Mixed feeding - WWYD?

[cbmum]

Sorry in advance for the background. DD2 is 2 weeks old. DD1 23 months old.

DD1 lost a dramatic amount of weight and was EBF for the first 10 weeks. It took her 10 weeks to get back to her birth weight and she only started to put on weight when I switched introduced formula and binned the breast feeding.

When the midwife weighed DD2 on day 6 she had gone from 8lb 2 to 7lb 9. In addition on the night before the midwife weighed her I had fed her for 2 hours straight at the late evening feed (10-12) and she was failing to settle. In desperation I offered her 3oz of formula - she sank the lot!

Since then I have offered DD2 2 bottles, 1 at 7pm ish and 1 at 3am ish.I have been feeding her myself for all of the other feeds at approx 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 11pm.

The HV weighed DD2 on day 11 and thankfully DD2 was back up to 8lb 3 so no repeat of history. On day 12 I had given DD2 what I thought was a full feed at 10am but an hour later she was very unsettled and wanting more food. I offered her some formula to see if she was hungry or not and again she sank the lot.

The pattern is now that DD2 has the following feeds (times vary):-
7am breast feed
10am formula
1pm breast feed
4pm breast feed
7pm formula
10pm breast feed
3am formula

My question is what would you do from here? Continue or switch to formula? With DD1 I could hear, with hindsight, that she wasn't feeding very well from me. There is not the doubt with DD2 as she has milky chops at the end of each feed and I can hear the 'let down' of milk from me to her.

I'm struggling though as DD2 wants so much of my attention. At the moment it's ok as my mother in law is staying with us for another week and can distract her. The nightmare is what happens from 22nd August when it's just me at home on my own. DH works in London and leaves at 7.30am and isn't home until 7.30pm. Some breast feeds take half an hour, some take an hour.

I have to some how figure out where to go from here. I also have to figure out how to get out of the house by 8.30am and get DD2 to nursery. It's a 3 mile round trip which I will have to walk as I'm currently 2 weeks post c-section and won't be up to driving until the start of September. Oh - and that's all before I even try to get my head around putting them both to bed at night without wanting to run for the hills!

I suspect it may be difficult to maintain a good milk supply with so much formula at this age.

As I see it you have 3 options
-Continue to mix feed
-Formula feed
-Breastfeed

What do you want to do? Ideally?

cbmum - can well understand you feeling confused....you have been round the block a few times :(

I think it will help to have some real life help and discussion - maybe call one of the breastfeeding helplines?

4-5 bf a day is normally not enough to build up and maintain a milk supply, so the choice to mix feed or breastfeed would be taken away from you if you just carried on with what you are doing.

It's normal for a young baby to feed a lot at the breast and then feed again from a bottle - it doesn't mean you are not giving enough milk, honestly :)

I agree with minnie - you need to decide what you want to do and then work out a plan :)

This may or may not help you (I may be stating the bleeding obvious in which case I'm just especially dim so ignore me!). I've been having a similar dilemma (DD is nearly 8 weeks) and there's a current thread about it. I settled on a kind of informal mixed feeding arrangement according to the particular demands of the moment. So today, DH being in bed resting I decided to give a bottle at lunchtime as DS was wanting my attention. Lo and behold DD fussed and messed around and the planned quick and efficient bottle feed didn't happen.

THEN (only then, can you believe it?) I realised that a lengthy bottle feed is much worse than a lengthy breast feed as you don't have a free hand so can't even read a story to your other DC. Said bottle was eventually flung across the room in frustration and DD attached to breast once more (from where she has barely shifted all day I might add). It's made me think twice so I thought I'd share in case it helps shed any light for you.

Thanks for your comments. I know I could call a breastfeeding counsellor but I tried that last time around and didn't find that I was told anything other particularly useful.

Last night DD2 had formula at 7.30pm, then slept til 11.45 (yipee!). I then fed her and was really pleased that it was a swift feed of 30 minutes from start to finish. She then slept til 4am when I decided to try and feed her myself to see how it went. She seemed to feed ok and although she didn't want to go back to her bed but slept on me instead she then went til 7.30 before waking for more food when I fed her again. She's had formula at 10.30 and another feed from me at lunch.

I think I'm going to continue as I am, but maybe with just 2 formula feeds, mid morning and early evening, until the middle of next week. I'm having a practice run next week before MIL goes home of getting DD1 to nursery whilst juggling DD2. If it proves impractical to breast feed then that's the point I'm going to call it a day.

As to what I'd like to do I'm not sure. I don't have too many positive associations with breast feeding so only really know what it's like to deal with a formula fed baby.

You have my total sympathies cbmum - I know exactly where you're coming from. FWIW, I mix fed my DS for 4.5 months when bf went belly up in the second week. He had a fair lot of formula from the word go and my supply held up pretty well. Don't feel you have to make a definite decision right now. Yes you may not be able to suddenly decide to exclusively bf further down the line, but it sounds like your choice is between mixed feeding and formula only. Any breast milk your DD2 gets is a really good thing so I'd continue with it for as long as it's practical if I were you. I hope you find a solution that works for you.

Thanks gaelicsheep. I'm not having a great morning. Feeding went ok last night with 2 successful breast feeds late at night and early morning.

But this morning's feed didn't go well and after an hour of feeding on and off, followed by some winging from DD2, she then took a further ounce of formula from DH and is now asleep.

I'll keep persisting for a bit longer like you suggest but I'm leaning towards a total switch unless this starts to work better as I'm feeling like it's a total muddle. Good to know I'm not the only one to have this muddle though so thanks.

Just a suggestion, but why don't you use the time when your MIL is here to increase your supply? Get a really goo expressing machine and express every time you give her a bottle, and use this to top up her breast feeds. Then you're not allowing your supply to dwindle with the FF.
I found when I was expressing (using a hospital grade machine, not hand pump) I made a massive amount of milk which was more than enough for DD. When I stopped expressing my supply went down drastically.