Combination feeding - yay or nay?

[Italianbride]

DS is 5 weeks old, born 7 weeks premature and has had a recent stint on a ventilator in PICU for an infection. So breast feeding has been hard work in his short life and I've felt quite stressed about the while thing.

My question is - does combination feeding work? I don't want to give up bf completely but I want to feel confident that DS is getting enough food and give myself a bit of a break. Any opinions appreciated!

I breast fed dc1 for 6 weeks then gave up and went onto formula only.

Dc2 had 2 weeks of breast then formula only.

Dc3 was breast fed for about 2mths we gave her a bottle of formula at bedtime. This continued until she was 8 mths when she dropped the breast feeding (too nosey)

Dc4 was breast fed only for about 3 mths then again a bottle if formula was brought in at bedtime. This lasted until he was about a year when a change circumstances and his lack of interest stopped the breast feeding.

With dc1&2 I was told you couldn't combination feed. With dc3 several friends told me from their experience that that was nonsense.

Ds1 similar to BadRoly's DC3. Totally fine. We had no problems at all with it and it helped to calm any worries about not feeding him enough (damn my boobs with no scale on the side...). He gave up bf at about 8 months. If it works for you then go for it! Good luck :-)

Buona sera italianbride, does the hospital have a specialist breast feeding advisor with experience in prem baby feeding who you can chat to at all?

As you baby was born prematurely that must have been a shock.... I was told that stress can have an effect on your supply (my DH was taken into hospital with heart probs when DD was 3 days old). We did top up feeds after each breastfeed in the end. We combination fed till she was 6.5m - and then we were starting solids so that seemed a good point (for us) to wind down breast feeding.

The NCT has a breast feeding support line

In bocca al lupo

Currently combination feeding DD2 (also did DD1). DD1 was topped up as milk took 7 days to come in after emcs/DD2 was prem so i am mostly expressing but approx 30% is formula. I'm much more relaxed about it the second time around, I felt like a total failure with DD1.
It works v well though you have to make the time to express/breast feed as a bottle of formula is sometimes a v convenient get out! We gave a bottle to DD1 in the evenings as my supply seemed to drop right off then and it gave me a chance to catch up, take a break from cluster feeding on the sofa and DH got to spend some time gazing into her eyes bonding channel surfing on the tv