introducing Expressed BM for 8 wk old

[margherita76]

I started a thread when DD was v young and decided not to start expressing til BF was established. I would say it is now, though we don't have a routine as such.

My plan is to be able to sometimes express so that I can go for a couple of hours without stressing that I am not there for her. So not so much implementing a routine, as being able to give her to people for a couple of hours in the afternoon with a bottle - IF something comes up.

DP gave her a bottle of EBM yesterday and she didn't know how to drink it BUT she seemed happy enough to try and didn't freak out. I ended up feeding her because she couldn't get enough out of the bottle, but I was glad to see that she was willing to try.

Here are my Qs
do i have to make this a regular thing in order for it to work?
do I need a special bottle/ teat?
How much is a feed?! I mean how do I know how much to give her? Is that a really stupid question?! It's just she varies so much and I am very much BF on demand.
thank you if anyone can help

If you are doing the 'odd' expressed feed then it shouldn't interrupt your milk flow etc. and if it means you can sleep/do something else and allow your other half to do a feed (eg Sat night with match of the day was my hubby's favourite) take a look at the variable teats as you can change the flow and get a carton of formula (just a sall one) which will show you the recommended amounts of feed according to age range - not a whole packet of powder just the one feed liquid carton...i found i breastfed for longer by letting someone else do an evening feed with expressed milk esp over Xmas when there were grandparents who also wanted to get involved and bond!

typically they have 1oz per hr. Often from a bottle, babies will take more. I've found (since expressed supply can be an issue) that if she if offered 1oz per hr she rarely cries for more. If offered unlimited amounts then she can guzzle 5oz versus 3oz.

Don't need special teats, but if price isn't an issue then it can't hurt. Will help to stave off nursing strikes/bottle preferences.

Some people report that when they have had a gap between offering bottles, then they have refused to take one. Others have not had this problem, so do what feels natural. Maybe offer a one/couple a week until 3-4 months at which point if should hopefully be safer tto drop to just whenever takes your fancy.

you can still feed on demand

I feed on demand and also express a bottle for dh to give every night. I express 100ml to 130ml,(3.5 to 4 oz), and he doesnt always quite finish if it is nearer 4oz(DS is 6.5 weeks also ). This lasts him from 2am to about 6am when I give him the first feed of the morning.

thank you for your help and replies - it is really useful.

I am already wavering though - I feel like I need to be more organised to do this and I can't seem to do anything other than eat chocolate at the moment. It was so weird watching DP feed her - I could hardly bear it and I am so paranoid about it affecting the BF which has gone so well.

Watching with interest as DC#1 is 8 weeks and Im just starting to introduce expressed milk bottle feeds so DH can do a midnight feed and I can sleep for more than 2 hours at a stretch!

I waited until ds1 was 12 weeks before he had a bottle, my mum gave it to him while I was upstairs expressing. I gave her an 8oz bottle and he drank the lot, she tried to wind him in the middle and he screamed. He didn't want it to start with but once my mum shook the bottle and milk touched him tongue he started to drink. Better to have more milk and throw some away than not enough. I used the teat with just one hole as I didn't know how fast my milk was coming and I decided it was better for him to have to suck harder than to choke on milk coming to fast!

I wouldn't have wanted to watch someone give him a bottle, probably a bit weird and I did cry while I was expressing upstairs- I think breastfeeding makes me my most irrational! I once went to pick him up from the childminder early (she knew I was coming early) and found her giving him his bottle of ebm. I was really looking forward to feeding him myself when I picked him up and was thinking of the wasted milk as I could have fed him and then had to go home to express and replace the milk he'd had from the bottle.

I don't think you have to be organised just express either straight after a feed or give it an hour after you've fed her and keep it in the freezer in small amounts then your dp can try as often as he has chance. You can build it up as and when, even while you're eating chocolate!

skatergrrrl - how are you doing? I'm not doing very well- she just doesn't know how to feed from the bottle. I don't know if DP has the conviction to do it. I am not sure he is as keen to feed her as my mum would be, for example, so she ends up being passed back to me fairly quickly. Not that I should be to hard on him as she does seem really confused by the bottle and willing to try. I perhaps could try different teats??

