Your experiences formula feeding in public

[eilightened]

I’m 6 weeks in and have decided to switch to formula. The decision largely comes for mental health issues but also a little bit due to baby girls transfer issues/tongue tie. I’ve been keeping one foot in the door of trying to make BFing work, but my gut is telling me I’m not going to be in a good place even if I push it long enough for it to start working better.

I’ve been doing a lot of processing on why exactly i want to keep trying even though prior to getting pregnant I always thought that the pressure to go one way or another was absurd and that surely I wouldn’t care what others thought - I’d do what worked best for me and my family.

I’ve realized one of the main reasons I’m afraid to fully commit to formula feeding is not that I’m worried I won’t be providing for my daughter (I’ve done tons of research and feel really good about what formula provides!). I’m surprised to admit that I’m afraid of being judged when I feed her in public. I live in Los Angeles, and everyone I know BF’d, or seems to be BFing

So I’d love to know your experiences of formula feeding in public. Did folks criticize? Largely not care?? How did you get in the right headspace to deal with it? Additionally, the irony does not escape me that BFing publicly also gets judged. So I know there can be haters either way.

EDIT: thank you everyone that wrote in on their experiences. It reaffirmed that I’m waaay in my head and I have no reason to be. And for the instances where they actually have the audacity to comment on how a child is fed, I can politely tell them to fuck right off! You all are so right - most sane people wouldn’t think to comment, and the ones that do probably have their own shit going on and would comment on anything and everything. Thank you Reddit community for making a gal feel just a tiny bit more confident in a very new journey I’m excited to hopefully start feeling like my old self sooner rather than later and being there for my daughter as a more positive and stable mother.

 

[sleeplesswhite]

@eilightened No one ever really cares, and if they do care and choose to comment they were going to find something to complain about anyway. Besides, how do they know what's in your kid's bottle?

 

[markotech]

@sleeplesswhite Tell them it's pina colada.

 

[carrythecross]

@markotech This. I said Bailey's. Lol

 

[sleeplesswhite]

@carrythecross "What? She doesn't work, she can start drinking whenever."

 

[taitai]

@sleeplesswhite Best. Response. Ever.

 

[hamstrungfool]

@eilightened I exclusively pumped for the first month….so I always fed him with a bottle. I had the thought that people must think I’m giving him formula. I was feeding him in public one time and the only thing people cared about was how cute he was.

But going off another comment in here. People have no clue what’s in the bottle…. And it’s frankly not their business. Some babies have allergies and can’t drink breast milk.

I now EFF and dgaf because I have a happy and healthy baby and I’m so much happier too. It’s a win for everyone.

 

[dgodshelp7]

@eilightened Personally, I’ve never had a negative experience. Nobody cared lol. But if they did, and said something I probably would’ve laughed in their face. That would be so weird of them.

Honestly more people formula feed than you might think. Formula feeders aren’t black sheep & breastfeeding is mostly glorified on just social media. That’s not saying there’s no formula shaming in the real world, the medical field & all the posters might jump you, you might have some funky family but like your average day to day people- formula is commonly used and most (and normal?) people will really probably not think twice about what’s in the bottle

 

[zech1210]

@dgodshelp7 From the national library of medicine:
Globally, only 38% of infants are exclusively breastfed. In the United States, only 75% of infants initiate breastfeeding from birth; however, by the age of three months, 67%, or 2.7 million, of them rely on infant formula for some portion of their nutrition [6].

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4882692/#:~:text=Globally%2C%20only%2038%25%20of%20infants,of%20their%20nutrition%20%5B6%5D.

 

[brynja]

@eilightened Not a sane person will care. They’ll see a mom bottle feeding her baby. The insane ones will, however, chastise you for baby not wearing socks when it’s 90 degrees.

