• Babies
• Building a Family
• Children
• General Parenting
• Newborns
• Teenagers
• Toddlers
• Pregnancy

Breastfeeding Versus Bottle-Feeding

Breast vs bottle

Breastfeeding Versus Bottle-Feeding

Both breastfeeding and bottle-feeding have their advantages. Because you need to make a decision now, let's consider each of them in turn. That way, you can make an informed choice.

Breastfeeding is better because:

• Your breast milk perfectly provides for your baby's nutritional needs.
• Your breast milk offers health benefits to your baby.
• You can get back in shape more quickly by breastfeeding.
• The physical act of nursing promotes bonding between you and your child.
• Breast milk is always available (as long as you are).
• Breast milk is cheaper.

On the other hand, bottle-feeding is better because:

• Both parents can participate equally in feeding and take advantage of this opportunity to bond with their child.
• The mother has more freedom in terms of scheduling, dieting, and sexuality.
• Both you and your baby will have an easier time if you need to return to work in the months after his birth.
• It provides good nutrition for your baby if you have a very rare medical condition that dictates against breastfeeding.
• You can avoid any uncomfortable feelings you may have concerning the physical nature of breastfeeding, especially in public.

To help you make the decision that's right for you, let's take a brief look at these arguments.

Breast Milk Is the Best Milk

The American Academy of Pediatrics hails breast milk as the perfect food for the first six months of your baby's life. Just right in its mix of protein, fats, carbohydrates, and minerals, breast milk also provides most of the vitamins your baby needs (though it does come up somewhat short in vitamins A, C, and D).

Amazingly, your breast milk adapts its composition from day to day to suit the changing needs of your baby. In the first few days, your baby needs colostrum-a somewhat thicker, high-protein, low-fat liquid. Over the next two weeks or so, the consistency of breast milk changes. The colostrum is gradually replaced with mature breast milk, which is more liquid and higher in fat and cholesterol. (Unlike adults, babies make good use of a diet high in cholesterol and fat. Your baby's rapidly growing body needs these nutrients for the proper development of the brain, nerve tissues, and cell membranes.)

Commercial formulas may have come increasingly close to duplicating the essential composition of human breast milk, but formula will never be able to adapt its composition from day to day to suit the particular needs of your child.

Breast Milk Protects Your Baby's Health

Breast milk helps to guard against many disease-causing agents. Your breast milk contains antibodies that can destroy bacteria, viruses, and other germs that can make your baby sick. Breast milk can ward off everything from strep throat and tetanus to measles and chicken pox. It may also increase your newborn's resistance to many allergens. Because only the human body produces antibodies, formula cannot provide this natural immunity from diseases.

Breastfeeding benefits

Buff Up with Breastfeeding

Baby Doctor

The suppression of ovulation while breastfeeding is both temporary and unpredictable. You should never count on breastfeeding as a means of birth control.

Nursing your baby helps your body recover more quickly from pregnancy and childbirth. Breastfeeding helps burn off the fat that your body stored during pregnancy for milk production. It also activates a hormone that shrinks your uterus more quickly. Because you need to be relaxed to nurse your child properly, breastfeeding also forces you to sit down and rest. This rest promotes recuperation from pregnancy and childbirth, too.

Nursing may also, according to some studies, lower your risk of developing breast cancer later in life. Finally, breastfeeding can-but (alas!) does not always-delay the resumption of ovulation and menstruation for several months. Hooray, hooray!

Breastfeeding Creates Intimacy

Breastfeeding undeniably creates a powerful bond between mother and child, not just physically but emotionally as well. Feeling your baby's skin against your skin can be a source of tremendous pleasure and satisfaction for both of you. Knowing that you are nourishing your child with your own body can also be emotionally gratifying.

Of course if you bottle-feed, you can (and should) also share love and intimacy with your baby during feeding times. But bottle-feeding doesn't offer quite as much warmth as breastfeeding. That's why most mothers who breastfeed insist that nursing is the ideal way to initiate bonding between a mother and her child.

You Never Have to Hunt for a Clean Breast

As long as you continue breastfeeding, you always have breast milk available. You'll never have to run out to the grocery store at three in the morning to pick up some breast milk. You won't have to go to all the trouble of sterilizing bottles and preparing formula.

Not only is breast milk a snap to prepare, it's always at the right temperature. So you won't ever have to worry whether breast milk is too hot or too cold.

Best of all, your breasts are extremely portable and you'll never forget to bring them with you when you take your baby on a walk to the park or anywhere else.

Save Money by Breastfeeding

Breast milk is much, much cheaper than baby formula. In fact, it's nearly free of charge (other than the cost of breast pads and nursing bras). You'll save on bottles, nipples, and-here's the biggie-formula. You'll never need to check expiration dates or throw away expensive formula because your baby wasn't very hungry at a particular feeding. Efficient and economical, breastfeeding generates absolutely no waste-except, of course, in your baby's diaper.

