Formula feeding

[Cl]

Not sure where to put this - this seemed as good a place as any... A friend is due to give birth in a month or so and has decided - for her own reasons - not to breastfeed, is in fact adamant. Having gone through all the arguments I can only respect her decision and try and help her, but as you'll know if you've seen my postings my daughter never took a bottle, even of expressed milk, so I'm no expert. I wondered if anyone out there had tips both on making life easier (I always thought bottle feeding must actually be quite hard work) and also on dealing with the inevitable pressure/disapproval of HV and "friends"
TA

I can't see how a bottle of feed can 'harm' the baby in anyway - its not poison for goodness sake! Would love to know the facts your friend bases that theory on. Its that type of unjustified statement that distorts the picture for 'mixed-feeding', and sends everyone back into 2 camps.

Bloss, somebody mentioned to me that mixed feeding can stop the breast milk being effectively digested (absorb nutrients etc). Dont know where she got it from.

Mixed feeding is OK after about 6 weeks. It does affect your supply before then and to introduce bottles generally means the end of breastfeeding. I think most women are having problems with breastfeeding before 6 weeks which is why health visitors say not to introduce them. However everything can be done in degrees. If you used one bottle of formula a day and your supply seemed to be OK then perhaps that would be alright. The irony of it is that after 6 weeks most people who have stuck at it are managing successfully and they don't need to use bottles anyway. That is the main problem with breastfeeding - all the hard work is at the beginning.

I do think though that it is better to take the risk and give some bottles than to just give up the breastfeeding completely. There is no turning back once you do that. I don't think women are given credit for having any intelligence - after all they can try to express to keep their supply going. I know that at this time it can seem like you are doing twice the work feeding directly to the baby and into bottles and I think this is why health visitors say to give up. When I was going through this my HV said I didn't seem to be getting the advantages of either way. However I didn't want to give up bf. In any case informaiton should be given on whatever strategy you want to adopt rather than it being presented as just a black and white option.

Certainly it is ideal to have mixed feeding when a mum returns to work and it can mean the baby being breastfed for much longer (perhaps even a year) rather than a few weeks - so you have to look at the long term scenario as well.

Oh and I've not heard of formula preventing breastmilk being digested. Formula is more difficult for the baby to digest anyway but the breastmilk itself is easy and the two won't affect each other. Unless of course the baby doesn't agree with the formula but the problem lies with the formula not the fact that the baby is mixing two types of milk.

Amen to this thread,ive been wanting to start a thread about bottle feeding for a while. I have been so annoyed at how people look at me when i said i have decided to bottle feed my baby.My reasons are valid and personal but that shouldnt matter it is soley my decision.I bf my first for 11 wks and also hated it my ds was not putting weight on but i carried on because i was made to feel a failure,my 2nd was prem so was encouraged by all conerned to bf so i did,at 14 day old my dd became seriously ill,she had group b strep meningits,to cut a long story short i was found to be carrying the gbs infection in my breast milk, iwas mortified ,i was told this was very rare,infact the doc had never seen it b4, but that didnt make me feel any better,my dd was in intensive care and i was told it was very unlikly she would pull through, and i felt it was me who had put her there.Thankfully she did pull through,and once my milk was clear of any infection i was again encouraged to feed her again but i couldnt bring my self to do it.I dont want to frighten mothers from bf,i just want to get across thats its not for everyone and people should refrain from pushing their oppinions onto others,i have made my decision and dont want to be made to feel that i am giving my baby 2nd best, i fully admire mothers who can and want to bf ,but please remember that not every mother wants to or can breastfeed.

That is really scarey, Ariel, I do hope your little girl made a full recovery.
I fully agree with your sentiments. When you think about all the things a mother has to do for her child as it grows up, breastfeeding is not even in the top five as far as I am concerned!
Bloss, I too have heard that one about even a bottle ( even a sip I was told!) of formula in the early months can have a detrimental effect but have been unable to trace its source. If you think about it however, how could such a thing possibly be proven?

