How to move to night time bottle feed from breast feeding?

[Ka1k0ura]

Hi

I'm a new mum and am struggling with breast feeding at night. While I will continue to breastfeed during the day, I hear that you can mix feed and offer a bottle at night. Can you share your examples of how you do this - times / amounts etc? My daughter is 10 days old and is 8lb 6oz.

Thanks very much.

Open a carton of formula and put it in a bottle? If you are thinking of expressing I'd suggest don't bother because it's a lot of faff. Most people get a lot less from the pump at each expressing session than it's enough for a feed.

It's totally up to you but I just wanted to let
you know that night feeds are vital to maintaining your milk supply. You produce more milk making hormones when you feed at night which in turn sends the signal to make more milk.

Can I ask what problems you are experiencing at night?

Oh and babies fret a lot at night. It's entirely possible it's nothing to do with milk supply. They usually get overtired and will cluster feed in the early evening. Even ff babies do that. It might be easier to just go with the flow and get your DH to make tea, do the dishes etc.

When my DD was young, I used to supervised DH making dinner for the two of us from the sofa. He's really slow at following recipes, but dinner was always made in the end.

And what dairymps said is true. That bottle could be a slippery slope to complete ff. The cluster feeding stimulate your milk supply. There might be people who can mix feed but they are rare. Of all the mums in my group, all the ones still bf at 6mo don't do regular bottles. All the mixed feed ones moved to full ff by about 3-4mo. It's your decision to see what is important for you.

10 days is very very young. I remember we used a dummy to shut DD up so we could have 15min for dinner! Bf is important for me and I know it's a supply and demand system. I just trust my milk supply, and human evolution , and just feed and feed.

It all became very easy once bf is established. I can now do a feed in 3-5min. Faster than my friends baby doing half a bottle.