Formula Feeding General Chatter

Is it ok if I join you guys in here? I had my DD just over 3 weeks ago and have had to FF since she was about 2weeks. I'm feeling pretty guilty about it but her being happy & healthy is more important I think. BF was going perfectly She latched on like a pro and I had more than enough supply even had enough to express extra so DH & DS could have a turn at feeding her. Unfortunately about the 2nd week, she would be sick after EVERY feed and eventually projectile vomit it ALL back up. I tried again yesterday but again same thing. My mum & almost everyone else is being quite anal to keep trying to BF but atleast DH & his mum are on my side and reassure me that her health is more important.
I BF DS until just over 2mths (just after his 1st immunisations) but I was only 17 yrs then & stopped basically out of laziness & not knowing the importance of it. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, now that I can't BF when I want to, I'm feeling guilty also that I just threw it away with him.

But hey, DD is thriving on the formula and I'm going to focus on being proud of her weight gain and not dwell on where it comes from!

Thanks for the feedback. I'm thinking I might slowly move him to 3 hours and see how that goes.

As for sterilizing, I have a microwave one that works well for me. I wash first then pop it in there. I don't have much room so it's just as easy to do it in there.

Fionaw - how is his sleeping? You didn't mention it in your initial post. Just be aware that if your baby is used to taking 4 hours to digest his formula (like many are and which would explain why he only demands his food at that interval), that popping fresh formula on top of partially digested formula can cause bloating, tummy stretching and additional possetting. I found this out from a nurse when I asked her about feeding our little man more frequently because I thought he was hungry all the time! Just passing on this info, I cannot confirm its accuracy though, as we have a happy chucker anyway!

Welcome Daytonas Mummy :) Sorry to hear you have had such issues with bubs vomiting. Glad to hear things are on track now.

welcome Daytona :D Sorry you had troubles with bfing, it is fantastic to hear she is thriving on the formula though. You gave her 2 weeks of pure gold, just remind yourswelf of that whenever you feel guilty.

:wall::wall: last night Milly settled really well and slept for 5 hours...today she has started spewing :wall::wall::wall DD1 was happy chucker so im used to it but it still sucks

I know it's not ideal to change to a new formula so soon, but try giving her some Karicare AR - it is a thickened formula and it really helped with all the vomiting DS2 was doing. He was still chucky, but I might get 1-2 spews a day compared to about 3 after every feed.

I used a thinckened formula for reflux for a couple of months too. It didnt stop his spewing at all but it made the spew a bit thicker so that when he did power chuck his spew was easier to catch and contain. I think I used S26 AR, and I didnt need to get bigger teats, I used Nuk standard silicone teats and they were fine.

its strange she only spews once or twice a day...they are huge spews with me needing a shower lol but it doesnt seem to bother her I might just see how she goes for a few more days before changing her because she has started going 6 to 7 hours over night :dance:

sounds like she should be fine on the current formula, if she is a happy chucker I would just leave her be :)

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Is there anyone still FFing an older child? Sam's been on Nan HA since birth with very few issues, but we seem to be having no success at all in getting him on to cows milk. If he has cows milk on his cereal he will spend the day puking, yet he can have cheese cooked into his dinners and be fine.

BW

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I read somewhere cheese and yogurt are lactose free and that's why you can give them to babies under 1 year. Tried lactose free milk? it's in UHT milk sectionthat I couldn't breast feed

I had a prem baby and she was weak to suck but on top of it had silent reflux and would want to snack every 45 mins including in the night. Charlie couldn't build supply and I felt a nasty pressure. After 6 LC trips, over 100 motillium tabs and 3 months my supply STOPPED because i was so stressed. i had lost all my prego weight plus 8 kilos and I felt ill because of lack of sleep and constantly seeing Charlie get all screamy after a very thin milk feed. Charlie started losing weight so i cracked it and got a tin of formula. We have both been happier since.

That said i do have the odd guilty pang that I couldn't breastfeed consistantly.

That's the thing - cheese and yoghurt also cause puking. I've got some lactose free milk for him to try, but he's got a cold at the moment so we will wait until he's over that. My gut feeling is that it isn't a lactose problem, but it seems like the next step so that's what we'll do.

