When to introduce EBM in bottle?

[LoubyLoubyLouLa]

My DD was born with a cleft lip and palate and was unable to breastfeed. I managed to express for 13 weeks and she was fed EBM with a special cleft bottle.

I am now pregnant again and thankfully this little one doesn't have a cleft but I would still like to express and give her a bottle once a day so DH can be involved and do the last feed at night while I get some sleep! DH giving DD a EBM bottle was the only positive thing that came from the cleft forcing me to not breastfeed.

I have heard that giving a bottle too early can cause 'nipple confusion' and lead to refusal of the breast, is this true? Or should I just give formula in a bottle and save the expressing (which I hated last time).

Any advice or tips would be most welcome.

I was told not before 6 weeks. We started to trial bottles of express at 7/8 weeks and tonight DS(now 9 weeks) took a full feed from bottle for 1st time so that tomorrow night it will be DH here feeding at this time whilst i sleep! :o

I waited until 10 weeks with DD, still bfing at 14 months despite starting work when DD 7 months. If you want to switch between bfing and EBM bottle like I do try to stick to newborn teat so that they have to work harder to get the milk out (like bfing) otherwise they can get frustrated and go off bf altogether.

We have just done our first bottle at 5 weeks. (So i could catch up sleep!)

No problems, happy to feed with her Dad with me next to them on the sofa. NExt feed from me with no problems...

The breast pump took a couple of goes to get the hang of, now I can do 3-4 oz a couple of times a day; such a relief to have that plan B!

This is what my MW told me a couple of weeks ago -

For babies who are latching on well, generally feeding happily and doing well BF-ing, introducing the odd bottle feed shouldn't cause nipple confusion. For babies who are struggling a bit at the breast anyway, and have trouble latching on, she wouldn't recommend it.

She also said (and this interests me a lot, given the number of posts on this board from mums struggling to get their older BF babies to take a bottle) -

There's an 'ideal' window of time, before the baby is 6 weeks old, to introduce a bottle. Later than that, and they can really struggle to use a teat, or just refuse it altogether.

She also said that if BF-ing mums introduced a bottle of expressed breast milk successfully at this stage, then it was best to keep it up once every 24 hours or so. Just that it wasn't realistic to introduce a bottle to a 4 week old baby - think, oh, great, she feeds fine with it - then not do it again for weeks, and expect baby to 'remember' how to do it.

I'm no expert,just relaying what MW said, and sharing my experience. Following her advice has worked perfectly for us so far - DS has been taking 2 night time bottle feeds from DP since he was 2 weeks old, very happily, with no trouble switching between bottle and breast.

Having the break and often up to 5 (FIVE!) hours of PROPER SLEEP has made BF-ing so much easier for me. DP enjoys it, and DS is doing very well. (I should say, I find expressing v easy, which I know is lucky, and not everyone does).