Now that we've looked at the arguments for breastfeeding, let's look at the other side of the question: the advantages of bottle-feeding.

Bottle-feeding benefits

Bottle-feeding Allows Dad to Have a Turn

If you choose to bottle-feed, your partner can take a much more active role in feeding your child. Bottle-feeding gives a father a chance to bond with his baby in a way that he can't when a mother breastfeeds exclusively.

Of course, even babies who breastfeed can occasionally feed from a bottle, giving the dad a turn. But only bottle-feeding gives both of you an equal opportunity to bond with your child as you feed her. (The father of a breastfed child can, however, bond with his child in every other way besides feeding.)

Free at Last, Free at Last

Baby Doctor

Contraceptive pills can interfere with the hormones that promote lactation. So if you decide to breastfeed, you may need to change your method(s) of contraception.

New parents have little freedom as it is. But when a new mother is breastfeeding, she has virtually no freedom at all. Because bottle-feeding allows the father and other caretakers to feed the baby, it can free up small pockets of time in a mother's schedule. So you will occasionally be able to do something for yourself: like sleeping through the night once in a blue moon, going to the gym, or just giving yourself a break from infant care.

Bottle-feeding also frees you to eat and drink whatever you want. You don't need to load up on calories the way a nursing mother does. You'll never need to worry whether you've had enough milk or whether that glass of wine you drank with dinner will make your baby tipsy or give him gas.

Baby Doctor

If you take any medications, consult your baby's pediatrician and your own doctor before beginning to breastfeed. Breast milk passes any drug that you take on to your baby. This warning also applies to illegal drugs, alcohol, and nicotine, so if you abuse any of these drugs, quit. If you can't, don't force your child to take them, too: Bottle-feed your baby.

Bottle-feeding can also give you more sexual freedom (though your exhaustion may dampen your ardor somewhat). Certainly breastfeeding does not have to interfere with new parents' sex lives; nonetheless, some parents insist it does. Lactation hormones, for example, can decrease vaginal lubrication, making it necessary for you to use artificial lubricants. In addition, both you and your partner may find your breasts less arousing when they function as the source of your baby's nourishment. Bottle-feeding can eliminate these concerns. Nonetheless, studies have shown that, perhaps surprisingly, mothers who breastfeed tend to resume an active sex life earlier than mothers who bottle-feed.

I Have to Get Back to Work!

Some working mothers have little choice but to bottle-feed their children (or combine morning and evening nursing with bottle-feeding during the day). If you need or want to return to work less than a couple of months after the birth, you may decide to bottle-feed right from the start. On-the-job breastfeeding-or even expressing milk (drawing milk manually with a breast pump for later use) during work hours-is at best impractical, and sometimes impossible. Rather than getting your baby used to suckling and then switching (at least for the most part) to bottle-feeding, you may decide to forego breastfeeding altogether.

Health and breastfeeding

My Health Won't Allow Breastfeeding

Q-tip

You can protect your modesty and still breastfeed. Try draping a baby's blanket over your shoulder and your baby's head while nursing. Or rather than unbuttoning your shirt from the top to nurse, unbutton it from the bottom or wear a shirt with no buttons. A lifted shirt can conceal most of your breast, your baby's head will cover the rest, and his body will cover any other revealed skin.

If neither of these strategies make you feel more comfortable, you can still breastfeed in private and bring along a bottle of formula or expressed milk whenever you go out in public.

You may have no choice but to bottle-feed. Although less than five percent of all mothers produce either no milk or not enough milk to feed a baby, you may be among that group.

Or you may have a chronic illness or medical condition (cardiac disease, kidney failure, or anemia, for example) that makes breastfeeding dangerous to your health. Though some mothers with these conditions can and do nurse, consult your doctor before you try to nurse if you have these or any other chronic diseases.

Highly infectious diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, or hepatitis can be transmitted through breast milk. So if you have an infectious disease, you should avoid breastfeeding.

I Can't Bare My Breasts in Public!

If you feel inhibited about your body, you may find it uncomfortable or even impossible to breastfeed, especially in public places. When your baby gets hungry, she's not likely to want to wait until you find a secluded place to feed her. She wants to eat right away. So if your inhibitions prohibit you from nursing your child in public, or if the idea of your baby feeding off of you seems creepy or makes you very uncomfortable, you may decide to forego breastfeeding.

Modesty and discomfort are perfectly legitimate reasons to choose bottle-feeding. If you can't relax while nursing, your body will not respond well. Your baby will sense your discomfort and become frustrated with feeding, so don't try to force yourself to do something you can't.

Women who bottle-feed are no less loving and caring than those who breastfeed. What other people think shouldn't matter. You know best how to feed your baby. If you still can't make up your mind after considering the various arguments for breastfeeding and for bottle-feeding, try nursing first to see whether you like it. You can always switch to bottle-feeding if you change your mind. But you probably won't be able to switch in the opposite direction. Your body stops producing milk if it's not being consumed.