Cinnamon, that must have been really frustrating with the childminder - she obv hasn't done any expressing herself!Did your DS seem confused when he was given the bottle - or did you stay well out of it?!

That was the only bottle I ever saw him have! I was always well away from it, either because he was at the childminder or because I was out and my mum or dh were giving him the bottle. Once he'd had the first bottle and I knew he was happy I didn't give him others unless I wasn't there. Which teats are you using? Lots of people swear by the tommee tippee closer to nature ones but I used avent ones and they were fine.

Hi SkaterGrrrrl we have a postnatal thread now from the due September thread, someone was asking where you were yesterday! Sorry for hijack margeherita76!

OP - why are you trying it now? It sounds like you are really not sure about introducing an expressed bottle for various reasons and it's causing quite a bit of worry and stress - would it be worth waiting a few more weeks when you would feel more comfortable about it?

I was really sorry to read you saying that you don't feel you are doing very well because your DD won't feed from a bottle - she's only 2 months old and you are clearly doing very well BF, so that is something to be very proud of, rather than beating yourself up about the bottle! Unless you are absolutely desperate for some time apart from your DD I really would wait a few more weeks (might only be a couple of weeks, might be a few more) until you feel a bit more confident / comfortable with introducing a bottle.

Good luck!

Wigeon - yes perhaps that is the problem - underneath it all I don't really want to be expressing. I think BF is perhaps my one talent and I feel very priveleged (Ive tried several variations and i still can't spell it) that it has gone so well. I have a few social engagements coming up that I need to be able to concentrate at and I want to make sure she'll be OK with someone else looking after her... Perhaps I feel a bit selfish as well. Oh dear I feel like this post has gone a bit psychiatrist's couch! But perhaps I should wait a little longer and do as Cinnamon and stay well away.

At 8 weeks for a BF baby I'd say a fed was 3-4oz. While my baby was EBF he never took more than 4oz from a bottle at one go. I disagree with other poster, I hate wasting BM, and if I was only out for a few hours I would be happy that 4oz was enough until I got back.

re: the bottle you could try again with the same bottle or I found that a bottle you can squeeze like the nuby bottle is best for a baby who isn't sure how to deal with a bottle (like my DD).

I wasn't especially keen on expressing or bottles but wanted to be able to go out and leave him with a babysitter. I expressed about 4 x 4oz bottles into the freezer (frozen complete with bottle/teat etc ready to go - DS2 was happy to suck from the avent ones) and replaced them when they were used. If he woke up hungry when I was out babysitter would just sit bottle in bottle warmer and feed him. He probably only had around one bottle every couple of weeks. I also knew I was going back to work at 6 months so he would need to drink bottles then.

Agree that 3-4oz sounds plenty.

DS was happy with 5-6oz max for a feed up until 8/9 months.

I did it once a week from about 4 weeks to help him get used to it, but I knew I'd be back at work by 6 months so felt I had to get him used to taking ebm from DH.

We used the Tommee Tippee 'Closer to nature' ones, but that was because they were free with a special offer on a microwave steriliser, so a coincidence that he liked them ok!

It did feel wierd at first watching him take a bottle, but eventually he got so used to it he'd even take one from me. We are still feeding happily at 13mo and I don't have to express at work any more, woo!

Hope you get on ok :)

Really, 8 weeks is still quite young to be introducing a bottle, and there's no rule which says "good BF-ing mothers make their babies drink from a bottle" or "good mothers express" so I'd give it a little bit longer until you feel it's the right time.

Why do you say you are selfish? It sounds like you are the absolute opposite of selfish - you are trying your absolute best to make sure your baby is ok! And BF is the least selfish thing you can do too.

Is there any way you can take your baby to the social engagements? Or, to be honest, pull out, given you are a BF-ing mother of a very small baby?

I have used Breastflow bottles with my ds - the action used is much more similar to breastfeeding than a normal teat and more work for them (I was concerned about a normal teat being too easy and ds prefering that to bf!). He's 12 weeks and will take anything from 50ml to 150ml - even had 200ml once.

