Anyone mixed fed from birth?

[AbbeyRoadCrossing]

Sorry if this is long but to give a bit of context, I really wanted to bf DS. He was premature and I had a traumatic birth with blood transfusions and emcs. I was in hospital for over a week and I think due to a combination of factors - he would just fall asleep and not latch on and could hardly feed (found out weeks later this is common for prems), and my milk never came in - we switched to premature baby formula because he was losing weight rapidly and was low birth weight to begin with. We were on the postnatal ward for over a week because of this.

Anyway, I failed to bf DS for very long at all. Currently pregnant with DC2 and would like to bf but I just can't spend several weeks in hospital this time for feeding reasons alone (obviously I'd stay for other health reasons). Hopefully with a straightforward birth and term baby bf might be easier, but I'm thinking of bringing some formula as a plan B if the same happens again.

Has anyone mixed fed from birth? Any advice appreciated

We mix fed from 11 days old until 6 months (gave up to ttc) and for that time ds was predominantly bf with perhaps a bottle or two a day. We started to introduce f as he was still losing weight at 10 days and needed a Tongue tie snipped. Although it was very stressful giving him f at first I actually found mix feeding great and I'm aiming to mix feed with this baby (currently 30 weeks). My advice would be to see how it goes, get as much help and support as you can and try to leave introducing f as long as you can. The way we did it was not really ideal (f so early), I think it would have been better to establish bf first and introduce the odd bottle a bit later.
As you say it could all be very different this time- I know I'm hoping for an easier start to bf

Thanks for your reply Nicky. I'm glad to hear it can work, hoping to ebf but let's see what happens. Unfortunately help and support was pretty non existent last time so I'm researching now!

Yes I mix fed my twins from birth on the midwife's advice (one was very small and couldn't afford to lose any weight). I mix fed until 6 months without any problems, breast first the Ff top up. Tiny twin is now a lanky 10 year old as is the other. Good luck, bf if you can but try not to stress it is not the be all and end all as long as the baby is healthy and feeding well.

I think mix feeding should be promoted more - people "give up" breastfeeding when they start giving formula but there's no reason you can't do both. There's various options: you could try one of these two -
Bf each feed then offer formula top up all/some feeds - good if low supply
Substitute some bf for ff altogether - usually evening/night feeds when supply low

Yes I did, was in similar scenario to you with having had an emcs, dd was slightly prem and lost weight rapidly she also spent first week in scbu with breathing problems!

So she was having top ups from day 1, I encouraged her to bf as much as I could, had a few days of her not bfing at all but I just kept thinking i'll give it one more go!!

In the end bf for 11 months which is amazing really.

My advice is find a local support group and keep an open mind, my guess is your experience this time round will be really different so hopefully being will not be such a struggle.

Thank you all. I agree it's not really promoted at all. The midwives when I was in with DS were rather all or nothing about it and looking back (hindsight is a wonderful thing!) I should've continued trying to bf for longer. I have no idea why it didn't occur to me at the time.
Thanks very much everyone for your replies

Can I maybe hijack your thread?

I'm having issues with one of my breasts (I've got another thread going on about it...) and wondered whether it was possible to do every second feed (that would normally be from my left side) as formula if I felt the pain was too severe to keep feeding?

I was told to do both from day one to avoid preference
worked fine
went to all ff at 5 months

Abbey - I hope all goes smoothly this time
I want to ask Nicky, when and how often did you ff? I've been giving DS1 formula at night... I started a thread to find out if DS could be allergic to something I've eaten, mentioned I ff at night and got reprimanded by bf nazis enthusiasts who've told me that if I don't bf at night my milk will dry up.

No one reprimanded you, lilla. You have nothing but support and understanding on that thread, together with information that you actually need in order to make a proper choice.

FFS.

Ds had some f every day. I'd make up a bottle to top up after every feed initially but then found over time that he wasn't really having much and it was wasted. From then on I'd ff if I was somewhere out and about where I didn't want to bf. Up to around 3/4 months ds would cluster feed in the evening but if I was going out he'd have a ff. I'd bf and top up at 10.30 ish as a dream feed. I stopped feeding in the night when ds was 12 weeks but that was because ds started to sleep through.
As I understand it replacing bf with ff in the night can effect your supply but not bf because your baby doesn't wake and demand it is different??? I'm not an expert (tiktok is btw). Ds would have a monster feed in the morning though.

Nazis were genocidal murderers. Not women who bf, even those who do so enthusiastically. Sometimes it's hard to hear facts and experiences that don't fit in with your plans. I think with mix feeding there are different types, those who establish bf then give the odd bottle, those (like me) who end up giving some f and find that they like it and those who get in a bit of a downward spiral and give up before they want to. If bf means a lot to you I'd really try to do the former.

I left mn for a year after being given so much grief about mix feeding. Agree its not promoted enough and done well can actually encourage woman to bf for much longer than they would have done otherwise.

This is going back a few years though so hopefully things have changed a bit, when I mentioned mix feeding then I was told I obviously had no faith in women really upset me at the time. i have a thicker mn skin these days though

I was told absolutely nothing about mix feeding (but I was pretty uninformed about it all tbh!). A mw said that if I didn't get up to ebf that ds would be ff within a week. To be fair to her I suspect that that has always been her experience. I've known loads of mums who've given the odd bottle without their supply/bf being affected at all but I think it's really hard to answer the question "How much/little do I have to bf in a day to maintain bf??" which is, I suspect what some women want to know!!

Thanks for all your replies. Yes, I'd heard the thing about it affecting supply, the thing is I never had any supply to begin with. Although I was mainly expressing (or trying to) as DS couldn't feed very well. However there was one pump between however many women were on the ward, maybe 30, so someone would always want it so I never got to give that a proper go really either.
Really hoping I'm not in for ages this time - I think in the privacy of my own home it would've all been easier

I've had a lot of grief on here in the past, at a difficult time as well. I think some posters struggle to understand that others have a very hard time of it. I was a bit nervous about posting this question to be honest but then I thought go myself not to be daft as it's only the internet

Very sorry Tiktok, I shouldn't have said what I did. I got defensive when I shouldn't have and took your advice the wrong way
Nicky thanks for the info. Handy to know mixed feeding can be done long term if done in the right way.

Ok, Lilla, accepted :)

Yes I have. Initially it was just here and there at odd times, DH used to make up a bottle fo formula to let me catch up on sleep ... the intention was nice but used to annoy me a bit as I'd wake up engorged and need to pump!

But from 9 weeks have given DS one formula feed a day, his bedtime (6.30 - 7pm) bottle. He's 6 months in a week and still BF-ed with just that one formula feed. It's worked really well for us. Prior to that he was massively cluster feeding and very unsettled & hungry int he evening. Once I started that 7pm FF he reliably went down for the evening after the bottle, I dreamfeed at 10pm-ish and he can usually make it through to 6.30amish with just one more BF at about 4am-ish. So much better than 2 -3 wakings between 10pm - 6am

Oh god sorry didn't realise this thread was so old

Thank you and don't worry, it's not that old - I haven't had the baby yet!