Mixed feeding

[WattleTheyDo]

Hi, my DD is 12 weeks old and I am currently bf with ff top ups x 3 a day as she was born on the 50th centile and dropped to almost the 1st centile.

Have just come back from having her weighed today and she has put on weight but is still only at the 2nd centile so will continue to mix feed.

Has anyone successfully mixed fed their DC for any length of time? I am happy to have gotten to 12 weeks bf as I had lots of issues in the beginning and kept saying I'll be happy when I get to 4 weeks, then 8 weeks and now it's 12 would still like to continue BF although I know it's a supply and demand thing so figure my milk will dry up soon.

Does anyone have any stories to share?

Thanks!

Hi Wattle I am still mix feeding my DD (19 wks). My reaons for having to mix is because I work full time and couldn't express enough as I got really severe nipple trauma from expressing. I am not having any problems in doing this. I would have thought as you are topping her up with FF that the demand is still there and hopefully you will be able to continue.

I ebf my DS till he was 6 months old and would have liked to have done the same with DD but unfortunately it didn't work out as easy this time around, but i'm glad to be giving her as much as I can and my HV and GP say every bit counts and that what i'm giving her is really good.

All the best xxx

thanks for that myname, I would love to make it to 19 weeks, you have done brilliant! Can I ask what you do with the middle of the night feeds? Do you offer a bottle after BF then? I haven't had to yet although for the last 2 weeks she's been sleeping for 10 hours but she has had a couple of nights where she's woken up and last night it took over 2 hours to settle her as i don't think I had enough milk for her. Do you make a bottle up before you go to bed if your LO still wakes?

I mixed fed dd2 upto 8mths and ds2 to just under a year. Both were bf during the day then given 1 or 2 bottles of formula in the evening.

I mixed fed my son for the first six months of his life. It went fine, we stopped when he went on a nursing strike though if I knew then what I know now who knows how long we'd have carried on?

My 4 week old baby is currently being mix fed too for much the same reasons as you but with a lot of moral support from my local breastfeeding support service we are working on reducing the formula and with some determination and maybe luck I'd like to exclusively breastfeed her at some point.

It's bloody hard work though. I may not make it but it wont matter that much really. Oh, tonight is our first night attempting no night time supplements. She sleeps with us and those are the formula feeds I hate. (I've been taking the starter packs of milk to bed but they are expensive)

I give her a FF quite late (about 11.00) by dream feeding her and then she wakes about 4ish and then I can bf her - it's quite a good time to feed as it's when your body is preparing to make more milk and so you tend to get a good supply about then. It does tend to get easier as you go on and so if you've got to 12 weeks I think you'll manage to continue to go on as long as you want really. If I had to FF in the night I think I would take a water in a thermos flask and add it to the formula in the bottle when she wakes rather than faff around at that time! But I would only do that if I couldn't BF - I would prefer to dream feed a bit earlier and then bf at about 4am as like I said it's a good time for stimulating supply. xxx