Tips from formula mummies

[mamma1mia]

Hi all, I am currently breastfeeding my LO but will be switching to formula in a few weeks (5 months) as I am due to return to work just before she is 6 months old. I am a little apprehensive about switching from bf as when LO is hungry out comes the boob and that's it. I am worried that with formula feeding I will have a hungry baby on my hands whilst I am flaffing around waiting for kettle to cool. I just wanted to here other mums experiences and tips for formula feeding. I am hoping that once in a routine it will be easier to manage. As a first time mum, would love to get some more help from other mums.

sorry, i don't formula feed, so can't give you any tips.
but you may not have to give up brastfeedin if you don't want to

a lot of mums still breastfeed morning, when they pick baby up, and before bed. baby either has formula or ebm while at nursery, or gets by on solids/water/juice

obviously ignore this if you WANT to move over to formula completely. but just wanted you to know that there is another way!!!

I was a formula mummy, my tip is ready to feed. I never boiled a kettle or shook a bottle in my life! :)

I switched to formula when DD2 was about 8 months. It was easier when she was on solids because I could give her something to eat while I waited for bottle to be ready.

Agree that if you want to continue bfing you might be able to.

Whilst the only recommended method is making each bottle to order, two commonly used alternatives are:

1 - make up a days worth of bottles in advance and warm (or not) as required.

2 - make up a days worth of bottles of water in advance, and shake in formula powder as needed. Warm (or not) as needed. I did this, and warmed the water by topping up "fridge" water with boiling water and shaking it up and pouring some out to get back to the right volume.

You know that you can continue to bf when you go back to work though don't you? By law your employer has to faciliate this and allow you time and privacy to express, and fridge space to store your expressed milk.

I would suggest you move over to formula gradually - one feed at a time. I read that you should drop the breast feed that your baby seems to be less emotionally attached to - for me it was the 2nd feed, with the last to be dropped the night time one.

I was topping up from the beginning anyway, but I would suggest you prepare a bottle to be "ready" half an hour before you think LO will be hungry - to allow room for error! you then have 2 hours before you cannot use the feed. I always have sterilised bottles and some readymade carton formula so if baby is hungry unexpectedly you can provide and not have to wait for the kettle/ feed to cool. Once you are in a routine you will know roughly when LO will need the next bottle. I am now weaning and bottles are normally 7.30, 11.30. 2.30 and 6.30 (all very ish!!)

hope this helps and good luck!

obviously as the others have said - you can continue bf if you want to! a friend of mine continued bf in morning and evening after she'd gone back to work, with no probs whatsover!

You can mix feed - evening, night feeds and morning bf, formula/expressed in the day. Knackering, though.

My tips are:

1 stay ahead of the baby's hunger - aim to be ready to feed/or make a bottle up and leave to cool, about half an hour before a feed would be

2 buy those frozen sleevey things for wine bottles, keep in freezer

3 make milk up in bottle (fat Avent-style fit best) and to cool, shake it around in frozen wine sleevey thing OR put hot bottle in 1pint pyrex jug and have cold tap run full and fast on it, swirling the bottle around a bit,unless you're walking up and down jiggling a howling baby

4 two half-bottles will cool quicker than one big one, so cool the first one using one of the above methods, feed it to the baby, whilst leaving the second bottle in cold water/frozen wine thing (what are they called?) to cool, use when the first one is done

AND

expensive, but buy ready made up cartons, pour into bottle, microwave for 20 seconds and go!

lol jiggerypopery. because your post is squished sideways at the top, i was skimming it and just saw

"and to cool, shake it around in frozen wine"

i was thinking wtf and imagining yoi making ice cubes from wine to cool bottles. pmsl

Thanks for all your comments, really useful. I like the idea of bf a while longer but unfortunately I have to work varying shifts so would be unable to always do morning and evening feeds, but maybe I will keep expressing for a bit! Thanks again for your tips

When I started to use formula I used to make them to order so to speak or used the cartons when I wasn't quick enough. I never used to heat the carton milk as my DS was happy to take it at room temperature. If I needed to cool a bottle quickly I used to stick it in a bowl of water with a couple of those freezer blocks (you know the sort you keep your picnic cool with), and the bottle cools in minutes.

even with shiftwork, if you manage to squeeze a couple of feeds in each 24hr period your supply should adapt and keep up with it.

When babies are formula fed, they do tend to get into a very regular pattern of feeding ime - it was every 4 hours for my dd, whereas for my other children who were breastfed they fed as and when and there was not really a routine at all. If you follow the current guidelines on formula, the easiest thing is to keep boiling a kettle every 30 minutes when you anticipate your baby is coming up for a feed. It's ok to make the feed after 20 minutes (I never made them with boiling water because that's supposed to lower the nutritional content).

It is also true that your boobs will probably keep up your milk supply though. When one of my children was 16 months old I went on holiday for a week and carried on feeding her when I got back.

lol at cooling in wine

what a waste!

I agree w the above. At 6 months you are often cutting down the amount of milk as solids increase so if you want to carry on bf it is possible. Your milk supply is quite flexible now it is so well established. I recently stopped bf ds2 at 17 months and was giving him one feed a day but not always at the same time.