Is it true that breast-fed babies are less happy than bottle-fed babies?
15 January 2012
A study in Cambridge has found that breastfed babies cry more, laugh less, and generally have "more challenging temperaments" than formula-fed infants. But such behaviour is normal, and mothers should learn to cope with it rather than reach for the bottle, according to the researchers. The study also concluded that bottle-feeding was akin to "comfort eating" - producing quieter and apparently more content babies who may be over-nourished and putting on weight too rapidly.
The study authors wrote in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE: "In particular, compared to formula-fed infants, breastfed infants were reported to show greater distress, less smiling, laughing and vocalisation, to be slower to calm down following distress or excitement, and more difficult to soothe by care givers."
This study has been portrayed in the media as meaning that all breastfed babies will be less happy than their bottle-fed counterparts, and any mother reading the words above will probably interpret it the same way.
I feel that the conclusions of this study are extremely misleading and will no doubt cause a lot of confusion amongst new mothers who will now be wondering whether it really is best to breastfeed their babies. I find it really surprising that this study has been published with so little medical evidence to back up its claims. For example, did the researchers study the weight gain of the bottle fed babies? If they have done this and noted that the majority of them were putting on too much weight, then they would be able to state as fact that the more content babies were indeed overfeeding. But if their weight gain was normal, it would show that they were happy simply because they were getting enough to eat. Similarly, did they weigh the breastfed babies and if so, were they all gaining the correct amount of weight or were some of them are underweight and clearly not getting enough milk? In addition, did they investigate whether the miserable babies had undiagnosed medical problems which might have been the cause of their distress rather than the fact that they were being breast-fed?
In my experience, the only time I see breastfed babies who are unhappy and unsettled is when breastfeeding is going wrong or when the baby has a medical problem such as reflux. Most of these babies will then become totally happy again once the problem has been resolved.
So my message to all the mothers out there is this: if your baby is happy, settled and gaining the right amount of weight, then Breast is clearly Best. But if your baby is not happy, please don't assume that this is normal. Instead, try & identify the problem by doing this simple test: at the end of the normal breastfeed, offer your baby extra milk from a bottle. If he drinks some and then settles perfectly, hunger is the problem rather than discomfort. If he rejects the milk and but still won't settle, you should seek medical advice to get a proper diagnosis.