Breast and bottle - experience and tips needed

[pinkdelight]

Hi all. Hope someone can help. DS2 is due in early Jan. DS1 was breastfed for 6 months and though we tried to introduce the bottle as well (expressed and formula), he was always v resistant so it always fell to me to do feeds.

I'd really love to make a better job of it this time and get DS2 to take a bottle as well as BF, but fear it will fail again unless I try a different approach.

Does anyone have any experience and tips on how best to get babies taking both breast and bottle? Some things I've read say start both from the beginning, others say this just causes confusion. It would be great to hear from those in the know and what has worked.

I did it from the start but only once a day (10pm) and at the same time every day.

With DD1 we sometimes didn't give her a bottle at 10 as I hadn't bothered to express and soon enough she decided she didn't ever want a bottle.

With the twins they had one bottle every night and all was well until I was ill and they got bottles in the day too so I could rest and then bloody DS decided no more boob thank you and that was that. So I was left having to express all his feeds and breast feed DD2. It was a flippin' nightmare.

Ah, very helpful, thank you. So absolute consistency is they key. Life does get in the way though, so it's good to know the pitfalls.

First gave a bottle at about 4 weeks as I felt bf was going well by then, good latch with no discomfort etc. Just did a bottle once or twice a week at bedtime since then.

DS is now 4 months and we've just started doing a bottle feed every night at 11pm.