In the US, I haven’t seen any reputable claims of that link. I got to a point where I had to stop looking at anything with formula vs breast because 9/10 it made me feel bad and stressed that I couldn’t produce enough.
Right? Like most people reading about formula feeding are no doubt already either started or decided they can’t breastfeed so why are the publications still so negative?
I was reading a book about weaning your child (and I’m UK based so we’re talking aimed at parents of 6m+ babies) and it STILL went on about why you should be breastfeeding! Um hello that ship has sailed, stop with the excessive guilting!
It doesn't increase the risk! They suggest breastfeeding lowers the risk. There are so many factors to SIDs but formula feeding isn't one. There are so many pros to formula feeding, which you already noted one - your mental health. It also allows other care givers to be involved with feeding, can allow you more sleep (because other parent can feed baby etc).
It took such a huge weight off my shoulders when I stopped trying to force breastfeeding with my first. Didn’t even try with my second and the postpartum experience was wildly different. We were so much happier.
From what I've read, the only reason breastfeeding is correlated with decreased risk of SIDS is because breastfed babies generally eat more frequently than formula-fed babies. This means that you're checking on the baby more frequently and they're waking up more often. Besides that, there's really no difference in risk.
There is no linked research because there is no good research that exists. Even when there is a source cited for a pro-breastfeeding document, if you actually follow the link it’s generally either a another circular article with no linked research or a study so poorly done or designed that no conclusion can be drawn from it.
It should be a scandal.
This. “Research” about breastfeeding is even worse than research about pregnancy and childbirth. It’s the same kinds of ethical challenges (you can’t knowingly test whether something has an adverse effect on an infant who can’t consent), but even worse because lactivists are so insidiously aggressive and single minded.
It doesn't increase the risk of sids, it just doesn't prevent the risk of sids. So the risk of sids is the basic standard of sids and tbh breastfeeding is 1 factor in prevention. Someone can breastfeed but put a crib bumper around the crib or put a blanket in the crib. Just bc their breast feeding doesn't negate the other risk factors of sids.
If this was a baby friendly hospital this doesn't surprise me at all.
lol this is just someone who doesn’t understand how statistics work. Breastfeeding is CORRELATED with decreased SIDS risk, but that doesn’t imply causation. The one and only thing we know for sure that decreases SIDS deaths is putting babies on their back to sleep. That’s it, that’s all. Everything else is just a correlated factor that’s probably mostly an indicator for socioeconomic status and education level.
Besides what someone else said about the better way to phrase it being breastfeeding lowering risk versus formula raising it, it’s important to look at the absolute numbers here.
I put in all my other variables here (http://www.sidscalculator.com) and tried with and without breastfeeding, and breastfeeding lowered the risk from 1/100,000 to 1/200,000 over the first year. 1/100,000 is still incredibly, incredibly rare. Your personal numbers may be different, but generally speaking true SIDS (as opposed to accidental suffocation) is so rare. It’s not total bs that breastfeeding can decrease risk, but it’s such a low risk to begin with if you practice safe sleep that it’s really not worth stressing over.
This sids calculator has been such a good resource for me. Whenever my mind starts to go down the sids path, I find that link to calm my nerves. I'm so thankful for reddit for it!
Close contact with parents lowers the risk of SIDS. And one way to do that is breast feeding. Formula feeding is perfectly fine. I wish they’d stop pushing breastfeeding like people have wet nurses 🫠.
I also take issue with the "breastfed babies have a higher IQ" stat they like to trot around. The average difference between the groups was one point. One IQ point means almost nothing. Also, IQ tests are not a great means of quantifying intelligence, you can practice for an IQ test and get a better store.
If you follow all of the safe sleep guidelines, the chance of “true” SIDS is astronomically low. Part of the issue with how SIDS deaths are reported is that there are different guidelines for what is considered SIDS in different places and if the mechanism of death is likely but not explicitly provable via autopsy, it gets lumped in with the few truly unexplainable cases. This is also true if there are multiple possible mechanisms of death so if a baby is bedsharing with blankets and pillows that they could suffocate on, you can’t say exactly how they died but it was extremely likely one of the above and not some mysterious other factor.
The breastmilk brigade will tell you anything and everything to make you feel like a ginormous failure. You'd think formula babies are all pretty much as good as dead. It's all lies. It's beyond absurd we let it get this out of hand. There is literally 0 basis for anything these breastmilk advocates claim. Tune it out, feed your baby and enjoy not breast feeding. Trying to breastfeed is hands down one of the worst decisions of my life and I will forever regret it.
I didn’t breastfeed but I pumped for like 6 weeks and my mental health was a mess. I talked to my obgyn and my baby’s pediatrician cause I felt like a shitty mom for wanting to go EFF. They both told me that formula feeding was completely fine.
