undecided... introducing 1 bottle of formula a day at 6m

[nannyl]

OK.... can i just run this past people who understand
(sorry its long)

I was / am absolutely determined to EBF DD for the first 6m.... nothing was going to stop me, and nothing has, but i have really found it an up-hill struggle, and have made it 1 month at a time, through various BFing hurdles (with lots of help / support / encouragement from here )

OH gave her 1 bottle of expressed milk at bedtime from about 5 weeks old (when i just couldnt cope with feeding all evening, most of the day and most of the night anymore, and i expressed this feed.

I expressed religiously 3 times a day for 3.5 months (which by the end i HATED with a passion) and as her sleeping was still rubbish, and my 3 expression sessions a day were now not making enough for 1 bottle, and i realised even with my freezer stocks, i would not make it expressing til 6months, I went back to BFing her to sleep. (sleep improved within days)

Quite early on i made the decision that when she was 6m she could have a bed time bottle of formula, and in all honesty i have been counting down the months / weeks / days left since she was about 2months old!

OH always liked doing the bed time feed (whole bath / bed routine) and I liked to have a bit of peace / my time / cook nice dinner etc for an hour or so while he got on with it.

Now DD is 11 days off being 6m....

and I am terribly upset about the idea of giving her formula (which i have been looking at longingly in the cupboard since January, counting down the days etc!)

OH says he doesnt mind me continuing to BF her to sleep.... BUT I know he really liked it and is saying what i want to hear, and early on her always said he wanted to do 1 feed a day. (we stopped due to me not being able to express enough, so he was happy with that, plan being just for a few weeks when he could do a bottle of formula)

Also there are a couple of things I want to do, which start at 7pm so I cant get to if i am BFing her, but can if OH feeds her.
(I really want to go to Zumba with some of my mummy friends, and since Jan I have been saying once she's 6m I can come along.... I WANT to go)

I know i can continue BFing her at bedtime as I do now
I DO want my evenings back.....
I KNOW OH deep down would love to give her that bottle but will not pressure me and will go along with what I decide

BUT for some silly reason i am suddenly having real issue with giving her formula.... which is so silly as i have been counting down since about November!!!

Shall OH give her that 1 feed a day formula as planned?
1 formula bottle a day wont hurt her will it? Ok i know it wont, but im worrying.

As I will still BF all her other feeds she will still have BM for as long as she wants / needs it.

What would anyone here do?

you could think of formula as a complementary food not unlike the solids you will no doubt be giving at 6 months too.

It's just formula. She'll be eating all sorts within a few months. What I'm trying to say is for me it was reading the ingredients list of formula and seeing, for example, fish oil on it. That felt weird when DD was tiny. Now she's 7 months she often eats fish iyswim

Also it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Why can dh give her a bottle some evenings and you feed her others?

It's really up to you, but you don't sound 100% happy with the idea. No one bottle of formula a day woun't kill her but there are risks to giving formula and if your not happy maybe you should do some more reading before making a decision.

www.kellymom.com/nutrition/milk/infant-formula.html#usingformula

You'll be starting solids at six months so you could get your OH involved in this (trust me it's messy). I'm sure he realsied there are other ways he can bond with her like giving her bath time. As for going out is it possible to bring her last feed just a little earlier so you can still go out?

I don't know what I'd do in your situation. I can only tell you what I did in mine.

I gave ebf dd a bottle of formula from 6 months. I really appreciated not being so tied to bfing.

With ds, I wanted to do the same thing but the wee tyke just wouldn't take formula. Ended up bfing for a year. I would've gone on longer because I kept thinking that it made sense to give him what my body was producing. However, I have a serious spinal condition and feeding such a big baby made it worse. I was in a lot of pain. Dh made me realise that stopping wasn't the wrong thing, that I shouldn't feel guilty etc.

So, I can understand your hesitation. However, don't let uncalled for guilt influence your decision.

Nannyl repeat after me..." I am not a bad mother because I decide to give my daughter 1 formula feed a day when baby is 6 months old"!

I completely understand where you're coming from since I've just been battling with myself about whether to give my dd 1 formula feed a day to allow me to have a bit more freedom (like being able to go to a hair appointment without having to spend a good 3 hours beforehand expressing a tiny amount of milk).

