Does this sound like a good plan?

[IceCreamCastles]

ds is 20 weeks now and ebf so far. I'm pleased that I've been able to do it without any major issues but am unsure of whether I want to carry on for much longer.

He has started feeding more frequently and waking up more at night (although this could also be down to recent heat I suppose) and breastfeeding just seems to be getting more of a faff in the day because he's getting more distracted by his surroundings.

I also have dd (3) who has been fairly patient with ds's demands on me but who could do with more undivided attention.

So I was thinking of giving him a bottle at around 7pm to see if I can get him into bed a bit earlier,

breastfeeding him during night if necessary,

breastfeeding first thing in the morning

And another bottle or 2 during the day interspered with breastfeeds- whatever is more convenient.

Bottles hopefully to be replaced with food snacks as he gets into his solids.

He takes a bottle of ebm fine and is done and dusted in minutes. Bottles would have to be formula though as it takes me a while to express a whole bottle.

Any thoughts? Sorry it's a bit of a long brain dump- was trying to formulate this plan when I was up in the middle of the night with him!

If you want to phase out bfing, replacing one feed every two weeks is the current advise to minimise the risk of mastitis. So offer the 7pm one for a couple of weeks if you want to and see how that goes.

Once you have swapped over completely to formula, he will need 20oz per day and the advice is to offer the milk an hour before solids until they are one. This is to make sure they get most of their nutrition from the milk.

Having said all that, there is no guarantee that he will take the bottle more easily than a bf and you will be taking away the thing that probably settles him at night.

OP, sounds very similar to what I did with DS and it worked fine. I bf him until he was 11 months old, and started to mix feed him around 5 months. Like you I struggled to express much - totally zero with a hand pump and only about 4oz in an hour with an electric.

He took to the formula fine and we never looked back from our choice to mix feed.

Good luck!

Thank you-that's useful.
I would like to carry on partly breastfeeding him for a good while but I just don't think I'm cut out to do it full time!

Will start with the 7pm one in a few weeks and see how it goes