Pregnancy and Baby Advice Thread: From Conception to Birth, and Beyond!

[PrincessPeach]

Hi lovely ladies x

I thought I'd start this thread off because it may be useful to everyone, and will be easier to follow rather than having to go through lots of diaries to find the information.

Basically the aim of this thread is to share advice, and to ask questions in case we get a little confused. Especially being a first time mum and having no idea, I can find all the different makes of bottles, formulas, etc very confusing - and trust me, the list doesn't just stop at what bottles to buy! For me anyway

I thought this would be a good space to do this, and would be an easy place to go back to for reference if we need to. This may help us all at some point, and of course any other lovely pregnant ladies who join the Pregnancy Without the Pounds section!

I know from my own experience, I'm a little confused at times as what to go for when it comes to my baby, plus I have an awful lot of silly questions I'd like to ask!!!



I'm going to start this off with:

If bottle or combi-feeding, what Formula are you going to go for and why? There are so many different brands out there that all claim to do amazing things, and I'm a little confused at what to try for my baby when the time comes



Please feel free to join in with your questions and advice! (and of course to answer my question lol )

Thanks mummies-to-be!!


Jess xxx

 

[Kim26]

Re: Pregnancy and Baby Advice Thread: Brands, Feeding, Nursery, Bathing, Everything!

Great idea Jess!

Oh with formula my mum always recommends using aptamil (I think cow and gate is very similar to that too) and to stay away from SMA as SMA is notorious for giving babies constipation due to the iron content I think.

All the babies in my family have been fed aptamil and never had bad tummies. One of my friends used sma and breast and poor little thing was so constipated that they had to get medicine for him

SMA works well for some but im going to stick with aptamil when I use formula.

 

[PrincessPeach]

Great idea Jess!

Oh with formula my mum always recommends using aptamil (I think cow and gate is very similar to that too) and to stay away from SMA as SMA is notorious for giving babies constipation due to the iron content I think.

All the babies in my family have been fed aptamil and never had bad tummies. One of my friends used sma and breast and poor little thing was so constipated that they had to get medicine for him

SMA works well for some but im going to stick with aptamil when I use formula.

Yeah, it was a toss up between Aptamil and Cow and Gate. Just purely because my Sister H used C&G and My sister L used Aptamil lol so they both recommend them. I've heard good things about Aptamil. I'm tempted to start with that and see how baby gets on, but may buy a tub of C&G as a back up maybe?

So many different things out there, being a first time mum can be so confusing! lol

xxx

 

[sarah_lou1981]

This is a fab idea Jess!!

I'm going with Cow & Gate, just because my sister used it for my nephew and never had any problems. Most of the brands I'm using have been recommended by my sister

Xx

 

[PrincessPeach]

This is a fab idea Jess!!

I'm going with Cow & Gate, just because my sister used it for my nephew and never had any problems. Most of the brands I'm using have been recommended by my sister

Xx

Looking on the Boots website C&G is a little bit easier on the bank as well

Good 'ole sisters. It's quite good having sisters/relatives who have had babies for recommendations.

Hmm...it's a toss up between the two! I bet hubby will go for C&G because it's cheaper lol He'll say that's a winner xx

 

[sarah_lou1981]

Looking on the Boots website C&G is a little bit easier on the bank as well Good 'ole sisters. It's quite good having sisters/relatives who have had babies for recommendations. Hmm...it's a toss up between the two! I bet hubby will go for C&G because it's cheaper lol He'll say that's a winner xx

Another reason I've gone for it is that I wanted some pre made bottles with sterilised teats to take into hospital and the only ones I could find were C&G or SMA. Xx

 

[Dubchick81]

I'm gona try aptimil to start off n hopefully baby agrees with it. It's meant to b closest to breast milk.
Re: sma, all my nieces n nephews were fed on it from the start n never had any issues at all. All depends on baby really.
Ps I bet if Jonathan knew there was a price diff he'd always go the cheaper option... Men eh?!

 

[MrsLmc]

Hiya girls, great idea for a thread Jess. I'll go with experience on this one. Both my children I express fed for at least 8 weeks (certain issues meant I couldn't breast feed....long long long story), then I moved onto a medicated formula for daughter and eventually aptimel, then my son after the breast milk was moved to Aptimel too, both had to be moved to Aptimel Hungry baby as the regular one seemed too thin for them and my son in particular was drinking massive 12oz bottles at 5months! This time I am going with SMA gold top, my mom fed it too all of us and said she found it a thicker formula, Aptimel just didn't seem the best choice now looking back.

