Support for those FF

[galonthefarm]

Not sure if this is the best description for a thread, but basically just somewhere for anyone who is FF who did not set out to do so - to chat to others about it, as there are so many feelings involved (yes, including guilt and also relief!)

My dd (5.5 months) is now exclusively bottle fed, using up supplies of frozen ebm once a day until its gone. She was 5 weeks early and we were advised to top up from the beginning so she put on weight. Now a very chubby 15 lb plus!

There are so many different stories I've heard from friends and on here, and I think it is so important to realise you are not alone in how you feel. I don't get on here much but thought would start the ball rolling! x

my ds is nearlly 5 now, but I remember the agonies I went through before I switched to ff. I remember feeling like I wanted someone to give me permission - I had no real problems, he latched I had loads of milk, but he was a very slow feeder. I just felt so isolated at night, he was a big baby and I just couldn't get comfy, I felt as though I would never be able to go out unless I took half the sofa cusions with me! I just hated it, which made me feel even more guilt!

However I had to epiphany type moments, once when I was changing his nappy, and I suddenly thought 'I'm the mom, I get to decide what's best for him'. And then once when I was washing up and looking out at the yard, and I thought 'when he's 3 and playing out there with scabs on his knees and snot on his sleeves, I'm not going to look at him and think 'oh I wish I'd bf!'
In the end it was the best decision i've ever made, I loved bottle feeding him, so did dh, it felt right and we never looked back. And it's true, it is something I never think about now; too busy worrying about nearly 5 yr old stuff now!

two epiphany not to, obviously! that'll teach me to preview

we switched from Advent bottles to TT CTN because of wind issues and haven't looked back. We would spend forever trying to help her get her wind up/out.

She has pretty much grown out of it now (19 weeks) but we found letting her have some tummy time after a feed helped work the wind through. She produced some pretty spectacular farts that made her daddy proud.

We also starting making her bottles up with camomile tea. A friend of mine is a natrupath and recommended we give it a try. Honestly it was like a miracle. She was burping and farting so much easier.

We use two teabags per litre of hot water. I make up her bottles for the day in one go and while the bottles are sterilising I pour the hot boiled water into a jug and put two teabags in to steep. By the time the bottles are sterile the tea has steeped and i just pour the tea in and then add the formula.

Apparently using camomile tea for wind and colic is practically an institution in south America.

wow im really glad there are more people like me out there! thot i was the only one!
i spent the whole pregnancy with people just checking i was going to breast feed and being handed breast fed best fed enough said things like it was a competition. so its no surprise that people not only want to breast feed but think badly of bottle feeding! then when it doesnt work you feel like your failing. the midwives at the hospital i was forced to stay in for days and days were so mean and treated me like a lump of meat - waking me without speaking to me grabbing at my breasts and exposing me to the ward. needles to say i had pnd - my kid is 4 now im still shaky thinking of it!

I'm at all this man-handling going on - how bloody rude! Maybe I was just lucky, but my mw/nurses always said "do you mind if... ?".

HI my ds is 8.5 months and i mix fed from about 12 weeks i think.....best decision i ever made! He is a whopper......28lbs already, 10lb 11ozs at birth! I am still doing a bf each day.....first thing in a morning so i dont have to get my lazy ass out of bed. if i hadnt mix fed i would have given up completely earlier on as he was so big and so damn hungry!

LOVELY THREAD AND A MUCH NEEDED ONE!!!

I am ready to stop bf now as ds has teeth and has bit me every day for last week!!!!

Wouldn't it be nice if health visitors could offer evidence based advice about the constituents of different formulas. Also about how the make up the stuff and sterilise for the first time. Having really struggled to breast feed and having carried on through two bouts of mastitis and a breast abscess until first son was eight weeks old such sensible advice would have been so much more helpful than "breastfeeding mothers put their babies first, bottle feeding mothers put themselves first". There really is no need or place for such guilt trips from those who should be sufficiently experienced and trained to know better. BF is great if it works for mother and baby and both are happy. If one or the other is unhappy then the infinitesimal benefits of BF are surely outweighed at what can be an indescribably difficult time. I would have loved BF to have been a success but for all mummy's who are struggling breast feeding is a very small part of parenting and if it doesn't work your baby isn't going to remember when he or she is 18. With love to all who are struggling with feeding and struggling for sound advice from those who are paid to provide it. First son is now nearly 15 - prop forward, v bright and really well balanced. Does he care that BF was a disaster - not a bit!! Is he less intelligent than the fully breast fed babes -not at all (just chosen latin and greek as GCSE options). Was he more allergy ridden than other children - well perhaps a bit but his little sister was successfully BF for a whole year and also had asthma and eczema which I believe are more genetically related than BF related!!

Hi again, still loving the thread, re health visitors and advice re making up formula, sterilising etc, when I had dd1 my hv ran through procedures for making up bottles, being safe etc, after dd2 was born hv did the same, double checking that I knew advice re making up and storing formula had changed. As I mentioned in an earlier post am pregnant with dc3 and midwife at 10 week booking appt had reassured me that I would be supported however I fed this baby. Maybe I have been really lucky, have had slightly different experiences in hospital but nothing that a well timed glare and a stern piss off look hasn't sorted out . Am in NI if that makes a difference.

Good god onceamai! she didnt say that to you did she???

Certainly did Sugar Plum and that's what then ricocheted me into six months of avoidable pnd. There was a plus point though, I found out about HV's and discovered that in reality they have the right only to offer a visit - families don't have to accept them.

