Bottle Feeders!

[ChipsnDips]

Am I the only one who gets narked wth all these comments about bottle feeding being totally wrong and that we are making our children obese and unhealthy. My little boy is 19 months and is very happy and healthy little chap... he has been exclusively bottlefed since birth.

Just fed up of people thinking they are better parents than me because they feed themselves. Wanted other peoples take on this.

bless you mrsjc for noticing my little whine at the bottom there...

i really do think that there is a degree of seperatism going on. particularly on weaning advice websites i feel that if you are BFing then there is an assumption that you subscribe to a pro-child manifesto whereas if you FF then you are pro-convenience for the parent. rubbish, i know. and totally upsetting if you've tried your hardest to BF and it's not worked out. (as much as anything else, it's nonsense because having done both i can say that the FFing is a monumental fanny-about).

with regards to the BLW in particular, they say 'if you are FF ask your health professional before embarking on BLW' which i did. of course my HV advised against it cos she told me the baby would choke. (i ignored HV. the baby is thriving.)

i'm quite sure if BFing mums asked the average under-informed HV about BLW they would be told the same thing, so what's the big deal about FF? why do we have to double-check with someone who we barely know? do we FFers have no maternal instincts, did we lose them when we picked up the bottle?

also i have seen it said that FF-ed babies are less likely to be able to regulate their appetites because they are encouraged to finish up every last drop. again, rubbish. i mix-fed for over four months and it would have been competely counter-intuitive to insist on the baby finishing up the bottle.

the advice i received was to make up a good couple of ounces more than had been historically necessary so that the child can stop drinking when they are replete. we waste a lot of aptamil this way but i can't imagine doing anything else.

oh i could go on and on... i do find it depressing and i do think the pendulum has swung too far... breast is best, but not everyone can do it - for a zillion different reasons. nevertheless, we still want to take care of our children and not be excluded from new and interesting ways to promote our childrens' health, and we deserve to be supported for it, not abandoned for having 'failed' at the first hurdle.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, rant over. aaand relax, aitch.

Aitch, I agree with what you say to a large extent - I know a lot of ffeeding mums who lovingly prepare homemade food because they didn't bfeed - one I know said "I might not have been able to bfeed, but I can cook". It doesn't automatically follow that because you ffeed you give junk food and because you bfeed you never do, not at all.

And just because you ffeed doesn't mean you can't BLW - there's just not been the research done that there has with bfeeding, largely because Gill Rapley started out with seeing how it works with bfed babies, because it seemed an obvious way of weaning them (their feeding is baby-led from birth in a way that bottlefeeding never can be IMO - I'll try to explain what I mean if that's taken the wrong way btw).

But I'm afraid I don't wholly agree with you saying it's rubbish that ffed babies aren't able to regulate their appetite because they're encoraged to finish every last drop. I KNOW not every ffeeding mum does this, and I'm not saying you did, but I have seen it happen ("go on, darling, just a bit more, come on, you can finish it, ohh, clever girl!") and then the same when weaning ("Oh, look, it's all gone now, aren't you a brilliant girl, eating all your dinner!").

okay, hunker, banged to rights - not 'rubbish' exactly, but it really wasn't the advice i received. plus in the book i used, by some chap called christopher green i think, he definitely says to throw away a good quarter of every feed.

i wonder if the advice on how to FF successfully is changing (perhaps in light of the appetite/obesity issues?) but it is taking people a while to catch up? thinking about it, i was so bummed out to be FFing that i tried to keep it as close to BFing as possible, but i suppose it might have been different if i had done it from the outset.

and i totally understand the reason for the BLW advice to check with a medical professional, of course, i know it was just a small study that rather grew into a bigger idea than first anticipated.

but i do truly feel like crap about my perceived maternal instincts every time i read it. and god knows it is laughable to think that the medical professionals are going to promote BLW when most of them have never heard of it. I just do not see what valuable insight they would have that might not be equally valuable to a BFing mum.

It's not just BLW, by the way. anything interesting, forward-thinking or new to do with caring for a baby is for the exclusive use of BF-ers until such times as the information becomes so widely known as to percolate down to the FFers.

see, now you've got me ranting again. don't worry, i know why it is like that, and i am more than capable of finding things out for myself and pursuing them (note the fact that i even started a BLW blog cos i was concerned about a lack of info online apart from here and the excellent Yahoo group). but i really thought i'd shaken off my (ridiculous but heartfelt) feelings of failure with regards to BFing and it was a nasty surprise to find that weaning set it all off again.

am off to demolish some vanilla ice-cream... that tends to help...

Hello hunkermunker .

