When to introduce bottle?

[PretzelPrincess]

DS is 4 weeks old and I want to introduce one bottle of EBM a day so he gets used to it. What's the best time of day to give it? I've heard a lot of people give it as the evening feed, whys that? He's feeding every 2/3 hours at the mo.

Evening feed is so you can go to bed early and dh can look after the baby while you get a nice nap before the night feeds begin :)

Ah that makes sense! If I am to skip a feed and give a bottle will my supply be affected? Do I still need to pump at the time I'd normally give a bottle?

Supply can be affected if you substitute a feed every day. I did an evening feed every other day with formula from about 5 weeks so that I could attend work meetings etc... You may notice your baby sleeps well after formula...!

I don't want to use formula, just expressed breast milk. I want him to get used to a bottle to give me a little flexibility.

Your supply will adapt. If you are using expressed milk you can pump before you go to bed and use that milk for part of next days bottle. No point waking yourself up to pump, at this stage you are still going to be feeding twice a night anyway.
My system was to try to pump about half eight or nine and get straight up to bed. Dh stayed downstairs with the baby who would generally wake at something past ten for the bottle. This gave me a sleep from half nine to one in the morning. Then we swapped, I did the night feeds while dh slept. He is a heavier sleeper so the baby stayed in with me in the bedroom, sometimes dh went in the spare room.
I found I got much more milk by pumping in the morning so I would do it as soon as I was up.