Positive stories about bottle feeding

[nearlythree]

Think we need a thread like this.

I couldn't bfeed dd1 and it nearly sent me mad. But we'd had a lousy time, I was ill and looking back I can see that stopping bf and all that surrounded it helped us to bond. She's happy, healthy and very bright.

I managed to bfeed dd2 for two yrs. Ironically she's the sickly one, but I loved bf.

Now I have baby ds. He has a tongue tie and I got so sore. Maybe I could have carried on but with two very sick dds I concluded that they needed me, too - dd2 is still a baby herself-, and gave up. And you know what? I've found that there are more important things than bfeeding.

Dh is bonding with ds. We all get more time together. And dh and I get time to ourselves, which benefits our kids as our relationship is better.

Anyone else?

That was for Tiktok, BTW. Unfortunately, you can't change my recollections, but I'm glad to see, from your post suggesting to complain, that you are more open now to accept that no organisation is perfect

Oh FGS, Chandra.....there must be about dozens of posts of mine going back years where I have heard something that is somewhat less than perfect about an NCT call or class and urged the poster to give feedback/complain.

NCT reaches something like (I think) 100,000 mothers a year. I would have to be crazy to think every encounter is sweetness and light.

FGS???

I really don't understand what is so wrong Tiktok, I normally search my name in "search current threads" to see if I have had any reply, which I think is quite a normal thing to do, problem is, that option only displays the posts that have your name, I just clicked on yours and I didn't see there were so many posts after yours... what's so bad about it???

I understand that NCT reaches lots of mums a year... so does the NHS and I complain all the time about it. What's so wrong of having my own opinion? [puzzled emoticon]

You said I was now ' more open now to accept that no organisation is perfect' as if I had not admitted before then that NCT could be in the wrong in some circumstances.

I corrected that, by saying I had urged women to complain if they had grounds to, many times before.

I don't think this spat is interesting to anyone else, so can we bring it to an end? Thanks!

I said that after you said it was you.

Better leave it here, I don't know what's wrong with you, and your agressive posts are certainly reinforcing the bad image I had from the organisation.

my little one is 1monnth old today and i bottlefeed. i was in hospital after an induction for only one night and the midwives were too busy to help me they just shoved ds on my boob twice. i just cried all the time and so did he. by day 4 hed lost nearly a pound (was born6pounds 13oz) and i cried at my mum and /dp begging them to get me formula.
i did and now dp looks after ds when he comes hgome from work at 3/4am and i get to go and have a good few hours sleep.

i feel very bad that i gave up but he is so big now im sure hes about 8pounds already!

sorry for bad typing, ds is in my other arm. i really hope a thres like this stays up and running cos i think im the only one bottlefeeding in my postnatal thread!

I personally feel that bfeeding is one of the most impt things you can do for your sprog.

But, parenting is like a big grid - there's so many components to being good parents. Bfeeding is just one of those squares - if you don't choose to do it, or can't, there's a ton of other things that are just as impt to your baby's wellbeing.

i know this doesn't prove anything but...
my mother, born in 1940, was exclusively breast fed, is now overweight and has late onset diabetes; my husband and his brother were exclusively FF, not even a drop of colostrum, and are both strapping 6' 4" fighting fit athleteic types (rowing, rugby etc etc); my daughter was exclusively BF for a week, mixed fed for 5 weeks then onto FF - she has been healthier than my friends' exclusively BF children, two of whom in particular were plagued by thrush and ear infections respectively; we were fortunate enough to have a maternity nurse who has over 30 years experience: many of her orignal babies were FF and, now well into their twenties, have suffered no apparent adverse effects; on the other hand she has seen a BF baby covered in raw ecxema.
as i said, i know that this proves nothing. equally, i wonder how much the statistics cited in support of BF prove. i'm with disrali and the three categories of lie - lies, damned lies and statistics. i wonder what socio economic, dietary, environmental etc factors are taken into account when concluding that FF babies are x-times more likely to get diabetes/cancer/and the rest? what age did the control group start on solids, for example, and what sort of solids? would a comparison of babies on modern formula for 6 months produce the same result?
i have no axe to grind. my baby was FF but i believe that BF would have been much easier - no sterilization, no back breaking bending over to check that you'd got the exact right amount of water in the bottle, no boring spooning out of powder. i am not however frightened for my child's health as a result of her having been FF. i certainly don't feel guilty. there are far worse things that a parent can do to a child than give it formula.
"they f**k you up, your mum and dad" wasn't written about food.....

