Combination feeding - how often?

[angelahpjc]

I hope someone can offer some help or what worked for them, my HV hasn't been too helpful so far

Baby is 14 weeks and I've mostly been bf, with one ff at 10pm. She feeds usually every 3 hours (7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm, 10pm and sometimes a night feed at either 2am or 4am). So 7 times a day. I'm moving to exclusive ff and dropped the 1pm and 4pm feeds, replacing them with bottle/formula. I'm hoping to drop the remaining feeds in the next couple of weeks to bottle. However I don't know how much baby should get and whether I still need to stick to the 3 hour slots - previously if she slept over she'd get really annoyed to be late feeding so I'd wake her (during the day) to feed.

I'm making up 6oz, sometimes she takes most of it but others she only takes 2oz.

Any thoughts? (PS, totally respect people that want to continue ebf, but my decision is made - had a horrible start with traumatic birth and time in HDU for baby so while I appreciate opinions, I don't need persuading to stick with breast. It has been a hard road and I was advised to move to formula but stuck with it, now is the right time for me to change over).

Hi angela,
How are you getting on? Check out the feeding guide on whatever formula you are using as a guide to start with, but baby knows best and will tell you if hungry.

There's a rule about number of oz per lb of weight which is what the feeding guide is based on. If your baby is roughly getting the total number of oz per day (e.g. if the guide says 7 feeds of 7oz = 49 oz per day) then you're doing alright.

There is no need to stick to a set time, if baby is hungry you'll know and if they are full they will start to pull away or stop sucking. As my formula fed baby got.older he started going longer and longer between feeds to the point at nearly 6 months he only takes 3-4 feeds per day of 8oz.. takes a while to get used to not feeding every few hours. He's not on solids yet either.

Good luck x

I think she’s probably only taking 3oz sometimes as a bf baby takes roughly 1 oz an hour. If you are moving over to fling, it takes time for them to adjust to the increased quantities of milk she will need to drink. I think you are doing everything right in doing it gradually to give her time to adjust.

Once she’s completely ff she needs to be having roughly 2.5floz of formula in 24 hours per pound of weight. So a 10 baby needs 25floz of milk a day.

Yiu can continue to wake her after 3 hours if that suits you both.

HTH.

Thanks for your help! Was reassuring. DD has taken to the bottle really well and it's now a lot clearer to see her hungry/full cues - she's always been bang on 3 hours since fairly early on but giving it some leeway to see how she goes. She tends to get hangry if she sleeps through for more than 10 mins, lol, she thinks I've fiddled her out of a feed!

As fate would have it I need to stop bf now anyway as finally been diagnosed with PND and on meds to help. Glad I started weaning her on to formula when I did or I think I'd be a mess trying to do it with everything else going on x