mixed feeding

[Loft653]

Hi

I'm after some advice please.

My DD is 7 weeks old. Until 6.5 weeks she was EBF. She cluster fed most evenings from around 7pm until sometimes 3am and never slept more than 2hrs after that.
The last few nights we have introduced a bottle of formula at around 9-10pm to see if it would help with the sleep. She therefore feeds from me 7pm-9pm then gets the bottle and then sleeps until about 2am when she wakes to feed from me again. The bottle had been 5ozs and she guzzles it. Before this however she was on track with weight gain and with wet nappies.

I'm wondering if my supply will be affected? There is no point in me expressing when she has her bottle as she has already been on me for 2hrs so I would get nothing out. When I wake at 2am to feed her my breasts are full and so she seems to feed well and go back to sleep for maybe another 2hrs.

If my supply will be affected what should I do differently? Continuing with the cluster feeding isn't an option as it will destroy me!

Thanks in advance x

[Micah]

it will affect your supply, but it might just adjust to the bottle. It you wanted to drop the bottle, you might have a few days work to get your supply back up.

More likely you might get into a cycle where she guzzles the bottle, then has a good sleep, so you think you don't nt have enough milk, give more bottles, until youre fully on bottles.

You always have milk, btw, even if you feel empty, even if shes been feeding for two hours. You make more as you go.

Also shes due a growth spurt, the feeding might settle down. I think for me a pattern with longer gaps started about 12 weeks.

Short answer being mixed feeding sometimes works, sometimes doesnt, and is the start of the slide to bottles. If youre ok with that, fine.

[Loft653]

Thanks Micah

I know that when she is cluster feeding that she will get milk the whole time, what I meant was that I don't get anything if I try to express. I'm definitely not going to be adding any other bottles, I'm not worried about supply to date because of the weight gain and wet nappies, also she looks happy. It is purely to combat the lack of sleep as I can't cope with it and she ends up being over tired the next day then doesn't nap well.

I'm not sure it is growth spurt related as its been every day since day 1, not just a few nights correlating with growth spurts.

[Focusfocus]

We offered bottles (ebm) from 4 weeks and formula recently- I did this with great trepidation about supply.

The fact is either time (4 weeks and 12 weeks) nothing happened.

So - yesterday he didn't have the bottle and had 12 breastfeeds (he sleeps through the night)

Today he had the bottle and had 13 breastfeeds including one big one 5 minutes after the blessed bottle.

So that's my expeience - I've got a don't ask for a bottle/don't refuse a bottle baby - if I give him bottles he feeds as usual if I don't he does the same.

Just one persons expeience mind you and remember you're very very early in and your risks of supply may well be different than someone with more establish supply.