Moving from ebf to formula-advice Please

[Neiffer]

Hi
My LO is 13 weeks old and is ebf (with the odd bottle of breast milk). I am going back to work when he is 6 mths old and due to the nature of my job will need to move to formula as I can't express during the day. When and how do I need to start doing this so it's not a shock to him (and me and my boobs!) I'm debating whether to try and keep the night feed but not sure if that's possible? We arebt planning on weaning until hes 6mths and hope to do blw but not sure if that will be compatible with going back to work and formula feeding? Sorry if this is covered elsewhere, I've had a look and couldn't find anything that covered this exactly.
Any advice much appreciated
Neiffer

I am most definately not an expert on this but depending on your work hours ( and if you want to) it should be possible to keep the morning/evening night feeds going as long as you want. His feeding habits are going to change a lot it the next three months so you don't need to do anything yet.
When I changed from ebf to bottle I dropped one feed a week with no problems. So I would suggest that perhaps about a four weeks before you go back to work you choose one daytime feed to drop per week until you start.

I hope that makes sense and that someone with a bit more experience knowledge will be along to help you.

No idea about the milk feeds for BF but we FFed and moved to BLW with no problems. DD happily dropped a bottle of her own accord quite quickly and after a couple of months we jiggled around with timings on the others. IIRC she dropped an afternoon feed first and then two other daytime feeds got a lot smaller so by the time she started nursery at 11 months, she was ready to move to just a morning and evening feed. Obviously at 6MO, it's much more important to be having lots of milk as the food is almost incidental.

Will she be going to nursery or looked after by a relative?

Thanks for the replies. LO will be doing a day and a half at nursery and 2 days with family. That's my main concern really as I'm not sure how behind BLW any of them will be. What were your experiences with child care/family and your weaning choice?

Forgot to add, my main concern with BLW is that it's not as 'routined' as spoon led, from what I've read anyway...please correct me if I'm wrong. My family really need a routine when caring for him and I'm not sure they would be supportive of him possibly eating something or not. Or am I totally wrong? Could I just give them a milk routine and give them pre prepared food to offer as and when? Would lOve some advice as really want to do BLW but this is my main stopping block, the fact I'm going back to work...

Nursery have been fab and stated that they would follow whatever routine I had at home. they attempted to do this but there was so much going on that DD wouldn't nap and soon fell into their routine. They were also ok with BLW but I suspect some degree of spoon-feeding goes on. I don't mind too much as I appreciate they have several children to feed. The one time I turned up early and saw DD being spoon-fed, I talked to nursery about this and it wasn't usual. They made a huge effort to find out more about BLW and did some training with staff.

At six months your LO won't be eating lots and milk is more important. Personally I found some degree of routine helpful and DD naturally fell into a routine of feeding every 3 hours quite quickly. I'd have never got anything done or gone anywhere if we didn't have a bit of routine.

Do you know about www.babyledweaning.com? There's lots of info there and a really supportive forum. If you're not sure about how your family will support BLW then I suggest you talk to them about it. Discuss their fears or objections and point out why BLW is better for you and your LO. I get the impression that a fear of choking is an obstacle for a lot of people so maybe find out about infant first aid courses to give your family the confidence to deal with any situation. (my LO never choked and rarely gagged so I don't thinking choking is a large risk anyway)