For some mum’s breastfeeding is no longer an option. For others using a bottle of formula at night, may satisfy their baby longer, resulting in a longer sleep between feeds. Having a partner give your baby a bottle during a night feed, may give you a longer sleep.

In other situations babies being breastfed may be struggling to put on weight, or may have lost weight. Using formula as a top up after breastfeeding may be an option, until baby has regained weight or mum’s milk has improved in quality and quantity. The million dollar question is which formula to use?
There is no straight forward answer to this question. The challenge is finding a formula which your baby will take (taste wise) and tolerate (digestive wise).
Formulas are classified as diary based, soy or goats milk based. Then there are multiple prescription formulas for babies who are unable to tolerate any of the standard formulas.
Most formula consists of over 20 ingredients. Your baby may be intolerant to one or multiple ingredients in the formula. This is why there are so many different formulas available, slightly differing in ingredients.
To start most parents will choose a diary based formula, sometimes based on price. Diary based formulas can be equal in casein and whey protein, casein dominant or whey dominant. As the protein in diary causing most gut irritation is usually casein, some babies intolerant to diary, may do better on a whey dominant formula such as Nan comfort, Bellamy’s organic, Nan Optipro Ha, Aptimal Gold and Delactate Lactose Free, A2 Platinum.
If your baby does not tolerate any of the diary based formulas, there is an option of a soy based formula (Karicare Soy) or a goats based formulas (karicare Goats Milk or Holle Organic Goat ).
For some babies they will not tolerate any diary, soy or goats formulas. The next option is prescription formulas.
Prescription formulas are available via the General Practitioner (GP). There are also multiple different types of these formulas. Amino Acid synthetic formulas with long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (Neocate LCP, Elecare LCP). Amino Acid synthetic formulas with long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids and medium chain triglycerides (Neocate Gold). Amino acid synthetic formula( Elecare, Neocate Advance). Extensively hydrolysed formula with medium chain triglycerides (Pepti-Junior Gold, Alfare, Karicare Aptamal ).
There is no right or wrong formula. It is simply a matter of trial and error to find the formula that suits your baby.
A helpful tool we use at Children’s Sunshine Chiropractic is testing babies with different formulas using applied kinesology muscle testing. This may give an indication on whether your baby will tolerate a particular formula or not.  This may save time and money trialling so many different formulas.