Thinking of giving a bottle of formula at end of day for BF 4 month old? Good idea?!

[flamingnora]

DD will be 4 months old in early June. She usually breastfeeds & goes to sleep like a dream but pretty much always wakes me at about 4.30am for another feed. I wondered if I were to give her a bottle of formula around 10.30pm if she'd be more likely to sleep through the night & be satisfied for longer? Is this a good idea or will it constipate and/or upset her? What formula would be good for this if this the way forward? Advice gratefully received!

[nowwearefour]

am sure you will get lots of people on here soon with views. personally i decided just to stick with breastmilk on the grounds it was the very best for my daughters and they both slept through from a reasonably early age. i guess my view was that giving them breastmilk was more important than the sleep but it depends on the situation. i do think though that the evening feed is quite a long one and probably does a lot to help keep supply going (for me anyway). i have never missed a single one and my supply has always been excellent. all the best with whatever you decide though- you have done so well to get this far on just breastmilk!

[thisisyesterday]

I don't think it will help her sleep, personally.
my 7 month old is eating 3 meals a day, and a snack before bed and still wakes me 2 hourly at least
so I don't think that giving an extra feed will necessarily make her go through any longer.

as nowwearefour says, breastmilk is the absolute best thing for your baby, and by introducing formula you would compromise the virgin gut (google it!)

[flamingnora]

The thing is, I LOVE bf & have no intention of stopping until I go to work when she's 6 months old I have no choice but to stop! I did wonder if a bottle of formula given right at the end of the day might help and my NCT buddies told me they thought it would work but I'm very unsure &, of cource, need to discuss with DH. Lordy - I never know ehat to do for the best, maybe I am just being way too selfish!

[notnowbernard]

I tried this with dd1, in a desperado attempt to get her to sleep better

It didn't work

Sorry

[flamingnora]

Am googling virgin gut right now! She goes down around 7.30pm and I often wake her around 10.30pm to bf her again - although I did stop doing this & it didn't seem to make a huge difference...

[notnowbernard]

Have just re-read your OP

At 4m I would have been OVER THE MOON if either dd went fom 7.30 to 4.30!

Does she re-settle after the 4.30 feed?

[tiktok]

If you want to know the research about it, it's here:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17700096 and it will tell you that formula at bedtime does not increase the amount of sleep for the parents.

[lilyloo]

wow would be over the moon if dd did that.
She is 4 months and bf and goes down at 7 up at 10 / 1 / 3 / 5 and if we are lucky she may go back to sleep for an hour!

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[BouncingTurtle]

I'm very at your dd's sleep, ds is nearly 5 months and still wakes at least 3 times between 7pm and 7am. Dreamfeed never worked for us.
Any tips you'd like to pass on?

[DontGetIt]

Agree that shes doing really well at night already by our standards! But, to go against the grain here, I have found a 10 ish bottle of formula to be a complete life saver with both my (not exclusively!) BF DCs. It definitely won me an extra hour or two, I experimented regularly to see if it was worth doing and DS 1 and 2 always woke sooner on breast milk. I know the experts say this is rubbish but I can only say what happened here! Both were 2-3 hour feeders day and night until about 5/6 months of age and I have struggled at times with tiredness...so I fed at 7, went to bed at 9, DH did next feed using formula and I then did the rest. It certainly never constipated or upset them, and it was nice for DH - sleepy cuddly baby time for him to enjoy them a bit too.

I guess do what is best for you and DD...if you're knackered at the mo then try it perhaps, or go to bed earlier, but if its just you thought she should be sleeping through by now - well, thats not very common at that age Im afraid!

[QuintessentialShadows]

Your baby is having a really long sleep anyway, you are very lucky.

I would not add formula to your equation, as I would not upset anything that is going well already (I gave formula top ups in the evening but for totally different reasons)

Why dont you just give your baby a dreamfeed at the breast around 10.30 or before you go to bed?

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[cmotdibbler]

You say that you'll have to give up bfing when you go back to work, but unless you have a really unusual job, thats so not the case. You can either express during the day, or just feed outside work hours. I expressed at work for nearly a year, and it really wasn't that much hassle.