After a while I realised that 1 bottle of formula is really not the end of the world. I have many friends who exclusivly formula fed, and their babies are super healthy and seem to have even stronger immune systems than their mothers. I'm sure the occasional bottle of formula won't take away their immunity. My DD is almost 4 months old, and as of 2 weeks ago I've been trying to give her 1 bottle of fomula in a day (not everyday though). She doesn't seem to like any of the powdered stuff though, she only drinks the ready made formula and sometimes rejects the bottle completely and just wants mummy!

I won't give up the other feeds for the world at the moment though. I love bf her.

It sounds to me as if the formula thing would be great for you, and great for your OH. I really don't get the crusade against formula - many, many children (not to mention most adults who are now in our twenties and thirties) have formula from birth - and we are all just fine. Yes, you should be very careful with the hygiene of preparing bottles. But apart from that, formula is just fine.

And in your case, breastmilk will still be forming a very large part of your DD's diet, so I really don't see the problem.

Getting out a few nights a week is not something to feel guity about - if anything, enjoying yourself away from your child will be good for you, her and your OH. Make your decision - but don't feel guilty about it - either way.

thank you all.

Yes I think i am being ridiculous, I know I am

ages ago i figured she would be having cow milk in her food and her night bottle would be extension of her new diet...

perhaps due to fish I might give her fish to eat first, then just go for it?

If she has cow milk in cooking formula cant be any worse than that!!!!

Then i think "only 10 'goodnight' breastfeeds left, and that makes me very very

Seems odd that i have been counting down for so long, and now its finally nearly here, i dont want it anymore!

That's not odd NannL - that's normal. Honestly.

I am going to be the devil's avocado (old joke) here -

The thing is what if giving her formula at bedtime does what EBM at bedtime did? It might not matter for the once or twice a week you are planning to go out (and not deal with her if she doesn't settle) but if you are going to be in the house with her, would you still give the formula even if bfing her helped her sleep better?

Also, if I remember correctly she took something like 9oz of ebm a time which wasn't a big deal because it was ebm, so even if it was a large proportion of her day's milk it was all the same milk IYSWIM.

If she takes 9oz of formula (or more) every day and is having food too, the proportion of her diet that is BM is a lot lower and it may lead to premature cessation of bfing. I may have got you confused with someone else so apologies if I have but I am sure I remember you saying you wanted to do child led/self weaning and let your child decide for themselves when bfing would be over for them. Introducing formula could interfere with that goal (you may have decided you don't want that now and wish to wean to formula gradually over time so I may be talking out of turn). Having a regular night off isn't the end of the world but having a regular feed/s a day off could be the end of bfing if push came to shove.

It won't make you a bad mother though nor do I think you should/shouldn't do this but would you rather no one pointed out the possible drawbacks and just told you it was a fabulous idea? Not helpful for you to make an informed decision (not saying I have helped but hopefully haven't pee-d you off too much)

nannyl, I understand where you are coming from, I felt the same a couple of weeks ago.

My EBM DS had a similar routine with DH giving last feed of expressed milk and me spending a grumpy hour expressing every night. Then he started taking 9oz and my freezer stocks dwindled rapidly, I couldn't keep up... I agonised about introducing formula... tears and all... but in the end I gave mixture formula & EBM for his final feed.

Now I am going back to work (no chance of expressing there) I alternate formula and breast feeds during the day. My DS doesn't seem to care what I give him and he has not appeared to have suffered as a result. Once the decision for change had been made, it seemed easy and natural to use formula. I still express (even though I detest it) and use breast milk on baby porridge and to supplement his formula. Now I get to go to Zumba!

You have given your LO the best possible start in life. Be proud. You have to achieve a balance and allow yourself to have a little time for yourself.

It's formula, not poison. I'm not going to write any more because you're actually making me cross on behalf of those who have no option but to give formula.

its one bottle of formula a day and you wouldnt have to give it to her everyday if you didnt want to :)

bebebelge there is a simple fact about formula which is that it is not the same as breastmilk and it does not contain what breastmilk contains. Formula is not designed for baby humans, but it is a modified version of milk designed for another mammal. Baby humans can thrive on it and be perfectly healthy, but they are less likely to be so. These are facts which are important to understand and not to shy away from. It is also clearly the case that we are incredibly lucky to live in an age where we have formula so that babies whose mothers are neither unable to breastfeed, nor able to access donated human milk can still have a food. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. It does not make formula "poison" but a life-saving product for those who need it.

