The alternative to breastfeeding is bottle feeding. While formula offers all the nutrients a baby needs to grow and thrive, choosing to feed a baby with formula has advantages and disadvantages. These considerations apply not only to the child but also to the mother.
Advantages And Disadvantages Of Bottle Feeding
Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of bottle-feeding :
Advantages Of Bottle Feeding
1. Measuring Intake:
When a baby is fed with a formula, the parent can see how much the baby drinks in each meal. This is helpful because the parent knows how much the baby eats and how much the baby needs to feel full Consequently, if the child gets enough nutrients or gain weight properly, the parents won’t guess the second.
2. Anyone can feed the baby
One of the advantages is that both parents feed the baby. Feeding is an important moment to bond; breasts don’t encourage a dad to bond with a child. Bottle feeding helps the newborn baby to spend some time with the sibling’s father and other family members.
3. Not Altering the Mother’s Diet
A mother who formulates feeds need not think about her consumption of caffeine, her intake of alcohol, or her intake of calories. A nursing mother needs to eat around 500 extra calories a day, so it can take longer and make it harder to lose the baby weight. A mother who uses formula can return faster to her habits of pre-pregnancy.
4. Bottle feeding helps infants with lactose intolerance
In rare cases, breast milk or animal milk may not be absorbed by infants This condition is known as lactose intolerance. Then suitable formula milk may be fed from a bottle, such as soy protein.
5. If your supply of breast milk is low, you don’t have to worry
Most moms are concerned that if their breast milk supply is inadequate, their baby will stay underfed. Parents can resort to bottle feeding in such a case. It means that all the milk your baby needs to grow and develop is received.
6. Bottle-Feeding can be done in public
Breastfeeding in public may be embarrassing for some mothers. Bottle feeding is the way to go if you don’t want to expose your breasts or go to a private breastfeeding area!
7. Always available
Moms who favor bottle-feeding say that in addition to convenience, formula milk is available from supermarkets all the time, unlike breast milk that sometimes needs to be pumped but is still not enough. There are pregnant mothers who don’t have enough breast milk and need to switch to formula milk early on.
Disadvantages Of Bottle Feeding
1. Nutrients
In terms of stimulating brain growth, breast milk has been shown to be more nutritious than formula. Breast milk is iron-fortified and also provides the child with immunity for as long as he is breastfeeding. The child can also break down the food quickly, and breast milk on a baby’s digestive system is better than formula. Additionally, breastfeeding provides a child with great warmth and can calm him if sick, upset or dehydrated.
2. Inconvenient
Breast-feeding is more convenient in terms of the night feedings. Instead of getting up, going to the kitchen and making a bottle, a mother may bring the baby in her bed and relax while feeding the milk.
3. Bottle feeding can affect the immune system of your child
Breast milk strengthens and improves the immune system of your infant. On the other hand, formula milk does not contain essential and natural nutrients. Formula-fed infants are also at risk for certain infections such as chest infection, ear infection, urinary infection, and diarrhea.
4. Breastfeeding keeps the mother healthy
Several studies have shown that mothers who choose to breastfeed instead of bottle-feeding are less likely to experience breast cancer, cancer of the ovary and osteoporosis.
5. The risk of SIDS lies in bottle feeding.
Research has shown that breastfeeding can lead to the prevention of babies from SIDS.
6. Equipment for bottle feeding is an additional cost
You will have to buy bottles for feeding a brush for washing and also a sterilizer. Investment in a good quality breast pump or formula milk powder will also be required. This is an additional cost to your monthly budget.
7. Can Cause Allergies
Many mothers refuse to feed their babies with bottles as studies have been carried out and findings have shown that infants given formula milk are more vulnerable to allergies as well as obesity and diabetes later in life. Breastfeeding stimulates baby digestion. On the other hand, formula feeding affects baby gut bacteria that are essential for the digestion of food and the transition from milk to solid food.
These are some of the advantages and disadvantages of bottle feeding. Once you decide on the method of feeding your baby, you must carefully consider all sides of the situation The goal is to ensure that your baby is not undernourished or overfed and that your baby gets the right vitamins and nutrients when adjusting to the environment around them.
Also Read: How To Choose Right Baby Feeding Bottle