BW

hi there can I join in...

with my first we had a rocky start with pre-labour at 27, 29, 34 weeks with a final emergency c-sect @ 37 weeks after being flown 11 hrs from home.. I attempted b/f and expressing while Jack was in SCN...where he was having formula dumps...we started FF on day 4 as I had no milk nothing...by the time my milk came in on day 9 or 12 can't remember we were in a lovley routine was not aware I could re-attach after FF oh well, he was a healthy happy baby and is still a healthy toddler well I suppose little boy now :) has rarely had a sick day in his life :) he was on S26 step 1 till a yr then step 2 till he was 2 he wouldn't take cows milk he stopped bottles around 2 yrs 4mths he had maybe 4mths on cows... even now he isn't mucg of a milk drinker but then we aren't either

with Luke I had every intention of BF but we had attachement issues from word go, elective c-sect made it hard to get into a good position, so in hospital i was hand expressing and following up with a FF, once home i continued expressing we were up to half EBM and half FF a day then my supply droppped off to nothing :cry: after a month then i had to start medication for post partum odema so even had my supply been ok i would have had to make the decision EBM or medication...... so my body made the decision for me, occassionally when i have to double up my medication dose i leak like crazy :wall:but Luke is thriving he is on 5 x180ml feeds a day.. we use S26...Luke was a chucker big time so we add karicare thickener to his feeds and no spews :dance:

as for sterilising aas long as Jack had a bottle his were sterilised, Luke will be the same...

HI Ladies,

I'm joining into this thread also!
My first baby, Zoe will be three weeks tomorrow.
She has been FF fed since she was just 1 week old, so I'm fairly new at this.
I never got a fabulous supply of milk, and tried to combination feed- EBM, FF AND BM for a couple of days, but Zoe was always starving after the EBM and BM.
And then my BM dried up after some stressful news last week :(

Now my problem is that ocassionally after a 120ml bottle of S26 Gold, she'll be looking for more food within an hour?
Should I demand feed her whenever she starts looking for it?
Its usually at night, and this morning 5am, I was up for 2 hours before I gave in and gave her another bottle.....

Any advice would be much appreciated :D

Emma are you doing the 4hrs feed routine ??? Luke would and still does on occasion have a bottle within 2hrs... other times it can be 3-4 hrs or more before he wanted more, why not give her the 120ml then if she seems to want more make up a 60ml...dont force her to take it but if she wants a little more than so be it, Luke moved onto 180ml ones at just shy of 2mths

how many bottles/feeds a day is she having ???

Emma, I demand fed our boy on advice from our paediatrician and it worked well for us. I think it is something you have to keep an eye on because you can overfeed on formula. We never had that problem and he is still in good proportion with both his weight and height in the 99th and 98th percentile. I guess you can just keep a close eye on weight gain vs height? Feeding our boy when he wanted it and until his was full really helped us on the sleeping front. Over time he regulated his own feeds and now only has a bottle every four hours and has tapered back on the amount he drinks now that he is on solids. I will definitely demand feed our next bub.

Rach and Sambo- Thanks for that.
Zoe is having between 6 and 7 feeds a day.
The tin says she should only be having 6?

Emma, our boy was also having more bottles than the tin specifies. If you go back to earlier on in this thread, I posted a calculation on how to find out how many mls your bub should be having based on their weight. You can work out the total daily volume from there. The tins are really not accurate in determining the correct amount for all babies because they are all very different. So it is all about working out the total volume that your baby should be drinking each day. The number of bottles they have in order to get that volume in, isn't important. I was really concerned because our boy used to frequently have more than his recommended volume based on his weight. This is what made me query from the paediatrician whether demand feeding was ok. I know many paeds are against it, but he said it wasn't a problem and it wasn't. Now we are actually trying hard to get our boy to have enough milk since he started solids!!!

How are we all going? Been a bit quiet lately so I thought I'd pop in.

DS11 wks has been doing some weird things with his feeds lately. He will suck pretty intently for a very short period of time. Then seems "finished" and isn't interested in any more. However this is normally only after 30 or 60 ml. I try and keep offering over the next hour and he will drink but is also squirming and playing with the bottle at the same time. He is particularly bad during his morning feeds.

Any thoughts? His day sleeps have always been terrible so I'm not sure if this is a follow on.

Cheers, Fiona

I had the same issue with Charlie but she worked herself out. She was gaining weight perfectly and MCHN said that it seems something is going right. If you're really worried go get him weighed if your child health centre has open clinics and maybe pick the MCHN's brains. Charlie was also really horrid with day sleeps.

