@notedfaith This actually is the reason I see listed everywhere! Breastfeeding apparently reduces SIDS because breastfed babies wake more during the night… but when I see people say that formula fed babies sleep better and sleep through the night sooner, suddenly there’s no evidence for that honestly they just wanna act like breastfeeding is magic and there aren’t possibly any upsides to formula lol
@notedfaith Omg yes, I breastfed my son for a week and oh man, I almost broke. He woke up every 30-1 hr all day and all night. Cried so much in between. Then we switched to formula and then bam! A completely different baby. He became so calm and suddenly would sleep 2-3 hour stretches. My husband, who was previously an exclusive breastfeeding advocate, told me to stop breastfeeding already since the baby likes the formula more.
And now, my son sleeps 7-7 and my coteacher who exclusively breastfed from the start, still wakes up every 2 hrs every night.
Idk if there's a correlation but formula made such a huge impact on my son's quality of sleep.
@papijay There is definitely a correlation! You may have had an under supply of milk. A really full baby is a happy baby and babies tend to get fuller on formula
@notedfaith This. I hate co sleeping bit I only get an hour stretch in the crib bc she wants to be held, then on and off the boob allllll night. I also hate breastfeeding. She won’t take a bottle so I’m working on straw cup and formula .
My first was also a terrible sleeper and didn’t breastfeed so we ended up doing the same thing we’re doing now. Bottle or boob, no difference. Co sleeping is sometime the only way i get any rest
@notedfaith I was hoping someone would call this out. La Leche League cherry picks data and then throws around pro breast milk statements with no evidence including this. It could very well be valid but as far as I know there have been no studies that cosleeping is safer for breastfed babies and it’s more dubious science.
If you have the spoons this book may be worth checking out so you have a better understanding of the nuances around the benefits of breastfeeding. I am not anti breastfeeding, I come from a social science background and have been trained on how to critique research and was getting very frustrated that things were presented to me as fact with no apparent scientific backing. I think it can be a very positive thing but the health benefits compared to formula are not as cut and dry.
@notedfaith SIDS is likely partly caused by deep sleep so that is actually an extremely important function. I have to disagree that the safe 7 is fake…. Co sleeping IS safer while breastfeeding because the baby is less likely to roll and you are more attuned to your baby. However formula definitely does not increase the risk of sids in any way
@anushagupta I did wonder about that. Besides any link between breastfeeding and reduced SIDS (has any causation actually been linked, or just correlation? Surely formula fed babies as a cohort is likely to include premature babies and those with health issues as they're more likely to have had feeding issues which made breastfeeding difficult or been outright unable to breastfeed so are absorbed into the formula fed cohort) surely the actual risk with co-sleeping is accidentally suffocation/strangulation, which has nothing to do with feeding method? Where does it come from? I never investigated this because I don't co-sleep but I just assumed it was medically legitimate... God knows why though because adherence to the scientific method seems to be thrown out entirely where there's a potential opportunity to guilt trip/demand labour from mothers ...
@toba4christ I think it's more propaganda from breastfeeding Nazis. Sorry, but I had such a bad experience with breastfeeding groups that it left such a horrible taste in my mouth. Also, there haven't been any good studies done on baby sleep because it's extremely difficult to do a good study on baby sleep, so I take everything I read with a huge grain of salt.
@jamesburke Wow, clearly not! I thought SIDS was only recorded when they didn't know why the baby died and that suffocation/strangulation would be recorded separately
@toba4christ That is incorrect. If you actually go look in the definitions, buried way in the appendices at the back, SIDS (now referred to as Sudden Unexpected Infant Death, or SUID) includes both mechanical strangulation and asphyxiation. The percentage of we don't fucking know what happened to this baby we just noticed they were dead is actually only 40% of the total number that they are stating. And then it gets really fucky when you actually dig into it further.
@mike_l My first was formula fed and we co slept from 3-4 months. I read somewhere that after 4 months it becomes safer if you don’t breastfeed. We followed safe sleep 7 to a tee without the breastfeeding.
Also, just because you didn’t/can’t breastfeed doesn’t mean shit to your kid. I’m sorry, but all babies really care about is if their needs are being met (clean, warm, FED) they don’t care if it comes from a boob or a can. They just want to be fed.
You’re so much more to your baby then a milk factory. You are enough for your baby, and you are everything she needs. Be kind to yourself, in the scheme of things breastfeeding is such a teeny tiny part of it. Formula fed or breast fed, eventually they all eat McDonald’s chips off the car floor.
Come over to r/cosleeping and ask others if they formula fed and co sleep. There are other people out there.
@mike_l I co-sleep until 5 months and then moved baby into his own crib into his own room. He slept SO much better because I wasn't awake and on him the second he made a noise. He was able to learn how to self sooth and we both got better sleep for it. He would still wake me up if he needed me but I was able to make myself wait five minutes before barging into his nursery instead of instantly messing with him if he made a peep. Best decision for both of us even though I miss co-sleeping.
@mike_l I read an article by La Leche League that pissed me off so much. It was all about how it is only safe to co sleep when breastfeeding, and they had this whole section on the fact that you'll only do the proper C shape with your body if you're breastfeeding, and your baby will only want to stay in the proper position with you while you're in that C shape because they'll smell your breast milk. Pretty sure they don't just smell breast milk, they smell other things (and a quick Google search confirms that too).
I was livid when I read that. I had just decided to stop trying to breastfeed, which was torture for me and my son and a huge part of my PPD. I had been to a La Leche League run support group and just felt like I was being told that I was doing everything wrong. I was just so DONE. I'm still mad about it but now we're onto more fun things like how to get my 13 month old to eat veggies...
@singbassman Yeah I’d never even heard of this until this post and was honestly laughing when I googled this sleep seven thing. Sounds entirely made up by people who pick and choose what information they want to include that helps support their agenda.
@dianes I had a lactation consultant who was also an MD for a while and she was lovely. When I decided to stop trying to BF she was so supportive. But she had a poster about safe co-sleeping and she was like "this says breastfeeding exclusively but you can ignore that. It's much more important to set up the bed properly, etc." such a breath of fresh air!
honestly they just wanna act like breastfeeding is magic and there aren’t possibly any upsides to formula lol