There are extremely good reasons to not introduce formula when breastmilk is available and to get cross because someone is considering those reasons for their own baby is quite unsupportive.

nannyl given the fact that you have found breastfeeding an uphill struggle I think it makes considering that bottle of formula even more poignant. I think it's a great idea to consider it as a part of the range of complimentary foods that you will be introducing in due course, provided that, as truthsweet points out, you're not displacing breastmilk (because when you start weaning foods are complimentary, not replacements for breastmilk). It is worth trying to find a formula without the added fish oil because a) they've been shown to have no added benefit and b) they've not been shown to be safe. However saying that I suspect that it's unlikely that they would be harmful to a baby of 6 months as the gut is likely to be sealed at that stage anyway, ready for complimentary foods. It is certainly worth sticking with infant formula and not moving to formulas for the over 6 months, no matter the age of your baby.

So a few things to consider:

• Has your baby shown any signs of cow's milk protein intolerance, or dairy allergy (in which case you clearly need to avoid formula at all costs).
• Can you ensure that IF you want to continue to breastfeed that you don't replace significant amounts of breastmilk with formula? To that end, is it worth considering how often you will give it, and how much. You can, of course, just play things by ear and back off with it if you find you need to.

Given your child's age I would feel that these are the two most important factors because you need to be less worried about the virgin gut than with a younger baby, and the body is now getting prepared to receive different types of foods anyway. If you are not displacing breastmilk then she will continue to get sufficient antibodies, and the long chain fatty acids that those blasted fish oils are supposed to replicate but are nothing like them because we cannot yet manufacture them (this is the brain development component).

The risks of one bottle of formula for younger babies are potentially far more serious than for a baby of six months or so. So given her age, if you take out any risk of CMPI or allergy, and ensure that if you want to continue to breastfeed you are not reducing the amount of BM she takes, and of course you take care with cleanliness/sterilising you are really removing the major risks of introducing "just one bottle".

Hopefully this is somewhat reassuring. Please stop saying that you're being ridiculous :) . You are actually asking a very serious and important question.

So then you need to look at how you feel about all this, and compare your concerns about formula with your wish to have "me" time. One thing to consider is, taking formula out of the equation, when mums who have exclusively breastfed start to introduce complimentary foods it's really common to feel quite upset about it, as their baby is no longer entirely "their own work". This can be quite unexpected for mums who have struggled to BF, especially when, as you describe, you've been hanging on in there to open that formula can! Is it possible that this might be part of how you are feeling? ( I know I felt this in spades). It does tend to pass quite quickly.

You sound like that evening time, plus being able to go out to Zumba, etc, is really important to you and so it should be. It is our biology to be sociable, and in our original communities it would be much easier to combine social events with the baby, partly because babies and children tended to be part of social events, and partly because there was always extended family to care for, and if necessary breastfeed the baby. Looking at this as biologically normal shows that it's not selfish, or something that you should feel guilty for! You can enjoy this time and go back refreshed, ready to enjoy your baby even more. Or, you can wait a while and continue to do the night feeds. The choice is yours and either way I hope you work out what is the right choice for you :)

I had issues bf and had togive formula to ds. I agonized over it. He had one bottle from 1week increasing to no bf at 3.5weeks. I felt like a failure, but now i see it really didn't matter that Much. I have a perfect little boy at 20mo, who is much easier to handle than any others i know. He slept through from 5weeks, comforts himself- Im not a human comforter, and was happy o
for anyone to feed him, which made going out and getting babysitter much easier.

Im not in any way saying you shouldn't have bf this long or anything like that, its just my experience. Im just saying formula is definitely a friend not an enemy.

how about just giving formula on zumba day? and see what happens ?

I thought I might share my story and the solution I came up with. At around 6 or 7 months I realised I wanted to go out in the evening every now and then. I tried to express but wasn't really able to and found it not very nice. I then spent days in boots trying to work out what formula not sure how to choose. I struggled to get my feelings about formula in check and was getting quite distressed by it all

What we ended up doing on nights I go out is: I feed DS as close to the time I'm leaving as possible (this is a good thing to do before exersize). While i'm away OH then offers DS water or cows milk from either a bottle or sippy cup. When I get back I might feed DS if he's awake or just feed him when he wakes up.

I don't think one way or another is better just what ever works for you all as a family.

Hi nannyl, can't believe your DD is 6 months already!