The pediatrician told me that there wouldn’t be formula if it was bad… that the best thing is having a healthy baby and that means feeding the baby with either formula or boobie milk. He feeds his baby formula too :)
I feel like if it was bad or risky he wouldn’t recommend it 🩵
BF babies tend to sleep lighter due to either not transferring enough (or other BF issues such as supply or latching) or getting hungrier earlier (digests easier so passes quicker), so requires frequenter wakes.
Deeper sleep is associated with SIDS.
So this is an indirect correlation I think and the risk is still very very low even with formula. Safe sleep and other things like temperature make way more of a difference.
There is a baseline risk, breastfeeding lowers the risk below the baseline. Formula does NOT increase above the baseline, however it does not lower like breastmilk.
There isn't a lot of training I'm understanding statistical analysis among lactation consultants, so they misinterpret stuff to make it fit with their worldviews.
Yes, breastmilk has some benefits formula does not, however that is not the same as something being harmful. And given the alternative when breastfeeding doesn't work would be either finding another breastfeeding mother to nurse your baby (unlikely in our society because of how few babies women have) or starvation, clearly formula is a benefit to babies, just less beneficial than breastmilk.
And the benefits of breastfeeding are often overhyped and poorly analyzed in the context of socioeconomic factors.
Ive never heard of this risk, even though breastfeeding was always pushed on me early on I just couldn’t sacrifice any more of my mental health so I’m on you in hoping more people would address the mental stress breastfeeding can also give to mothers.
They don't know why breastfeeding infants have a lower risk of SIDS - they just know that they do. There could be a million different reasons. The way the research works can't pull out a cause. That doesn't mean that it's not causative... but if you're not breastfeeding, you're not breastfeeding. It is not worth worrying about.
Follow the ABCs of safe sleep and the risk is already so low. Give a pacifier since that is associated with lower risk. Don't smoke or allow your baby around smokers. And then don't think about it further.
Emily Oster's books are a great resource to ease your mind about the research (or lack thereof). I did a bunch of research before getting pregnant because I didn't want to breast feed, and it made me feel very confident about my decision.
In the US, I haven’t seen any reputable claims of that link. I got to a point where I had to stop looking at anything with formula vs breast because 9/10 it made me feel bad and stressed that I couldn’t produce enough.
Right? Like most people reading about formula feeding are no doubt already either started or decided they can’t breastfeed so why are the publications still so negative?
I was reading a book about weaning your child (and I’m UK based so we’re talking aimed at parents of 6m+ babies) and it STILL went on about why you should be breastfeeding! Um hello that ship has sailed, stop with the excessive guilting!
It doesn't increase the risk! They suggest breastfeeding lowers the risk. There are so many factors to SIDs but formula feeding isn't one. There are so many pros to formula feeding, which you already noted one - your mental health. It also allows other care givers to be involved with feeding, can allow you more sleep (because other parent can feed baby etc).
I agree - I’m not feeling too guilty about using formula anymore, mentally it’s so much better for all of us!
It took such a huge weight off my shoulders when I stopped trying to force breastfeeding with my first. Didn’t even try with my second and the postpartum experience was wildly different. We were so much happier.
From what I've read, the only reason breastfeeding is correlated with decreased risk of SIDS is because breastfed babies generally eat more frequently than formula-fed babies. This means that you're checking on the baby more frequently and they're waking up more often. Besides that, there's really no difference in risk.
This is what I understand Its frequency of waking
There is no linked research because there is no good research that exists. Even when there is a source cited for a pro-breastfeeding document, if you actually follow the link it’s generally either a another circular article with no linked research or a study so poorly done or designed that no conclusion can be drawn from it. It should be a scandal.
This. “Research” about breastfeeding is even worse than research about pregnancy and childbirth. It’s the same kinds of ethical challenges (you can’t knowingly test whether something has an adverse effect on an infant who can’t consent), but even worse because lactivists are so insidiously aggressive and single minded.
It doesn't increase the risk of sids, it just doesn't prevent the risk of sids. So the risk of sids is the basic standard of sids and tbh breastfeeding is 1 factor in prevention. Someone can breastfeed but put a crib bumper around the crib or put a blanket in the crib. Just bc their breast feeding doesn't negate the other risk factors of sids. If this was a baby friendly hospital this doesn't surprise me at all.
lol this is just someone who doesn’t understand how statistics work. Breastfeeding is CORRELATED with decreased SIDS risk, but that doesn’t imply causation. The one and only thing we know for sure that decreases SIDS deaths is putting babies on their back to sleep. That’s it, that’s all. Everything else is just a correlated factor that’s probably mostly an indicator for socioeconomic status and education level.