I'm wondering if there's actually anything inherently "wrong" with mothers putting themselves first. Seriously, I don't want my "Martyr Medal". I'm loving being a mum - but I'd like to think there's more to me than what I can grow in my uterus.

LOL Skihorse, i was saying much the same thing to my mother just this morning. Mummy martyrs are the new black it seems to me sometimes.

Onceamai - i suppose it is too late to report the HV for those comments? So sorry that you had to put up with that kind of attitude.

hello all you lovely FF mummies - quick question for you.

Best formula?

I was using Aptamil for DS but got caught short at my FIL (car broke down) and had to stay the night. Could only get SMA Gold at the local tesco, so carried on regardless thinking all would be well... And also thinking, TBH this is good - it's a bit cheaper. But since we swapped DS had no poo for a whole 24 hours and after a very distressing few attempts this eve passed what can only be described as green/black clay. Poor baby!!

So I was wondering, is Aptamil worth the extra few quid? Are any other formulas kind to tummies? He's only 6 weeks on Thurs so still very tiny. I don't want to mess him around with lots of swapping and changing, but we are on a ridiculously tight budget (DH about to start uni) so rather than just panicking and reverting to Aptamil, which is as far as I can tell, the pricyest on the market, I thought I'd tap into your collective wisdom... Clearly, if the advice is Aptamil knocks socks off the rest, I'll stick with it. DS comes first! But advice is v welcome!

thanks

hello nina. I seem to remember hearing a few times that Aptamil and Cow & Gate (which is cheaper) are essentially the same formula, just differently branded. They're both owened by the same parent company, anyway. My first daughter was formula fed and I changed her from Aptamil to Cow & Gate with no ill-effects at all, and her poos were much the same.

Hi Nina, I used SMA Gold for both my dds and really liked it, never had any tummy troubles, wee man may have just had poo problems because of the intial change and should be ok if you decide to stick with SMA. Funny enough I only chose SMA because all my local shops carried it and I didn't drive at the time!! Good luck

the poo was probably caused by changing the forumla, not by the formula itself if you see what i mean.

Most babies have some kind of intestinal problem when they are switched from one brand to another. You will probably find that if you keep him on the SMA his bowel movements will return to normal.

HTH.

nina As sugarplum says, it's my understanding too that it's the chopping and changing which is problematic rather than the formula itself.

If you're on a budget, sign up for Boots/Superdrug/Aptamil newsletters for deals and vouchers. E.g., right now when I buy at Dutch boots I get vouchers which can be exchanged for jars... am stockpiling!

unfortunately the vouchers you get from the formula companies/boots/baby clubs etc are only for follow on and toddler milk. they are not allowed to incentivise (sp?) you to buy first milks.

You dont even get boots points when you buy forumla there. very very annoying.

Hello again

I spoke to my DS dietician and she said I could try DS on any formula once I decided to introduce formula, not just nutriprem which is what he was originally prescribed. As he point blank refuses to take that, even mixed with express breast milk any ideas what to do next? has anyone else had a baby refuse formula when they will take a bottle if it contains breast milk. How did you get round this. I'm back at work in two months so need a solution before then and at the moment it looks like that solution is going to be pumping even if I don't want to!

Really? That makes me want to roll my eyes about 1000 times! Did you see the thing on AIBU yesterday about a summer fete somewhere where the kids who were bf got given pencils...

SkihorseWonAWean same here. Apparently people wouldnt be able to tell that the first milks were offered at a sale price and might decide to switch to forumla based on the discounted price. Basically we are all idiots apparently and must be coddled and looked after.

and yes i saw that thread and had to walk away. absolutely insane.

Hilda what ratio are you mixing the forumla to BM? it might be you need to start out with really small amounts of forumla and build it up really slow.

Alternatively it might be the brand of the particular formula. Maybe get a range of ready to serve cartons and try him on them.

haha - yes "I started using formula so I could collect Boots points to exchange for a bottle of Head & Shoulders"!

Hilda - when you mix it, what ratio are you doing? Try doing literally 90% EBM and 10% formula, then the following day 80/20 etc... it wil be a pain in expressing fr a few days but hopefully he'll get there.

Great thread! I wish it had been here when I had to stop BF. And the post about hospital (sorry forgot who said it) brought it all flooding back - that 3 hourly treadmill of BF, watch as paed nurse gave DS a mix of my pitiful amounts of EBM + formula, 20 minutes of the milking machine producing tiny amounts of milk which then had to be sucked up drop by drop with a syringe, wash the pump and pop in steriliser, try to grab sleep before next time round. And the worry as DS's weight went into free-fall below the bottom of the weight chart at about 6 weeks, and the delusional period when I desparately looked for the WHO breast-fed weight charts in some sort of crazy "maybe he won't look malnourished according to those" sort of way. Then crying for a week when I finally had to stop, while DS gulped down formula with a look of amazement ("coo, this is what a full stomach feels like") and relief.

So, breast may be best, but formula is better than starvation, cracked and bleeding nipples, PND, etc. And to those who say on about "only a tiny percent can't" (as if bleeding nipples, PND, etc. weren't good reasons) - remember that 1 to 2% probably means that the average maternity unit gets about 2 or 3 women in this category a week.

And to those of you going through all this just now, big, un-MN-y hugs.

Hi, I've been mixing 75% ebm 25% formula, I'll try increasing it next time I try. I'm currently working on fixing sleep a bit so maybe only change one thing at a time. But despite the fact I have full hospital support due to DS' premminess and was given loads of info on bottlefeeding when we were discharged they are rubbish at helping me to switch 6 months later. It's like noone had ever done this before