Please can you talk to me about bottle feeding a bf baby?

[badguider]

Hi,

My ds is two months old and I run my own business so my dh will be doing some childcare quite soon to enable me to keep things ticking over until ds is 5mo when dh and mil will be doing some regular childcare for whole days.

He had a tt when born so we used bottles to top up with ebm in his first weeks and since it was all resolved we have tried to keep a regular bottle of ebm going.

DH was giving a bottle at night so I could sleep 9pm-midnight but now ds doesn't really need to feed in those three hours and it's also his fussiest time so he began to refuse the bottle at that time.

So, now i'm stuck not knowing when best to express and when to bottle feed... last night dh tried a bottle at 6ish but ds just got upset. Today we have nothing on so I managed to pump and then immediately feed a half feed (60ml) successfully before I followed up with a breast feed but I don't know if that's the best way to do things.

I am bf on demand right now and we don't seem to have much routine but does anybody have any suggestions about how and when might be best to offer a bottle feed? (bearing in mind I have to fit in the expressing bit too).

Advice online from nct, LLL, kellymom and others all just tries to discourage bottle feeding by listing all the down sides but I am not willing to put dh or mil in the position of having an un-weaned baby and no means of feeding him, not to mention putting ds is that position. And I am not keen to have poor mil faffing around with cup feeds or finger feeding or whatever....

So - any suggestions or advice???
thanks.

My dd was similar to you starting off having the bottles as top up when first born and having the 10pm feed out of a bottle at first which she then started refusing.

I wouldn't worry about the time you express just make sure that one per day is out of a bottle and at time when hungry so first thing or during the day and not an evening when it's probably for comfort as well.

My dd only drank from the bottle if it was really warm aswell so some of the time when she would refuse it and we thought it was because of the bottle but it was actually because it was cold

thanks for this. i'll take a look at those links (I was very disappointed in the nct website)

I am not sure I believe that there's no benefit in using bottles before absolutely required to become accustomed to them... do you know what research was done on this? The very good specialist bf mw at the bf clinic we went to for the tongue tie said she'd recommend keeping him familiar with bottles as in her experience babies who didn't have one for a while often didn't take them again.

Currently I don't need to give a regular bottle but I will need to leave him for longer than he usually goes between feeds once in a couple of weeks and then approximately fortnightly.... even if just for my peace of mind i'd find it so much easier to do that if I knew he would take a bottle otherwise i'll be distracted the whole time wondering if he's screaming with hunger and dh/mil are going crazy :(

cross-post - thanks for the tip about temperature tretops and you're right, it doesn't work in the evening...

thanks bbs