how long before its ok to give expressed bm in a bottle

[rockyroadahead]

dd is 6 weeks .... I am finding that in the evening she feeds and feeds non stop until there is not enough left to satisfy her . she tends to sleep from 10 - 10 with feeding every 3-4 hours but only if I stratagise boobs so that at around 10pm there is enough in at leadt one boob to fill her up .. if this doesn't work for one reason or another she will just be frantic trying to get more out than she can and will be unsettled all night I find if I give her a bottle of breastmilk at this time sghe will settle better ... and dp loves to do this and feel as though he is helping too ... but I am really worried she will get nipple confusion . as we have only done this a few twice .

your thoughts please

I think she's probably just clusterfeeding. It's complitely normal and very usual at this stage. Also I think there is a big growth spurt at around 6 weeks. If you go on the Kellymom-website, there's loads of useful information on all things breastfeeding (I'm on my phone so find it hard to link, sorry).

At that stage my DH was doing bath and gave DS a bottle of EBM every evening to give me a breather. We used a bottle specially created to imitate breastfeeding, calma-something, I forget the name.. It was brilliant though and lead to no nipple confusion or any other problems.

Also, don't worry about your boobs being full or less full. Trust your body, it will make plenty enough for your DD.

Congratulations btw :)

She's increasing your supply with the cluster feeding so swapping it with expressed could have a negative effect on your supply.

Mine is 10 weeks now and at 6 weeks he was cluster feeding like a beast in the evenings, but it did calm down after a few days once my supple had adapted to what he needed. Personally I wouldn't mess with the supply/demand system of cluster feeding by introducing expressing yet. A dwindling supply will be a lot more stressful than dealing with cluster feeding.

Hang in there! I promise it'll pass soon.

Right, here is info on clusterfeeding, growth spurts and all things newborn:

kellymom.com/bf/normal/newborn-nursing/

And yes, it was a Medela Calma-bottle we used to have:

www.boots.com/en/Medela-Calma-with-Baby-feeding-Bottle-150ml_1228240?CAWELAID=908501065&cm_mmc=pla--google--Boots+Beauty-_-Beauty+-+PLAs&kw={keyword}&cagpspn=pla

Actually, come to think of it, when DH was giving DS his bottle of EMB, I was usually expressing more, so I suppose it wasn't really to give me a breather, but to give DH some bonding time .

In general, yes, you should try not to give bottles of EMB too often in the early days so as to make sure your supply is well established. For what it's worth though, my DS is now 2.5 years old and still BF several times a day night so my supply was fine in the end. Everyone is different though.

my lo is 11 weeks and has had a bottle of ebm every night since he was 2 weeks old. no nipple confusion at all.

Kellymom site is brilliant but have to say I know no one with nipple confusion and several people who's LOs refuse a bottle because it was introduced too late. At 13 weeks I'm successfully combination feeding - 1 or 2 ff bottles a day and about 6 bfs. It's working no problem for us