You know the "yeah, but I know a bf baby who's ill all the time" old chestnut?

[hunkermunker]

Not very well thought out, is it?

out of my group of friends, (gonna discount Flame for this!), I was the only breastfeeder, and I was the one the others quoted as having the poorly sickly kiddies .

ALL of mine have spent lots of time in hospital for various things, and 3 of the 5 had at least one bout of pnuemonia before their 1st b/days as well as gastro bugs and ENT infections!

I commented once to a paediatrician about it, and he replied that unless we had cloned them and fed the 'clones' formula, how the hell were we to know that they wouldn't have in fact been worse......

At least with me breastfeeding I know that I did my best for my children and gave them the best start IMO.

Both my boys were bf until they were 6mths, have the occasional sniffles but otherwise OK.
DH was FF and a really sickly baby/child had asthma/eczema/allergies/convulsions.
I always content myself that at my boys would have got at least one of these conditions if I hadn't BF.
Entirely based on scientific fact, obv

isn't it that bf babies get colds and illnesses but they deal with them better/faster?

psychomum5 i agree, you are bang on with that comment, you have done your best for your child and i think to at least try to bf is a great thing to do even if you have to stop for some reason, at least you've given it a go. I bf all 4 and would do it again!! I was also a minority in my group of friends, i don't even think they considered bf at all and when asked it was oh no i couldn't do that, why!! I know i have given my children a good start!!

My retort to this old chestnut is "well, good job they weren't ffed, just think how much sicker they'd have been"

I've never had to use it as my bfed, slow gaining and skinny DD hardly ever got sick, but a friend of mine whose DS got everything going and she got a lot of comments from the ff mums with robust babies.

I really don't understand this point scoring business and what baffles me totally is the pushing of a processed product over a species specific natural product. You wouldn't say an apple flavoured haribo is better than an apple, would you?

bitcat thanks. He did make e feel lots better for saying it, as I have to admot I was feeling paranoid that I had poisoned them in some way, because of the way the others made me feel.

tis such a shame tho that just by doing our own best for our children, some people can make us feel so crap about it all!!!

hey ho, none of us are perfect, but at least we can make a damn good try at it by doing what we consider the best for them

Quite right Brangelina, natural is always best (well in most circumstances). I don't understand the points scoring thing either, yes we all like to think our way is best and that our babies are the best...but really i don't see the need to make others feel bad or to cause worry to another parent!!!

Ds3 was never sick while he was being bf. Ds1 and ds2 were always coming down with things from creche after they were 1. ( That's when I stopped bf them.) dh or I were always taking time off to look after them. Never had to take time off with ds3 till after I stopped bf him at 2.8. He has also never had glue ear which they both had. And other than that ds3 is a virtual clone of ds1 and ds2, you can't tell photos of ds1, ds2 or ds3 apart if they were taken at the same age.