A few questions.....(including a really stupid one!)

[muffins]

DD is 4 months old next week and is EBF. I am returning to work beginning of April. Up until yesterday I haven't been able to get her to take a bottle but she took some expressed milk from an NUK bottle yesterday and some from DP this evening. Ideally I'd like to stop breastfeeding and start giving her formula. My main reason for this is that when I express I get 3 1/2 oz max and this is pumping first thing whilst feeding simultaneously. It's less in the evenings. I don't think I'll be able to express enough for her when she's at at nursery. However when I try formula she gags, spits it out, screams etc.
So I have a few questions.....

1. Will I be best to keep trying expressed milk so she is more used to bottle and keep trying formula?
2. Will I be able to increase the amount I express?? I have no idea how!
3. When she starts nursery she will be 6 months. I am planning to wean just before so will this reduce her reliance on breastmilk during day so could she manage with just small amount of expressed milk during day from cup/bottle and then feed from breast in evening and night?
4. and now for the stupid one! Can you mix breastmilk and formula milk to sort of try and get them used to taste and gradually increase ratio of formula????

Thanks in advance!

muffins

I was in a similar situation to you and started off with breast milk only in the bottle and added formula, building it up until it was 100% formula. Expressing is such a pain in the arse. When I as doing it at work I felt like I had no breaks, no time to relax at all during the working day. My DD still hates all bottles at the age of almost 11 months. When she's really hungry she will take 3oz but more often than not refuses.

Ooh so u can mix them! This is good news! Thanks OPeaches. I don't want to be expressing at work either ideally.

hi, i went back when my DS was 6 months. i found that although i wasn't so good at expressing beforehand, it got much easier when i did it every day at roughly the same time at work! i started off doing twice a day (ate my lunch at the second one i think!) but was able to just do one break a day within a month or 2.

i expressed a wee freezer stash of maybe 6 or 8 'portions' in case any extra feeds were needed.

i had only given DS a bottle once a week or so, but he took them fine from DS when i was at work.

i have definitely heard of mixing formula/ebm to get them used to it.

good luck with going back to work, I'll be about due dc2 then so will need to look out my pump at some point...

Expressing every day should build it up - it's a habit. (And you may get on better with a different pump? 3.5 oz is a decent amount, though!)

How long will your work days be - how long will you be away from your DD?

Some six month olds do feed mostly just morning and night. I think this is easier if you're happy to have her in bed with you, and feeding through the night, iyswim.

And yes, as others have said, you can mix formula and breastmilk, to get her used to it.

I've got a medela swing which seems good. And certainly better than the tommee tippee one I tried. Expressing whilst feeding is just so awkward, I need more hands!

Unfortunately work is going to be near as damn it full time. In an ideal world I'd give up work and carrying on breastfeeding for as long as she wanted but that's just me living on cloud cuckoo land!

Thanks for the advice everyone. I expressed 3oz this morning, how much formula should I add to begin with, 1oz?? Have got aptamil, I assume they are all much the same. DS had SMA no probs.

I bought and tasted cartons of all the different brands of formula and aptimil tasted most like breast milk (yes, I tried that too).

I only expressed at work for two weeks before I found I could go the day without having to do it. DD would be fed at 7:00 a.m. then when I got home at about 5:30 or 6:00.

If you don't want to stop BF then don't. Have you though about mixed feeding so you do morning and night and any nighttime feeds and she has formula during the day.

There is another option.

3.5oz is actually a pretty good amount. The average intake for a BF baby from 6 weeks to 6 months (at which point it starts to decline) is 25oz a day i.e. 1oz plus a bit per hour. So A 3.5oz bottle should suffice for a baby feeding every 2-3 hours.

Also by 6 months it is possible for babies to do OK without milk (plenty of people with bottle refusers have returned at 6 months) not ideal but doable.

By 7 months DD was on one 3oz bottle at lunchtime as I struggled expressing at work (went back at 4 months). If you're happy to accept some night feeding then FF doesn't have to enter into it. If you get a good freezer stash to start with to help in that first month you probably have DC on a much reduced bottle intake after a month at being back at work with some help from nursery etc.

As for increasing yield, I found if I expressed at roughly the same time each day volume went up by a few oz's over a week. If I stopped for a few days I would be back to where I started.

Maybe I should add - it it does work. Mon to Thurs I am at work (no expressing) so DD is fed evening/through the night/morning, Fri to Sun I'm at home and also feed DD twice during the day. She's 10 months now, I've been back at work since she was 5 months. My supply seems to easily adjust to the different feeding patterns.