Advice on expressing

[Moulesfrites]

My ds is now 6 weeks old and breastfeeding has been going really well, after being a bit sore initially. He is gaining weight really well and seems to be an efficient feeder. We want to start doing a bit of a bedtime routine with ds, and quite often I am so tired that I have gone to bed at 8 or 9 for dh to wake me at 10 or 11 to give ds a feed. We are thinking about me expressing so that dh could do this feed if I have gone to bed, meaning I get a bit more sleep until his middle of the night feed - ds seems to go anywhere between 3 to 5 hours at night. I have a few concerns however, namely:

Is it too early to do this?
How will missing the 10/11pm feed affect my supply?
What if once he takes a bottle he won't go back on the breast?

The latter question scares me as I really want to bf for at least 6 months. In terms of nipple confusion, ds has never had a dummy, but I did use a shield for a few days when in was really sore and it did not seem to bother him at all.

Thanks

He may well not take a bottle rather than refusing the breast. I found that I did get a bit engorged and leaky (TMI) if I missed the evening feed. Uncomfortable to sleep!

I did this from 2 weeks for our DS. I expressed every morning as soon as he had gone down for his first nap, so was as much a part of my routine as his. If you're feeding later on in the night then your supply shouldn't be affected. Agree with Katey, you're much more likely to get problems the other way with introducing a bottle, but its something you should definitely try and do sooner rather than later anyway as lots of people have such difficulty getting older previously ebf babies to take a bottle when they want to stop bf.

Around 6 wks sounds the right time to introduce a bottle of expressed milk. Totally sensible to try for the 'dream feed' so that you can get 5-6 hrs unbroken kip. As long as it's only one bottle per 24 hrs, you shouldn't have a problem with nipple confusion. Good luck!

Probably fine now - waiting 6 weeks is a good time both for avoiding messing up bfing and hopefully not having too much trouble getting LO to take a bottle.

You'll probably be very full after a long sleep at first, but if you pump one side when you wake up (so LO can have the other side) your supply will easily adjust. If you get really full and can't sleep, get up and express enough to be comfortable - you can then gradually drop this (it's what I jad to do).