QUICK POLL, IF YOU BOTTLE-FED ......... NOT FOR A ROW, GENUINELY INTERESTED!

[lissielou]

if you ff, did you choose to because of packaging?
advertising?
logos?
and if not, why not?

I mix fed for a while (before ditching the formula after a couple of months) and just went for the cheapest, my reasoning being that DD was getting all the goodness from my bm and only really needed the extra calories, so who cared if it wasn't the top brand with all its fancy extra omega oils/prebiotics etc.

However, on principle I refused the Nestlé brand for obvious reasons and avoided Aptamil and one other because of the fish oils and I think egg (I mean, egg before 6 months????). DD's paed tried to get me to use one of her fave brands but it was a pain as it was never stocked and you always had to order it from the chemists, plus it was f*ing expensive. In the end we used mainly Hipp organic as it was easily available in supermarkets and therefore cheaper (here in Italy many formulas are only available at the chemist's and consequently cost the earth) and was basically, well, organic, which went some way towards assuaging my guilt.

And yes, the box was prettier than the others....

I used sma gold with dd as that is what my mum, sister, sil used with their kids. With ds I am using aptamil as I had heard it made their poos softer like breast fed babies (and it does!!).

The packaging never came into it - tbh the packaging is nothing mych to look at. On the aptamil tub it has some numbers with the number of the powder you are using highlighted e.g. number 1 is first milk, number 2 is hungry milk and number 3 is follow on.

i choose SMA for dd1 as the local shops had a limited selection, and tbh the size of the tin was good.

did some ff at the end.
chose Cow & Gate because only organic one at Asda.
Rubbish pack though, doesn't reseal.

I didnt choose to FF because of anything other than my babies were hungry and I couldnt give them what they wanted.

I was advised to use SMA Gold with DD1, but following major sick issues, I decided off my own back to use Farleys First with Rebecca.

WOuld have prefered breast milk all the way but im not interested in advertising of baby products.

I topped up all my children at some time or another although I mainly breast fed.

I used Cow and Gate, simply because when I was in hospital with No 1 and made the decision I wanted him bottle fed so I could sleep (selfish mummy) the midwives offered me C&G or something else and I liked the sound of C&G No better reason than that. I then had no problems with it so I carried on using it whenever I wanted to with all 4 children.

As beansprout says, no-one will really admit to being affected by advertising...partly because it's admitting being manipulated [which is particularly embarassing when it comes to your kids] and partly because we don't always realise it.

There's so many nappy ads around, for example - believe me, they wouldn't spend the money if it didn't do something. If it was simply a better product they could save millions of pounds by not advertising and just expect word of mouth and trial to do the job for them.

I used Pregnacare when I was pregnant because of the press adverts in a magazine I bought.

Message withdrawn

Oh I see, now I understand the OP better.

Although advertising works, I doubt it would really MAKE people ff. If they are already ff, it can influence which brands they buy...

I chose SMA because it was the one i had most heard of and looking at all the different tins there wasnt much in it.

i ff ds1 from 5 weeks due to disaterous attempt at bf,and have ff all the others from birth.i started with sma cos it was the only formula id heard of,ds and dd1 had it and ds2 started out on it but got badly constipated so switched to aptamil.dd2 was on cow and gate cos it was cheaper and she liked it and dd3 is on aptamil now cos she likes it better than cow and gate

sma made my older 2 constipated also but nobody told me at the time the milk could be causing it.

I was tempted with SMA because I grew up with the tins and they are soooo handy for storing hairbands in

We mix fed. Can't say I conciously chose a particular formula based on the packaging. Oh, wait there was one feature. Not sure if you class this as packaging, but I prefered Aptimil because it had a little plastice flat piece where I could level the scoop. But, with SMA I had to get out a knife to level it off. Am I lazy or what?

But, my choice to Formula feed was based in not having enough milk supply. I tried and tried, but finally decided some formula was better than going hungry. Then, I went back to work and stopped BF at 4 months when I had to go to a meeting with leaky tits...

I sent dh to Boots after trying impossibly to breast feed dd. Dh asked in Boots which formula he should go for - they said they couldn't give their opinion and it was up to him to choose! So back he comes with Boots own formula (which they don't do anymore).

I was very ill after having ds and more or less out of it for a week after his birth, their was a choice of Farleys, C & G or SMA at the hospital. I chose SMA because it is what my mum gave me.

can the op clarify whether she means choice of brand of formula or are you asking, as Pruni's post seems to suggest (i haven't seen the other thread), whether we chose to ff as opposed to bf because of formla packaging/advertising. If the second is the case then I did not chose to ff but ff is better than starving my child! I chose the brand of formula because of the reasons listed in my earlier reply.

I bottel fed my DD because she was to small to latch on - born on 35weeks. Tried to breastfeed but couldn't latch on. Gave her SMA because hospital gave my SMA to top her up in the beginning.

Formula feeding for me had nothing to do with packaging or advertising. I started out with both DC with breast feeding. With DS i stopped at 3 weeks due to sore nipples and lack of support in rural area. With DD i had to stop after 12 days as she was admitted to hospital with bhronchiolitis and breast feeding was hard and hospitalk was no support. I chose the formulas based on what was available in local shops so was nothing to do with advertising at all.

I didn't set out to FF but I used SMA Gold for both of mine. It was the only one I'd ever heard of tbh (mainly because my friend had used this with her children, although they are much older than mine).

I seem to remember looking at the Hipp Organic FF but can't remember why I didn't buy it.

Packaging, advertising, logos were not important at the time. Getting a 10 day old hungry baby fed was.

ff ds1 from 2 weeks, and ds2 from 4 weeks, both because i couldn't successfully bf. chose cow and gate for ds1 because it was the first one i saw in tesco (as mercy says geeting hungry baby fed top priority!) and the same for ds2 (but organic) purely because ds1 had survived on it!

didn't even consider packaging logo etc

ff both ds1 & ds2 much the same as everyone else, couldn't bf and both were ff on sma white purely because they were hungry babies.

don't recall seeing any advertising for any formula milk, picked sma cos it's the only one I'd heard of & both my sisters were fed on it.

No of course not.

Had SMA as given that in hospital (on SCUBU) so just continued.

ooops, actually it was the Hipp Organic formula I used, not Cow & Gate!!! Not very brand aware, am I? As I said, cos only one in Asda.