Why is breast milk better

Lactation consultants are available at many hospitals and clinics. Your or your baby's health care provider might be able to help, too. If your baby has trouble latching on to the breast or if you and your family have a preference for bottle-feeding, you can exclusively bottle-feed your baby breast milk. Pump as often as you would feed your baby from the breast.

Using a double electric breast pump can help you collect more milk in less time. If you're having trouble making enough milk or if you can't give your baby your breast milk for a medical reason, you can turn to a human milk bank and feed your baby pasteurized donor milk from a bottle.

If you're struggling, ask a lactation consultant or your baby's doctor for help. If your baby's doctor is concerned that your baby isn't receiving adequate nutrition or hydration, he or she might suggest pumping and supplementing with expressed breast milk or formula. Breast milk is the ideal food for babies — and the best way to keep a baby healthy — but proper nutrition and hydration are absolutely essential for your baby. Commercial infant formulas don't contain the immunity-boosting elements of breast milk that only your body can provide to your baby.

For most babies, breast milk is also easier to digest than formula. When prepared as directed, however, infant formula supports healthy babies who have typical dietary needs.

A baby who has special nutritional needs might require a special formula. Exclusive breast-feeding is recommended for the first six months after birth. A diet of only breast milk provides the best nutrition. Formula supplementation can disrupt breast-feeding as well as affect milk supply. However, some mothers are able to combine breast-feeding and formula-feeding — especially after breast-feeding has been well established. If you're considering formula-feeding, do your research so that you can make an informed decision.

Then focus on nourishing and nurturing your baby — instead of dwelling on negative emotions. You might also share your feelings with your doctor or certified nurse-midwife, your baby's doctor or others in your support circle. Remember, parenting is an adventure that requires choices and compromises. What counts is doing the best you can as you face this new challenge. Breast milk also naturally contains many of the vitamins and minerals that a newborn requires. One exception is vitamin D — the AAP recommends that all breastfed babies begin receiving vitamin D supplements during the first 2 months and continuing until a baby consumes enough vitamin D-fortified formula or milk after 1 year of age.

The U. Food and Drug Administration FDA regulates formula companies to ensure they provide all the necessary nutrients including vitamin D in their formulas. Still, commercial formulas can't completely match breast milk's exact composition.

Because milk is a living substance made by each mother for her individual infant, a process that can't be duplicated in a factory. Breast milk doesn't cost a cent, while the cost of formula quickly adds up. And unless you're pumping breast milk and giving it to your baby, there's no need for bottles, nipples, and other supplies that can be costly. Since breastfed babies are less likely to be sick, that may mean they make fewer trips to the doctor's office, so fewer co-pays and less money are paid for prescriptions and over-the-counter medicines.

Different tastes. Nursing mothers usually need to extra calories per day, which should come from a wide variety of well-balanced foods. This introduces breastfed babies to different tastes through their mothers' breast milk, which has different flavors depending on what their mothers have eaten.

By tasting the foods of their "culture," breastfed infants more easily accept solid foods. With no last-minute runs to the store for more formula, breast milk is always fresh and available whether you're home or out and about. And when women breastfeed, there's no need to wash bottles and nipples or warm up bottles in the middle of the night. Smarter babies. Some studies suggest that children who were exclusively breastfed have slightly higher IQs than children who were formula fed. Many nursing mothers really enjoy the experience of bonding so closely with their babies.

And the skin-to-skin contact can enhance the emotional connection between mother and infant. Beneficial for mom, too. The ability to totally nourish a baby can help a new mother feel confident in her ability to care for her baby. Breastfeeding also burns calories and helps shrink the uterus, so nursing moms may be able to return to their pre-pregnancy shape and weight quicker. Also, studies show that breastfeeding helps lower the risk of breast cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, and also may help decrease the risk of uterine and ovarian cancer.

Breastfeeding can be easy from the get-go for some mothers, but take a while to get used to for others. Moms and babies need plenty of patience to get used to the routine of breastfeeding.

Common concerns of new moms, especially during the first few weeks and months, may include:. Personal comfort. Initially, many moms feel uncomfortable with breastfeeding. It seems it is best in terms of infant health. Where I think we run into complexity is in how we contextualise the size of the benefits, taking into account the fact that breastfeeding is difficult and may not be practical for all.

The debate has spilled out of parenting blogs and the medical literature into policy. The UK has low breastfeeding rates, and this is clearly of concern to some. In April, the president of the National Childbirth Trust quit over concerns that the NCT was providing too much support for mothers who did not exclusively breastfeed.

Her concerns were that this was a slippery slope: providing support for all women, regardless of how they feed their babies, risks losing the message that breast is best.

Of course, the flipside of this is that, by providing a more inclusive message, more women may feel helped and supported. Many of the benefits women hear about are speculative, or do not show up in the best data. It can feel as if policy is centred around the idea that, if women just believe this is important enough, it will magically work for them.

They need help figuring out how to get breastfeeding to work, they need help managing supply, they need help with cracked and bleeding nipples.

When women return to work, they need help with pumping logistics and support. When it does work, breastfeeding can be awesome. I struggled with my daughter, but there were also many wonderful moments. And when my son came along, and I knew what I was doing, breastfeeding was fantastic. I enjoyed it, it was easy, it was convenient, and it worked for us. Is breast really best?

A doctor said he could be allergic to something in her diet that was passing through to the milk and suggested they try a hypoallergenic brand of formula.

Breastfeeding not a big deal? That sounds like heresy. Yet the idea that mothers should breastfeed at all costs is now being challenged by a small but increasingly vocal group of campaigners, including parents such as Barston, and even some doctors and researchers.

They argue that if a new mum struggles to breastfeed, pressure to persevere can lead to intolerable strain. The biggest concern, they argue, should not be whether the baby is given breastmilk or formula, but whether they are getting enough nutrition full stop.

Before the benefits of breastfeeding became apparent, doctors and nurses once encouraged the use of formula milk Credit: Getty Images. Official attitudes to breastfeeding today are very different from the way it was viewed in the past. As formula use grew in the first half of the 20th Century, firms began advertising their products as superior to breast milk. Healthcare staff would often discourage women from breastfeeding, seeing it as old-fashioned or lower-class.

That seems shocking now we know that breastmilk contains countless beneficial substances, such as antibodies that kill germs. From the s onwards, outrage over formula advertising in the developing world grew, leading some to boycott baby milk manufacturer Nestle, for instance. Now many countries ban such adverts and as interest has grown in the potential public health benefits of breastfeeding, healthcare staff have become increasingly vocal about them to new parents.

Barston, for instance, felt that she was judged harshly for not breastfeeding, despite her struggles. Of course, some women really enjoy breastfeeding. But others find it amplifies the toughest aspects of new parenthood — the lack of time to yourself, the sleep deprivation. In theory a partner can do some feeds with pumped breast milk, but not all women can express their milk this way, and some breastfed babies refuse the bottle point blank — so the feeding burden falls entirely on the mum.

Some women are near suicidal. As many as one in seven mothers can't produce enough milk to fully nourish their baby Credit: Alamy.