Dilly, your experiences and observations show that individual outcomes cannot be predicted by looking at statistics. There is a lot of discussion on this in the MN archives, and the best studies on health outcomes of infant feeding do indeed take into account all the variables you list.

In your mother's case, I don't think there are any studies that show exclusive breastfeeding protects against late onset diabetes - the diabetes protection is against juvenile diabetes. Ditto obesity. It's obesity in childhood that's looked at.

The only way to get decent infant feeding statistics in a western context is to have huge samples, because western babies are protected against a lot of illnesses or serious consequences of illness simply by having access to good medical care and clean water, immunisation and so on however they are fed. You also need large samples as some of the outcomes are quite rare - chrons (sp) disease is more common in FF babies, but you need to get a lot of babies and compare them before it shows up.

Age of starting on solid food is also an issue, especially as formula fed babies start solids rather sooner than breastfed babies (according to the UK Infant Feeding surveys), so for some studies, you need to have this as a variable in some studies ie is this outcome a result of early solids, or formula feeding?

There are plenty of good studies that control for all this.

We don't know if modern formula would be different, because no one really looks at the long term differences before launching a new product - this is one of the drawbacks of formula being a primarily commercial field, where manufacturers are keen to get new formulations out there. The manufacturer who says 'no, let's wait 10 years and monitor this sample of 100 babies and see what's happened before we go into production with this new ingredient/addition' doesn't exist!

In fact, the independent work that has been done on the effects of modern formulas show that the health claims made for them don't stand up (see the reports on manufacturers claims for the benefits of prebiotics), not that they are likely to be more harmful than older formulas.

I don't agree with your argument which is basically 'my observations and my maternity nuses observations don't tally with the statistics. I know this proves nothing. It also shows that the research on health outcomes of different infant feeding regimes may prove nothing as well'.

Of course there are plenty of bad things a parent can do to a child whether they are breastfeeding or formula feeding!

thanks tiktok, i can see my thinking on this isn't particularly sophisticated. are you saying that every single variable has been taken into account in the studies?

i know bf is best, but i formula feed now. i feel like a constant failure as a mother so not being a good enough mother to BF after trying very hard to give my son what he needs. i feel like a complrete lacking mother anyway. i dont even know if i love him. im happy for anyone to hold him and when he cries it feels like he hates me (not logical i know). i just wanted this thread or any thread to make me feel better about failing the first test you have as a parent.

Mumsnet used to be so nice when i first used to come on here, now its just fighting all the time.

i really apologise for sounding like a spoiled child but i'm just completely upset and have noone in RL to talk to.

i TOTALLY felt the same, koshka. in fact, on christmas day, when the baby was just nine days old i wept to my husband that because we had lost previous pregnancies that she could feel that i had wanted the previous babies more and that she hated me... happy christmas, everyone.

BF-ing kind of is the first test, isn't it? i've never thought about it like that before... and i didn't exactly pass with flying colours either... {hopefully a kindly, understanding smile icon]

BUT, i did not fail, either... i tried my best and had to give it up for good reason... the reason being that i would have been profoundly depressed and unhappy if i hadn't. i do allow myself to feel sad about it, but i won't be made to feel guilty by people who haven't been where i was.

thinking about your 'test' example, perhaps we should think about what you will say to your child if they come home from school having done worse than you expected in an exam.

i am sure that you will give him a big cuddle and say that there will be other opportunities to shine, and that so long as he tried his best then he can let it go. maybe we should try to take that advice? because lord knows there will be years and years of opportunities to get things right and get things wrong in the future...

i don't know anything much about post-natal depression, koshka, so hopefully someone will be along who can guide you if you think you might be suffering from that. are you asking for enough help? you do sound a bit tired...

how old is your baby, koshka?
and you don't sound like a spoilt child, you just sound a bit blue, and i do understand a bit i think...

Ooh koshka, I could cry just reading that post, you sound so sad .

You have not failed! You have done your very best for ds and he does love you for it! He doesn't care if his milk comes from your breast or a bottle, he gets a lovely cuddle with mummy who makes his tummy nice and full with milk, that's all he knows.

Please talk to someone in rl about how you are feeling. I know that it can be soo frustrating when they cry and you don't know why but your lo does know that you are there comforting him.

When I started this thread it was as a support to ff mums. Why has it been allowed to become yet another battle ground? Tiktok, I know you mean well but any mum wanting info on bfeeding vs ffeeding can find it on many threads here. Now Koshka has been made to feel sad by reading stuff on a thread that should have been her refuge.

IME there is no difference between th ehealth of ffed and bfed babies. In my own children, it is my bfed daughter who gets sick and my ffed daughter who is well. Who knows what will happen with ds - although he had his first jabs yesterday and didn't even need Calpol!

