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Welcome to the Formula Feeding general chatter thread. This thread is where you can talk about formula feeding your baby/ies with other Mums who formula feed.
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Just bumping this - use it or lose it ladies! :)
:clap: Oh yay just in time :dance:
will be great to chat to other mums ff sometimes i get a bit jealous of all this BF talk:redface: but i know im doing the best i can.
I only fed DD for :redface: one day and then we started FF.I started her on Nan ha gold pro but have only today changed to Heinz gold because she didnt seem satisfied on nan and after all the unsettledness im willing to try anything :wall:
Look forward to chatting
Hey Lucylu!
I know exactly how you feel! I wasnt able to BF DD as all as I didnt get any milk! I also get pangs of jelousy about the BF thing and DD is 14 month old now!
Hope that your FF journey goes well! Your DD is just gorgeous!!
Kate
I have days where the guilt still overwhelms me... and my son is only a little bit younger than Jakabella's daughter.
Most days I'm fine...
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
Butterfly+ can sam eat other dairy like yogart?? DD1 only drinks 100mls of cows milk a day but eats alot of other dairy
We haven't tried yoghurt for a while. For now, we just stick to our HA toddler formula and hope he grows out of it eventually.
BW
Woohoo! I'll be posting in here more often :hello:
Great thread - glad I found it :)
Yep, we have a double whammy of mummy-guilt here! Not only could I not breastfeed (milk late in coming in and a laughable supply, thereafter), but our boy reacted really badly to the formula (Cow's Milk Protein Intolerance). Anyway, after a less-than-pleasant journey we had to put him on an extensively-hydrolised formula and eventually move him onto an elemental formula (Neocate). So the problem is solved and he is really thriving on his fomula, but I am still trying to get over not being able to breastfeed.
I do envy other mums being able to BF and I still get upset (almost daily!) about it. A part of me constantly second guesses whether or not if I did persist I would eventually have built up my supply to BF exclusively. I gave up after two weeks of trying (the second week I was not getting any more than 25ml from each breast and the PND was starting to set in - in a big way). I always wonder about those statements like "just persist, I promise your milk will come in". I don't know how accurate they really are if physically you cannot do it. One thing that they are effective in doing is making you wonder if you gave up too soon! Anyway, I know this isn't a "BFing Issues" thread, but I figure that, after reading your ladies' posts, that perhaps you will appreciate how disappointed I am about the whole thing. This is something that I have wanted to share on BB, in a supportive and understanding environment, but didn't feel like I could up until now and up until I discovered this thread. So thank you for bearing with me :)
BW - sorry to hear you still haven't found an answer to your question (I recall another thread where we discussed it). The only "help" I can offer is to say that many kids stay on formula because they cannot tolerate dairy at all. So they would have formula instead of cows milk throughout their formative years. It is for this reason that I imagine Sam would be just fine on formula for the time being until you manage to get some answers. Stupid question, I know, but have you spoken to a GP about this? A paediatrician would definitely know the answer. I am seeing our paediatrician in a month's time for a check up on our boy. I can ask him the question (because it may well be applicable to us as well) if you are happy to wait until then?
I have spoken to the paed... He suggested soy (hell, no! Not my boy!) or lactose free milk. I decided to just leave it for a while, and then we had to give him a jar of emergency food for dinner one night. I realised later that it was a very cheesey one, but he wasn't puking like normal from it so we decided to try again. We put half cows milk half water on his cereal (the farex apple muesli one) and he was fine the first day, but puking the second. He had a small spew, but spent the day constantly swallowing down what we can only assume was spew that he was able to catch. He had a really bad cough that night, which is fortunately settling now so I think it was just the irritation. Our plan is to give him a few days for everything to settle down again and then try lactose free milk. It would be interesting to find out what another paed thinks, though. I think we do have a dairy intolerance, but it is mild as the partially hydrolised formula is ok for him.
In some ways, formula is much easier than cows milk - especially when we're out!
BW
Sambo, I'm totally hearing that!:
Another hand up for BF guilt over here...and some jealousy in hearing that one of my bestie's is feeding her 6 week DD easy as - but of course I'm proud of her too.
I only BF'd my DD for 3 weeks and felt so incompetant the whole time, DD was so much happier once we started FF and we finally felt like she was getting a full little tummy :)
I feel a bit guilty too sometimes, mostly when I've read something though (e.g. a comment on another thread i was just reading about being 'embarrassed' to FF a baby...got my hackles up a bit! lol).
DD just never got the hang of latching on, not sure if it was because of her nature (she was a little lazy!), me not being able to get the hang of it or a combination of the two. We didn't get much support from the midwives at the hospital, apart from a couple that were really fantastic (I wish their shifts never ended! haha) so Idont think that helped a lot either as we were left to our own devices most of the time and whenever I buzzed for someone they took over half an hour to respond and by that time she had pulled off and was back asleep again.