But sure it'll depend on the baby. I'll re-try breast feeding but I will not be expressing this time, its extremely exhausting and time consuming and with having 2 other kids just won't be sensible for me.

 

[Dubchick81]

Oh Laura might get some tips on express feeding if you don't mind??
I wana feed baby the colostum stuff but then wana go more or less straight to breast milk from a bottle..
So any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated as I'm sure when I ask at the Breast Feeding class they won't give me much info coz they like to push breast feeding..

 

[MrsLmc]

Oh Laura might get some tips on express feeding if you don't mind??
I wana feed baby the colostum stuff but then wana go more or less straight to breast milk from a bottle..
So any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated as I'm sure when I ask at the Breast Feeding class they won't give me much info coz they like to push breast feeding..

Its tough work Frances so best to get the best equipment. You can get it second hand though. I would say get something like the medela swing electric pump, thats the one they had in the hospital and it was excellent, but shop around. Some are really useless I had one here in the house, kinda a last minute purchase, can't even remember the brand but my god I cried, milk kept getting sucked into the mechanism and took extra long to use!! You'll need breast milk storage bags or contains too with labels to freeze/refrigerate extra milk. Get the nipple cream too as it is painful enough to start with, stick with it though the same as breast feeding it gets more comfortable with time. They say too to have something belonging to the baby or the baby itself nearby as the smell of them helps with the let down of milk. I was adviced never to pump for more than 20 mins per breast either per time as its very sore on your ducts, but then that depends how good the pump is I suppose.

Be prepared for the time though. It'll take you at the very least 30-40mins to get prepared pumped and finished, then you have to count the feeding of the baby on top of that at least every 3hours, and that includes during the night! So maybe 1 hour out of every 3 feeding and pumping. But hopefully baby will behave and start sleeping through the night at a good reasonable age, both mine were around 8 weeks. My sisters at the minute is 7 weeks and sleeping from 10p.m till 7a.m , but she is bottle fed.

Hope that helps Frances x

 

[Dubchick81]

Its tough work Frances so best to get the best equipment. You can get it second hand though. I would say get something like the medela swing electric pump, thats the one they had in the hospital and it was excellent, but shop around. Some are really useless I had one here in the house, kinda a last minute purchase, can't even remember the brand but my god I cried, milk kept getting sucked into the mechanism and took extra long to use!! You'll need breast milk storage bags or contains too with labels to freeze/refrigerate extra milk. Get the nipple cream too as it is painful enough to start with, stick with it though the same as breast feeding it gets more comfortable with time. They say too to have something belonging to the baby or the baby itself nearby as the smell of them helps with the let down of milk. I was adviced never to pump for more than 20 mins per breast either per time as its very sore on your ducts, but then that depends how good the pump is I suppose.

Be prepared for the time though. It'll take you at the very least 30-40mins to get prepared pumped and finished, then you have to count the feeding of the baby on top of that at least every 3hours, and that includes during the night! So maybe 1 hour out of every 3 feeding and pumping. But hopefully baby will behave and start sleeping through the night at a good reasonable age, both mine were around 8 weeks. My sisters at the minute is 7 weeks and sleeping from 10p.m till 7a.m , but she is bottle fed.

Hope that helps Frances x

My friend has offered me a breast pump which she has used and recommends.. She's finished with it as her little one is almost 4 months now and on formula..
Yea my nephews were great n slept through the night from very young.. But again were bottle fed..

Sounds like you need to be pretty much house bound for the first month at least to do expressing??
That's the only thing making me think I won't do it... Not that I imagine I'll be going far but I'd like to at least be able pop to Liffey Valley for a wander to just get out of the house for a couple of hours..
And with J working for himself, there'll be little or no chance of him having time off so i'll be pretty much alone all day every day from the get go..

 

[MrsLmc]

My friend has offered me a breast pump which she has used and recommends.. She's finished with it as her little one is almost 4 months now and on formula..
Yea my nephews were great n slept through the night from very young.. But again were bottle fed..

Sounds like you need to be pretty much house bound for the first month at least to do expressing??
That's the only thing making me think I won't do it... Not that I imagine I'll be going far but I'd like to at least be able pop to Liffey Valley for a wander to just get out of the house for a couple of hours..
And with J working for himself, there'll be little or no chance of him having time off so i'll be pretty much alone all day every day from the get go..

