combination feeding

[kaly88]

Hi all
My LO will be 6 weeks in a few days. She is currently ebf, but I'm thinking of introducing a bottle of formula for the night feeds.She currently wakes up every 2-3 hours in the night. Will introducing a bottle help her (and me) sleep longer at night?

Sorry just to add - I'm a first time mum

After 6 dc, i can honestly say it totally depends on your baby.

Remember though, those knackering cluster feeds & night time feeds are important to keep your supply going.

Try it & see.

Good luck

Totally depends. DS is a bottle refuser, he wakes between 1.5-3 hours at night. My friend is totally formula feeding and her DD and she wakes more frequently than DS.

My DS is 18 weeks and I've been combination feeding on/off for a while. I only do the top up with formula after breastfeeding so not the whole feed. This way the first stretch of sleep is longer from 7pm until 2-3am. But during the night I never give formula in my opinion it's more hassle going to the kitchen and making a bottle. Also the night feeds keep the milk production going so shouldn't cut them out I've heard.
You could do the dream feed with bottle around 11ish which should then give you longer sleep but I personally don't have the heart to wake DS if he's in deep sleep so I just wait when he wakes himself.

Great! That's a good idea to do the last feed of the day with formula. Thank you all!

We do the 10-11 feed as a formula one. I go to bed at 9 and my dh does the bottle
I then do the rest of the night feeds. This usually guarantees me a 4-7 hour sleep stretch. Do you have someone who could do the formula for you?

Oh and the breastfeeding helpline said the night feeds are important for maintaining supply in the early days due to timing of hormone production but the key time for this is early hours of the morning which is why we chose the evening feed to not breastfeed. Would be lovely to skip the 2-3 am feed...sigh

It totally depends on your baby. Some will switch between breast and formula happily, some will refuse formula, some will get the hang if formula and refuse the breast.

Problem is you can't know until you introduce formula, and it can be hard to go back as your supply will have lowered.

I always ask bf mums how important bf is. If the absolutely, 100% want to bf, then it's not worth the risk of formula. If you wouldn't be that upset if you had one of those babies that switches to formula, refuses the breast and never looks back, try it and see.

I introduced an evening bottle of formula at 8m. Within 3 days dc was completely refusing the breast and only accepting formula. Fortunately i was ready to give up bf at that point.

I BF, but after a week where DD wouldn't sleep more than an hour at a time, we tried mixed feeding. She was 10 weeks at the time (now 13 weeks).
We give her her bedtime feed as a bottle of expressed milk (full 150ml bottle) and then a bottle of formula (as much as she wants). That is at 7pm & sees her through to about 1-2am when we do the same again. Everything else is BF.

To keep my supply i pump in the evening while DH gives the feed & then again in the morning after her first BF feed.

We're lucky in that DD happily swaps between bottle, boob, dummy & thumb with no issues - she likes anything in her mouth! But as pp say I'm sure it depends on the baby.

I'm a FTM too & have no idea what I'm doing, but at the moment this works for us. At the point it stops working we'll try something else!

I introduced a bottle of f when dd was about 4/5 weeks old. Dp would usually give it to dd at 10-10.30 ish which meant I could get an early night, she started to sleep from 10pm to 5.30/6 ish (it didn't last!)but that honestly might have happened anyway. We mix fed like this (one bottle a day) until 8 months when she refused milk during the day completely. It's something to bear in in mind because when dd started to stop feeding in the day we were (and still are) left with only the bottle feed remaining as the bedtime feed is always the last to go. When she stopped bf I wasn't really ready Tbh.

I introduced a night time bottle at 8 weeks. DH would give it to DS about 11ish so I could go to bed early. I then did all night time feeds. It worked really well for us. I've just finished feeding DS at 17 months.

Thank you so much all for your replies really appreciate all the advise!