can combi feeding help my ds to sleep longer?

[jouli]

I've EBF my 11 week old DS,so far.He feeds every 2 hrs, sometimes more.It's been a challenge,since for the pst month,on & off, he's been refusing my breast,screaming hysterically,as he's hungry,but won't bf.I express when this occurs( v tricky,when I'm trying to calm him...)Anyway, my mwife suggested I could ff himat around 11/12 p.m, to try to get a 4/5 hour stretch of sleep.Also I start work in 2 weeks & would like combine bf & ff.Is this possible? I'm new to this mummy lark & live abroad(away from relatives),so I'm finding it tricky. I'd appreciate advise, thanx.

We didn't find formula or ebm made a difference to DD. And judging by my NCT group, the FF babies were the last to start sleeping longer!

I would instead try to work out why you're having issues and your DS is cluster feeding so much at 11 weeks (if it's been a month it doesn't sound luike the 3 month growth spurt). It may be you have fast letdown, or your DS has reflux (bottles are often given in more upright positions) for example.

could it be that he's developed a bottle preference?

I had problems with DD getting incredibly fussy on the breast and even a full on nursing strike for a few days at that age. She would stop crying the moment the bottle teat touched her mouth but not feed from me.

She had got used to the immediacy of the bottle and wouldn't work for the let down. Didn't help that I have slow let down anyway.

Feel free to ignore the following if you don't thin this is the problem

tbh what I did often goes against the grain of other advice. I stopped all bottles until she was better. Initially I would drop a few drops from the bottle to get her to open her mouth and then attempt to latch.

For general fussy behaviour (not the strike) I would only give a 3oz bottle if it was the middle of the night and we'd been trying for a while.

Also to avoid this, EBM was furthermore always given cold, we never moved on from a newborn sized hold teat and generally tried to make bottle feeding a make do experience. This link I also found useful for people caring for DD when I was away.