You never know Frances the baby might take to breast feeding like a duck to water and you might reconsider, I know that J wants to feed too so maybe do a few express jobs in a day for him and freeze. My sister did that and had a brilliant flow but i don't know much about keeping the supply equal for both iykwim. That way you could go and bring baby with you and feed yourself. Lots of places have feeding rooms now and Amazon do a kind of cover up if you feel uncomfortable doing it in public. It really is hard to decide when baby isn't here and you don't know how he/she will be isn't it? At least you've got a pump and can decide in time x

 

[Guinevere]

Oh Laura might get some tips on express feeding if you don't mind??
I wana feed baby the colostum stuff but then wana go more or less straight to breast milk from a bottle..
So any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated as I'm sure when I ask at the Breast Feeding class they won't give me much info coz they like to push breast feeding..

Yeah, as MrsLmc says - expressing is a huge faff & way more time consuming.
& I think if you do it exclusively then your supply is likely to dwindle more than if breast feeding directly & you'll need to spend quite a chunk of extra time pumping - they say a baby is about 1oz more efficient than a pump at getting milk from each breast each time & it's a supply & demand thing? One of my NCT-friends solely express/combination fed but only made it to 2 months.

Does have the advantage that someone else can give a bottle of expressed milk though & less likely to be a bottle refusers if you NEED to give one though.
The other really important thing if you want to combination breast & bottle is to get the best bottles you can that are breast like/with newborn teats so they're similar to minimize the 'confusion' thing.

We had to top up with formula in hospital before my milk 'came in' (baby was jaundiced on phototherapy lights and being treated with IV antibiotics for ?sepsis) - so then ended up doing x1 bottle feed of either formula or expressed breast milk a day since then & I think it did make maintaining breast feeding or giving breast milk much much harder than if had been exclusively breastfeeding. In hindsight, hospital probably should've advised I be expressing with a hospital grade pump in the first few days... but we bought an electric pump a few weeks later. Countdown to 6 months old - 6 weeks to go! But it's been so hard maintaining combination feeding (she's still about 80% of feeds breastmilk).


Formula wise we've used Aptimil - didn't agonize too much over it - they had the pre-prepared sterilized & with newborn teat boxes of 90mls that I wanted 'in case' so that's what we started off with. They have handy cartons that are ready to use & a colic/constipation and reflux version that we also use.
Main thing is not to keep chopping & changing though as that's likely to upset digestion.


If I did it over/advise friends I think worry less about the giving birth (it'll happen somehow!) & learn more about BF if that's what you want to do.

 

[Dubchick81]

You never know Frances the baby might take to breast feeding like a duck to water and you might reconsider, I know that J wants to feed too so maybe do a few express jobs in a day for him and freeze. My sister did that and had a brilliant flow but i don't know much about keeping the supply equal for both iykwim. That way you could go and bring baby with you and feed yourself. Lots of places have feeding rooms now and Amazon do a kind of cover up if you feel uncomfortable doing it in public. It really is hard to decide when baby isn't here and you don't know how he/she will be isn't it? At least you've got a pump and can decide in time x

Yea I defintely wouldn't be comfortable doing it in public at all... That' just not for me..
But I would like baby to have the best chance.. I will give it 110% but would prefer to be expressing a week or 2 in.. I know I need to build up supply to be able feed breast milk only.. Yea its so hard to make decisions when you just don't know how baby will be...

 

[PrincessPeach]

Wow thanks Laura and Guinevere, that's so helpful as I wasn't really sure what to do either.

Hubby at the minute is putting lots of pressure on me to breastfeed, and of course I will do my best but I may not get on with it (as some women don't - it's not for everyone) which is why I thought of expressing. If expressing milk is really time consuming, and we have a baby that wants to be fed every 2-3 hours then it sounds like it might be quite difficult. Therefore I'm tempted (if I can) to breastfeed as much as possible, but maybe use Aptimel or C&G formula for the odd feed so I can have a break (and so hubby can bond).

