50-50 from birth

[Hugtheduggee]

Hi

Just wondering ifbanyone has fed 50-50 (ish) formula and breastfeeding/breastmilk from birth, by choice.

This will be my second child. I do not want to exclusively breastfeed. I am happy with if necessary exclusively formula feeding. In an ideal world I'd like to try and achieve a fairly even mix from the start.

I'd 100% rather nipple confusion than a bottle refuser, and want the mix from the outset, even if that means I am doomed to failure.

So, that being said, how can I try and do this? Could I space say 4 bottles during a, 24 period (so every 6 hours perhaps), and bf in between whenever baby seems hungry? If I pumped during those bottle feeds (husband would mostly be doing them), in the early days, would that help?

I did this. Similar to you I didn’t want to exclusively BF as I had a really traumatic experience with my first (he never could do it and lost loads of weight making me very anxious and sad). With number 2 I have been mixed feeding from birth. He is now 7 weeks.

I would say that it’s not an easy option by any means as it requires a LOT of hard work and dedication to maintain the BF element. We we advised to start with top ups so I could build my BM supply. So initially he was having formula after each feed. He was also tongue tied so that helped as he wasn’t going to gain weight quickly with BM alone. So essentially I was doing all of the washing sterilising etc associated with FF but was also BF and pumping.

After a couple of weeks when he was back at birthweight and had had his tongue tie clipped I moved to three bottles a day (morning, lunchtime and evening), of which half the amount was formula and half BM. This was ok for a couple of weeks but he is a very fussy baby and started refusing the breast during the day. This reached a peak at the six week growth spurt. In hindsight I think his tongue tie meant he was a slow and inefficient breastfeeder so came to prefer the faster flow of the bottle.

Like you I had thought I wouldn’t mind nipple confusion as wanted him to be able to take a bottle. But remember BF is hormonally driven - so I found the rejection very upsetting.

He always BF well at night so I decided to bottle feed him during the day and BF evening, night and morning. That took the pressure off us to BF when it wasn’t going well. I have been pumping 3-4x per day so is still getting about half his bottle as BM. Gradually he has come round again and is starting to BF better during the day but it’s still unreliable.

On the plus side we get the benefit of my husband being able to feed him, I get the reassurance of knowing he is full and well fed (my previous experience means I am really anxious about trusting that my babies get the calories they need from BF), I get a good stretch of sleep in the first part of the night, and I carry on giving him the benefit of my milk. But it has been so full on to ensure that we don’t just end up bottle feeding and I have found the emotional side of BF tricky.

I’d also say that, like any aspect of parenting, you can have all the best laid plans in the world but your baby might have other ideas. This baby is a fussy feeder who cluster feeds manically (boob or bottle) in the afternoon and again in the early hours. Our mixed feeding regime does help with the cluster feeding, but the fussiness has made it much less relaxing than I thought and I’ve been on the verge of giving up BF several times (though am happy I haven’t yet!).

Good luck!

I’m doing this with 3 week old DS, after formula feeding dc1. I had similar concerns to you regarding exclusively breastfeeding.

I feed him breast milk during the day and evening, and he gets formula overnight. I’ve been waiting for my supply to be effected as I’m not doing the night feeds, but so far it’s been fine. I’ve found that the break overnight gives my nipples a good chance to “rest”, especially after an evening of cluster feeding.

I have been very lucky so far though- no nipple confusion, no issues with supply, no tongue tie or damaged nipples. If there were any issues that made BF difficult, I’d happily swap to FF exclusively but so far it’s working for us.