Is breast really best?

[sneakypanda90]

Hello all,

About to become a first time mum. For many reasons I've pretty much decided I'll be formula feeding however baby isn't here till the end of September and I still have a pretty open mind to how she's fed changing.

However, in doing some more research just now I've discovered that breastfed babies need vitamin D drops??
Soooo, if 'breast is best' and give the baby everything they need, surely you wouldn't need to supplement?
Do you see my point? I find the information on breast feeding wildly exaggerated and how a little contradictory which just adds to my thoughts of 'whatever' when someone's going on at me about breastfeeding.

Don’t really get the breast is best thing, is it some kind of magical elixir? 😂 do bf children never sick? do they excel in school over their bottle fed class mates? Nope!

You could always mix feed? Then sometimes someone else can feed the baby if you need a break. I BF my daughter but she was in hospital at a week old with jaundice so we were advised to give her some formula to help speed up the process. So I did both and it’s a really nice mix. Dad could help and its nice at night to just get your boob out, I used Kendamil which is all organic etc etc and made in the lake district. Honestly do whatever you feel like, your baby will be fine either way x

Formula milk is made to help the baby survive, not to thrive.

Plenty will disagree with me but it is true.

Breast IS best. It is digestible, provides antibodies, helps prevent against future cancers, diabetes etc. Formula simply doesn't offer this.

If we used the term artificial milk, rather than formula a lot less people would use it.

And I say this as a mum who has breastfed for 3 weeks with one child, and 3 years for another

So how did my formula fed DC’s manage to grow up so healthy and get all A’s at school and 1st class degrees?

That doesn’t answer the question.

Also from The Lullaby Trust: “Breastfeeding lowers the risk of SIDS. Breastfeeding for at least 2 months halves the risk of SIDS but the longer you can continue the more protection it will give your baby.
Research has shown that any breastfeeding is protective against SIDS. For full NHS guidance on breastfeeding and to get help click here
Breast milk is all the nutrition your baby needs for their first 6 months of life. At 6 months you can then introduce other foods as well.
The Department of Health now recommends that babies be exclusively breastfed for at least six months and that breastfeeding is continued, with the addition of appropriate weaning foods, for as long as the mother and baby want.”

Plenty of babies thrive on formula, or do all formula fed babies just lay there until they can eat actual food? YOU think breast is best and thats great, some people want to Ff And thats fine. If they are not your kids don’t worry about it. Has your child you only BF for 3 weeks not thrived?

Breast milk IS better than formula but not by much-it has some immune boosting factors that just can t be replicated in formula but formula is a very, very close second. Aside from the immunity BM offers everything else is the same. One difference is that breastmilk adjusts to needs but that isn’t true of formula so babies just need to keep increasing the volume of formula
to have their nutritional needs met which isn’t a big deal really.

Combi feeding is best of both worlds and I think should be encouraged more. Was amazing for us. We didn’t wait till 6 weeks either as found when we did that dc just wasn’t interested but if you offer a bottle as well from birth maybe once a day then baby will happily switch

No one needs to justify a thing.

I’m just trying to understand why a parent would make a decision that works for them, before trying the option which is optimal for their child? Many women try and then switch. Why not even try?

That is exactly the same as asking them to justify it to you.

Yup, me too. When I was exclusively breastfeeding my weight was my ideal! Now he's 18 months and drinking much less milk from me, I've piled it back on, back to my pre-baby weight😒

Yes, it is.

There is evidence to suggest breastfeeding affects kids at a genetic level and the benefits across a lifetime and beyond. Eg pcos, blood pressure risk, diabetes risk, egg/sperm quality seems to all be minimised with breastmilk. It could explain why we became unhealthier as a species when we started using formula milk — it is only beneficial for premies or babies who can’t have breastmilk for a handful of rare reasons.

Because I didn’t want to. My choice. Why does anyone need to justify their decision?

I think they mean with the washing and sterilising bottles. Must admit, I tried bottle feeding a few times (expressed milk) and was somewhat relieved that my boy was a bottle refuser. The few times I did it, I did find it a faff! I much preferred to just unclip my bra! Might make me sound lazy but then I remember that breastfed babies do a lot of little and often feeds!! It was harder in other ways (and still is.. at 18 months he still wants to breastfeed to sleep). But oh so rewarding!

This. You do you but formula is ultimately a processed food.

👌

I don’t think it matters one iota, as long as a baby is fed and cared for that’s the important thing.

If you question your adult friends there is likely to be no difference between breast and bottle fed.

But that’s just crap, we criticise people’s decisions all the time-to get in debt, to make poor choices of partners etc etc. Look at the thread at the moment on nik naks the mum is being roasted for giving her child crisps and that’s fine- why should formula be treated differently?

Exactly. I can’t imagine the first thing I gave my baby was an ultra processed milk substitute.

I do get it if you can’t bf, but a baby’s instinct is to nurse straight after birth. They will search for a nipple minutes after they are born.

However, the lack of breastfeeding education in this country is criminal. So I do get why mothers think formula is appropriate after birth. It should be taught in school in sex education how to breastfeed, so it becomes very normalised.

There's a huge weight of evidence that bf babies are sick less & have advantages through childhood in terms of health & achievement. How much if it is causation & how much correlation, as far as I'm aware is harder to establish. Plus, more intelligent/educated mothers bf so are more likely to have more intelligent offspring, rather than breastmilk necessarily creating more intelligent kids. And don't shoot me - look it up!!

You can't imagine it? Really? Formula is appropriate for some mothers after birth.

I breastfed and acknowledge the benefits of doing so, I'm not claiming all is equal but comments like yours are pretty ignorant and narrow minded.

Wait, you want to know if human breast milk for human babies is really best verses a powdered formula made in a factory?

Am I understanding your question?

More intelligent and well educated mothers breast feed 😂😂😂 I’m sure they do, but that is such a load of tosh. MANY women who don’t have access to education across the world breastfeed as its free. All of the “more intelligent/educated” mothers I know - CEO’s/ women with PHD’s etc have all bottle fed because they all go back to work and have nannies and there is nothing wrong with that.

Well both of mine fell asleep immediately after birth, so that's bullshit. And neither was particularly interested in suckling, they were too lazy 😂