Bottle feeding breastfed baby. Please help

[cornflakes86]

Hi. My baby is 3 weeks old and is almost exclusively breastfed. I had intended to combi feed the baby from the start but have had problems Introducing the bottle. When I am apart from my baby he seems to want to feed from the bottle constantly to the point where he can take too much and which makes him sick. We have tried ebm and bottle of aptamil. He is ok when sucking on the bottle but when it’s finished he cries until gets back to me to breastfed again Or else when offered more bottle he will just keep going and take too much. I need to be able to leave my baby with my husband for a couple of hours but I am not sure this is possible the way things are going. Has anyone else any experience with this ? We have tried giving him a soother but he usually spits it out after a few minutes .

Hello OP. I am no expert, but I would say that 3 weeks is quite early to introduce a bottle to a breastfed baby if you plan to carry on breastfeeding for a while longer. You mention wanting to leave the baby with your husband for a couple of hours - your baby is still tiny, have you got to be able to leave him soon or can you wait a bit longer? When he’s slightly older, his feeds will naturally space out, and you could leave him between breast feeds. At 3 weeks, most babies will still want to feed quite a lot of the time for milk and for comfort. I would carry on with the breastfeeding for now, and think about the bottle when he’s a bit bigger. You could also have a chat with your health visitor about it. Is your health visitor making contact with you as services hopefully start to get more back to normal?

Look up pace feeding. Also I'd feed with breast milk as formula is naturally heavy anyway so would make things worse. No more than an ounce per hour apparently, taking regular intervals to burp baby and give him a chance to realise he's full. Constantly wanting the bottle could be comfort as breastfed babies comfort suckle. Also peak time for cluster feeding and increasing your supply so if you could stick to breast until your supply is established at 6 weeks or so, that would help.

Hi thank you very much for your replies. The health visitor suggested to continue with 1 bottle per day in case baby develops an aversion to bottles but perhaps in this case it is a bit early .