Why mothers have to bottle feed/formula feed their babies

Dear Mothers,

Breastmilk is the best gift a mother can give to her baby. its
nutritional, emotional, economical and peaceful benefits are known to
all, however more and more mothers are switching to infant formulas.
Can mothers share why they opt for total or partial formula
feeding?????????

In my case, I had to start off formula feeding as my labour was induced and
the milk would just not come in. Took days of getting the baby to latch on
and get nothing, then me pumping using a pump and hand, crying and getting
nothing. One or two drops. So sometimes it's not something that people "opt"
for - it's impossible to feed the baby otherwise. If my milk hadn't
eventually come in and I'd had to continue bottle feeding, I would have
hated being judged by people thinking I had "opted" not to breastfeed.

"rukhsana" wrote in message
ups.com...
Dear Mothers,

Breastmilk is the best gift a mother can give to her baby. its
nutritional, emotional, economical and peaceful benefits are known to
all, however more and more mothers are switching to infant formulas.
Can mothers share why they opt for total or partial formula
feeding?????????

rukhsana wrote:
Dear Mothers,

Breastmilk is the best gift a mother can give to her baby. its
nutritional, emotional, economical and peaceful benefits are known to
all, however more and more mothers are switching to infant formulas.
Can mothers share why they opt for total or partial formula
feeding?????????

Why do you ask? If you Google you can find plenty of stories from
people here about why they mix feed. Unlikely to find total formula
feeders as this is a breasfeeding group.

Jeni

rukhsana wrote:

Breastmilk is the best gift a mother can give to her baby. its
nutritional, emotional, economical and peaceful benefits are known to
all, however more and more mothers are switching to infant formulas.
Can mothers share why they opt for total or partial formula
feeding?????????

a) This is misc.kids.breastfeeding, so you're not likely to find any
total formula feeders.

b) My son was only breastfed because I got really lucky. He was born
at 34 weeks, and I never really let down much for the top-notch
hospital-grade pump. But he learned to nurse 10 days after delivery,
just as pump resistance got bad enough that I couldn't stay ahead of
him with my 20-40 mls of milk, and we were set.

--
C, mama to three year old nursling

wrote in message
ups.com...
rukhsana wrote:

Breastmilk is the best gift a mother can give to her baby. its
nutritional, emotional, economical and peaceful benefits are known to
all, however more and more mothers are switching to infant formulas.
Can mothers share why they opt for total or partial formula
feeding?????????

a) This is misc.kids.breastfeeding, so you're not likely to find any
total formula feeders.

b) My son was only breastfed because I got really lucky. He was born
at 34 weeks, and I never really let down much for the top-notch
hospital-grade pump. But he learned to nurse 10 days after delivery,
just as pump resistance got bad enough that I couldn't stay ahead of
him with my 20-40 mls of milk, and we were set.

I ended up partially formula feeding for the first few weeks, because my
daughter (born premature, due to Pre-eclampsia which apparently can delay
milk coming in) had oral tone issues and never learned to actually get milk
from a breast. For the first five days, until she started dehydrating and it
became obvious that her weight loss was not normal, we tried to get her on
the breast, first alone, then with an SNS. At 5 days, I had to start bottle
feeding and pumping, and even with bottle feeding, it took finding a nipple
which didn't really require her to suck at all for it to work. It took
several weeks of pumping, doing everything possible to increase my milk
supply to the point that she didn't require supplementation with formula. My
milk didn't fully come in until she was 6 weeks old, and it was a real
struggle up to that point. However, once I got to that point, I was able to
pump and feed EBM exclusively (with some rice added due to silent reflux)
until she was able to start solids, and was able to avoid formula entirely
until she went to cow's milk after 1 yr. At 18 months, she gets about 8 oz
of breastmilk a day and 8-12 oz of cow's milk. I hope to continue pumping
and giving her at least some breast milk until age 2.

