EBF swap to Formula - help needed!

[Tilsner]

My 6-month old has been EBF and has not really taken milk from a bottle with any enthusiasm during this time. We did try, with my husband giving her expressed milk from a bottle when I was out, but she just got really upset. As I had PND I could not cope with the trauma so we did not really persist with this (mmm - rod for my own back now I think!)

I have now decided to wean my little one off of the breast and onto formula mainly because I need to get a bit of my life back and also in 5 months time I'll be going back to work! However, I am a complete emotional wreck at having to do this as I have really enjoyed BFing my DD. I have a few questions that I really hope someone can help me with.

I have been feeding on demand and my DD now gets approx. 3 feeds during the day:
Breakfast - between 7.30 and 8.30 am;
Lunch between 11.30 am and 12.30 pm;
Afternoon between 2.30 and 3.30 pm). She rarely asks for these 3 feeds.
Occasionally, she will ask for a feed around the 5 pm mark.

She gets 3 feeds over night:

• Before bed between 6 and 7 pm,
• Between 10 and 11 pm (although sometimes this gets pushed out to 1 or 2 am!);
• and between 4 and 5 am - happy days!

I am not sure how much she really takes during the before bed feed, especially if she has fed around 5 pm, or at the 4/5am feed. I think these may be comfort feeds.

For a few weeks now my husband has been offering a bottle of formula at the 'before bed' feed with mixed success. My DD seems to 'play' with the teat in her mouth and the most she has ever taken at this time is 60 mL, but normally she only takes about 30 mL. She then gets upset and wants me! I then give her a feed.

Realising now that this is not the best time to substitute a BF for formula, I gave a bottle of formula at the afternoon feed this week. She took 50 mL today. I refused to give a top up of breast milk at the afternoon feed (around 2.30 pm), she wasn't really bothered by this, but she was really hungry at 5 pm and I had to BF her then.

One thing I have noticed is that my DD does not really latch onto the bottle teat very well - certainly not like she does onto me, so I'm not sure if some of the problem of her not drinking very much per feed is due to poor technique. Has anyone else had this issue?

Am I going about the substituting of BF to formula in the right way?
What volume of formula am I looking for her to take in a single feed? I feel the 50 mL was a stop gap until she could get her next BF!

I would really appreciate some advice.

Hi,
Just a quick one to say it really is less hassle to keep bf than to switch! By the time you go back to work your DC will only be on 2 or 3 feeds a day, probably (by 10 mos mine were only on 2).

Unfortunately I have no advice to offer, but am in exactly the same boat, save that my little boy is eight months old and I have stopped feeding in the night. I still feed on demand, but if he has three good solid feeds (very variable) he will usually have four milk feeds a day. I really don't know where to start with offering bottle, wd prefer to move straight to formula, but dont really know where to start. Have others skipped the bottle phase and moved to cup?

I would suggest trying a cup, maybe a doidy cup to start off. It is not really recommend to use bottles after 12mo so you could choose to skip that stage.

Hi Tilsner and EIRo
I'd like to offer you my experience. My DD is EBF and took a bottle for the first 5 days and then rejected it completely. I tried like you Tilsner to get her onto a bottle in time to going back to work (she was approx 7 months). We tried a bottle of formula and also expressed milk, but neither would work. She wouldn't latch onto the bottle, would play with it and would prefer to wait until I was around rather than take anything out of a bottle, sometimes going 5 hours whilst I had some time out. We tried various bottles, cups, scenarious, but nothing worked.

It worried me over Christmas with my return to work date getting ever nearer, she would be 10 months when I went back to work. I spoke to my Nursery about it and asked their advice. They were great and assured me that she would get used to what happened at home and what happened at Nursery. They would be happy to handle it and give her any milk I would provide (breast or formula). She wasn't too happy about it for the first few weeks, but she's now taking milk out of a cup that Nursery provide. (really cheap 'picnic' throw away cups from ASDA 3 for £1.50ish) I purchased some cups and she now drinks water and milk from those on the day's that she's not at nursery.

For the first couple of weeks I was expressing at work to enable me to feed her during the days that I wasn't working, but I dropped that down and now feed just at night and first thing in the morning.

What I'm trying to say here is that you don't have to worry about getting the baby to take a bottle. Have a word with the nursery and see what they say. You may be able to get them to help, they'll have seen it all before and will have lots of experience. It gives you a little longer with the BF if you want too.

I still love it and am loathed to start to wean the evening and morning feeds off her, but am going away shortly to a concert so I'm going to have to face that one. Enjoy the time you've got with them before they go to Nursery. Take some time away if you need too, they wont starve if you're out for a couple of hours.

Hope it all goes well.

If this is making you into a "complete emotional wreck" and upsetting your LO, why are you doing this? If you continue bfing for a bit longer, you can completely skip bottles and may not need to give formula or ebm during the day when you return to work even.

Hello All

thank you for your comments. Apart from work in a few months time, a driving factor for getting her to accept feed from someone other than me is my best friends hen night - actually it's an afternoon and evening thing, followed by her wedding a month later. I would like to be able to leave my DD with her grandparents for the whole day. Don't get me wrong, this is not about wanting to drink alcohol, but about being at my friends special days.

So when it comes down to it, I would like to have a bit more flexibility in taking time out every now and again, for more than 3 hours. I will also need to do some keeping in touch days at work before I go back, which means she will need to be able to take milk from someone else.

I will certainly try the cup, as you suggest. Have any of you expressed breast milk and had some one give that as a feed while you are out? If so, what sort of volume do they drink in a feed? (I realise that each baby will be different, even at the same age - just be good to know what I'd be aiming for if I decide to drop formula at this stage).

Hi Tilsner.

Kellymom is really good for approx volumes of ebm I seem to remember. Will try to find a link...

calculator here

That's great thank you for the calculator