Sorry to be such a pain harping on about this........

[fannyannie]

but I really appreciate the opinions, thoughts and ideas from people on here with regards to my uncertaintity about switching over to bottles.

I now think I'm swaying towards FF'ing DS3 - but not certain. If I were to switch to bottles for a few days - but keep expressing regularly what would the chances be of me being able to re-introduce the breast if I decided I want to continue with things as they are ATM (currently almost exclusively breastfeeding during the day having a 'top up' bottle before bed and then one bottle at 3am(ish) so far my body seems to be coping ok with the 'break' overnight).

Fanny - if you switch to bottle for a few days, your baby may or may not come back happily to the breast. There's no way of quantifying that, I don't think, sorry....you would probably be able to encourage a 'breast refuser' though, if that's what happened, but it might not be easy.

My MW told me that breast milk was like yoghurt - very good for you, nice, light and easy to digest. FM was more like sticky toffee pudding, not quite so good for you, left you feeling full and sleepy. I don't quite know where i am going with this, but maybe once baby has tried the sticky toffee pudding, it's hard to be satisfied with yoghurt again.
Still, it's completely your call.

so in theory (depending on baby) it would be possible - and I'd be able to get my milk supply back up again with lots of frequent feeds?

I just think the only way I'm going to be able to make a solid decision is to try bottles only for a few days and see how I feel then. Not sure how much of my wanting to still breastfeed is purely based on the knowledge that its nutrionally the best for him and that somehow I'd be 'depriving' him what's best for him.............and how much is just my own fears about would I feel that I'd let him down etc etc.

One of my favourite MN quotes was "you give birth, they remove the placenta and insert the guilt"
You will always feel guilty about something you are doing/not doing with baby.

lol sockmonkey - I like that one.

It's odd - as I ended up switching to FF with DS2 when he was just 5 days old (DS1 had 14 months of breastfeeding - never took a bottle even of ebm!) and although I was upset for one or two days I've never really felt guilty about it.

Not sure why I'm feeling so bad about the propsect of switching DS3 at 5 weeks old! Perhaps it's because I'd got 3 weeks of exclusive breastfeeding under our belts and assumed it was pretty much sorted..........but then discovered it wasn't .

Mind you I'm at least happier now he is actually taking a bottle from me without me having to hold him at arms length - he will now cuddle right up to me and drink it - unlike this time last week when he wouldn't take a drop.

I'm starting to think now that it's more of a "it's my last baby and I want everything to be "perfect" (whatever that is) than "omg how terrible I may be about to give my DS3 Formula fulltime".

Feel odd giving advice to 3x mum as I've just got the one and still don't feel as if I know what I'm doing. BUT I had lots of trouble with cracked nipples and pain early on and had to ff dd for a week or so, topped up with the tiny amount of EBM I managed to produce. I did get her back on the breast and was iirc (it's all kind of a blur) exclusively bf after a couple of weeks. One HV told me that it's easier to get a ff baby back onto the breast than a bf baby onto the bottle, though this is the exact opposite of what I've heard/read everywhere else.

MissTea - all opinions are gratefully recieved - goot to hear of a success story with getting a baby back from FF to breast - I probably won't be going back to breastfeeding exclusively (infact almost certainly won't) but if I do decide I want to breastfeed him still nice to know it's possible

sockmonkey - i like that yogurt analogy. it makes sense!