I know that there have been some questions surrounding the minimum amount of formula required once solids have been commenced. I asked my paediatrician today and thought that I would relay what he said for those interested. Obviously I could only really ask him questions in relation to our boy, but it should give people an indication, anyway. I just want to preface the following by saying that our bub's height and weight are in proportion (albeit both in the 100th percentile!!) and he got a 100% bill of health. Different weight vs height issues or dietetic requirements could result in the following being inaccurate:

Firstly he said "always ignore the can - that is for babies who are not on solids"

Secondly he said that once baby is on established solids and having a balance diet, i.e. 3 meals per day, they require 800mg of calcium per day which is derived from the formula (particularly for my bub who is milk protein intolerant and cannot ingest calcium any other way). So I suppose that can be reduced if your bub is guzzling yoghurt, cheeses etc.?

Thirdly he said that the absolute minimum for a bub on established solids is 500ml per day BUT that you should be aiming for between 600 and 700mls.

I hope this helps - it sure put my mind at ease :)

BW - I asked him about bubs having formula beyond one year and he said that it is 100% fine. He even said that they can have formula for as long as they like (obviously within reason, in moderation and not as a food supplement). He said that once babies move onto cow's milk you need to supplement their diet with iron as cows milk contains little or no iron. Even at this stage, all of the iron-fortified cereals constipate our boy, so this is definitely something I will offer him beyond 1 year. I hope this helps.

Thanks for that, Sambo. We got some lactose free milk for Sam to try, but then he got sick so the UHT carton is still sitting in the cupboard despite the fact that he's been well again for over a week! Formula is still just way more convenient when out. We still have issues with Sam getting constipated really easily, when the paed suggested we put him on pentavite I made sure to get the one without iron! Poor kid seems to have his mother's slow, sluggish digestive system.

BW

Thanks for that info Sambo.

DD isn't quite having 3 meals a day, just random solids when she's interested, but I was wondering how much milk she should be having/balancing it out with. Now from reading that I've got a bit of guideline to go off.

:bump:

Isn't it funny - I actually asked for this thread to be made, and then bloody forgot about it and never posted in here.. :lol:

I have formula fed all three of my kids - DS from day 3 in hospital because of some wicked attachment issues, and not very helpful midwives! The experience scarred me so much, I put DD1 on formula from birth, and had a much more enjoyable experience with her as an infant because of it. Then I was determined with DD2 to bf - and then she arrived, and fed for 2 hours immediately, my poor nipples didn't know what hit them, and she was still screaming for food at 10pm that night (she was born at 6.15pm!) so we dropped into KMart on our way home and picked up bottles and formula for her. She also had reflux, was a "happy starver" so wouldn't wake up for feeds, so I would assume she was getting enough from the breast when we eventually started bfing again. And of course, because she wasn't demanding it, I didn't think to give it (cos I thought she was satisfied) so my milk supply dwindled, she never emptied the breast properly because of a lip issue (she couldn't flare her top lip out, so wasn't sucking effectively and emptying each feed) so with all these issues - finally when she was a month old we turned to formula full time. I did express as much as I could (but didn't get much out) but it wasn't fair to my other kids because they were missing out on mummy time. So we made the educated decision for our family and put her on formula. And to this day (she is 6 months) she STILL can't flare her top lip around the bottle teat.

Anyhoo - thats my journey - how is everyone going?

forgot about this thread too :redface:

Starting to think about transitioning DD to cow's milk/reducing the number of bottles she has. Won't do the cow's milk thing just yet but doesn't hurt to start thinking...thinking about not having to fork out $20/week for a tin of formula! Lol

When did you start to reduce the number of bottles? Atm because she is waking 1-2 times a night she's back up to having 5 or 6 bottles in 24 hours. I did have it down to one bottle overnight, and because she was waking at about 4am I'd skip her breakfast bottle and give her cereal instead, then a bottle before she went down for her morning sleep. But now she's waking at about midnight and again at 4 or 5am, and only has one day sleep, so my great routine has once again been turned on its head!

Due for a visit to the MCHN shortly so I want to know what I *should* be doing so I can tell her that instead of what I am doing so I don't get a lecture :hide:

It's been good to read your story Mel.

Personally, I feel like a bit of a fruit loop for still giving my 18 month old boy formula... But every time I get ready to do the slow wean onto cows milk he gets sick... and he's been bouncing from one bug to another for the last month, so I'm not messing with things any time soon!

BW

ss - I can't really remember with my kids, I *think* Miss M was still having 3 or 4 bottles a day at 1 year old, but I can't really remember.. funny how you forget things!!!! Eden is still having 5 bottles a day, sometimes I think she's about to drop one, but then she wants it in the middle of the night instead, we're a bit all over the joint here.

