Questions on newborn bottles and formula feeding

Several people have said to me when first meeting N, “when you got him home from hospital did you just sit and share at him and wonder what to do next?”. This was from people with and without children bizarrely. I always answer no, because even though I always thought of myself not as a baby person, or at all maternal, when it came down to our son, I’ve always known what to do…it didn’t scare me.

At 3 months old, I still can’t quite differentiate between his cries (it’s usually just more food), but on the return from hospital it seemed to just happen and work out right.

The hardest thing we discovered was bottle feeding.  Newborn bottles, milk powder, and how to feed a baby the right way.  Breast feeding hadn’t worked for us but there was no information provided on how to formula feed, or how to actually put the teat on the bottle.  It took us about 5 minutes until OH worked it out.

Now, the questions about bottle feeding continue

• how do you know which teat size to use
• which newborn bottles work best
• how much formula to give when you’ve a baby who wants to feed 7 or 8 times a day and the tin suggests for his age and weight he should only be taking 5-6 bottles

It seems lots of people have these questions and more, and there just isn’t the support available for non-beastfeeding mums.  I had been planning to breastfeed, but in the end it didn’t go as planned so it’s be good to find specific support to answer the questions.