I know several people who have wanted to breastfeed, but ended up formula
feeding. One of my friends also had severe PE/HELLP, and the sound of her
daughter crying would push her BP into the danger zone. While she might have
been able to pump and maintain supply until her body was stable, the
combination of all the factors in her recovery, and the instability of her
health led her to just plain go to bottle feeding entirely, so that at least
DADDY could feed and spend time with the baby while mommy recovered. My SIL
ended up going to formula entirely for her first daughter, who had multiple,
severe food sensitivities and severe reflux. Yes, she probably could have
gone through an elimination diet and eventually gotten something
appropriate, but given as many different formulas as it took to get the baby
thriving (she ended up on a very expensive, prescription only one), I can't
blame her for giving up. She stopped breastfeeding at 6 months with her
second child because that was all the time she could handle the "no X,Y,Z"
diet recommended given her first child's issues. (So far, the third seems to
be doing fine with nothing extra except the mother avoiding dairy, and
hopefully this will continue).



--
C, mama to three year old nursling

rukhsana wrote:
Dear Mothers,

Breastmilk is the best gift a mother can give to her baby. its
nutritional, emotional, economical and peaceful benefits are known to
all, however more and more mothers are switching to infant formulas.
Can mothers share why they opt for total or partial formula
feeding?????????

I think you'll find that most moms here did not exactly "opt" for
partial formula feeding. That makes it sound like they chose it and
wanted to do it, and that may be true of some but for most there were
medical issues or pump resistance involved.

In my case, my fifth baby was diagnosed with failure to thrive at four
months. She gained no weight at all for 2.5 months. She was
hospitalized and tested for everything under the sun, and finally the
diagnosis was that her jaw was too recessed to effectively empty the
breast. So even though she nursed nearly constantly, she could only
get out about 20 of the 25 ounces she needed a day.

It would have been preferable for me to supplement her with pumped EBM,
but I have pump resistance. Even with a rented double electric
hospital grade pump I could only get a couple of ounces at a time. All
I was doing was pumping, bottle feeding, nursing, trying to use an SNS,
over and over again. And I have four other kids. I suppose you could
say that I "opted" for formula instead of this routine from hell which
I know some dedicated mothers out there would have kept up.

But I could not take it. So even though I had raised four other babies
without one drop of formula, I fed Lorelei four bottles a day for
several months, until her jaw grew and she started solids. I can't
remember now when we stopped--8 months or so maybe? But now at 18
months she still loves to nurse.

Leslie

rukhsana wrote:
Dear Mothers,

Breastmilk is the best gift a mother can give to her baby. its
nutritional, emotional, economical and peaceful benefits are known to
all, however more and more mothers are switching to infant formulas.
Can mothers share why they opt for total or partial formula
feeding?????????

Because when I'm out on an ambulance run, I can't leave my breasts at
the house, and after the first couple months, expressing becomes more
trouble than it's worth, because the bottle thawing, etc is a bigger
pain for my husband and daughter than mixing up a bottle of formula.
Sasha is eight months old, and we're just seeing the bottle of her one
(small) can of formula.

Theona had just a few bottles because I worked at the time, but she
had more expressed breastmilk bottles than Sasha has.

Gareth = zip on the formula.

Xander, formula for medical reasons, usually to calorie supplement my
breastmilk.

Katrina, we started with some bottles because my husband wanted to
feed her, too, and my doctor at the time encouraged me to only nurse
for six months. She was fully weaned by seven months.

We all have to have one that wasn't perfect, right?

Michelle
Flutist

rukhsana wrote:
Dear Mothers,

Breastmilk is the best gift a mother can give to her baby. its
nutritional, emotional, economical and peaceful benefits are known to
all, however more and more mothers are switching to infant formulas.
Can mothers share why they opt for total or partial formula
feeding?????????

All you have to do is really take a look around ya. More and more
mothers probably choose that simply because we live in a world of
convenience. While babies were born to breastfeed, mother's were
supposed to be allowed to be available to breastfeed at any given
moment in time, but that isn't how the world works these days, and each
and every woman has a different set of circumstances into which their
child is born.