Occasional formula for 3 wk old (to get some sleep!) but how much?

[dentyandliqing]

Hi everyone,

We have a 3 wk old daughter, weighing about 4.1 kg. My wife's mostly breast feeding, but she's decided she prefers to feed now every 2 hours (it was 3 for a while), and so occasionally - just to let my wife have some sleep - we have decided to formula feed.

But the question is how much?

We're currently giving about 65 ml, but I wonder if this is too little? Another thread (www.mumsnet.com/Talk/breast_and_bottle_feeding/1138455-Newborn-drinking-100ml-per-feed/AllOnOnePage), would seem to suggest maybe it is. Based on weight of 4.1 kg, it comes out at 680 ml per 24 hours, which would mean 85 ml for a three-hour-fill.

So that's a bit more than we're giving her, and it would seem like she would drink a little more if we offered it (she tends to carry on searching after the bottle's emptied). But some friends have advised against feeding her too much formula as it could expand her stomach.

What do you guys think?

denty.

My little girl was hospitalized at 4 weeks for losing weight. I can't remember now how much she weighed at the time but I.remember the doctor calculating her required formula intake as the weight she should have been at 4 weeks if she had stayed on her curve and it was min 68ml.every 3 hours but they told us to.give her more if.she would take it. Obviously the latter advice was in the context of an unusually underweight baby though.

I am no expert at all but I wouldn't want to give her a lot of extra formula over and above the advised amount just because of the potential effect on your wife's milk supply but a few mills here or there probably won't hurt so I'm sure 80-odd is fine. If she was crying for more and it were my baby I would give her more but id she were contented enough I wouldn't. She can always go for a bigger feed at the next breast feed.

Don't know if that helps or not.

We did exactly the same- my OH gave our baby a formula bottle so I could get some kip at night, for about 3 hours, and it worked well for us.

To begin with, we gave about 80-90 on average, although on one occasion, early on, he guzzled about 125 in one go. Since then it's varied between being a bit more than that, to about 40ml.

As OH is now going back to work and my supply is now getting properly established (4wks), we've had a few days now where it's been purely bf with expressing 80ml for a feed or freezing in the morning, and will aim for that from now on.

I'd definitely recommend giving a little more than you're doing, as that will be a complete feed for baby and allow your partner to get 3-4 hours sleep.
HTH.

If your DD is feeding every 2 hours and is 3wks old - the average amount of BM she is taking is a day about 700mls (by 3m it will be ~750mls and 6m will be 800mls so it doesn't increase greatly) every 2 hours is 12 feeds so 12 / 700mls = 58mls - your original feed of 65mls is about spot on.

You don't want to encourage her to take more than she would normally take as that can stretch her stomach so she ends up wanting more food than she should naturally need.

Also, if you try to get her to take more (and succeed) then it can have a negative effect on your wife's milk supply - if she takes more, she will not be hungry when she normally would, the milk supply starts to slow down the longer the gaps between feeds and as it is still really early days this can signal to some of the breast tissue to switch off as it isn't needed.

This is because if your DD goes 3 or more hours after having a bottle feed without bfing, your wife will have gone at least 5 hours without removing any milk, this is a big gap for a 3wk baby, especially if they then have another longish gap without bfing overnight too. This is a big signal to the breasts that they need to slow down and stop making so much milk - there is no point making milk if it's not being drunk!

If giving extra feeds is part of a plan to change to mixed feeding on a daily basis (better to wait until supply is established at ~6wks though) or to stop bfing soon then this is fine, if anything it's giving your wife's breasts a heads up that they won't be needed as much in the future.

If you do plan on baby being bf mid to longer term then perhaps finding other ways to help your wife rest might be more beneficial. Things like helping her to learn to bfing lying down, making a safe co-sleeping space to make night feeds easier (my DH liked bungee cording the cot to the bed frame ) or taking over some of her household duties (sorry!) will assist her more than bottlefeeding the baby and still protect her milk supply so she can continue to bf easily.

This is a good guide on how to bottlefeed (just in case your HV/MW hasn't given you any guidance on it).

Thanks everyone. Really useful. I think we'll offer her a bit more than we have been and see if she's interested, and try and keep an eye on her not glugging down too much.

The last couple of days, she's let my wife have a bit more sleep between breastfeeds, so we've not yet put it into practice.

Thanks.

Formula feeding does not routinely lead to more sleep overall or rest for the parents - if you google 'The Effect of Feeding Method on Sleep Duration, Maternal Well-being, and Postpartum Depression' you'll read an interesting article :)

We've been giving our five week old one formula feed a night for the past three weeks, even though he goes 3 hours at night, and to be honest that extra bit of sleep is the only thing which keeps me sane and breastfeeding. At the risk of sounding like a wimp, longterm sleep deprivation just turns me into an unhinged, aggressive emotional wreck and I don't want to be like that around my baby. He's still breastfeeding very well and piling on weight, but I also have over supply which may explain why we've got away with it so well (I've spent most of my breastfeeding life actually trying to produce less milk). Of course this is just one person's experience, and I did it prepared to switch fully to formula if it came to it.