Throughout the pregnancy people where often curious to know if I was planning on breastfeeding or formula feeding given that we were having twins. My answer to those curious people was that I was going to try to breastfeed. I understand the health benefits of nursing for both me and the babies but a big reason I wanted to try was the expense of formula. I never even bothered calculating out what it would cost for formula because what could possibly beat free?! Plus the promise that I could keep eating "extra" helpings and still lose the baby weight had plenty of appeal!
The boys are 15 weeks old and I've been able to mostly breastfeeding with some formula to supplement but now that I'm back at work providing that free food is becoming more challenging. Pumping is a total drag. Cleaning all the parts, lugging everything back and forth to work, going in an hour early so I can make up the time lost to pumping throughout the day, plus I can't pump enough in the day to cover what they eat at daycare so I have to have a late night pumping session, and the general awkwardness of pumping in a super small, super quiet office all make pumping a pain. Since I'm questioning my resolve to keep on pumping, I decided it was time to calculate out what formula would cost us should we need to fit it into our already very tight budget.
Using a price of $.08 per ounce of formula (for generic brand formula) it would be $150 a month to feed the boys. Now, I generally use generic products for just about everything in our household including food but something about generic baby formula doesn't sit well with me, so recalculating for the name brand formula at $.13 an ounce it comes to $240 a month. We currently end up spending a little each month on formula for supplementing plus some pumping items that make it a little easier but that only adds up to $40 a month. So in my cost comparison I am saving us $200 a month by keeping at it... and that's just the kind of motivation I needed right now!
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