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Diabetes prevention in young babies - infant formula choice
Snipped follow-ups to misc.health.diabetes and misc.kids.breastfeeding
(I'm guessing my words of wisdom aren't quite fascinating enough to justify posting them to half of Usenet. ;-) ) Dan Evans wrote: Many thanks for all the helpful replies. My wife (Emma) is going to try to continue breastfeeding for a bit longer, but I can't see it lasting that long to be honest. Up to now, she has been pumping breastmilk (~250ml) first thing in the morning, which we have been giving to Charlie (baby) last thing at night (11pm ish). This has meant he sleeps through the night. (The rest of the time he gets milk from breast direct). In the last month, Emma's AM supply has dropped to ~150ml pumped in AM, which has meant that Emma is also now pumping in the evening to try to get enough for the night feed. Charlie is not getting as much at night as he wants and he is waking earlier than he did. It's managable for now (6:45-7am waking rather than 8-8:30 previously) but we're not sure for how much longer. In that case, the problem isn't that he isn't getting enough full stop, but that he isn't getting enough to sleep for as long a stretch as you'd like. (Being able to pump 150 ml in the morning on top of feeding the baby is excellent – I wish I could pump that much! Sounds like your wife's got a great supply.) So the choice is between your wife getting less sleep for a while, and your son potentially being at higher risk than he already is of a rather unpleasant long-term disease. What choice you make is obviously going to depend largely on how the lack of sleep is affecting your wife. If he's having a feed at 11 p.m. and then sleeping until 6.45 – 7, then that should allow a 7-hour stretch of sleep for your wife. It's unusual for someone not to be able to function for a good while on that amount of sleep – they might not be at top-notch level and might well be feeling pretty tired and a bit below par, but most people could get by for a good few months at that level. Of course, everyone is different – maybe your wife is very badly affected by lack of sleep, and if she's unable to cope without getting more sleep then formula might be the best answer in your case. I'm just wondering about this, though, because I know from my own experience with a poor sleeper that sometimes the worst thing isn't even the tiredness but the fears and stressing about how much worse it might get. Oh, no! I feel tired now, so that must mean I'll go on getting more and more and *more* tired until I go into a meltdown! He was sleeping until 8.30 and now he's waking at 7 – does that mean that by next week he'll be waking at 6 and the week after that at 5? I won't be able to cope if that happens! I don't know when this'll end! This is *never* going to end! I'll never cope! Any of those thoughts sound familiar to your wife? Sometimes, when you get into those kinds of thinking patterns, the level of fear and worry that they engender can blind you to realising that, actually, the current situation is one you're managing to deal with. Also, sometimes what's needed is a break rather than a permanent change. Sometimes, just getting one decent nap can make the difference between “I can't stand this any longer!” and “OK, guess I can keep going for a bit.” And keeping going even for a bit may be worth the effort – after all, studies seem to indicate that older is better when it comes to first introduction of cow's milk to a baby at risk of diabetes, so it could well be that delaying formula by even a few weeks could make a crucial difference to the risk level. Are there any compromises that could help resolve this by ensuring that your wife gets enough sleep with the baby's current sleep pattern? Has your wife got a job outside the home during the day (truly exhausting with a small baby to look after) or could she nap during the day? Can she go to bed earlier in the evening and make up the sleep that way? Can she get him settled again after the 7 a.m. waking and grab a bit more sleep that way? Is Charlie getting the breast as well as the bottle at his 11 p.m. feed? The extra milk he gets from that could make up the difference. Has your wife tried nursing him before the bottle and then again after it? That will help him get a bit extra, stimulate her breasts to make more milk, and mean that he gets more of the high-fat milk that babies get when they nurse on a recently-drained breast, which can help fill babies up and help them sleep longer. At the end of the day, I figure much of parenthood is about doing what you can and then not worrying about what you can't. Much like the Serenity Prayer. So – my advice would be to make sure the two of you really have explored all other feasible options for putting off formula supplementation for as long as possible. And, if you run out of other options and find you really do need to give it, then you'll know that you've put in the effort to make the right decision, and, for all you know, the extra time that trying other measures will have bought you may make a difference in itself. Finally, congratulations to your wife for trying so hard to breastfeed for this long, and good luck in her continued endeavours. All the best, Sarah -- http://www.goodenoughmummy.typepad.com "That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be" - P. C. Hodgell |
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