Feeding Your Baby

The Royal Surrey County Hospital is a ‘Baby Friendly' Hospital which encourages and supports women to breastfeed.

Every help is given to enable mothers to leave hospital successfully breastfeeding.

However, if you are unable to breastfeed, or, following a discussion with your midwife on the benefits and management of breastfeeding, you choose to bottlefeed, the midwives and maternity support workers will be on hand to advise. We will support you in techniques for bottle-feeding, sterilizing and make-up of feeds.

Breastfeeding Your Baby
Your baby may require very frequent feeds during the first few days and your breasts will learn to fill in order to meet his/her requirements.  Demand feeding does work!   Being a new mum is tiring.  You will need lots of help and encouragement from your partner and family at this time with changing and settling your baby, to enable you to succeed in breast feeding and to have some rest.        

Breast fed babies should not require any formula milk or water!  Why ?

• Breast milk contains all your baby's needs in the first few months
• Just one bottle of formula can increase the risk of allergy and infection
• When formula is given to a breast fed baby, mum may feel her milk is not ‘good nough' and her confidence in feeding may be reduced
• Research has shown that babies, who are supplemented in the first week of life are 4 times more likely to be having mixed feeding by 3 months

Bottle Feeding Your Baby

Your midwife should discuss the benefits of breastfeeding with you during your pregnancy and also inform you about Skin Contact, Demand feeding and keeping the baby with you at all times during your hospital stay.

Once you have been given all the information on breastfeeding, you may still choose to bottle feed your baby with formula milk. The midwives and maternity assistants will be happy to support you to do this.

There are so many different formula milks available that we ask you to bring in to hospital with you, the one you prefer to use. As there is no facility for making up powdered feeds, please bring in a supply of ready made cartons to use during your stay.

A baby only has a small tummy so one carton will most likely do at least 3 feeds and can be stored in the fridge in the feeding room, labeled with your name, time and date opened. The staff will show you all this when you are on the ward. We will supply bottles and teats for you to use during your stay.