There really is no right or wrong answer to this question. The answer is which ever works best for your baby and you.
The different factors that pertain to breast and bottle feeding are;
A) Convenience: breast feeding can be very convenient, especially during the night time feeds. There is nothing to prepare or heat up and your baby can be fed immediately as they need to. If you are bottle feeding, the best thing to do is to prepare the quantity of formula in the bottles ready for the night time, and have water that has already been sterilized in a jug waiting to pour directly into the bottle. These days’ hospitals will tell you that it’s alright to give the formula at room temperature, so one doesn’t even have to heat the bottle up at night. Your bottle fed baby can receive their feed as quickly as possible.
B) Bonding with your baby. Breast feeding did not work for me with both of my children, and I probably have a closer bond with my children than a lot of people who did breast feed their babies. You definitely have the opportunity to bond with your baby whilst breast feeding, but bottle fed babies can be equally bonded with their moms.
C) Nutrition – breast fed babies certainly do receive a wonderful nutrition from their moms provided they themselves eat a healthy diet, and do build up a strong immune system. Fortunately the formula today actually has a lot of wonderful vitamins in it, and bottle fed babies do receive enough vitamins to build up a strong immune system too.
D) When do you stop? There are no rules to end feeding your baby. Breast fed babies can continue to be fed until the mom feels it’s time to change over to bottle feeding or even drinking milk from a ‘sippi’ cup. Babies, who are bottle fed, generally stay on formula for a full year, and after a year their paediatricians recommend they can change over to regular milk, either in a bottle or cup.
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