Breast vs. Bottle

Now that I've made it to the 6 month mark of breastfeeding Merit I feel somewhat qualified to compare the two primary ways of feeding your baby.

Now for a little background on each child. Chapter is the most stubborn child.  He absolutely would not eat in the hospital.  We tried everything.  The lactation consultant tortured us both for hours before finally giving up.  We had nurses literally crying and worrying he was going to have to go to the NICU.  In short, he is a little stinker who only does what he wants to and he was born that way. We finally got him to take a bottle at around 2 1/2 days old.  I was just happy my kid wasn't dead and unhappily pumped for 2 weeks and then happily gave him formula for the next 12 months.  Merit did pretty much the same thing, only we had better nurses and she finally figured out how to nurse at around 1 1/2 days.  We have been happily nursing since (minus the first month, ugh).

Formula Pros:

1. You know exactly how much your baby is eating.
2. Your husband can take a turn in the night.
3. You don't have to stress about leaving him with a babysitter.
4. No pain.

Formula Cons:

1. You have to buy formula.
2. You have to remember to buy formula.
3. You have to have a bottle, water and formula with you at all times.
4. You have to actually get up and make a bottle in the night. 

The Breastfeeding Pros and Cons are basically the opposites, but I'll cover them anyway.  

Breastfeeding Pro:

1. All you need is you. 
2. It's free.
3. In the night you can just grab your baby and feed her without turning on lights and tripping through the kitchen.

Breastfeeding Con:

1. It's a much larger commitment for you. It's all you.  No passing the baby off on someone else.
2. It's not all that fun for the first month or so.
3. It can be very isolating having to hide yourself away at your family's house, at church, in public, etc. 
4. You stress every time you leave your baby.  Also, not being able to leave for longer periods of time, like going to the temple.  That thought just stresses me to no end.  

Additional observations:

•  As far as the weight loss argument goes, I think it depends on you.  I actually have had a much harder time losing weight while breastfeeding, whereas it just happened all by itself and really quickly with Chapter.  
• You get judgy stares no matter how you feed your baby in public, only they are from different people. 
• I get really annoyed when I hear people talk about the "bonding" of breastfeeding. How if they quit they will lose the "bond". Holding, feeding and loving your baby is going to result in a "bond" no matter how they are getting their nutrition.  
• I feel like a lot of "mom shaming" goes on on both sides of this argument, but if I had to be honest I feel like the breast feeders shame the bottle feeders a lot, and I think it's unnecessary.  I don't think it's anyone's business how you feed your baby.  There's this mentality of if you don't breastfeed you don't love your child or care about them.  I've done both (I've done both as far as the pain meds during labor goes as well) and I can tell you that it doesn't impact how much you love your child.  I do not love Merit more because I had a (basically) unmedicated birth and I've breastfed her.  

Anyway, just my experience and something I've been thinking about a lot lately.