I'm a breastfeeding advocate and breast is best etc... but we are bottle feeding!
I trusted my midwife and health visitor. If you are not breastfeeding but did, then you probably didn't fail, the society failed us. If you plan to breastfeed then don't make my mistakes!
I had problems when breastfeeding, I was in pain, Amelia was losing weight, and she was screaming while feeding. I tried pumping but I lost supply. She ended up on formula. It made her sick, she developed reflux. We changed to reflux formula, and the constipation made her bleed. We swapped to Hipp organic and the problems stopped... for a while because she developed eczema! We tried organic goat formula and it made her sick again!
We moved onto donor milk and her problems stopped. We lost so much time driving for 3-4 hours to get the milk and it would last less than a week. Don't get me wrong it was still worth seeing her thrive on it and the people that do it are amazing but it was undoable long term as we struggled to find donors close to us and had to start topping up. I guess it would be easier for a younger baby or if you live in a place like London.
When she was almost 1 I decided to give raw milk a chance! We found local antibiotics free, small, free range raw milk farm. She has no problems at all, it's amazing. I don't recommend doing that for younger babies. Raw milk doesn't have the same nutrition as breast milk but at this point she was having solids anyway and at least it didn't make her sick while still providing real nutrition.
Relactation is always possible! I could not do it as I started late when I was going back to work but if your baby is still young, you might even be able to breastfeed again! 💛
What I've learned is that you can't trust your midwife or health visitor. They rarely have a good knowledge about breastfeeding. If you have problems check for tongue tie (none of them ever mentioned it to me!) , Amelia is very sensitive to pasteurized milk and that's probably one of the reason we had problems. Join a breastfeeding group and see how others managed! Contact someone that actually has knowledge like la leche league.
Don't listen to people that tell you their babies were 'fine' on formula. They probably weren't, the first thing you notice is the change of poo from yellow to green, and they start to smell. Even if the baby doesn't show any symptoms, it doesn't mean it didn't affect them. Ingredients are terrible including synthetic vitamins (research them! ), processed oil and fluoride.
It is basically baby junk food (if you can call it 'food'). I hate sugar coating I'd rather stay informed than wonder why my baby has eczema and is throwing up. Yes, it's better to feed formula than starve a baby but that's obvious. What's not obvious is that most mothers that wanted to breastfeed are pushed away from it by the same people that supposed to support them.