I expressed for a max of 3 weeks, combined with FF and then I just stopped expressing. I didnt get a lot of support from family to keep persisting with trying to BF/express and in the end decided it was better for us that we just went FF full time, I am glad I made the decision as I think we are all a lot happier and less stressed (expressing also takes up a lot of time), I guess I sometimes just wonder what it would be like if I had persisted.
But at the end of the day, if DD is happy then I am happy and that should be all that matters :)
BW - I am with you on the soy! We were told that soy yoghurt may be an option for our little one before trying to re-introduce dairy at 1 year - just not meant for little boys' tummies, in my opinion. So he will just have to hang tight until we try the cows milk.
I would be really interested to know how he goes on the lactose-free milk because that will probably ascertain whether or not it is a milk protein or milk sugar intolerance (the latter being far easier to deal with!). Good idea to let him settle down for a couple of days, though so you get an accurate response. I wish you luck and please let us know.
Els and storm - I know what you mean about the negative FF posts, storm - you would swear it is poison and it really upsets me when people refer to it like it is a sin (as if us FF'ers don't exist and don't have feelings!). I am sure that you both, like me, did the best we could at the time. I suppose we just have to keep on reminding ourselves of that. There is that fine line between persisting with something that eases out conscience, but places our children in a very dangerous position and that of swallowing our pride and dealing with the guilt in an attempt to nourish our children adequately. It seems so logical and simple when you put it in black and white - it is a pity it doesn't seem to help the situation between our ears! You are great mums and it isn't all about boobs at the end of the day!
BW - when I started Bella on cows milk I started by mixing it with formula - so 1/3 CM and the rest formula to the required amount.. then as the weeks went on the ratio of milk was more and the formula less - Im sure you have tried that - but just putting it out there.
I so get all you ladies! I STILL get offended when I read some of the BF v's FF posts that happen time to time.. but it does get easier! I will try to BF my next bub but I know from experiance that I hava a bright and happy and very smart little girl and she didnt get a drop of Breast Milk...
I have relised as she has gotten older that its all not about BF v's FF - thats just a small part of the picture, hey we all do the best that we can!
Kate
you're right girls, how we feed our babies is only a tiny part of the whole parenting journey, and I have a very intelligent 3 year old who had ff from 5 weeks and he only got his first virus at 3 years of age!
I felt guilty about stopping bfing for a good 2 years afterwards, telling myself I gave up too easily (i had a severe reflux baby who spent time is hospy and had surgery which made him worse, plus I ended up with PND) DS last feed is something I will never forget for as long as i live. It was still dark in the morning and I hatefully gave him his last breastfeed, I was SO looking forward to starting him on formula later that day, he gulped down a huge bf and was settled for many hours after it. When I look back I think if only I could have taken it one feed at a time I'd prolly still be bfing him now!
So yeah, the guilt over ff is HUGE, so huge in fact that I am scared of attempting bf second time round....a huge part of me wants to go straight to ff to save any stress over failing to bf again :(
vent over, ff mummies rock just as much as bf mummies xx
Widdly, I have times where I feel like I won't even try next time. Not only the fear of failing again, but that it won't be fair to Sam. I'm not sure it makes sense at all, but it is what it is.
On another note - 1.5kg lost, well done! I can only guess the plan is working? I soooo need to get back on track, but work is killing me at the moment!
BW
:hello:
DS has been FF from 5 days old and to this day i feel horrible when i read stories about women who dont even get milk and i feel horrible coz i gave up and im sometimes abit afraid to admit it the feeding constantly from 3 till 6 in the morning was horrible and even before that the lack of support in the first day in hospital i feel if the LC had have come on the first day i would have been ok and the fact that u should be waking them to feed more often was left out in hospital i thought oh yeah this is awesome hes sleeping all the time until 3-6 well anyway thats just background
DS was on Karicare Gold and we couldnt afford it anymore so we ended up on Heinz Nurture (the plain one also constipation issues) and now we are on step 2 and its working brilliantly :)
JwithJ - we just changed back to step 1 from step 2...poor DD was constipated for almost 3 weeks!
I know i changed over the wrong way though...silly me thought it would be fine to do a straight swap, well she had a couple of bottles of half and half to use up the last of the step 1 and the tin didn't say anything about changing over gradually..I assumed because it was the same formula it would be ok. I feel a bit stuipd now..lol. Anyway we have gone back to step 1 and that seems to have sorted her out so I think we will be sticking with that until she goes on cow's milk.
I know what you mean..I felt so lost in hospital I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing and when I was supposed to be doing it. I think that was part of the problem that I didn't try and feed her often enough. I feel awful about it now but all I can do is learn from the experience and make sure I do better with #2 (not that that will be happening for a while!)