do I give baby bottle instead of breast?

[shelleyandjoey]

Hello this is my first post.
my baby boy will be 6 months old in 2 weeks. I pretty much exclusivly breastfed him until 5 months old. He was no where near sleeping through night, mostly waking every 1 1/2 hours. So we intoduced a nighttime bottle which helped him sleep a bit longer. TThe last week or so he has been having a few more bottles as ive left him with his dad. We also a few days ago started him on baby rice.
He is becoming fussy on the breast, crying and pulling off and getting more and more fustrated, but when he has a bottle he is much more satified, dosnt seem so upset in the day and sleeps better at night.
Im not sure if I should just give him bottles now, although I am looking forward to getting my boobs back and a bit more freedom, something is upsetting about stopping breastfeeding.
Anyone else had a problem like this?
Thanks

Yes, exactly as you describe. As I upped the number of bottles my dd had, she developed a strong bottle preference. I was quite happy to stop at this stage and just followed her lead of swapping one feed for a bottle every few days until all bottles apart from night feeds. When I did swap the night feed for a bottle she stopped waking for it.

Thanks emmie
im thinking thats a good idea, im just finding it so hard to let go!
but I know he is more satified, and im not so exhausted.

It's totally up to you! You can keep breastfeeding for as long as you want. If you've had enough then there's no shame in stopping now if that's what you want.

What about mixing the two? Give regular bottles at set times, solids at mealtimes and breastfeed on demand the rest of the time. You'll find that he naturally cuts down as he gets older anyway.

I think they can get a bit lazy feeding at this age and distracted, the flow of a bottle is faster, especially if not using the newborn teats, but if you still want to breastfeed then carry on. It doesn't have to be all or nothing - just introduce the regular bottles one at a time (e.g. if you wanted to give 3 bottles per day, I'd introduce one every 2 weeks) and keep them consistent, otherwise the sudden drop in demand will play havoc with your supply. Supply is pretty robust at 6+ months and shouldn't be too fragile but suddenly replacing a lot of feeds at once will probably cause you to become engorged which would be uncomfortable.

And it can be emotional to stop whether you feed for days, weeks, months or years, so be kind to yourself when you decide it's the end whenever that might be.

I was going to say similar to bertiebotts that it's absolutely fine to do both, you could always do morning breastfeed and maybe last feed before bed?