Is 8 weeks really young to be introducing a bottle?

I ask only because I read a lot of conflicting advice about this here. My (very pro BF) MW in the UK suggested, as DS was doing very well BF-ing at 2 weeks, that we could try expressing and bottle feeding if we wanted to. She said that there was a small 'window' before 6 weeks old when a baby easily learned how to drink from a bottle, but after this they would have more trouble, and many would simply refuse to take a bottle at all. She also said not to feed one bottle early on, then think 'oh, baby does that fine', and then leave it. She advised feeding once a day, even with just a little bit, or a few times a week to keep them familiar with it.

I've read quite a few threads on here where mothers of older babies have been desperate for them to drink from a bottle, usually because they are having to return to work and want to feed expressed milk, and their babies won't take them. Which supports what my MW said....

FWIW, my DS took a bottle off DP at 2 weeks old, never had any nipple/bottle confusion, and it didn't affect my supply or DS's feeding at all (he's gone from the 9th to 50th centile since birth). We give one bottle a night now, so I can skip one feed and get some joined-up sleep. DS is 16 weeks now and still EBF, but in those early days when he was SUCH an enthusiastic and frequent feeder, and I was just utterly exhausted, that one expressed bottle feed a night was what kept me going, frankly.

Same as barkfox, my baba had his first bottle of EBM at just over a week old, (and he had a dummy earlier than that) and he feeds straight from the boob just fine. I didnt want him to not know how to feed from a bottle any more than I wanted him to forget how to feed from the breast.

Plus I remember reading somewhere (sorry, cant remember where) that the studies on nipple confusion are biased and not entirely accurate...
Which my anecdotal evidence concurs with, lol

:)

I was told similar - that there's a small window between getting breastfeeding established, and then after 6 weeks it's harder to get a baby to accept a bottle. I introduced a bottle at 4 weeks and have done one or two a week since then without problems.

Oh, sorry, I didn't meant that people shouldn't introduce a bottle at 8 weeks, just that as the OP was finding it quite stressful / emotional introducing a bottle to her DD then she could choose to wait a little bit and she might well be able to introduce a bottle again in a few weeks (I think my DD had her first EMB at about 12 weeks). And she needn't feel like a failure because her 8 week old wasn't taking a bottle easily.

I just thought from her posts that the advantages of persisting with introducing a bottle right now were not worth the stress and worry she is reporting!

Not trying to stop anyone else introducing a bottle earlier if it works for them and their baby!

Wigeon, I understood you picked up on my anxiety and questioned why i was doing something I didn't perhaps need to do, especially as I was getting stressed about it.

I think I'll try another type of bottle - although from what the other posters have said I may have left it too late (balls!)...She also hates the dummy and gags and spits it out. But as she is 98 percentile I can hardly complain. I did wonder about the nipple confusion thing, nattiecake, which is why I didn't try before 6 weeks. So much of the information I have about this sort of stuff feels like it might be anecdotal and that sometimes you need to ignore it and do what feels right.

I was thinking. If I am to get DD to take the bottle with EBF would I need a teat that mimics the breast (mine)? I know you have all told me the bottles that your DC took and it could be a matter of time / luck but rather than teat but its worth a try. I think I have a fast let down as she is usually a frantic feeder to start with and I squirt everywhere. Should I therefore get a fast flow teat? Or should I get the Nuby or Breastflow? Sorry if you are losing the will to live with this one!

Glad you knew what I was trying to say, margherita76! I don't think you've necessarily missed a window to introduce a bottle - my DD first had a bottle of EBM about 12 weeks. I think some babies seem to object to the kind of bottle and / or teat and some don't seem to mind - fortunately my DD didn't mind the cheapy second-hand Avent bottles and (new) standard Avent teats I got from Boots.

So it is probably just worth experimenting, although as you've said, it will be hard to know if she refuses a bottle whether it's because of the teat, or because it's too early, or because it's the wrong time of day, or a million other factors!

I definitely think it helped that I went out of the room when my DH first gave DD her bottle so that she didn't think there was an alternative.