The age-old question, breast or bottle? For many years we have heard breast is best, and yes there are many great reasons to breastfeed, baby gets your all-important antibodies (something we have heard lots about this past year!) and best of all it’s free! Breastfeeding doesn’t always work out for everyone though and that’s absolutely fine, I already knew this and I was prepared to persevere, I looked up techniques and how to hand express and thought the rest should come naturally. I also thought that I would like to combi feed if I didn’t have a good supply as I was determined baby would get some breast milk goodness.
People had told me that midwives would push breastfeeding which they didn’t until I mentioned that I wanted to try. At the hospital, after he was born he had his first feed with no problems, then once we moved to the postnatal ward his latch wasn’t so good. In the end, we got discharged on the basis I would combi feed. I tried breastfeeding again at home but I wasn’t sure if it was right and baby was getting upset. When the midwife visited she wasn’t sure why but baby’s latch was still poor, I decided I would express and top up with formula.
What I didn’t realise is how time-consuming it is to express and formula feed. As a newborn, he was feeding every 2 hours so it was a revolving door of change, feed and pump. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the routine once my husband returned to his shift work job, eventually my supply seemed to be dropping and I gradually reduced my pumping and moved baby over to formula.
No one ever made me feel bad about this and I always have advocated that fed is best, but I still feel pangs of guilt about it at times. I wish I had known just how much time expressing would take so that I could have adjusted my expectations, I take my hat off to all those Mum’s that do it! We are all super Mum’s no matter how our little ones are fed! X
