Combi feeding

[Fern08]

Has anyone combi fed from birth?

[SunbathingDragon]

Yes. Lots of babies get formula top ups and some mothers then move to ebf, others continue combi feeding and others decide to move onto formula only.

[bookish83]

Yup. Had to express and formula feed due to tongue tie. Worked well, saved my sanity, baby didn't care!

Now BF with a formula bottle per day too x

[BellyMama]

Yep - baby was too little to feed properly and also jaundiced. 8 days in hospital pumping and then 8 weeks at home trying to pump and eventually giving up. Suddenly at 8 weeks she got it. Now bf directly and ff to top up as milk supply had pretty much dried up when she decided she was ready to feed. About 70/30 formula and breast now, she’s 7.5 months.

[NoRoomInBed]

We are still combi feeding started when he was 3 days old and it's been a god send. Started with just the one bottle in the evening when he wanted to cluster feed. Now we are 3 bottles a day at 7 months as its faster for us. I have a toddler too.

[Keha]

Yes, not by choice because my milk was quite delayed and I could never express much. He's been fine with bottle and nipple. For the first 2 or 3 weeks he was mainly on formula but is now 90% bf. We mainly keep the formula so I can have a break. All I would say is it can be quite tough to get bf supply going at the start so you do need to bf a lot of the time in first few weeks and mainly offer breast before bottle.

[dochas06]

Yes, I expressed and fed formula.
Didn’t have much of a choice but it worked really well for us.

[BertieBotts]

We had to be separated for 24 hours as baby in scbu and it took a while for my milk supply to catch up. What do you want to know? What do you hope to get out of combo feeding? I would recommend learning as much as you can about breastfeeding supply and demand mechanics if you do choose to do this. In many ways I think I was lucky I was on DC2 and pretty clued up about breastfeeding.

[Fern08]

Thank you I'm feeling much better about giving it a go! Breastfeeding DS1 just felt like it took over my life and I got very unwell as I struggle with my mental health anyway. I want to give DD breast milk when she arrives but I also want DH to be able to feed her so that I can have some time to look after myself as well :)

[InDubiousBattle]

Not from birth but dd was combination fed from about two weeks old. From then she had one bottle of f every day (with the very, very occasional bottle other times)and was bf the rest of the time. It worked out great for us.

[Reinstein]

DD is combi fed, we often mix about 30ml of BM with 150-180ml of formula. She hates BM on its own and doesn’t like formula on its own either!

We’re running out of BM however, hoping she either learns to love formula or we can find a way to fake the texture of the mix 🤷‍♀️