I used formula to feed my baby – I was made to feel like a failure

‘You shouldn’t use formula, that stuff is made in a lab. You can do it if you put your mind to it.’ 

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. 

I was in the newborn trenches when I called one of my closest friends, after having given birth just two months ago.  

I must have been really struggling because when he asked me how I was, I ended up offloading all the guilt I’d been feeling for not being able to breastfeed exclusively. At that time, I was bottle feeding with breast milk and formula, after struggling with my supply.  

Not a day had passed without the mental self-flagellation and the sense that I’d already failed at motherhood. 

But his response didn’t just hurt – I was upset that he bypassed my exhaustion to make this comment – it made me furious. It was beyond me that a man, who has never breastfed a baby nor ever will, could have such strong views that he would express them with such confidence. 

When I first got pregnant, I had heard about the benefits of breastfeeding from the hospital – it ran a class that outlined the nutritional value of breastmilk and the supposed benefits to a mother’s mental health. 

But if the antenatal classes I went to had focused less on these benefits and more on how milk production worked, I might have had an easier time figuring it out. 

My plans for exclusive breastfeeding, however, went out of the window on day two, when my jaundiced baby was put on formula by the doctor. Since formula can help to flush out jaundice from a baby’s system, especially if a mother’s milk hasn’t yet come in, he had to do this.

Throw in a sleepless week on a noisy maternity ward, which had just one breast pump that didn’t fit properly, and unrelenting colic, and my plans to breastfeed looked bleaker with each passing day.  

Back at home, three weeks after giving birth, my health visitor looked at me with sad eyes when I optimistically told her I would be exclusively breastfeeding again soon. She told me that a full supply was difficult to achieve, unless by week two, you are expressing around 500-700mls of breastmilk over 24 hours.  

I was shocked. I didn’t understand why the classes I’d taken hadn’t covered this. 

I struggled to breastfeed my baby. And using formula affected my supply of breastmilk. So, for the first five months of my newborn’s life, I fed my child formula or any breast milk I could express. 

The guilt I felt was gut-wrenching and eroded my confidence as a new mother.  

At two months, I was getting up at night to express milk from my breast to keep up my supply and bottle-feed my nipple-confused child who exclusively demanded the bottle. I did this so that my baby would get the health benefits of breastmilk even though he was happy drinking just formula. 

I avoided breastfeeding support classes as I couldn’t face the pressure to express more than I already was, and couldn’t deal with any more guilt. 

The health advisor then recommended an organisation for breastfeeding support – La Leche League – but when I saw that one of their guides was titled The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, it felt condescending. It also didn’t feel inclusive of all gender identities, so I was put off. 

A La Leche League advisor told me to get a prescription for Domperidone, an anti-sickness drug that raises the level of prolactin in the body and as a side-effect, triggers lactation. And, I found out later, if you’re unlucky, serious cardiac events. Luckily, I opted not to take it.

No one should be told to do this, especially when they are struggling to eat and sleep, and are irrationally wondering, as I did, what might happen to their baby if they were to keel over and die from exhaustion. 

My mental health was struggling – I was depressed from lack of sleep and the exhaustion of caring for a newborn. On top of that I felt like I was failing my baby. 

However, NHS-approved formula is safe for babies when prepared according to safety and hygiene guidelines, and there are no health risks from using it. 

In the UK, only 1% of babies are exclusively breastfed by six months and 73% are given formula in the first six weeks.  

It’s often forgotten that breastfeeding is a full-time job, but we are judged by these impossible standards to live by, especially when we’re simply trying to support our babies. 

These organisations making us feel bad is enough, but when it’s people I know, I’m surprised.  

However, my friend wasn’t the only man to offer his opinion. When my baby was just four months, a stranger saw my husband feeding the baby in the park and said, ‘It’s nice to help out but breast is best.’ My husband was shocked and by the time he had thought of a few choice words, the man was gone.  

There are so many reasons why someone would not breastfeed. 

It requires privilege – neurodivergent mothers might struggle with sensory overwhelm, while those who have experienced childhood sexual abuse have a hard time breastfeeding because of shame and dissociation. 

I was lucky to get some closure in the end when one night, aged four months, my fevered baby forgot about his nipple confusion and accepted the boob for a few feeds. I was so happy I cried.  

It was, however, a one-off. The next day his fever passed and he went back on the bottle. 

On January 1st 2025, we rang in the new year by cheering and clapping as he downed 20mls of breastmilk from the bottle – the last dregs of a dwindling supply – as he turned five months and was almost ready to eat solids. 

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I was ecstatic to finally choose sleep over the breast pump.  

There was a lightheartedness and smiles in the weeks that followed.  

My little one would soon turn out to be a big foodie and none of the emotional torture of the early days would matter.  

In a twisted reversal of my situation, friends who were still breastfeeding their children after introducing solid food have told me they have started getting questions about why they haven’t stopped breastfeeding. 

It proved one thing: when it comes to feeding infants, people love to make parents feel bad.  

I’ve learnt not to listen to them, and neither should you.  

I say: do whatever works best for you and your child, because in the end that’s all that matters.  

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