Moving from BF to formula - 9mo

[OpheliaMoo]

Hoping someone can help me!

I'm going back to work in January and would like to move from BF to bottle in the next month to get DD into the routine and to reduce my discomfort as I stop BF'ing.

Currently she is BF on demand, eats three times a day and is given a 270ml (9.5oz) bottle at bedtime (she doesn't always drain it but gets close). I don't make any breakfasts/food with formula, I just use cow or almond milk

Because we EBF until 6.5mo and only then introduced food & bottle at the same time, I have no idea how much formula she should be having.

She's due to go to nursery in January and haven't yet decided whether or not to give one BF in the morning before we go to work/nursery or whether or not to just give it up completely finding it hard to let go but I don't know what size bottles she should be having during the day or how many.

Could anyone offer advice please?

Thanks!

[worldgonecrazy]

At that age, I just bf mornings, evenings and weekends (I was very glad to never see my pump again!). DD had a cup of cows milk with her mid-morning snack, a yoghurt in the afternoon, and water if she wanted a drink. We kept bfing until 15 months and never gave formula. She also night-weaned around this age (I think she was 10/11 months?), though she did wake up for drinks in the night. We just have her a sippy cup of water.

[OpheliaMoo]

She has water during the day whenever she wants it but I thought it was recommended to continue breast or formula until 12 months old? But I could have the wrong gist of that.

What do you mean night-weaned? No feeds during the night? If so, she's been night-weaned from about 6/7 months old unless she's ill or really cannot be settled (so we know something must be wrong).

She does have yogurts although not every day but she does have cereal and milk of some description every day.

[sophie150]

I think it's just a bit of trial and error. At 9 months I was bf 3 feeds in the day plus a bottle at night of about 200ml

By ten months he started to refuse his mid morning feed and so we went down to two bf and a bottle at night

At ten months I started to replace breast feeds with bottle feeds as I wanted to gradually wean in time for going back to work and now at 12 months he has been having 3 feeds of 240ml each (although sometimes he drinks all and sometimes just half)

They shouldn't have cows milk until one as a drink (fine in food etc). We started this week on cows milk and I'm trying to cut down quantity as hv said that they should be drinking about a pint (c.450ml) of milk each day at one year and this includes milk in food and yogurts etc. He hardly ever eats breakfast so I've cut down drastically his morning milk to see if he eats the solids instead.

Rambling a bit now! But I suppose what I'm trying to say is you just need to take the baby's cues and work from there particularly when they're I'll as they seem to go off solids and rely on milk. There's also a chart on the formula box that has some guidelines about number of feeds and amounts but every child is different!

[worldgonecrazy]

Hi - just to clarify - from about 9 months we breastfed mornings, evenings and weekends until she was 15 months. So we didn't stop giving breastmilk.

During the day she had one cup of cows milk with her mid morning snack, and a plain yoghurt in the afternoon.

I think that babies are able to do something called "reverse cycling" which means they just take more milk during the feeds they do have if breastmilk is unavailable throughout the day.