Here is Donna’s third and final post of her fantastic series on baby budgeting: milk.

Considering how much trouble I am having breastfeeding, I won’t be lying if I were to say that I get very tempted to switch on over to formula. However, I will persevere for the time being and if I do end up going the formula route in the future, this is another post I will have bookmarked.

Donna has also graciously offered to give away a $5 Amazon e-certificate. Just leave a comment to this post by Friday, 11/5/2010 and a winner will be chosen by a random number generator. Be sure to include your email address so that we can contact you if you win. Good luck, and a huge thanks to Donna!

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Milk

I am going to preface this post that it may be graphic at times and if you are easily insulted, stop reading.

 

I know what they say: Breast is best. But breastfeeding was the HARDEST thing that I have ever had to do in my life. I know that it’s great, bonding with the baby and good for the baby, but I struggled so hard.

I breastfed my son (from my left breast) for the first five weeks. Week 5, he FINALLY accepted my right boob and breastfed from both. What did we do beforehand? When he woke up, I would feed him from my right one. Then, my husband would have to take over, change him and entertain him for 15 minutes while I attempted to pump (mostly for the left one). My son was purely on breast milk for the first five months but considering that I had to go back to work after 6 weeks of maternity leave, trying to breastfeed and pump continuously through the day was really exhausting and really difficult when you didn’t necessarily have a supportive work environment.

Anyway, my point is — you’re not going to be a bad mother if you don’t breastfeed. If you can breastfeed, the more power to you — you’ll save yourself money, help you lose that pregnancy weight and give your kid those extra antibodies. However, with formula, heck, you can head straight back to the gym without the milk-filled breasts bouncing all over the place. AND you can drink alcohol and eat whatever you want. Maybe it’s selfish but when I had to stop eating broccoli because it was giving my son gas, I was sad and felt guilty that what I ate hurt him. I also had to hold off on alcohol and sushi, as well.

 

Saving money while breastfeeding — see if you can get a used pump but get new tubing. That cost will be very significant.

 

Saving money with formula — I recommend signing up for Enfamil, Similac, Good Choice, and even Sam’s Club because you get free cans of formula all the time! Also, stalk www.freecycle.org because people will also give away free sample cans, as well.

I shopped three places for formula: Costco, Target and Jewel/Osco. If you prefer to use Enfamil, I recommend Costco — 36.5 oz (Enfamil Premium with triple health guard) for only $32.49 AND it comes with a free box of the travel sticks (16 total in the box) so ultimately you’re getting 100.5 oz (roughly 16.75 bottles of 6oz each) for only $32.49 and 32cents per oz. But keep in mind, they don’t take the manufacturers coupons/checks here.

Also, through Costco — my son Neddy will drink their store brand formula contently (it does foam up a LOT though) but it’s only $19.79 for a package of two tins of 25.7oz each so we usually pick up at least 1-2 packages each time. Neddy used to drink about 30oz a day or 5-6 bottles a day which equals one 25.7oz tin a week.

For powder sticks (perfect for traveling/going out because it’s a pre-measured 4oz of formula), I prefer to go with Similac because their $5 manufacturer’s checks are good for ANYTHING by Similac so instead of paying $9.99 for a box of powder sticks, I get it for only $4.99 instead. Also, I like the Similac tins because the scoop is actually in the lid and you don’t have to get your hands dirty digging around for the scoop so I save the Similac tins and use that for storing other powder (and I save the Costco/Enfamil tins for my holiday cookies!).

I totally scored a great deal on Similac yesterday at Target — there was a coupon in the mail for buy two, get one free + $2 off Target coupon AND I was able to use the $5 check so the original price was $52.48 but I only paid $34.98.

Now, Jewel/Osco for Enfamil formula — but only the small tins of formula. Why? Because Jewel keeps giving me these ‘buy one, get one free coupons’ which is stackable on top of the manufacturers coupons! So, the best part was buying two tins originally worth $13.99 each and getting one free, but using my $5 off manufacturers coupon and getting two tins for only $8.99!

 

Best of luck to you for this first year of feeding your child. I was going to go into making your own baby food but it seems like I’ve rambled on long enough!

Thank you, Jenny, for letting me be a guest blogger — I’ve enjoyed sharing my personal experiences with all of you and welcome any feedback. If any of you are interested in following my personal blog, you’ll have to send me an email introducing yourself especially since mine is privatized.