Breast and bottle (expressed)?

[Morcerf]

This is my first post here so hope this is in the right place.....

My wife is breastfeeding our second child, who is only 8 days old. It's pretty tough on her as we also have a 2.5 yr old and the lack of sleep is really making her suffer. I want to do more to help out but lack the equipment.

I've bought an electric breast pump but wondered how long I should wait before feeding the baby myself with a bottle to give my wife a rest? Will it confuse the baby if we switch to a mix of breast and bottle too soon?

Any advice much appreciated!

Thanks.

Hi OP, its great that you want to help. The advice i was given was not to express and bottle feed til 6 weeks so bf is fully established.

Hi op. Congrats on your newborn. I've asked mnhq to move this to the infant feeding board as you should get better advice there. The potential problem with you trying to help now by giving a bottle of expressed milk is that your baby is still trying to establish a good supply so if you were feeding baby your wife would need to express at the same time hence no rest! If you give it a few weeks and take on full responsibility for the toddler and be a butler for your wife as much as you can then she can just focus on baby and rest. Feeding lying down with baby on its side next to her means they can theoretically both drift off to sleep safely. At about 6 weeks her milk supply should be robust enough that if she misses the odd feed here and there it shouldn't matter and you could give first night feed or bedtime feed to allow her to get a decent block of sleep.

Very helpful, thanks.... just got to survive the next 5 weeks then! :)

My wife is trying to feed lying down but the baby doesn't seem to feed that well in that position - or more likely is only getting a little before falling asleep.

Hi Morcerf - we're just going to pop this over to Infant Feeding for you to get the best advice and support.

My hubby started doing the late evening feed (ie around 10pm/11pm) with a bottle of expressed milk from week 2. From week 3 most of our DS's feeds have been part breast part bottle (using expressed milk or formula) because it's turned out that both baby and I are rubbish at breast feeding!

So we've been doing at least one feed by bottle since week 2 and 'mixing it up' at every feed since week 3 and it's made not difference to him.

In fact in his first week (which we spent in hospital) one of the less draconian midwives fed him from a bottle when I got to the end of my tether one night.

Not once has he had any problems feeding from the breast or the bottle.

I think the whole 'nipple confusion' thing is a bit of a fallacy, possibly encouraged by well meaning midwives who want to keep women breastfeeding in the early weeks when it can be so difficult. I've never heard of any actual case of a baby being put off the breast by having a bottle. Personally, it was actually using the combination of breast and bottle that kept me breast feeding, otherwise I'd have given it up and gone 100% bottle.