Formula or Breast milk

breast milk is best
it has everything your baby needs


i don't really know much about actual formla though.

I have to agree - breast milk is best and the longer you can do that the better for your baby and the cheaper for you.

I have to agree with the others. Breast is the perfect thing for your baby to eat.
When I asked which formula my ped recommended though, because when I went back to work I had to use a formula due to not being able to pump, he said the cheapest one is the one he'd go with. He feels they are all chemically similar and no one is better than another.
Of course there are moms on here who would disagree strongly with that.

I really like Enfamil Lipil and find the Sam's Club brand to be excellent. I never tried anything else, as I was lucky and when I started weaning my son off breast and onto the bottle, he didn't have any adverse reactions (excessive spitting up, belly aches, etc). If I were able to pump I would have kept him on breast milk without question.
Some babies are more sensitive to milk products, so they do best on soy.

I understand about the breast milk but i dont think im the type to do it??? i just dont know i guess i will be able to tell once my baby is here

breast milk is the best AND it saves money :]

I wanna try it this time around, but i'm one of those mothers that will have to return to work after 4 weeks, and it might be tough for me to do so. I just don't know what to do..

sorry but this in my opinion .......but i dont think either is the best. But you wont know whats best for your child till your child is here and you try what the dr recommends for your child

Ava's on enfamil prosobee lipil. It's soy based. The milk based irritated her and made her vomit.

Try to breastfeed if you want and see if it works for you. It's not for everyone including me.

lol 'let em suck on your boobie" yeah, it seems so complicated sometimes doesn't it? people have been doing it since they've been having babies. i think it's our culture or society or something that makes us feel like there's something wierd about it when it's really the most natural thing in the world.

i read this on the la leche league website and i thought it made a lot of sense:

In the United States and Canada, bottle-feeding is the norm. We are a bottle-feeding culture. We begin teaching our children at a young age. Dolls come with baby bottles. Most children's books show babies with bottles. The idea is perpetuated that animals breastfeed and humans do not. Dr. Newman showed slides of Canadian children raised in families where breastfeeding is the norm. Little boys and girls nursed their dolls. An Australian aboriginal child was shown wearing a strap with clay breasts to breastfeed her doll.

For many mothers, breastfeeding information comes from formula manufacturers. Breastfeeding mothers pictured in the pamphlets are usually plain with dark hair and appear to be depressed. Bottle-feeding mothers are blond, prettier, happier and the photographs are brighter.

Many mothers are fearful of nursing in public. A breastfeeding pamphlet picturing both breasts exposed gives a subliminal message that breastfeeding mothers must be immodest, making bottle- feeding mothers appear somehow more virtuous.

Many mothers fear that they will not be able to breastfeed because there is something wrong with their nipples or breasts. They believe their nipples must be as clean and tough as bottle nipples. If a mother has flat nipples, how could she breastfeed? But what woman has nipples that look like any of the artificial nipples on the market? A mother may offer her baby a squeezed breast to try to make it look more like a bottle.

Our culture values the concept of being civilized. Civilized upper class women do not breastfeed because they are not as close to nature as women in developing countries. And babies need to be civilized as well.

Many parents feel most comfortable with schedules and avoiding such practices as comforting the baby and nursing the baby to sleep.

As a breastfeeding mother in a bottle-feeding culture, it was fascinating for me to learn from Dr. Newman how the beliefs of our society have been shaped. Our values include modesty, science, progress and civilization and these have a profound impact on breastfeeding in our culture.

I'm not sure that a child would understand why her baby doll came with a fake breast, or what a child would be doing nursing in a book. I'm not sure that it's entirely appropriate.

As far as "just let them suck on your boobie", I understand that you're being playful, but it's so much harder than that. Breastfeeding is a difficult road, and many mothers on this forum struggled with it before having to switch to formula. Downplaying the difficulty of breastfeeding, even while joking, could be offensive to them. Please try to keep that in mind.

well with formula feeding you don't have cracked and bleeding nipples and a baby having to suck on them several times a day lol

I'm not sure where that came from, Jamie. Anyone who knows me knows I'm huge on breastfeeding. But I'm also realistic, and I don't exactly appreciate people acting like breastfeeding is a walk in the park and is as simple as "just put your boob in the baby's mouth". We have a number of moms on this forum: Sarah, Kristina, and Tanya to name just a few, who tried hard to breastfeed their babies and were forced to stop. Comments that downplay the difficulty of breastfeeding are insulting to those moms.

Formula isn't exactly a walk in the park either, and I never said it was. Sometimes it's hard to find a formula that agrees with your baby. So I'm really not sure where you're coming from.