The Baby Feeding Series with Muffin Top Mummy Blog

Hello and welcome back to another instalment of The Baby Feeding Series, that features real stories from real parents who have experienced how hard and baffling feeding your baby can be. I want this series to be a place where parents can share their own experiences in the hopes that other parents who are struggling can feel less alone. Being a parent is the hardest job in the world but it's one of the most rewarding jobs too and so I want to share their stories.


Last week we had my lovely friend Naomi from Life By Naomi who shared a post about moving on from toddler snacks and her post has even given me some tips for snacking with my little girl, don't forget to check out her post. This week I would like to introduce Lucy from Muffin Top Mummy Blog, brilliant name right? The lovely Lucy has decided to share her feeding journey with us today about bottle feeding her daughter and so without further ado, I'd like to hand it over to the lovely Emily...

On the bottle

My baby is not an alcoholic as the title of this post suggests...but she is exclusively bottle fed, which seems to be equally as bad if you take too much heed of the internet.

I feel like it's almost blasphemous nowadays to say, "I've never put my boob anywhere near her mouth" (on purpose anyways), and I'm always expecting someone to rugby tackle me away from the formula section in Morrisons.

I do get it though. Breast is best, and of course it is. It's just not best for me.

You may now be thinking such things along the lines of - does she not want to give her baby the best start in life? Or protect against illness? Or do the most natural thing in the world? And the answer is yes I do, but it didn't work out like that.

I toyed with the idea of breastfeeding throughout pregnancy but honestly didn't know if it was for me. I wasn't breast fed and neither were my sisters and we haven't turned out too badly (actually we're awesome and we never get ill) so I never really saw the big deal. I bought bottles and formula along with a breast pump, thinking I could try both out for size and just go with the flow.

However, after having my daughter, I lost a lot of blood (I had to have a blood transfusion 5 days pp) and contracted sepsis and was, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than a blood-stained sack of potatoes for 6 days.

I was on an antibiotic drip and barely had the energy to look at my daughter, let alone hold and feed her. Combine this with the fact she also had to go on antibiotics, 'just in case', and the idea of giving her my messed-up milk to make her tummy even worse was pretty much unthinkable.

Do I feel guilty? No.

At the time, I was wracked with guilt; not because I couldn't feed her, but because I couldn't do a thing for her and I was almost too gone to care. The fact that formula existed so that my husband could do everything was an absolute relief.

Now, I'm feeling great, she's great and we are making up for the lost time at the start of her life. She's still bottle fed and that's the way it's going to stay.

It breaks my heart to read posts on online forums about desperate mothers who have given up breast feeding for various reasons and are absolutely devastated that they are 'letting their baby down'. And it's even worse when other mothers comment about how they should have tried harder. Surely the most important thing is that your baby is fed when it's hungry? I'm very aware it goes the other way too - with poor mothers being asked to leave or judged in shops/restaurants/anywhere for feeding naturally. You just can't win!

So please respect a mother's right to choose how she feeds. Motherhood is hard enough without any extra judgement. Fed is always best.
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About Lucy
A newbie blogger and a new mum Lucy created her fantastically named blog as a way to avoid watching too much TV that is not baby friendly and to hopefully find some other mothers that are struggling to loose that baby weight. Lucy is a mother to the beautiful Mila and is enjoying her time off whilst on maternity and doesn't want to go back to the world of work.  Lucy is lives with her husband, baby Mila and their two rabbits in the lovely Warwickshire after moving from Brighton.
Remember you can find Lucy over at Muffin Top Mummy Blog

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