Formula vs Breast Milk

Rates of consumption vary

In this corner, we have Breast Milk, an all natural healthy immune-boosting naturally produced substance you can get for free.

And over here in the opposing corner we have baby formula with extra vitamin D as women today are having a severe lack of it due to over-sunscreening themselves.

There are benefits of each, but it’s generally considered better if you can to give your baby breast milk. If you can’t, no shame in that, you can either switch them totally to formula or do a bit of a half and half thing if you’re able.

Baby needs more formula than breast milk

So, you’ve probably got a chart that says give baby X amount per feeding of breastmilk. Unfortunately that’s not the same as the amount of formula they’re going to need.

Babies require more formula to feel full than they do breast milk, especially if they’re hitting a growth spurt.

Whether that’s due to the caloric content of milk, or a hormone in breast milk that makes baby stop, I don’t know. The internet is full of crap info and all the good info has at least 15 sites saying it’s crap, so yeah.

Formula vs Breast Milk feedings

The general rule of thumb I’ve decided must work is feed your baby what you think they should want, take them off at whatever point you think they should be done, burp them, watch for signs of being hungry and being pissed off, and if you see those offer another half ounce to ounce.

During a growth spurt, staff editor Maggie managed to drink about 2 & 1/2 times what she should have been able to, and didn’t barf all over the place. It was seven hours of hell thinking that if we gave her any more she surely would be horking all over the place. Finally I gave in and just stuffed her full of more formula than she should have been able to handle and that was what was required to put her mind at ease.

Formula vs breast milk breakdown

A quick rule of thumb is that there is no quick rule of thumb. Your baby’s needs, hunger, etc are driven nearly entirely by the stock speculation of fresh squid in a Salvadorian casino and numbers of ounces don’t matter so much when you’ve got a drill-sergent-in-training bleating at you that she’s hungry.

As callous as you may feel about it, let them get to the gallon challenge threshold if they want. It’s easier to clean up from a milk hork than spending hours with a stressed out baby saying she’s starving to death.