Can I breast feed just in the morning?

[mothertobe789]

Hi, just looking for some advice. My baby is 4 and a half months old. She was ebf then from 6 weeks until a few days ago she had one bottle of formula around 6pm and breast fed the rest of the time.
Recently I've been finding it hard to keep breast feeding all the time as she is wanting fed every hour or so I don't think she's getting enough from me.
The past few days i have given her a bottle at about 12pm then another one at 6pm, breast fed inbetween.
After some consideration I think it's will be best if she was able to take formula during the day (probably 3 bottles at 7oz) but I would still like to breast feed first thing in the morning and throughout the night (she only normally wakes once in the night if at all).
Has anyone else done a similar thing and did your milk still come in enough to be able to do this?
Thanks.

I’m interested in the replies you get for this.
My boy is 4 and half months and has been exclusively breast fed- however with summer coming and the fact I have 2 older boys I am wanting to wean off breast on to formula, but unsure when I could still feed on breast x

She is likely going through a growth spurt hence the hourly feeds this will change. It is difficult to keep up milk supply if only doing 1 feed a day as stopping the feeds makes your body produce less milk. Some people manage to combi feed easily, others don't.
I would also be careful about dramatically altering the feeds as this puts you at the risk of mastitis. If you do want to combi feed then drop one feed at a time slowly so your body gets used to it.

If you cut back that much without expressing I would think your supply would reduce quite considerably and make it difficult! But I don't know it might work you won't know unless you try!

Cluster feeding is very normal at 4 months as they go through a sudden growth spurt at this age. It shouldn't last more than a week or so. Obviously you CAN reduce the breastfeeds, but there are still pros to sticking with it you might not have considered:

A reduced risk of SIDS
Breast milk adapts to your baby's temperature to keep her at the perfect level of hydration - great for the warmer weather!
The lurgy-fighting antibodies should she fall ill
Reduced risk of you developing mastitis if you keep going til 6 months

I recommend pumping and freezing at least for the next couple of weeks, and see if she settles back to her old routine, before you cut back too drastically. When you do reduce the nursing sessions just drop one feed at a time and ease into it.

I’ve done something similar since my 4mo was about 8 weeks and have basically gone against all the advice about supply and have been expecting BF to tail off but we are still going strong. I’ve come to the conclusion that my breasts hold a lot of milk so I can go longer between feeds without it impacting much. No idea how one tells if that’s the case though! This is why I do it:

Baby has always been a tricky feeder - tongue tied and very big and hungry which is a bad combo (even though I’ve had the TT divided). Sometimes he will out and out refuse the breast and is often a fussy bottle feeder too. I had a terrible and stressful BF experience with my first (weight loss, lots of anxiety etc) so didn’t really have the confidence to exclusively BF (and my fussy boy didn’t make this time around easy). So this is what I do:

He has consistently BF at night (sometimes multiple times). We cosleep and I feed him lying down. We also usually have one or two BFs during the day (but some days we don’t have any at all as he is usually far too distracted). They’re not usually full feeds so I think of it as BF “top ups” but sometimes he’ll reject his bottle if he has just BFed a lot.

I hired a double pump from Medela and pump 2-3 times per day (one in the morning, one after kids bedtime and one before bed). I seem to consistently get about 300ml from the pump (more if he hasn’t BF at all; less if he has BF a lot).

It is a bit of a faff and sometimes I think I’ll just stop and will bottle feed him. But when it goes well I love the closeness of the BFs we do and find the night feeds convenient and cosy! I’m also massively proud of myself for getting this far as I was convinced we’d stop at 8 weeks.

Sorry for the essay. I guess the point is I have found you can mess around a lot with the BF/bottle mix and still keep both going. But I am very diligent about my daily pumping sessions (and love giving him my breastmilk in a bottle).

Good luck!