Is there actually anything wrong with formula feeding?!

[taffy101]

Don't get me wrong, I am an avid breast feeder (fed dd till 1 and currently feeding ds), but the more I hear about people who bottle feed that their babies sleep through straight away and gain loads of weight, it makes me wonder. I believe WHO have even brought out new weight charts for bf babies, which basically puts their average weight lower than a bottle fed baby's.

I do realise all the benefits of breast feeding but once baby has all vital antibodies and mum+baby are nicely bonded, if formula milk makes for a more contented baby why has it become so demonised?

Hercules1 I SO AGREE! Who cares if ff babies sleep through the night earlier, I would trade a few night wakings where you just grab the baby from the cot, feed them in bed and replace for, horror of horrors, having to go down to the nasty cold kitchen, get milk out of fridge/mix powder/find bottles etc. etc.

Remember, though, Megan, that some of these statistics apply to very rare illnesses. Just as I freaked out because I read before my c-section that giving birth at 38 weeks tripled the risk of respiratory failure and felt awful that my hospital were making me do it at that time, the obstetrician considers it not that much of a risk because 3 times 1 in 2000 is 1.5 in 1000. Similarly, double the risk of neuroblastoma is still a very very low risk of neuroblastoma. You and I are in the same position, we don't have a choice, and although it's really easy to follow every link and read every story and get heavy hearted about it, these are often very slight increases in risk, even though they can literally call it 'double' or 'triple' the risk.

That's a good point, I think. However, I still think that you can make that call better the more you know.

Macneil - I wan't suggesting that all the risks mentioned could be put down to demographics. But as you say, we can't get too hung up on it as we've got no choice. (Prefer to be known as Twinkle btw )

Aloha - I know you weren't implying that women who end up bottle feeding would have perservered more if they knew more. But I just wanted to make clear that it wouldn't have mattered how much I knew about the risks of formula (and I knew a fair amount), I would still have ended up bottle feeding because exclusive b/f was impossible and I couldn't sustain mixed feeding for more than a few months. DS's recent cold was the final nail in the coffin for my b/f career .

Thanks for everyone's input - i've learnt a lot. And hurcules ur so right i am lazy. I babysat for a friend's ff child once it was a right faff. He must've got very hungry cos i totally ballsed up mixing the feed. friend said use 1ozwater:formula but i just put 1oz ff and topped up with water. Never have admitted that to her!!