breast and bottle from early on.

[Strangertides1]

Hi all. Am new here. Could I please have all and any advice on this. I have two children 1 & 3, I had a horrible time trying to bf with the first and it did put me off with the second. Now I am pg with third and final baby. I already have the pregnancy boobs going on and as a result I've been thinking a lot about giving bf a go again. But with a 2 & 4 year old in tow I think bfp and bottle would work better. Am thinking of bf in the night and bottle in the day. Do you combine feed? Now does your routine work? Any other tips and hint? Thanks.

I did it the other way around. Boob in the day and bottle at night. It's worked really well for us but appreciate I might be lucky not to have had any supply issues. I got quite full 0vetnight in the early weeks but it settled down as my boobs adjusted. DS is now 12 weeks and sleeping 7 -4 or 5 most nights so is effectively now ebf except for the occasional dream feed around 10 pm or I am elsewhere during the day when DP will give him a bottle.

We started this routine right from the start with bottles at 10pm and then middle of the night feed (roughly 2-3am). I would then feed from around 6 onwards.

Meant to add that in my case my reasoning was that I had a section with complications and would have struggled to move to feed in the night once I had lain down and really needed to rest to recover. Also I wanted to make sure I had a baby that would take bottles as well as breast to give us more flexibility. So the 10pm bottle feed was always in the plan but we added the next feed in as well because of the surgery.

Thank you for your reply. Am glad too hear it's worked well for you. My main reason is also so the baby will take both from early on, I've hear of many people having problems with getting a baby to take a bottle after breast, with two other under 5's, I'd like things to be as smooth as possible, we have a wonderful babysitter who's looking forward to looking new baby cuddles, lol x