Also, you will most likely stop caring about whether you bf sooner than you think. 6 months and starting solids comes at you fast. And before then, you’ll be too caught up with your baby’s milestones and social interaction with you and others to care about whether they’re getting breast milk or formula. Toddlerhood similarly comes faster than you’d think, and by then literally nobody gives a shit whether the child was breastfed or formula fed. Exceptions being the insane lactivists. But normal folks? Doesn’t even come up. And if you are really questioning the importance of the decision, ask yourself whether prior to having your own child it’s ever once mattered whether you were breastfed or formula fed. And then look around a playground and see if you can tell which kids got what, or what kind of milk is in a bottle being fed to a baby.

 

[markotech]

@eilightened I've never had anyone comment on anything I do with my baby in public, only coos about how cute they are. No one has given a fuck when I've bottle fed her in public.

 

[renierbajala]

@eilightened I wouldn’t sweat it. No one knows what is in your bottle, and honestly anyone who judges you isn’t someone you want to be friends with.

I know way more moms that formula feed than breast feed. I think people (not all, but a lot) who breast feed are just really loud about it, whereas formula fed moms aren’t on their trumpet, so it can feel like “everyone is BF”.

 

[canedunkan]

@eilightened I felt conscious about this too in public. But I always said to myself later on that the person doesn’t know what I or my baby have been through, what pumping costs me and what my struggles have been to produce enough milk for my baby from my own body. And trust me we all have so much going on in life that even though people stare and judge, they’ll get over it once they get out of that place lol

The most important message that we mommas, who feel guilty to feed formula must know is that the real parenting will come in as baby grows older. Beyond BF or FF, there’s so much like responding to baby’s needs, counseling them, being a teacher to them, loving them, making them feel heard, standing up for them: all of this will come up once baby starts to communicate and get connected to the world. If I successfully BF and can’t do all of this, I’m definitely a failure.

So you’re doing great. Feed baby and don’t bother.

 

[justneverendingproblems21]

@eilightened No one criticized, but I was embarrassed and ashamed I couldn't make it work. They fed is best, that's true, but it's still hard.

 

[tmm99]

@eilightened I don’t think anyone cares. For me, I’d feel way more comfortable giving a bottle than whipping my boob out.

 

[mawmaw5]

@eilightened People assume it's breastmilk. I kept mine in a cooler or lunch box with ice packs. Put premade formula in mason jars and sometimes I'd correct people when they would comment but usually I just don't care.

 

[highlyfavoured]

@eilightened Well... Of course the culture is different depending on your location and I think these other redditors are pretty lucky to have received zero judgment. I also live on the West Coast where nearly everyone I know breastfeeds, and I have gotten my share of negative comments. Yes it got to me, yes it stung. But the negativity was never nearly as bad as the actual mental health repercussions of my bfing experiment.

As my baby grew through his first year, people blamed his 99th percentile size and lagging (but not late!) gross motor skills milestones on formula. I'm just waiting it out, knowing that once he's walking, there will few conspicuous development skills left to comment on. He's super smart, talkative, loves books, playing ball and so on. I'm truly not worried, just sensitive to the little jabs and barbs from breastfeeding moms. People are welcome to insult me all they want, but underhanded insults towards my son set me off.

TL;DR yes I've had to distance myself from some people and their precocious babies as a result of judgment over formula feeding. Their loss.

ETA I'm now gathering downvotes here for answering OP's question honestly lol-

 

[markotech]

@highlyfavoured Lactivists are a fucking scourge. I couldn't imagine hanging as much of my self worth on a basically immaterial parenting choice as these people seem to.

Like fuck, my mother formula fed me and smoked during pregnancy because she wasn't educated on it being a bad thing and I ended up at Harvard and am a professor now.

 

[e4enviro]

@highlyfavoured Ha! I’m also on the west coast and my baby is formula fed and is in the first percentile for weight so babies come in all sizes so people need to STFU! But yes you’re right, I feel like most people I know BF their babies and there is a lot of judgement there. Luckily I had had none while out in the wild!

 

[raniekays]

@eilightened No one has said anything to me. If they don't see me mix how would they know? Maybe I exclusively pump for all they know but truly it's none of their business. My baby is healthy and that's all that matters is to me. My husband feeds just as much as I do (the beauty of formula feeding!) and I think people are more often surprised it's a man feeding.