Moving to 2 bfs a day from ebf

[ohthegoats]

My baby is 6 months old, and I want to start the move to formula so that I can share the food responsibility with her dad.

Having not 'loved' bfing, I've realised now that formula is part of our lives, that bfing is so much nicer all round, and I'm glad I've been able to do it. So, I have decided to keep going with morning and evening feeds - how long will I be able to do that before it starts drying up? Will it start drying up completely?

I started replacing two feeds with formula a week ago, and my boobs have steadily got used to it and stopped getting so engorged when I miss a feed. Makes me wonder about the drying up thing. Clueless!

At 6 months your supply is likely to be very robust. Your boobs will adjust to the two feeds a day, and then you will probably be able to carry on for as long as you want to. There's no reason why your supply should stop if you maintain those two feeds a day.

Cool, thanks.

I am also planning to do this for work in July (dd will be 9 mon5hs). I've frozen a stash but it will be formula after that when I am working, bf I hope at bed time.

I worried about the same thing but was told by local BF adviser that once you've fed that long your supply is amazingly established and you can take whole weekends off without drying up if you need to. Was very liberating as I was paranoid about losing supply, I think because all the advice at the beginning is to never do anything to risk interfering with it.

I recently stopped breastfeeding after 11months, having already gone down to 1-2 feeds per day, and it took a good week before my body realised what was going on, then another week for it to dry up altogether.

Oh OUCH.. I can't imagine going a whole weekend without feeding her. Zeppelins ahoy!

I'm aiming to get down to not feeding at all by about July I think. Considering I was only going to feed her until Christmas, I'm pretty happy with myself.