Are bottle-fed babies generally bigger/heavier than breastfed babies?

[birthofawoman]

I met a 6-month-old very cute, very chunky baby the other day (my DS's cousin) - much chunkier than I imagine my 6-week-old will be at 6 months (although me not being able to imagine it doesn't mean he won't be). My DS has always been on the smaller side... I carried and measured small during pregnancy, and he weight 6 lbs 10 oz at birth. Currently, he's gaining weight perfectly but is still considered a more petit baby.

The 6-month-old baby is formula fed, and it got me thinking (just out of curiosity) whether bottle fed babies (whether fed breastmilk or formula) generally gain more weight than breastfed babies? If that were the case, I imagine it'd be because they're made the finish a bottle (someone else's idea of how much they should feed), whereas breastfed babies take exactly as much as they wish/need and stop once they're satisfied that they've reached that point? I could be completely off the mark here, I'm just curious!

Or could it be to do with what's in formula? When I told my mum about the chunky baby, her first comment was "He'a on formula, isn't he?".

Would love to hear your responses! It's 4am and my curiosity has gotten the better of me tonight!

Probably. I’ve been on both sides of FF and BF and everything in between with my DC. My opinion is the difference is minimal if at all. Mums should just do what’s best for them rather then being made to feel guilty all the time.

This thread has some mental posts on it. Comparing breastfeeding to comfort eating is just nonsense. Also feel that the OP is slightly goady... no experience formula feeding at all but feels able to muse about all these FF babies being forced to finish bottles?!
I think FF babies tend to be heavier but as far as I'm aware it's correlation rather than proven causation that it leads to anything later in life. Then again, my 6 week.old is ebf and huge. Some babies are just bigger and continue to follow that centile line regardless of feeding method.

girlwiththearabstrap I think you misinterpreted my tone and took my actual statement out of context. I was referring to bottle-fed (not ff) babies (so nothing against ff), and I even apologied for my comment possibly offending anyone, admitting to my own ignorance and lack of experience with bottle-feeding!

My question was out of genuine curiosity and nothing else - no hidden or ill-natured opinions towards bottle-feeding or formula-feeding! Quite annoyed at myself for giving off this impression!

I need to spend more time crafting my posts if my tone is coming across as goady!

@birthofawoman just wanted to say thanks for your apology. Lots of ff mums are quite sensitive (I'm prob oversensitive to be honest) if they've wanted to bf but been unable to, or felt judged for their decision. You will see this in other posts about feeding.
I think there's some other goady posters on this thread who've made it worse to be honest.

birthofawoman I wasn't offended or feeling judged. You said you have no experience of f fed babies, but you do have experience of feeding babies.

I just wondered how/why you thought it would possible to overfeed a ff baby, when you would know that you can't overfeed a bf baby. the method of feeding doesn't change how full they get.