Allergic to powder formula but not ready made?

[Cookethenook]

I'm feeling so bummed out today. My friend worked out how much we are spending on pre-made aptamil formula and it's about £50 a week :( ds2 is only 9 weeks old!I knew it was expensive, but I didn't realise it was that much!

This is the problem, DS gets terrible constipation when he has powdered formula. I have no idea what it could be in the powder (or possibly our water) that could be causing it, but even one bottle makes him really bunged up and uncomfortable for days.

When I stopped expressing (was expressing all the time and getting hardly any milk, it was taking up my entire day and wasn't practicle) at 3 weeks, we moved him onto powdered. After a few days we twigged what it was and moved him onto pre-made, hoping we could eventually 'wean' him off it by giving him 1 bottle of powdered a day and then increasing it. Last week we tried it and the constipation was back after just one bottle.

This is made worse by the fact that DS has 8-9 6 or more oz feeds a day.

Has anyone has experience if this? Any suggestions at all on how to combat it would be welcome. Obviously I don't want to make him uncomfortable, but we only spend £20 week more on our groceries for 3 people!

Should we perhaps try different brands of formula? Water it down? I have no idea!! The health visitor is awful and isn't really prepared to talk about ffing on depth. I don't really trust her advice anyway.

Please help!

If the ready made is better for him comfort wise, I'd stick with it.

We just used ready made formula until DS turned one. (Purely for convenience really). It worked out a little cheaper to buy the big 1 ltr bottles than lots of the 250ml cartons.

Also when DS turned 6 months we moved onto the follow on milk, as the advertising rules are different to first stage milk, and we could often get it for 3 for 2 in boots, or collect nectar points from Sainsburys.

I have no idea what could be causing the problem as I would assume powdered and ready made formula of the same make would have identical ingredients?

Perhaps the ready made is heat treated and maybe that makes a difference?

Could you make up the powdered with slightly less powder than recommended ? Perhaps that would reduce the concentration and relieve constipation but it might reduce the nutrients in the milk too so I am not sure if you could (maybe ask your gp about doing this).

It does sound like a lot of money to be spending, maybe a different brand of powdered formula would be better, one of the 'comfort' milks perhaps a sthey are deisned to ease constipation.

designed

I know with SMA, powdered is vegetarian, but ready made isn't (or maybe the other way round?).

Does Aptamil have a contact number on the side of the pack? Could be worth asking them what the difference is.

Aptamil do a baby milk that's specifically for colic and constipation! I don't know if this would be worth trying. It's slightly more exspensive than a normal tub of powdered milk but totally worth it if it work for baby. X

Oh really peazly, that's interesting because we're vegetarians and couldn't find a powder that was (damn fish oil!). Although if it was the fish oil, he'd have a reaction to the ready made aptamil too, as I think it's fishy as well.

Have you tried hipp organic powder? I know that it contains less caking agents. A friend uses it after her baby got dreadful colic and constipation on aptamil.

Please don't water it down. This is really dangerous.

I would definitely try different brands - perhaps if you have any friends who FF using powder you could ask to try a bottle made up of their brand to save having to buy a whole tub.

I think Hipp comes in sachets, though - might be worth a try? IIRC it's the only one which is vegetarian as well.

SMA comfort milk has been a godsend for my nephew, he was in terrible discomfort with normal formula and my sister tried him on this and he is absolutely fine.