Right, just while you're all on this thread can I ask a question that's been bugging me for ages? I'm sure you all know the reports that formula fed babies are at increased risk of getting respiritory (sp?) illnesses. And 3 bottle fed babies I know of have all been in hospital with broncilitis in the 1st year of their lives (don't know whether that's just an unlucky run but its enough to put me off for life) But my question is does anyone know if it's the actually cow's formula that does this (ie would goat or soya be better)? Or is it the lack of anti-bodies usually gained from b/feeding? I'd really like to know...

jasper,my dd is now the most wonderfull person,she has suffered so much from her illness,she has hydrocephalus which she had a shunt fitted at 4 months,she had to have a shunt revision in oct and she has left hemiplegia,her development is very delayed but despite all of this she is always smiling and never lets her problems get in the way.I never stop feeling the most emense guilt at what i feel is my fault.I have always felt that by trying to do the best for my child i have scarred her development and health,i only pray she doesnt blame me when shes older.

Lizzer, hope I can help.It's probably a mixture of both. In any case allergy and infection both involve the immune response in some way. There is no evidence (that I have seen) that goats milk formula is any likely to be 'better' than cows milk formula, though some very specifically allergic babies might benefit from goats instead of cows, I suppose....there is no accounting for individual response to things. But of course anything other than human milk does not have antibodies in it - at least not antibodies that would work in baby humans : )

There is a 'dose related response' to breastmilk, shown in a couple of big studies at least , meaning that the more breastmilk you get the better!! It is reassuring in a way, as it means that some breastfeeding is measurably better than none. The big Dundee study showed that breastfeeding up to at least 13 weeks, even with formula, still protected against infection. The babies that are most protected have the most breastmilk, and you are right in highlighting respiratory infection as being much more common in formula fed babies.

Here (in the west), bronchiolitis is not a life-threatening disease, but it is still miserable for the baby and may well need hospital treatment, which is upsetting in itself. I don't know what the exact figures are off the top of my head - I expect some breastfed babies can get it, though I have never known one to, and I have known a number of formula fed babies to have it. It may also be that breastfed babies do not get it as severely.

Does anybody know of any cases of babies having a reaction to breastmilk. I find it very unlikley but dh says a lady he works with friends baby supposedly had just that. With ds and his itching at the moment, which btw is slowly but surely looking like its getting better, he obvioulsy brought up it might be my milk. Breastfeeding is rare in his family, I believe I was the first, so Im sure he just needs some convincing now and again. I dont believe it to be and intend to breastfeed no2.

Joe 1 - there is one very rare condition where a mother shouldn't breastfeed called Galactosemia. Galactosemia is a metabolic enzyme deficiency/absence condition which is transmitted through a recessive genetic trait. The incidence of galactosemia is one in every 85,000 births (US figures). These babies lack a critical liver enzyme (responsible for converting galactose to glucose) and should be fed a galactose free formula.

Another even more rare condition is true lactose intolerance and the baby would have to be fed lactose free formula.

Therefore a baby never has a direct 'allergy' to his mother's milk - he may in these very rare instances just be unable to metabolise it. Any reactions seen under normal conditions are likely to be the baby reacting to something that the mother is ingesting, most likely dairy products.

Yes Lizzer as Tiktok says it is the absence of antibodies in formula (whether it be soya, cows, or goats) that means an increased likelihood of illness and this means any kind of illness (chest, ear infections, excema, stomach upsets etc). And yes the longer you breastfeed the longer the benefits continue. Toddlers are very prone to all of the above illnesses in just the same way as babies are.

I regularly see a mother whose little boy reacted to her breastmilk. He is allergic to cow's milk and reacted when she ate anything connected. I think he was almost a year old before they found out, so it sounds like a developed reaction. She did try giving up milk, cheese etc but only managed a fortnight which seems a fair go to me. He seems pretty well on his substitutes.

Thanks so much for all the advice so far. I'll certainly pass it all on - Keep it coming and thanks again for taking the time

My cousin's 6 months old baby had broncholitis last winter. He had just stopped being breastfed 2 months before.

well my ds has also had it - and he was bf at the time.

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DS had eczema from 2 months onwards and he was breastfed... so goes to show ! Nothing's perfect.

My son gets excema too and he is b/fed. No-one is suggesting that b/feeding totally prevents illnesses and allergies just that their severity is decreased and the incidence of them is decreased. At age 2 I started to give my son cow's milk to drink but his excema flared up. This suggests that it would have been much worse if he'd had a diet totally based on cow's milk.