Breastfed babies 'more challenging'?

[Woodlands]

Have just been reading this article (apologies if there's already a thread on this).

Personally I don't have anything to compare with, as my DS was (still is) breastfed, and nearly all my friends breastfed their babies too. Some of their babies are more challenging than others. When I saw the headline I thought it was going to be about breastfed babies needing fed more often/not sleeping for so long, but it seems it's more about them being less happy. Mind you in the comments it says this study was part funded by Mothercare.

What do people think?

gaelicsheep I think that's probably what I was trying to say (badly) earlier on - that there is this expectation that babies will feed on a schedule, that they will sleep easily in between, that as long as you are doing it right you shouldn't have a hard time. It just isn't like that - some babies need to suck, won't be put down, will have silent reflux, will fight sleep at every turn, and actually no matter how many classes you go to, no-one tells you that. It's only when you're dealing with a newborn who hasn't read the manuals that you end up finding forums like these where real mums tell it like it is, and that can really help.

And of course then there is the endless barrage of 'is he/she a good baby' (as if there are bad ones) and 'is he/she sleeping through yet?' and my favourite one which I got at 3 months: 'You're not still demand feeding are you?' ( responded to that one by saying 'No, I just like to air my boobs regularly' - was feeling a bit snarky at the time)

There is a real pressure to 'cope' with motherhood instead of struggling and coming to terms with it - losing the weight, getting 'back to normal', whatever that is - we could learn a lot from so-called 'primitive' cultures where new mothers are allowed to bond with their babies whilst everyone else fetches and carries for them for the first 6 weeks or so.

some babies need to suck ,
won't be put down ,
will have silent reflux ,
will fight sleep at every turn,

I'm still here to tell the tale, just!

Mine were 3 out of 4 (no silent reflux, lucky me) - I ended up lugging them both around in the sling for the first 3 months or so. I got some weird looks (this was before babywearing was a known concept and when slings were for hippies, DD1 was born in 2001). Fortunately I am thick-skinned assertive, so I just did what felt right.

Fast forward 10 years and I have two fabulous healthy DDs who sleep like tops, are independent and feisty and loving, and I don't regret a single thing I did. Not even the cloth nappies.

Mine sound like yours pointy
Vintage 99 and 01

We did extended breast-feeding, co-sleeping, slings, a bit of attention now and then
Mine are lovely now too !
(Didn't do cloth nappies though, even though I knew I should )

Article as gaelicsheep said, is total pants.
Presenting individual subjective thoughts as scientific research is bollocks.
Bf both mine til 3.5 years and 2 years, and they rarely cried. Total crap sleepers tho. I could say 100% of bf babies rarely cry. And sleep poorly. Asking 300 mothers hardly makes it any more reliable.

Am loathe to give this article any more air.

nomdeplum - my sympathies but equally good on you
not so good on choccy front!!

Gaelic you poor thing - again i am a shocker with dummies...i'm sure mine would all have loved them but why oh why did i let society tell me not to give them??

i m a mum of 7 months old and love breast feeding and still doing it!!!!well every good thing comes with a challenge!!!!! remember not everyone in this world can breastfeed their baby even if they want!!!! thats something to know!!!!

As always the combination of 'journalistic intentions' (to put it politely) and misunderstanding of what statistics can indicate cloud the issue. But in broad terms it does highlight that natural and artificial feeding are different in many ways - and that's on top of the great variation in every mother/baby combination! The digestive burden of cow protein inevitably means longer sleeps to process and the ease of taking milk from a bottle means that larger feeds will be consumed. My DS once went for 8 days without filling his nappy because he utilised my milk so efficiently - but he was obviously fine so it was just a bit of a puzzle. So this information is a step in the right direction because it counters the gross over-simplification with which every aspect of motherhood seems to be treated by the powers that be (which is so patronising
For those who have access to potable water and sterilisation facilities it is 'horses for courses' really; it's our choice.

As long as all babies start from the level playing field of having had their colostrum in the first 48 hours. Oh and of course as long as artificial milk powder is stored in case there is a pandemic in the crucial months for your baby - it is sealed and keeps so this precaution is easily taken.

Only just seen this thread so apologies if this has already been posted, but I thought it might be helpful to say that the study has been published in PLoS One, which means it is free to access from here.

It is particularly interesting to look at the graph of the results, because this shows that although the difference is statistically significant, it is also very small - so the mean score out of 6 is say 4.9 for bfs/mfs, and 5.1 for ffs.

So, although a difference may have been measured (regardless of whether it is 'real', or perceived), it doesn't represent a big gap between bfing and ffing.

And as I said from what I read the scores were the same from breast-feeding mothers and mixed feeding mothers and slightly different from formula feeding mothers.
I think other factors than the type of milk and it's delivery to the infant were at play here. Basically factors relating to educational achievement and background of the mothers.
All to typically for such social surveys this doesn't seem to have been considered in any depth

too

Hope that first sentence of mine made sense to any readers - basically I'm describing the scores as "from" the mothers (in different categories) rather than "for" the babies being fed in different ways. HTH !

and now we can all see the links to Nestle, looks like the main author of this has been funded by Nestle in the past.

Well what a surprise !

Hoping for more funding from them in the future perhaps ?

Reading the discussion of the results (last section) it says;

"for infant animals irritability is a normal component of signalling to parents... offspring transmit signals of nutritional need, and parents respond with an appropriate transfer of food.
and
In longitudinal studies, longer breastfeeding duration seemed to be associated with easier perceived infant temperaments."

So the infant has to communicate more often (by crying) as it requires feeding more often, and BF is demanding at the start but gives advantages later.

Yeh, but I still think they're trying to make breastfeeding look like something difficult to do.
I'm deeply cynical about their motives.
I found it very natural and straight-forward.
My DCs were very contented babies and grew into very settled and happy children.

My sister has three children; first two BF exclusively for only about 6 weeks and last one BF exclusively for about a year as he took to it so much better. She will gladly tell you that her last one was most certainly her most fractious and challenging child.

Oh, and he is also the only one with asthma.