I am 2 months ahead of you, and my 8mo DD is breastfed. I don't know what I'd do in your situation, but I can tell you what I did. When DD was 6 months I was still spending ages every evening feeding her to sleep. Gradually, over the past two months, I have cut back on that. Now I do bath and feed at 6pm, leaving me theoretically free from around 6:45 till 10-11pm ish. I say theoretically as DD still takes ages to settle after that, but she just wriggles around and needs some cuddles, so DH could take over (except that she doesn't settle for him, but that's another problem). Plus, bfing in the day has dropped off/sped up, so I no longer feel like I constantly have DD latched on!

Also, you're introducing solids, and your DH could do some of that. He could regularly give her breakfast or dinner?

Anyway, I don't think introducing formula is anything to feel bad about if it works for you and your family. But I just wanted to say that things change with solids and age, and what it's like now is probably nothing like what it'll be like in a month or two.

Is this about breastmilk being healthier than formula as some people believe? Or is this about giving up the breastfeed which is often the loveliest, cuddliest feed of the day? And another sign of your tiny baby growing up?

It doesn't have to be all or nothing does it? One or 2 formula feeds a week and bf the rest. I do a funny pattern of BF/Formula and my body somehow manages to make the right amount of milk at the right time.

Or if your not happy, don't do it! You can change your mind anytime you want (mothers' prerogative!). Your baby, do what's right for you. Just because other people accept formula doesn't mean you have too!

HTH.

"Is this about breastmilk being healthier than formula as some people believe?" Or all the science proves... :)

But otherwise gemma4d is right.

We can all argue the toss about BF/FF/solids etc etc, but surely the most important thing is how nannyl feels about it all.

Nannyl it sounds like the 6 month deadline that you set yourself is putting you under loads of pressure! Especially since you promised friends you would go out in the evenings, DH that he would give the bottle, etc ... and now it feels like you have to follow through on your promise?

So what would happen if you don't make any decision?

You could still introduce that bottle of formula any night you wanted. You could wait until a night when there was something you really wanted to do, then the FF would seem like a positive step. It could be a two-way street - you could FF some nights and BF other nights. Or you could just delay the decision indefinitely, go with the flow and see what happens.

How about that?

thanks for all your advice. I have read it all and been thinking and thinking

boobmeister i think that is what i will do

and yes it IS about me choosing to give DD an inferior bedtime drink.... because at the end of the day it is inferior, but it is still not poison.

Have decided that the night she becomes 6m she wont get formula (unless i change my mind)... and i will take it day by day...

perhaps when she is having cows milk and fish as part of her diet i will think differently about formula (i think her consuming these things anyway WILL make a difference to how i feel about her drinking formula), but will do it when i feel its right.

My other issues are, if the bed time feed is the last one to go, then swapping that feed to formula will lead to earlier than planned stopping of BF-ing.... but then its highly likely to be irrelevant if i have another HG pregnancy (which is being planned) and need anti-emetics again...

Perhaps formula the nights I want to go out, and BF's the other night will be a good way forward?
and if she sleeps a bit better, it might be good incentive to do formula other nights too.

We will see

Thank you all for your help /advice / perspective.

and waves to squirrel, how time has flown by..... remember when were waiting to TTC!!!!!!!

Sounds like a good plan, Nanny.

Although I don't think you mean you're planning an HG pregnancy . But seriously, good luck with TTC and good luck with the HG - I truly hope that you are lucky enough to avoid it next time :(

LOL..... not planning a HG pregnancy...... (just expecting it, but really really really hoping to avoid HG next time!!!! )

anti-emetics can be given alongside continuing bfing - cyclizine is given to bfing mothers (I have had it myself) and it can be given for HG too. There may be other, more suitable meds that could be prescribed though - I only have experience of bfing a 6m and having cyclizine for non-HG reasons. Perhaps checking with the BfN's Drugs in Breastmilk Helpline might help.

Mind you, you may well not feel up to bfing if you have HG and no one would blame you if you stopped in that case. Anecdotally it seems that bfing can have a dampening effect on morning sickness - as usual Kellymom has info here

really?

I discussed this with my GP last week, and she said I cant take cycizine while BFing. (i took it throughout my whole pregnancy last time)...... and if BFing can help relieve sickness id like to try.... would try anything

I wonder how i could BF while really dehydrated though?.... (had to have a drip last time)