Stupid question?

[fleacircus]

Hello - please excuse my naivete, I'm visiting from the TTC your first baby thread and know nothing. We have been talking about BF vs. bottle feeding; I'd assumed it was possible to do both, BF most of the time but express and use bottles so DP can also feed when I'm not around. Someone else on the thread suggested that once you've switched to bottles that's it, the baby would get confused going back to BF. Is that true? Apologies again for ignorance - also for being so previous, given that I have yet to conceive; we like to plan ahead to take our minds off the waiting!

Yes, it's perfectly possible to mix feed breast and expressed milk from a bottle. Lots of people add in a bottle of formula too. The trick is to get the right teats - you'll probably have to experiment a bit...

I mixed fed for ages with dd2. The only thing is, you need to establish bf first, but don't leave introducing bottles too late or they won't take the bottle.

It is possible, and imho, much, much better for everyone.

You just need to get the timings right. I think when baby is about 4/5 weeks, assuming no probs with bf, introduce a bottle.

(and it's not a stupid question)
(and you're not being previous)

I gave DS bottles when he was a week old, and carried on fully bf for four months. He wasn't gaining weight and midwives insisted I express a gazillion times a day, and then give him a bottle after EVERY breastfeed. Highly annoying but at least I never had a prob getting him to take the bottle.

Good luck on TTC!

Thanks very much all of you. Will go and report back to my TTC colleagues!

Hi fleacircus (great name by the way).

Don't worry about asking questions too early, it's great you want to breastfeed and are starting to gather info. It is possible to express and give some feeds from a bottle, thousands of women do it every day, especially those who work outside the home.

I'm not an expert in this, but I think there can be an issue if you try to regularly bottle feed before breast feeding is really established. In general the advice seems to be to wait until feeding is established and then try a bottle of expressed milk.

We first gave our son a bottle of expressed milk at about 3 weeks as we were at a wedding and also leaving him with MIL for the evening. He was initially a wee bit funny but took it ok in the end. left him a bottle again at about 3 months, but had left a faster teat (think it was 3 holes for some reason) and he wasn't happy. We didn't use bottles for a few months after that, started when I went back to work at 5 and a half months. He has always taken them without problems.

Hope that helps

ooh, forgot to say, if you are bfing, it is much easier to get someone else to give baby their first bottle, and for you to leave the room. They can smell the milk on you and they want you. If you're not there, they are much more likely to go with the second best alternative.

flea, not a stupid question at all - I am a breastfeeding counsellor and it is always discussed in antenatal classes.

The healthiest and safest way to feed your baby is to breastfeed exclusively for 6 months and then at around this time, introduce othe foods alongside breastfeeding. Expressing is a fantastically useful skill to learn, as it enables the baby to remain breastfed even if mum is out. It is quite wrong to tell mothers that they can't do this because of confusing the baby - I do wish people would get their facts right

However, I think it's sensible not to express in the early weeks unless you have to - getting bf established is the priority, and you can become quite uncomfortable if you express and then miss a feed. It takes time to express at first, and there is simply not much time when a baby is newborn, and feeding frequently.

There are no teats or bottles that are universally better than any others - people have different experiences with them.

There's a lot of info on the mumsnet boards and there are some expressing threads which will also help you.

I have mixed fed ds from day 1 [not through choice but that is another story]!Anyway it works really well for him, he has never been confused. It is working really well for us, so every cloud has a silver lining as the old saying goes.

I am sorry, Tiktok it was me that wondered if a baby might be confused by switching between breast and bottle I'm sorry if you got at yet another person with misleading information - but I wasn't saying it as a fact, genuinely wondering. I have no idea where I got the idea from either - but it seems a common misconception.

Thanks everyone for the advice... we are glad that Fleacircus was brave enough to come and ask on our behalf

Sorry, Ready, I didn't check the thread directly - just took flea's report of it for granted! It sounded more dogmatic than it was, sorry

It's certainly the case that people wonder about confusion, and it's also the case that if breastfeeding isn't going well, and bottles are introduced without any real help with the bf, the baby can 'vote' for bottles because they're more productive ... and I have come across babies who have been difficult to transition back to the breast after a time on bottles, even a short time.

