Food Glorious Food

So how do you choose a formula?  How do you decide what bottles to use and when to change teats etc etc?

I'm a believer in mixed feeding.  I'm defo not a believer in 'my baby won't take a bottle'.  No one gets awards for martyrdom and my pet peeve is the age-old moan from breast feeding mothers about how they don't get any sleep, how their partners can't help out and how they're so exhausted.  Either it's their health visitors putting the emotional pressure on them to breast feed and through exhaustion they can't see the wood for the trees, or they genuinely can't work out how to ask for help.  No well loved, healthy baby is going to suffer from being given expressed or formula milk once a day.  So I can't understand why one wouldn't turn to something to help them.  Surely some sleep and tlc will help milk production and allow your baby to feed better?

From day dot we have mixed fed - so breast fed through the day and night but hubby has given a bottle at 10pm.  For the first few weeks this is expressed milk.  I followed Gina's thoughts with this - it made sense to me - express twice a day - it does wonders for milk production and a few days in I'm expressing over 100mls of milk (so I know baby is also getting plenty too in her feeds).

Giving a bottle for the first time is like giving a boob - it takes a few goes at trying to suckle and get the right positioning etc but once they get it, it works.  And if baby is hungry, they'll take whatever is on offer!

We went for Aptamil formula but only because we were like the sheep at the back of the herd and everyone else seemed to be using it.  There wasn't any big amount of research or reasoning behind it (odd for me as I seem to research everything a million times before I make a decision).  It's worked well for us and we used hungry baby milk as first baby was never full so why rock the apple cart with the second.  As she never really fed much we did try no 1 milk, but she drank the same amount just was hungrier quicker - as I like my routines, we decided to go back to no 2 (hungry baby) milk so the 3-hour routine would be achievable.

A friend really struggled breast feeding with her first and was adamant it was the only way.  Her baby cried and cried (and cried some more).  The health visitors didn't offer her any other options but just encouraged her to carry on trying the boob.  She then started mixed feeding after her sisters gave her the confidence to do it.  At month 4 she went to her GP who was stunned that she was topping up every feed and suggested maybe she just moved onto bottles (every feed was taking over an hour - 40 mins of breast feeding and then doing the bottle too).  She finally saw the wood for the trees, knew she'd 'done her bit' for her baby's start and moved just onto bottles.  It wasn't what she set out to do, but was so much happier now a decision had been made.  With her second, she started breast feeding but was so much more relaxed.  When she started struggling to keep her milk production up, she went straight onto bottles and was much more content.  No pressure from anyone to keep breast feeding, just the confidence that she was doing the right thing for her baby. 

If you only try the bottle once every so often with a baby and expect them to then only take a bottle when you want them to at month 5, of course it'll be a struggle - it's all new.  So my advice is start early and offer a bottle once a day.  I promise you'll be happy with your decision a few weeks down the line.  Plus, hubby will love the responsibility and space to bond with baby - a hugely important time of the day for them too.

I feel like today's been a little schmaltzy!  I'm tired.  My 6-month old isn't playing ball with waking up at 7am - she's hard bent on waking at 6am.  I'm doing my best to sleep train - give it a few more weeks and I'm sure I'll have it nailed!  Will update you on that side of things soon.