Whatever you feel comfortable with (The Breastfeeding Debate)

Member Name: January

Product:	The Breastfeeding Debate
Date:	01/04/03 (165 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: both have them

Disadvantages: both have them

I have three children aged 24, 21 and 14. When I had my first child I was told that breast milk is the best way of feeding and being a young mother I thought that I had to do the best I could to feed my baby. I tried to feed him for four days and he wouldn't take the breast milk.
He suckled for a few minutes then went back to sleep. On the fourth day I got the baby blues, this is where you cry and cry for no reason and think that the world is coming to an end. I had got it in my head that my baby didn't like me. I was only eighteen at the time and told the nurse I wanted a bottle to feed him as he didn't like me.
This is when they finally told me he had jaundis.

I tried to bottle feed him amd he wouldn't take the milk and after two weeks of this he had lost weight, the nurses kept taking him away and testing his blood, then after weighing him on the fourth week he had gone down to under 5 pounds in weight.
This is when one of the sisters on the ward decided to force feed him. They do this by taking a tube and putting it down the babys throat, a funnel is put at the end and they pour the milk into the funnel. It goes straight to the babys stomach.
I couldn't watch this being done and had to sit in the waiting room. Four hours later a baby was crying the ward down, I had never heard my baby cry so didn't know it was him. The nurse had to fetch me to give him a bottle.
Ten days later we were allowed home, my baby had gained weight and was taking a bottle nicely.

When I had my second child I automatically put her on the bottle, as this was the way I knew how to feed a baby, even though you are told breast is the best, bottles are easier. You can make up feeds and keep them in the fridge for later feeds and your partner if you have one can help with the night feeds too. Also friends and grandparents like to help out at feed times too. This helps everyone to bond together.

My third child came alon
g when I was living in the middle of no-where, in Wales.
I decided to breast feed because if I had run out of baby milk in the country there would be nowhere to get any, town was thirteen miles away and they don't stock the milk in the village shops.
I did find breast feeding very easy, if tireing but once I had got my daughter into a routine it was plain sailing. I knew it would be difficult to feed her on buses and in public places so I would time the trips into town so that I had to feed her when I got there.
There was a drop in centre in Aberystwyth that was for mothers with babies and you could go there to feed and have a coffee, before the shopping had to be done, by the time it was the next feed I was home in the country.

I put my daughter on the bottle after she was five months old, because her bottom teeth were coming through and I didn't want to be bitten. I also didn't want her to get to old and start to pull up my tee-shirts in public, which my friends girl used to do, then have tantrums if she couldn't have the breast.
So my daughter took the bottle nicely and I felt that I had given her a good start with the breast milk.

I personally didn't think there was a preferance between bottle or breast, all my children are close to me, we get on really well and I love them all. I have no favorite.
To me it didn't matter which was breast fed or bottled, as long as they have plenty of cuddles and you give them the attention they need, with games and reading stories at bedtimes, ect.
Love is the best thing you can give to a child as I know foster mothers who have brought up children from babies and they have bonded and they bottle fed them.

I would say do whatever feels right for you, after all it's your baby.

Summary: