. Is there a laziest MNer contest?

sarah293 · 21/01/2009 08:48

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

ScottishMummy · 21/01/2009 08:52

but faff is such a good word so descriptive of any footerie task

badassfeline · 21/01/2009 08:59

I find making bottles Fafftacular. Prefer to rip the lid off a carton of ready-made stuff, although the sterilizing and bottle washing is epic faff.

However, I am with you MrsMattie when say you found bf exhausting and difficult.

Natt82 · 21/01/2009 09:05

I dont find any of it a faff - have breast fed and formula fed and dont find either easier than the other in all honesty - they both have their faff points and their good points!

I wash my bottles with my normal washing up every evening (just do them first) and chuck them in a big tub of milton. Then I make a cup of tea - about 30 mins pass with me drinking that, and when I take the mug out I fill the rest of the water into the sterilised bottles. Then they're ready for the next day. He's only on 1 bottle a day now, but when he was on more I'd just measure out the milk powder into those containers whilst waiting for the kettle to boil. It wasnt a faff at all - especially as he didnt have his warmed when drinking. It just fitted into our rotuine easy.

Calling it a faff doesnt annoy me as much as people moaning about FF/bottles or BF when they havent done both - can you honestly have an opinion on which is easier etc without having done both??

blueshoes · 21/01/2009 09:14

It is a complete faff if you have babies that feed little and often. The amount to make up for each feed, the wastage, too hot, too cold, washing, sterilising, putting away, taking out again, making up night feeds, going out with bottle/formula paraphanelia, possetting, worrying about formula going bad ...

Bubbaluv · 21/01/2009 09:24

faff reduction thread

Possibly the most bumped thread ever on mumsnet, but if it reduces faff then I'm converted!

macaco · 21/01/2009 09:25

I'm with MrsMattie. BFing for me was never "whipping out a boob", I wish it had been. For me it meant bent double trying to get a teeny (2kg at birth) baby to open his mouth enough to get the nipple in. On the rare occasion when he did (with me dripping all over him in the meantime) he'd manage 2 sucks and pull off or cry or fall asleep or all of the above. I couldn't relax even on the rare occasions he did latch on as the slightest movement on my part seemed to make him latch off so I was sitting in a totally uncomfortable position unable to move. The he started to twist and pulling off without letting the nipple go first. After 2 months of this every 2 or 3 hours I couldn't hack it any more and as he'd always had formula too (from in hospital) we descended into FF.
It makes me really when people go on about whipping out a boob...ooh it's soooo easy, why do you bother with FF

chancelloroftheexCHEQUERS · 21/01/2009 09:26

I seem to remember faffing around with breastfeeding for the first three months. She fed all the time! Formula feeding would have been far less time consuming.

TheNinkynork · 21/01/2009 09:34

Breastfeeding DD was a huge faff for me too macaco. I just couldn't get the hang of any other position but the rugby-ball one. It killed my back, was impossible to do discreetly whilst out and she was on formula by eight weeks

As a previous poster said, perhaps you need to have had different experiences in order to compare. I FF and BF, but within the latter I had both an hard and an easy time. DS was a dream and of course I had MN by then.

Actually I think there must be no faff quite like expressing for a premature baby, or multiples. Women who manage that are just incredible IMO.

FAQtothefuture · 21/01/2009 09:52

I've come to the conclusion it's all faffing, making up bottles, feeding babies (which ever way you do it - and I've done both), changing nappies

It's all a faff

macaco · 21/01/2009 09:52

Well I think I am well qualified in faff then as DS was early (36 weeks, so not hugely so but it made things harder) so as I said before the BF was a nightmare, I was trying to express to have some nip stimulation as he wasn't really feeding and i didn't want to lose supply AND he's been put on formula in hospital and as he wasn't really feeding AT ALL, no latching on, for about a week and was only 2kg. So I had the worst of all worlds and I can say the FF was by far the least faff of all that. Looking back I'm amazed I even mixed fed til 8 weeks.

pamelat · 21/01/2009 09:56

Never thought of it as faffing, unlike expressing which was a complete failure.

Breast feeding is obviously more straight forward (unless there are problems). I breast fed and then formula fed for 5 months and personally found formula feeding less of a phaff on the whole (mainly because I did not have to be involved at 2am! )

I followed all of the bottle making guidelines but wont be doing next time round. I did not realise that no one else did!

Egg · 21/01/2009 09:58

Believe me, when you have newborn bottle fed twins who are feeding every 2-3 hours making up bottles, and more to the point washing and sterilising the damn things is a PITA.

Expressing is more of a PITA though, as I did that a lot for DS1, usually at 3am.

tittybangbang · 21/01/2009 10:10

"Calling it a faff doesnt annoy me as much as people moaning about FF/bottles or BF when they havent done both - can you honestly have an opinion on which is easier etc without having done both??"

I think most women who have bf for more than a few weeks have also at some point given bottles.

But lots of women who ff haven't also experienced non-problematic breastfeeding. I personally think that breastfeeding which is 'working' properly is almost always going to be easier than ff.

I think trying to compare ff and bf for ease is a bit pointless, when most women in this country who bf are doing the equivalent of making up bottles in an unlit room with loads of people standing round jogging their elbows and giving conflicting information on how to do it.

And shouldn't it be 'pfaffing around'?

Deemented · 21/01/2009 10:14

I dunn. Having expressed for 6 months for ds - he was 12 weeks early and the lazy bugger just wouldn't latch on, preferring to let it drip into his mouth - and then moving onto formula for him, and now exclusively bf dd, i think it's infinately less faff to bf, yep, it does confine me somewhat, but i'd rather sit on me arse on the couch for two hours of an evening then be stood by the sink washing, rinsing, sterilizing, making up bottles, traipsing downstairs in the night...

no5 · 21/01/2009 10:16

never heard of faffing around before.

pamelat · 21/01/2009 10:16

For me, I was lucky that breastfeeding was do-able and not painful but I found it emotionally draining and would often cry and looking back I wonder whether it depressed me a bit.

FAQtothefuture · 21/01/2009 10:19

tbb - I bf DS1 for 14 months (he never took a bottle........lots of lovingly expressed milk thrown away grrr) and I found that just as much of a faff as FFing DS2 LOL.

Not to mention that before we got to the "shove the bottles in the dishwasher and don't bother sterlising" stage so I was still handwashing the bottles it took me infinitely shorter time to wash, and bung in the sterliser in the microwave than the time that DS1 used to feed for

tittybangbang · 21/01/2009 10:24

I suppose it depends on how you breastfeed. I did it on the run, in a sling etc half the time so was able to get on with things while feeding my dc's.

whoingodsnameami · 21/01/2009 10:24

The worst thing about making up bottles was losing count of how many scoops of formular you had put in, so you have to start all over again.

beansmum · 21/01/2009 10:26

Sometimes when I tell people how long I bf for I feel like I have to blame my laziness or something, so they don't think I am saying bf is better than ff and suggesting that they are a crap mother. That's the only time I would mention the faff of bottles. And actually I have no idea if they are a faff or not, never used them, so you are probably not being unreasonable.

BouncingTartan · 21/01/2009 10:30

'BF is definitely the way to go for slutty, disorganised women.'

That would be me

'BF had me tied to the sofa/bed for hours and hours so which part of this was better?'

This was me too... though I thought it was great... used the time to catch up on reading and watching DVDs!

I think the bread analogy is a good one. I'm a prepacked bread person.

Cloth nappies are a faff, but I like sitting on the sofa and putting them together, stuffing the pockets, folding my prefolds ready to go to wraps and making neat little piles.