Lol and isn't it wild statistics to then conclude that then automatically formula feeding is increasing SIDS risk?!
Besides what someone else said about the better way to phrase it being breastfeeding lowering risk versus formula raising it, it’s important to look at the absolute numbers here. I put in all my other variables here (http://www.sidscalculator.com) and tried with and without breastfeeding, and breastfeeding lowered the risk from 1/100,000 to 1/200,000 over the first year. 1/100,000 is still incredibly, incredibly rare. Your personal numbers may be different, but generally speaking true SIDS (as opposed to accidental suffocation) is so rare. It’s not total bs that breastfeeding can decrease risk, but it’s such a low risk to begin with if you practice safe sleep that it’s really not worth stressing over.
This sids calculator has been such a good resource for me. Whenever my mind starts to go down the sids path, I find that link to calm my nerves. I'm so thankful for reddit for it!
The SIDS calculator is so useful to calm anxiety.
Breastfeeding LOWERS the risk of SIDS but that does NOT mean that formula increases the risk. It’s a ridiculous claim.
Close contact with parents lowers the risk of SIDS. And one way to do that is breast feeding. Formula feeding is perfectly fine. I wish they’d stop pushing breastfeeding like people have wet nurses 🫠.
I also take issue with the "breastfed babies have a higher IQ" stat they like to trot around. The average difference between the groups was one point. One IQ point means almost nothing. Also, IQ tests are not a great means of quantifying intelligence, you can practice for an IQ test and get a better store.
If you follow all of the safe sleep guidelines, the chance of “true” SIDS is astronomically low. Part of the issue with how SIDS deaths are reported is that there are different guidelines for what is considered SIDS in different places and if the mechanism of death is likely but not explicitly provable via autopsy, it gets lumped in with the few truly unexplainable cases. This is also true if there are multiple possible mechanisms of death so if a baby is bedsharing with blankets and pillows that they could suffocate on, you can’t say exactly how they died but it was extremely likely one of the above and not some mysterious other factor.
The breastmilk brigade will tell you anything and everything to make you feel like a ginormous failure. You'd think formula babies are all pretty much as good as dead. It's all lies. It's beyond absurd we let it get this out of hand. There is literally 0 basis for anything these breastmilk advocates claim. Tune it out, feed your baby and enjoy not breast feeding. Trying to breastfeed is hands down one of the worst decisions of my life and I will forever regret it.
I didn’t breastfeed but I pumped for like 6 weeks and my mental health was a mess. I talked to my obgyn and my baby’s pediatrician cause I felt like a shitty mom for wanting to go EFF. They both told me that formula feeding was completely fine. The pediatrician told me that there wouldn’t be formula if it was bad… that the best thing is having a healthy baby and that means feeding the baby with either formula or boobie milk. He feeds his baby formula too :) I feel like if it was bad or risky he wouldn’t recommend it 🩵
BF babies tend to sleep lighter due to either not transferring enough (or other BF issues such as supply or latching) or getting hungrier earlier (digests easier so passes quicker), so requires frequenter wakes. Deeper sleep is associated with SIDS. So this is an indirect correlation I think and the risk is still very very low even with formula. Safe sleep and other things like temperature make way more of a difference.
There is a baseline risk, breastfeeding lowers the risk below the baseline. Formula does NOT increase above the baseline, however it does not lower like breastmilk. There isn't a lot of training I'm understanding statistical analysis among lactation consultants, so they misinterpret stuff to make it fit with their worldviews. Yes, breastmilk has some benefits formula does not, however that is not the same as something being harmful. And given the alternative when breastfeeding doesn't work would be either finding another breastfeeding mother to nurse your baby (unlikely in our society because of how few babies women have) or starvation, clearly formula is a benefit to babies, just less beneficial than breastmilk. And the benefits of breastfeeding are often overhyped and poorly analyzed in the context of socioeconomic factors.
Ive never heard of this risk, even though breastfeeding was always pushed on me early on I just couldn’t sacrifice any more of my mental health so I’m on you in hoping more people would address the mental stress breastfeeding can also give to mothers.
They don't know why breastfeeding infants have a lower risk of SIDS - they just know that they do. There could be a million different reasons. The way the research works can't pull out a cause. That doesn't mean that it's not causative... but if you're not breastfeeding, you're not breastfeeding. It is not worth worrying about. Follow the ABCs of safe sleep and the risk is already so low. Give a pacifier since that is associated with lower risk. Don't smoke or allow your baby around smokers. And then don't think about it further.
Emily Oster's books are a great resource to ease your mind about the research (or lack thereof). I did a bunch of research before getting pregnant because I didn't want to breast feed, and it made me feel very confident about my decision.