Supplementing breast milk with formula

[peachy2410]

Hiya

I'm looking for some views.... Struggling a bit! I had my baby girl 3 weeks ago and have been breastfeeding all the way. I'm coming under a bit of pressure from family to add in a bottle of formula to allow them to share the load to give me a break. I love the bonding of breastfeeding and makes me feel needed post pregnancy but part of me sees their point but I really wanted to breastfeed. I've tried expressing but can't get much as she's quite greedy.

Does anyone have any experience of dropping a formula feed into a breastfed baby's diet? Does it cause any problems? I'm worried she'll no longer breastfeed if she prefers formula! Just want to try my best for her!

Hopefully someone who knows more about this will come along, but for what it's worth, here's my 2 cents. My experience was that supplementing with formula can damage your milk supply. With my first baby, it drove my supply down to the point where we moved to 100% formula at 7 weeks.

With my second, I gave one ff per day from birth. I successfully breast fed for his other feeds up to 7 months, but once weaning started in earnest my supply dwindled again.

Other people wanting to feed your baby is not a good reason to supplement with formula. But there are good reasons (like maybe you might lose your mind if you spend one more fucking hour trapped on the sofa breast feeding!). Only you know what the right choice is for you, but make sure it's Your decision.

Best of luck!

Peachy, the biology of breastfeeding is that formula reduces the amount of breastfeeding you do (that's why it's being suggested, right?). This reduces supply. With well established breastfeeding , with an already generous supply, mothers can get away with it and supply remains ok. But usually at three weeks supply is not yet well established.

If people want to help you, there are a zillion ways! Ironing. Making a meal. Washing up. Cleaning. Shopping. Giving you a lift. Taking the baby out for an hour in the pram while you have a nap. And so on.

Feeding the baby? You can do that :)

Thanks for replies :)

I've included a ff with dd. I bf most of the time but she has a bottle of f at bedtime. There were several reasons why I chose to do this; wanted dp to de last feed sometimes, didn't want her to reject bottles, didn't want her to refuse f. IMHO these are quite good reasons, however other people deciding that they would like to feed your baby instead of you isn't!
It will almost certainly have affected my night time supply but it doesn't seem to have any effect for the rest of the time.

Do you want to introduce a formula feed? From your post it doesn't sound like you do. It shouldn't be something you bring in to please other people. It sounds like a big hassle to me!

(Similar - but not the same - when DD was a few weeks old DH was really pushing me to go out with a friend for a few hours. He was trying to be supportive in encouraging me to take time for myself but I had to spell it out that it actually made me more stressed because I had to factor in expressing in the lead up to it! I think these offers of help come from a good place but they're not always practical.)