But it's not a reason for mothers to be concerned about the occasional 'convenience bottle' of ebm

Interesting thread. My ds was 6 weeks prem and we really struggled to get bfeeding going. We were both really unhappy and he was losing lots of weight and not latching on right and I was in agony. I suggested giving him some ebm in a bottle to allow my nips to recover and the midwives all sounded horrified about the idea and basically said to me that if was given a bottle (even once) before bfeeding had got going he would get confused and we would not be able to breastfeed. Anyway, I got to the point where I had to give him a bottle as I was in so much pain and I was so traumatised by the whole breastfeeding experience (much head grabbing and trying to force him onto my breast by different midwives) that I didn't even attempt bfeeding until he was 4 months old but kept expressing and bottle feeding.

I finally felt brave enough to try again and he has been exclusively bf for nearly 3 months now. I wish I hadn't worried so much about whether I would wreck his chances of ever bfeeding again.

Personally, I never want to see a breastpump again as long as I live

No need to apologise Tiktok - I just felt I should come and say that I'm not another annoying person that spouts stuff as facts - there are lots out there though, so I understand your

My concern is that I want DH to bond with the baby by feeding, and it not just be me that experiences the bond during feeds - and I don't want it to just be an occasional convenience thing - IYSWIM? So I wonder if it would be better for both of us to just use bottles (EBM not formula) to avoid baby only wanting Dad to feed because that way fills the belly quicker?

Sorry if I am not really making any sense, ttc brings with it so many questions and thoughts, and concerns for doing the right thing. Thanks again for your help.

Ready, this is a great topic, and worthy of a new thread - how about starting one, here in the breast and bottle folder?

Dads really, really really do not need to 'feed to bond' - dads can show the baby, from the very start, that love doesn't have to come with a meal attached to it ;) , dads can give skin to skin comfort, cuddles, baths...and the time you breastfeed only is a tiny amount of time (6 mths) compared to the lifetime a dad will be a dad.

My experience is that people worry about this bonding thing and there is no basis to it - grown up dads can understand (surely) that their baby's health is the number one priority, and their relationship with the baby should not depend on interfering with this by giving formula...ebm is of course breastmilk but it is a hassle to express to give by bottle more than occasionally, and most women would not choose to do this. The physical closeness of getting the milk from the source direct is also important to a baby's development and, indeed, the direct way allows the baby to establish the supply and take in what he needs.

But do start a thread with a title something like 'how do dads bond with breastfed babies?' - it would be so interesting to hear people's experiences.

And Ready, if you only ever give ebm, then you, and your baby, miss out on a lot.....IMO.

I just thought I would add in my experience of this.

When starting bf with ds, because he had a tongue-tied (different issue altogether!) I found establishing feeding very difficult, and the worst advice I got was to put him on formula with a fast flow teat!!!

The reasons this was bad in our case was:

1. he then was having the milk pour down with the bottle with no effort, so that when it came to breast feeding it was too much hard work for him.

2. the person forgot to tell me to express when the formula was being given, to help keep up the stimulation for my supply.

3. Two years later we finally found out why the formular was making him sick - he is intolerant to milk protein, so I was causing him bleeding in his gut, and nappy rash from the acidic poo due to the formula milk. (this is another story altogether)

Re: dads bonding with babies, strangely I found the best thing that happened with us in dad-baby bonding was related to me breastfeeding!!! Feeds were with me feeding the baby and then passing baby over to dad for winding. I was useless at getting the wind up, but he was fantastic, and it always gave him a part of the job of feeding. He bonded much better than I did, his was an instant bond with both our children. I took 5 months to bond with our son and I was doing the breastfeeding !!!!

I would also like to pass on one other lesson I learnt about expressing, it is that it is harder to get the right amount of milk out by expressing than with feeding normally. But I do know from experience that even when you are expressing and getting virtually nothing out, that the stimulation itself is helpful in increasing the milk supply, although it did take three days to catch up with what I needed each time. Trying to be relaxed while expressing is not easy either!

Sorry I have waffled on a bit here. I hope that it helps to hear someone elses experience.

my dd2 had mixed feeds and then we managed to go to total breastfeeding - there was no confusion between breast or bottle.

Thanks very much TikTok you have certainly given me plenty to think about. I don't know where my worries over DH not bonding the same as me came from, but I can see now that it won't be a problem! And I will endeavour to breastfeed. I am really pleased that Flea asked the question, as I would have continued to think that DH should share feeding or miss out!

I love Mum03's idea of DH doing the winding!

Thanks again, all I need to do now is work out how to get pregnant