Breast vs expressed milk in bottle

[Sirenetta]

Hi. DS is 7.5 weeks old and my first child. He was somewhat premature (born at 35 weeks) and weighed 5 lb at birth. I had to express in that first week because he was in the special care unit; after he came home, I was advised to keep pumping to keep the supply going, and to "top him up" with the bottle of expressed milk at the end of each feed to make sure he was gaining weight. Fast forward to now - he is 10 lb! Yay! The problem now is that I don't know what to do about the bottles. I would love to ditch them and use the boob primarily or exclusively, but when I try this I find he doesn't really know how to fill up the tank - he will snack at the breast, on/off for hours, sucking for only a few minutes and then giving a hunger cry only minutes later. This is particularly true in the evening. I have to say I love that when I feed him from the bottle we get 3-4 hour stretches of sleep. And obviously it means I can leave him with DH for part of the day. But the pumping regime is a pain. What would you do? Thanks!

Babys find it easyer to drink from a bottle so once they have had a bottle then its not very common that they go back to breast
i tryed feeding ds breast milk but i dryed up so he had no choice but to have formula out of a bottle its up to you what you do ether keep on with pumping breast milkvor slowly change to formula hope this helps xx

I expressed for my DS1 for a month before I convinced him to feed directly. I think if you can manage it for a couple of days just don't give him bottles and feed him whenever he wants it - or even just offer a feed every 2-3 hours.

After a few days he may figure it out. The problem is it is more effort to breast feed - it may be he needs to build up his muscle strength over a few days.

think that's what bf entails sometimes though cluster feeds and on and off for hours ... you may want to express enough for one bottle so you can have a break later on in the day!