I wonder if mums who actively choose ff may have more anxieties about food and themselves have been encouraged to clear there plates etc thus maybe choosing ff on the basis that they will always know how much the baby has fed. I wonder if it is this attitude which manifests itself in comments like those you quote that makes it difficult for ff babies to regulate appetite rather than the formula itself.

I'm not sure that I've expressed myself very clearly there.

Oh, Aitch

FWIW, I have huge problems related to weaning - bfeeding's something I can do, but the weaning thing - well, I struggle with it. I'm not a natural cook, although I have a larger repertoire now - but I do have "ishoos" around food. The whole talk of "solids" makes my stomach turn - using that word to describe food...

LaDiDaDi, I think that's something that is very true. I've always countered the "you can tell how much they're getting" "pro" of ffeeding with "yes, but you can also worry when they don't finish what you think they ought to have" - this only in conversation with someone whose opening gambit is to criticise me for bfeeding, btw...!

i am rubbish around food also. i am a baaad cook. but i am surprised at how easy dd3 did wean. it was pretty much BLW, she was grabbing food from around 6months. did use some purrees and spoonfed, but mainly as she is alittle dot, and just wanted to ensure she actually ate the stuff rather than played with IYKWIM. but her main sourse was still me.

where as dd1+2, both FF from around 6-8 weeks old, do have food issues. not sure that has anything to do with being FF, but mroe to do with my need to see them eating well and finishing meals. i think by the time you get to child #3, you tend to relax. and having mumsnet does help loads with reassurence.

its funny how formula feeding is so scorned when 50 years ago babies were gagged with a cloth soaked in milk and flour, people hired wet-nurses, stuffed anything down their babies throats or let them starve... yes breast IS best, but formula is a pretty close second.

see i do love cooking, which is why the BLW is such fun i think. and the whole BF thing was just such a kicker cos every professional i went to about promised they could help, did their 'ta-dah!' thing and whether it was giving me drugs or making me double-pump into a hospital grade machine every 2 hours for three days or showed me the sodding rugby ball position, none of it helped because it's a physiological issue.

so you shake all that anxiety off, thinking, just as you say, 'i'm damned sure i'll do my best at the weaning stage' and then you find no-one knows what to do with you. no matter, i'm sticking around and if, like me, someone posts about FF and BLW i'll be able to make sure they get a reply.

by the way, i think Ladidadi makes and excellent point about perhaps more insecure about food feeling they need to know how much is being taken at every feed. the HVs used to ask me that all the time, as if with mixed feeding i could possibly tell them a meaningful number... they were horrified when i told them i didn't have a clue.

and yes, 'solids' is a little creepy, isn't it? although please note i have no difficulties with solids in frozen churned cream form...

I'm really sorry bfeeding didn't work for you, Aitch (I don't mean to sound patronising - I'm sorry if I do). It sounds like you're doing brilliantly with weaning though - I've just shoved a banana at DS2 a couple of times and today he gnawed on a rice cake

I think HVs often pressurise women to stop bfeeding so that they can monitor how much babies are having and interfere loads. Same with weaning - the question "how many ice cubes of solids is he having?" makes me want to scream "FUCK OFF!" and run away from people...

quootiepie, I think you might get people taking issue with "pretty close second".

actually, quootie-pie, my GP said something similar to me when i was whining about how much of a struggle it had been to breastfeed for as long as i did. i was saying, 'i can't believe that it is all so complicated and difficult, there must be a better way' and she said rather exasperately, 'There IS, it's formula, for god's sake. Not perfect but not poison.' that actually rather helped me at the time.

don't worry hunker, i'm not easily patronised. (in fact, i'd say i'm generally to arrogant to notice when i'm being patronised ;) )

luckily i haven't had much to do with the HVs etc since the whole breastfeeding thing, they were so utterly useless (and utterly convinced that their method, however barbaric, would work)that i lost any faith in them. i genuinely have found reading MN to be of infinitely more value.

the BLW is going great guns, although i have been too tired to update the blog much in the last week as the baby has decided to throw out any routine in favour of screaming the house down every night. it's an interesting development, all input gratefully received on the thread titled 'oh dear god help me...'

not great for this weather but a good recipe (pah!, it's hardly a recipe) has been chicken soup made with home-made proper stock and a bit of low salt bouillon and along with you usual chopped-up celery and carrot you throw in some BLW-sized pieces. the baby loved the soupy-tasting soft veg, especially when she saw us fish it out of our own bowls and onto her highchair tray.

ice cream finished, time for bed... nice talking to you all, i feel like i really got a major whinge out there, which can only be a good thing.

'too arrogant', not 'to arrogant'... oh the shame. must use preview button more.

Praise from another mumsnetter! Made my day .