BW - I don't think you are a fruit loop at all :hug: I never gave my kids formula after about 14 months of age, I gradually made the switch to cows milk - and I've always taken about 2 months to make the switch, to let their bodies get used to it :)

ss, at 12 months Sam was having three bottles per day, but was still having two day sleeps so each bottle came before a sleep. I kept getting told that he would gradually drink less and less with one bottle and eventually drop it, but he never did. I can remember that we made the decision to stop his first bottle of the morning (I think at around 9-10 months) and that's how we got him to go from 4 to 3. I don't think he's ever dropped a bottle of his own accord - he loves his milk and the only way we've ever got him to eat more was by reducing the number of bottles.

Mel, I kept asking DH to wean him on to milk, but he just didn't seem confident in doing it. But I've stopped working now, and DH will go back to full time work soon enough and then I'll get on to it. DH just finds formula easy and familiar and doesn't like to change things.

BW

I can understand that BW - I'm not a big fan of change myself... LOL

Oh were chatting again yay!!

Im a bit confused with Millys feeding atm she is all over the place...
last night she had 180mls at 7pm went to bed, woke up screaming the house down for another bottle at 10pm then slept till 6am and when she woke this morning she only drank 30mls!!
the night before she had bottle at 7pm then 11pm 3am and up for the day and refusing a bottle at 6am
she has never had any routine...sometimes she goes 2hours between bottles sometimes 4 hours or longer some nights
I know i shouldnt let it but to be honest its doing my head in

Aww honey :hug: Is she teething? I found teething always put the kids off their bottles and made them all over the place. At the moment, Eden is all over the place too with her feeds, she drank about 90ml of her bottle at 9.00 - but drank about 200ml at 5am. Then I'll probably feed her around 1.30, 4.30 and 6.45 today - thats our usual times, but sometimes she wants it earlier, later, but I just think, oh well, if she isn't drinking she mustn't need it - and if she cries for one, well she must need it.. LOL... I do hate wasting formula though (even though I hate that feeling) because its so expensive!!

I'm the same Arimeh...I threw out a full bottle (240ml) the other day because DD stuck her nose up at it. Had a few mouthfuls and after that didn't want a bar of it!
Po5 DD was/is the same when she is teething, she really goes off her food. It's only been the last few days that she has completely finished her bottles.

yeah Arimeh she is getting some teeth...hopefully they come thru soon cause she is being a PITA!! Im with you on wasting formula, she has just gone up to 180mls but only for some bottles so we waste heaps :wall: she is just fussing at the bottle so Im thinking of going up to the next stage teats

I would make less... and then if he seemed to want more I'd make up a little more. I just hated pouring formula down the sink when he refused to drink it. Which reminds me... He wandered off with his bottle when he was done this morning and I haven't located it yet. At least I'd got the lid back on so there won't be any nasty spills...

BW

Haha thought of a joke earlier and figured I would put it here where I wouldn't get slammed...

"Why is formula better than breast milk?"
"Cos you can teach your older child how to count when making the bottles... 1...2... 3... 4 scoops!"

Bahahaha

Sorry, just a little pathetic joke from me!!! Came to me when I was making Eden's bottle just before and Kelti was standing there counting the scoops.. LOL... one.. two.. fee... or....

Sam won't talk for us yet (stubborn boy!) but he does get excited when we count out the scoops and get to four - he knows that indicates the bottle is nearly ready.

If we'd stuck with stage 2 instead of going to stage 3 he'd be counting to 7!

BW

Lol that's a good one! I count out loud when I'm making up her bottles, makes me feel like dork but at least I know where I'm up to...there's been a couple of times when I've forgotten how many I've put in and just hoped the right number of scoops was in there!

Hi.. I'm not sure if I belong here.
I FF Munchkin from about 3-4 days old.
Miss Nao on the other hand things went marginally smoother. I sorted the attachment out, but supply kept dropping with each period and never recovering. Then add in bunches of stress about things and bam, non existent. So now we've made the decision to give her Formula. She's almost 5 months old now. And I feel every month of that was uphill. Part of me wishes I'd made the decision earlier. The sound of a hungry baby is heart wrenching.

I don't know where I belong now. I feel a bit stuck in the middle. I just want people to talk to who understand and don't have their silent judgey hats on.

Tam - I never wear hats ;)

Be where you feel most comfortable. :hug:

No judgement here, Tam. Welcome. :hug:

Thanks guys. It means alot. :hug:

I just gave Nao a bottle and normally she's cranky and yelling the house down. But she burped and smiled. She's now laughing and playing with her toys.
I don't think I've felt this relaxed in ages.