Koshka, I felt just like you did after dd1 was born, I had a bodged induction too and had to ffeed her. I too felt I was the worst mother on earth and knew no-one else who was ffeeding. I'm now ffeeding ds after successfully bfeeding dd2 for nearly two yrs. If you think it might help, feel free to CAT me if you'd like a chat - your post reminds me so much of me some 4 yrs ago but it does get better.

hi koshka, i scrolled back and saw your first post so i see that your wee boy is a month old. i too had an induction and the baby wouldn't really latch on well so she lost terrible amounts of weight. the fuss that the doctors and midwives made was unbelievable.

one told me that i was starving her to death because i was trying to persevere with bfing... so i did what they wanted and gave her formula. i might not do the same if i have another baby, but i feel okay about the fact that i did what they told me to do at the time.

i was also surprised at how much i liked it if someone held the baby for me, it just felt like a bit of a relief for a while. and i bet that your relatives and friends are happy to cuddle your wee boy so if it gives you a break then great.

i am sure that you are doing your very best for your baby, and that your bond with him can only strengthen from here on in...
kindest regards,
h x

brilliant thread nearlythree. I exclusively ff ds1 since the day he was born, (now 11 months) by my own choice. I've had loads of support from family and friends, my best friend's dd1 is three days older than my ds1, she bf for 4 months then ff, we NEVER had any altercations, they were our own choices and we respected each other. The subject never ever even came up.

Wish everybody could be more like my best friend and let mothers decide for themselves how they want to feed. If the baby is happy and healthy, loved and looked after, there is no cause for any concern. Thanks to all supporting ff mums!

thank you all for your messages. ds is now 9pounds now from 613when he was orn so must be doing something right with the bottle feeding.

koshka - been there, know how you feel, it does get better.
But also, your baby is really little - are you expressing at all? I only ask because I felt so bad about it all that at 3.5 or 4 weeks, I started feeding again, and got up to 3 full feeds a day within a week. This was making me feel heaps better, and was obviously good for ds too, but it didn't last as pretty soon he started to refuse (I had a cold, whether it was that or something else, I do not know) and by that point I couldn't emotionally take it any more.
Just wanted to say that if you've been expressing, maybe you could get some advice on re-starting b/f? Mixed feeding like that might be possible - I don't know enough about it. In the end, in my case, weighing up the emotional trauma and the feelings I had about ironing out major b/f problems for the third time in my son's 6 week life, I didn't continue, and that was absolutely right for that time. It's very very hard, isn't it?

anyway, bottles and babies are hilarious:-

first - the look on my husbands face when i thrust both baby and bottle into his arms and said here you go, see you in an hour after i've had a rest (almost as good as his expression when the midwife gave him a dirty nappy to change)

second - the fact that when the bottle is empty and they are still sucking, you can see the inside of their mouth when you look up through the bottle from the bottom

third - when they start trying to hold the bottle themselves they look like little squirrels with nuts

I bottle fed both my children now 13 and 2.
I have absolutley NO urge whatsoever to put a child to my breast.
I do though know that breast is best and have no problem seeing anyone else feed, its just i couldnt do it myself.
Maybe im not maternal enough or something, i really dont know why i dont want to.

Probably should add, both my kids are ok! They are both slim and healthy, i have bonded with them both perfectly well, and yes it is nice for others to have a go at feeding sometimes especially at 2 in the morning!

nearlythree - I don't want anyone to feel personally got at here or anywhere else because of how they feed their baby. If you read my posts they are only ever in response to something people have said or have asked.

I don't think it helps anyone to hear misinformation and misunderstandings - you are requesting that misinformation is perpetuated in an attempt to make one individual feel better for a short time (actually, I don't think it does make people feel better....the feelings about infant feeding go a lot more deeply than that).

Sharing positive aspects of bottle feeding is absolutely fine, and I think it's important, too.

But if dilly contributes by saying ' I don't believe the research into the health impact of infant feeding is valid' and actually asks what the research is, and whether or not it's been done on modern day formulas, why would I not respond to that? If she doesn't want me to respond on this thread, why doesn't she ask on another one?

Koshka's sadness and lonliness and desperation are heartfelt and go far beyond anything that can be done here. If the idea remains that formula feeding and breastfeeding are the same with regard to outcomes - as dilly suggested - how does that help Koshka, or anyone else wondering about it, or anyone else wondering what to do next time with the next baby?

Dilly - you asked if every study controls for every variable. The answer is 'no' but there are many that do.