Wanting to stop breastfeeding

[meggie1980]

Hi, I've been finding breastfeeding really really hard - pain, bleeding, cracked nipples the lot. DS is two months old so I think he's had all the goodness of antibodies etc and so am going to stop. anyone got any tips on how to swap to bottle at this age? exhausted and in need of help!

how much do you know about formula feeding? Are you fine with sterilising, making up and storing bottles etc? Has your baby ever taken a bottle?

I just swapped out one feed at a time. So at that age a baby will probably have 6-7 formula feeds (but loads more breast feeds). Probably around the following times:

6am or getting up time
10am
2pm
6pm
10pm
2am

If you don't have a routine yet, just pick a time that's going to be a formula feed and go from there. If your supply is good, leave a few days between dropping each feed to avoid mastitis etc, judge by how full your boobs are feeling. My supply was rubbish, so I didn't have that issue!

Good luck.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can swap feeds for formula gradually, but keep one or two feeds a day if you want. Eg morning or evening. Your baby will continue to get the benefit of antibodies etc for as long as you feed, that doesn't stop at any point.

I BF DS1 for around 6 weeks.

I then expressed for a couple of weeks and mix fed (so expressed milk from a bottle, plus some bf).

I then started introducing formula.

It took a while to find a bottle that DS would take (we ended up with Dr Browns) and at first all bottles had to be given by DH (otherwise DS just screamed and rooted for boob).

There is nothing wrong with formula feeding!