What are the differences between breastfeeding and bottle feeding?

Many mothers ask: “Could you explain the differences between breastfeeding and bottle feeding?”

Okay, let’s get started! Today, we’ll explain the differences between breastfeeding and bottle feeding from the perspectives of feeding purpose, feeding speed, nutrient absorption, convenience, oral development, and parent-child bonding.

1. Purpose of feeding

Breastfeeding involves the baby sucking, which stimulates the breasts to secrete more milk, making it easier to achieve exclusive breastfeeding.

Bottle feeding involves first expressing milk with a breast pump. However, the efficiency of a breast pump in stimulating milk production is limited; even the most expensive and high-quality pump cannot compare to a baby’s sucking. If bottle feeding continues for a long time, the milk supply may gradually decrease, making it easier to switch to formula feeding.

2. Feeding speed

Breastfeeding is on-demand feeding; the baby eats whenever they are hungry, and the amount they eat is up to them, preventing overfeeding.
Bottle feeding is much faster, allowing the baby to drink a lot in a short time, which increases the risk of choking, spitting up, gas, and overfeeding.

3. Nutrient absorption

Breastfeeding: Breast milk contains nutrients, antibodies, and gut flora , allowing babies to enjoy the dynamic balance of breast milk at different times, providing comprehensive nutrition.

Bottle feeding: The freezing process of breast milk will cause some loss of immune antibodies and the gut microbiota cannot be shared, thus losing the advantage of enjoying dynamic balance.

4. Convenience

Breastfeeding: It’s very convenient to just lift the lid and feed. It’s also the most effective and fastest way to soothe someone to sleep or calm them down.

Bottle feeding: This requires a lot more work, including pumping breast milk, freezing milk, thawing milk, heating milk, cleaning and sterilizing…

5. Oral development

Breastfeeding requires the baby to suck vigorously, which exercises the entire jaw and face, effectively promoting the development of oral muscles and helping the baby learn to speak.

Bottle feeding is effortless and makes it easier for babies to eat. But it doesn’t provide enough stimulation for facial muscle development.

6. Parent-child relationship

Breastfeeding provides mothers with an incredibly healing sense of happiness, something I think many breastfeeding mothers have experienced. At the same time, babies are more easily satisfied and feel more secure; this close contact also helps mothers and babies better understand each other and form a stronger bond.

Bottle feeding can be do by the mother or someone else. Which reduces the burden on the mother to some extent and gives her more freedom. However, during bottle feeding, the baby’s secure attachment distance to the mother widens, and the intimate bond becomes less strong.

Finally, I’d like to remind you that frequent use of breast pumps can easily cause blocked milk ducts. Even if you are bottle feeding, it is recommend to breastfeed occasionally to reduce the chances of blocked milk ducts and to avoid getting mastitis .

Breastfeeding is not as easy as you might imagine. You may encounter difficulties such as low milk supply, breastfeeding pain, blocked milk ducts, babies not eating well, and babies refusing to breastfeed. But as long as you do your homework in advance, breastfeeding is not that difficult!