Psychology of Formula Feeding – All the Pros and Cons

It’s undoubtful fact that breast milk is the best and optimal food for a newborn. But what if a mother does not have the opportunity for breastfeeding? Then baby formula comes to the rescue. Feeding a baby is a very responsible process. And it all starts with choosing the right baby food. First of all, it should be age-appropriate. Breast milk might disappear at any stage of kids’ development. That’s why you should pay attention to the marking on the package e.g. HiPP Stage 2 means that the food is suitable from 6 months and onwards. 

If a child has digestive issues, an anti-reflux formula will help. In any case, the switch to infant milk is a serious and in some cases tough decision which should be discussed with a pediatrician beforehand. Let’s take a look at both sides of bottle feeding.

Pros of Bottle Feeding

Don’t get upset if you cannot provide a kid with breast milk, as the baby formula has many advantages. In addition, today doctors identify several cases where breastfeeding may be contraindicated for a child (severe diseases when the act of sucking is violated, serious metabolic disorders, etc.). The modern wide range of adapted baby food allows parents to choose high-quality nutrition for a baby, which will contain all essential components. If necessary, there are also special treatment and prevention adapted foods that help in various difficult situations such as allergy, digestive, or skin disorders. The obvious pros of bottle feeding include:

• the opportunity for each family member to feed a kid
• while bottle feeding it’s easier to control the amount of food a child consumes
• in most cases, the allergies are always associated with the formula that can be easily changed after the pediatrician’s recommendation. To determine the allergen in a breastfed baby, a nursing mother has to completely review her diet
• the formula is digested longer than breast milk, so the number of meals is reduced thus a kid wakes up less often at night

Cons of Bottle Feeding

It isn’t the truth to say that feeding a baby with formula doesn’t have disadvantages. Of course, it has and there are even more cons than breastfeeding has. However, in the case of a careful approach to the selection of adapted nutrition, neither a baby nor you notice the difference. Let’s define the most common disadvantages of bottle feeding:

• the use of bottles requires their constant sterility. If cleanliness is not observed, the risk of infections increases
• quite often the poor quality pacifier causes the air swallowing thus leading to colic 
• when traveling with a child, you have to take extra luggage with the baby food accessories
• sometimes it’s necessary to try several formulas to find the most suitable
• bottle feeding also means certain financial costs because a good formula can not be cheap, and as a kid grows it needs more and more food 

They say that breastfed babies get sick less often than bottle-fed kids. However, it’s not the truth. Experts prove that the frequency of illness mostly depends on the heredity and environment.