Mix feeding

[Char998]

Hi, my daughter is 7 weeks old, I am currently fully breastfeeding but I feel my breastmilk is watery and not filling her up as she feeds every hour during the day, at night she feeds upto every 4 hours. My feeding routine is making things a little difficult as I have a 4 year old child too and cannot get much done during the day. After each feed she needs winding for half an hour so she is not full of wind. I feel so guilty giving her formula, I tried mix feeding her on sma gold but it made her vomit. I was thinking about mix feeding her using Aptamil. Please advise. Thank you.

Char, if you are keen to breastfeed, then maybe it would help to talk about this in real life on one of the breastfeeding lines (phone nos. on Mumsnet's bf page)? The thing about using formula is

i) it undermines your breastfeeding, so you make less breastmilk as a result because your baby feeds less at the breast

ii) it is a proper faff - making the bottles, keeping them clean, buying the formula, all takes time and effort and planning, whereas with bf, it may seem to take longer at first but it becomes easier and quicker as time goes on :)

Hourly feeding is within normal for a 7 week old; she is making a distinction between day and night already if the gaps are longer at night so that's a help. You could discuss with the breastfeeding line counsellor if this length of time winding is necessary - maybe your baby is unsettled just because she wants a little more time on the breast (perhaps another 'session' on the next side) rather than being 'windy'.

Hope you get this sorted. By the way, your breastmilk won't be watery - it will be just fine.

Hi Char, just wanted to urge you to continue to EBF if you feel you can. I mix feed (not by choice -- had major problems at the beginning and have never been able to make it back to ebfing). My daughter still feeds little and often (ie 1-2 oz every 1-2 hrs during the day). Added to the top of breastfeeding, it means we still spend the majority of our day feeding. She's 6 months old. It's not fun, but I feed on demand and she simply refuses to take more at a time and to go longer in between.

I think it's relatively unusual for babies to still be eating so little and often at 6 months (she has reflux, which I think is related), but my life would be much much easier had I been able to EBF --no faffing with all the bottles!

Hope things start to improve soon.

OP your bm is fine for baby so dont worry about that part. It might look more watery than formula but looks are deceiving.

BUT I would say if you are finding it a bit hard with bfing and having another young DC aswell, and you really do want to try mixed feeding to see if it takes any pressure off, then dont feel guilty about using formula.

I give DS2 a bottle every now and then as DS1 is nearly 3 and can sometimes get a bit jealous and / or play up when Im feeding DS2. So I let him 'help' (as much as a 2 yo can) me prepare the bottle and feed DS2.

Feeding regularly is normal, but I do find when DS2 has a FF he goes a fair bit longer until the next bf so I can get stuff done and spend a bit of time with DS1 if hes acting up a bit. preparing the FF can be a bit of a faff so I just keep the pre made cartons in for the odd feed. Using bottles to me is no more a faff than making sure DS1 is occupied / happy before I start bfing or having to make DS2 wait (so hes NOT happy) while I finish whatever it is Im doing with DS1.

With me at 7 weeks it was the opposite, DS2 fed every 3 hours or so in the day and every hour at night [tired] Hes 3 m/o now and his feeding has settled a fair bit, so much so that I rarely use bottles anymore, but the odd FF definitely seemed to help me out at first.

My HV told me for a bf baby if she's not burped after 5min, you don't need to wind them! This is one of the best advice I have. I basically timed myself for a week and stopped winding. She just brings up burp in her own time. I do use infacol before 3mo because I find it somehow makes her less colicky. I agree with tiktok you should talk to a bf consellour about it.

Thank you for all your supportive messages. They are all really helpful, I will be trying a few of your tips. It makes things that little easier when you get this kind of support from other mums :)
I will let you know how we get on.

Breastmilk may look watery but it isn't so don't worry there.
Feeding every hour or so is pretty usual for a 7 week old. Try offering her both sides then the first again to see if she is still hungry.
As her stomach grows she will be able to take more milk so will go longer inbetween feeds. She will also get more efficient at feeding so feeds may feel shorter.
Your milk is filling her up if she is going 4 hours plus on a night
Winding is something I hardly did with my 4 kids. My mum was fanatical about it and would happily sit for 30 mins patting their backs. With DD1 I would just lay her over my shoulder for 5 mins and if she burped she burped. She was very pumpy though, as were the others, but she never had any wind related pains.
The only one I had to wind was dc4 who was windy and posseted after every feed so I did try and wind her for a few minutes buit she soon fell into my laziness way of thinking and 5 mins of patting.
It is harder with an older dc but it will be worth it. Will your other dc sit down for stories whilst you read or watch tv? You might feel the tv is on all day at this point but it won't hurt

i mix feed after my 4-week daughter lost a dangerous amount of weight while exclusively BFing and was admitted to hospital. we were given this plan by the senior pediatric consultant: I BF her for 10 minutes every three hours or so, plus some extra comfort feeds. Immediately after the BF she has a bottle of formula.
I have a 3.5 year old son and find this regime much easier than BFing for hours on end (as I did with him). My son always seemed hungry and was a scrawny little thing until he went on solids.
Don't feel guilty - formula is not poision and your daughter can still benefit from BFing as long as you keep doing it frequently enough.
any brand of formula is probably fine - just take it slow and wind her during the feed if it seems she's in distress.