Hmm something for me to think about. I may see how I get on expressing, but I won't put pressure on myself to do it if it's hard work xxx

 

[Dubchick81]

Yeah, as MrsLmc says - expressing is a huge faff & way more time consuming.
& I think if you do it exclusively then your supply is likely to dwindle more than if breast feeding directly & you'll need to spend quite a chunk of extra time pumping - they say a baby is about 1oz more efficient than a pump at getting milk from each breast each time & it's a supply & demand thing? One of my NCT-friends solely express/combination fed but only made it to 2 months.

Does have the advantage that someone else can give a bottle of expressed milk though & less likely to be a bottle refusers if you NEED to give one though.
The other really important thing if you want to combination breast & bottle is to get the best bottles you can that are breast like/with newborn teats so they're similar to minimize the 'confusion' thing.

We had to top up with formula in hospital before my milk 'came in' (baby was jaundiced on phototherapy lights and being treated with IV antibiotics for ?sepsis) - so then ended up doing x1 bottle feed of either formula or expressed breast milk a day since then & I think it did make maintaining breast feeding or giving breast milk much much harder than if had been exclusively breastfeeding. In hindsight, hospital probably should've advised I be expressing with a hospital grade pump in the first few days... but we bought an electric pump a few weeks later. Countdown to 6 months old - 6 weeks to go! But it's been so hard maintaining combination feeding (she's still about 80% of feeds breastmilk).


Formula wise we've used Aptimil - didn't agonize too much over it - they had the pre-prepared sterilized & with newborn teat boxes of 90mls that I wanted 'in case' so that's what we started off with. They have handy cartons that are ready to use & a colic/constipation and reflux version that we also use.
Main thing is not to keep chopping & changing though as that's likely to upset digestion.


If I did it over/advise friends I think worry less about the giving birth (it'll happen somehow!) & learn more about BF if that's what you want to do.

Thanks hun.. Really appreciate all the advice I can get.. I really want to give it 110% but there's so much confusion around it all... Sometimes throw my hands up and think "feck it.. i'll bottle feed.. its less complicated!" But I really wana try

 

[Sammielouise071]

Pregnancy and Baby Advice Thread: Brands, Feeding, Nursery, Bathing, Everything!

I'm thinking of going with aptamil too as its what my sister used with her little girl.

On a different note, does anyone know what pushchair they are getting ?
I'm completely baffled there seems to be soooo many and all ranging in prices .. It's not something I have to worry about yet but it would be nice to have an idea in my mind of what sort I would like .
I want something easy to put up and down and and not too heavy x

 

[MrsLmc]

Girls you can only try and if you last 2 days, 2 months or 6 months with the breast feeding you'll have done amazing. If you go straight to bottle you'll do great too. Its all about keeping your sanity and keeping baby well fed. Don't put too much pressure on yourselves and don't feel guilty about any which way you go. xx

 

[sarah_lou1981]

I'm thinking of going with aptamil too as its what my sister used with her little girl. On a different note, does anyone know what pushchair they are getting ? I'm completely baffled there seems to be soooo many and all ranging in prices .. It's not something I have to worry about yet but it would be nice to have an idea in my mind of what sort I would like . I want something easy to put up and down and and not too heavy x

I've bought a Silvercross linear freeway. It's a pram that turns into a pushchair in literally a couple of clicks with no separate carry cot. And the car seat fits on the frame too. The only thing is it's quite bulky so if you need to take it on buses or don't have a big car boot it might be difficult but I only walk or drive and our boot is plenty big enough. Once baby is about 8 months I'm going for a cosatto pushchair in toffee apple I think

 

[Dubchick81]

Thanks Laura Very true but its hard to now get carried away/disappointed... I'm already starting to feel a failure coz there's so much to take in and just can't seem to get my head around it all.. And I swore I wouldn't get caught up in it all...
I guess all we can do is try eh?!

OMG SammieLouise... We went look at prams/buggies last weekend coz I have no idea what I want at all.. So wanted to see what's available and what price range we're looking at... There really is just too much choice.. With everything!!!!
There's a Mothercare brand one that I really like but am not sure if it'd fit in my boot.. So really need to get measurements.. But it sounds pretty much the same as the Silvercross one Sarah got..
I know I don't want to spend a huge about on my pram so I defo won't be getting the likes of a Bugaboo or any of them... I just want something secure and safe for baby... It'll spend most of its time in the boot of the car no doubt anyway!!! I want soemthing that will do from newborn til at least 2 r 3 years old tho.. And that'll be warm enough for when babys an infant during the winter months.. Which that mothercare one is perfect...