Advice on introducing expressed milk in a bottle for 1 feed a day by Dad

[snowchick1977]

Question in the title really. I need to be away for 7 hours soon without daughter. At the moment she is 5 weeks old and exclusively breastfed.

My question is how would you go about introducing a bottle of expressed milk for dad to feed? Does anyone have any tips on what bottles to use and when i should do this?

Thanks again!

I am useless at giving my DD a bottle so can't help there . If she's good at latching on the breast, I'd say start asap on the bottle.

This might help on how much EBF you'll need

www.kellymom.com/bf/pumping/milkcalc.html

I've just started doing the occasional feed of expressed milk. We use the small Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature bottles - first tried it at about 5 weeks (a couple of weeks ago) and so far he's been happy to take the bottle (hope this carries on!) I used the kellymom guidelines linked to above to get an idea how much he'd need. The difficult bit is finding a time to pump in between breastfeeds - at the momemt I'm managing it most mornings in between feeds, but I'm only getting about 1/2 to 2/3 of a feed's worth. This is fine for me, as my aim is just to build up a supply for the occasional few hours away, but wouldn't be enough for replacing a whole feed every day (I guess that would require me to work harder at building up the supply by pumping longer each time).

I would introduce the bottle when you are not there (DD is nine months) and we are still BF. Tomme Tippee are good. I used to have a bath and DP would feed DD. You are on hand but not there. The best time we found was in the evening.
When you express do it in the morning as you have more milk and you should get out about 60-100 mls. If you are away for seven hours you are going to need about 400 - 600 mls (I equate 60mls for 60 mins). I would express once a day when you are relaxed and build up a stock either in the fridge (lasts up to five days) or freezer - three months.

Good luck - it does get easier and you will be able to express once you get it while cleaning, feeding baby and being on the phone.

Snowchick - good info here and here on bottlefeeding the breastfed baby.

Lots of info on expressing here too.

We use the Avent newborn sized teat, as the flow of the Closer to Nature ones was too fast and made DS gag. The first couple of times we did it I hung around in another room so that I could help if necessary, but wasn't in the way distracting baby. He actually took to it very easily though- I think he was about 5 or 6 weeks when we started.

I give DD expressed breast milk and try to give her a bottle every couple of days so she stays used to it. She uses a Medela Calma teat and a regular bog-standard Medela teat. She has also used Avent newborn but I think she found this one hard work. Here are my tips:

Have a range of teats to try.

Give a bottle a few gos with you (and your boobs) on standby before you need to be away.

Make DH/DP/someone other than you give the bottles. Make sure the bottle giver is going to be calm and persistent.

Try the bottle when your baby is hungry but not starving, perhaps two hours after the last feed.

If baby is in a real strop and crying etc, my DP did a good trick of a bit of finger sucking/cuddling to calm DD down, then just slipping the bottle in in place of the finger.

Don't panic in relation to mls (amount) of milk drunk from the bottle. I think, and am no expert at this, that people go for 100-120ml for one feed, but if your baby takes only say, 70-80ml in one feed, I think that's fine - it may be that they're less hungry / your milk is more calorific, and it's only 7 hours that you're away.

I was advised by HV to start giving a bottle of expressed milk to DD once a day to supplement normal feeds once a day (she will not feed on my left boob, not even HV, MW and hundreds of well meaning friends and relatives have managed to get her to ).

That was at 2 weeks and 5 days - I bought a NUK bottle with a nipple shaped teat and she took it, from me, straight away, and will then happily go back on the boob. I may be lucky, but the teat seems to be very close to the shape of my nipple so maybe that helped.