Toddler formula -

I agree the advertisements are really only aimed at brand awareness and I agree with whomever said that is just so that if you are already formula feeding or are going to formula feed, then their brand is 'top of mind' on your head when you get to the supermarket...

However, I do think this can vary from family to family, child to child. I was unable to BF my twins (for medical reasons) so they were formula fed from birth. They are now 17 months old and are still formula fed. They eat normal solid food obviously, but they have a bottle when they go down for their one day sleep and they have a bottle at bed time. Often if they wake or are hungry, which is most nights - I will give them a bottle at about 10pm in their cots which they drink themselves.

They only weigh 10kgs each, which is pretty light for 17 months. Our Paed advised that we should keep them on formula rather than moving to cows milk, for several reasons. Firstly because we are trying to 'fatten them up' and she felt this would happen faster on formula than cows milk. Secondly, because they are hungry in the night - she advised that giving them a bottle of formula in bed was 'safer' than cows milk because often they will not drink it all in one hit and throughout summer we were all concerned it would 'go off' or congeal in the bottle in the night. Thirdly she felt the girls would benefit from the additional vitamins etc in the formula. I should add that they are not on 'toddler formula' they are still on newborn formula for exactly the same reason I think Mad B pointed out - no sugar and more of the good stuff (if you can actually even say that formula has any good stuff!).

I am the first to agree that breast is best for babies and toddlers, however some people cannot BF. So I kind of disagree with some of the Nazi-ism that surrounds breastfeeding. As someone who couldn't breastfeed the twins - I find it offensive when people comment on the twins being formula fed, or try and point out breast would have been better etc... It is an individual choice and for many mummies that formual feed - it wasn't their first choice. Tbh I feel lucky that we live in a Country where the formula is safe to give our babies. Which is not necessarily the case if you live in China, India or a third world country.

Formula is expensive etc so I totally agree that if you have BF for 12 months moving your toddler onto formula isn't really necesary, unless like us there is a reason that formula may be more valuable to your child than say cows milk. Frankly we would give the twins anything our Paed suggested (and that we had researched) if there was common sense justification for why it was beneficial over cows milk or any other kind of milk...