bottlefeeding expressed milk at night- any experience?

[fulllife]

hi i noticed that when dh is feeding our daughter with expressed milk she sleeps longer at night and i am thinking of doing this every night...
...however i am wondering if it will disrupt our breastfeeding if i give her a bottle in the evening, maybe she'll refuse the breast !

she had two days where she was mostly bottle fed(breast milk) and seemed to refuse the breast on her first regular feed after, but apart from that there are no issues. she's two months old.

anyone tried this?

[ramblingmum]

dd1 had a bottle of expressed milk most everning as it gave me a bit of time off, to catch up on sleep etc. I had no problem with her not wanting to breast feed. I didn't with dd2 only because she wouldn't take bottles.
Why not try the feeding topic for more advice

[Emzar]

I express a bottle almost every night and have have done since my son was a couple of weeks old (we have latch problems so expressing a night feed keeps it from getting too painful for me). To be honest, I wish I didn't have to, as I find expressing that often a pain in the arse, but we've never had any problems with it interfering with breastfeeding.

[Chaotica]

I did this with DD and it had no effect on breastfeeding. It meant she slept longer and was more settled in the evenings. OTOH DS wouldn't take a bottle.

[Ba8y1]

My LO had one bottle of expressed milk a day at his 10:30pm feed from about day 3. I found I had much less milk at night so if we didn't do this, he would need feeding more during the night. As long as you express every time you give LO a bottle - I don't think it will affect your supply and being only one bottle a day I never had any probs with him refusing the breast!

I guess some would argue that it might have taken a bit longer for me to up my supply because I wasn't feeding all through the night (thank god!) but I believe a well rested mummy makes more milk!! I also used to express off a bit before his morning feed to use at night - I always had lots more in the morning and I think the fact that he was sucking after I'd expressed created extra stimulation for my supply. I also occasionally used a top up bottle after his early evening feed (~ 6pm) when he was going through growth spurts - again expressing myself at the same time - found it avoided the dreaded cluster feeding (did it one evening - never again!) and DS has slept beautifully through the night (with a 10pm dream feed) since he was quite small! Good luck - it's so draining in the early days, but after a couple of months when my supply was well established I went back to feeding all from the breast without disrupting his sleep!