Newborn Expo: Breastfeeding vs Formula
Gina DiRenzo-Coffey, M.D., Boys Town Pediatrics
I'm Gina DiRenzo-Coffey. I'm a pediatrician here with Boys Town and actually right now you are sitting in my waiting room and Boys Town has asked me to come in today and talk about breast feeding versus formula.
The first few weeks are stressful. They are hard, there is a learning curve. You have to figure out what you're doing, the baby has to figure out what they are doing. Give it that time. When you bottle feed a baby you can look at the bottle and see that they took an ounce and a half, that's perfect. When you breast feed a baby you don't have that objective number.
Trust yourself ok. Give yourself a break. Give yourself a few days to a week for your milk to come in. Give yourself three to four weeks to see how it's going. If you feed your baby and they'll sleep from anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half, to two hours, that is content That is a content newborn. Don't expect your newborn to sleep more than 45 minutes, if they do that's great but don't expect it.
If your baby sleeps that long and wakes up smacking their lips, they are ready to eat again.
Breastfed babies spit up less. They are less gassy. They are less colicky. There are lots and lots of nutritional benefits and lots of health benefits in terms of infections, cancers, auto immune disease, allergic disease, and SIDS prevention.
It's always available, it's always the right temperature, it's always mixed correctly, and there is really no downside to it. Breastmilk is free, formula is not cheap ok. I will tell you that not all babies tolerate the inexpensive formulas so you get progressively more and more expensive formulas.
Do venting bottles make a difference? Sure if your baby is gulper, that get a lot of gas and is very fussy and irritable when you try to burp them, they do help.
Not every baby will take every bottle but you don't know if your baby will take the really expensive one or the really cheap one so wait until your baby gets here, use what you have. Most babies will take whatever bottle you give them if you decide to do a bottle.