Please talk to me about mixed feeding

[Bubblebox]

Ds is 4 weeks old. Very sleepy when breastfed and was loseing a lit of weight.
Feeding has become a long cycle of breastfeed, express and top up with either breast milk or formula. It is exhausting and I am close to giving up and just giving formula.
I wondered whether mixed feeding might offer an alternative and would love to hear others experience.
I wondered

• what your feeding schedule looked like.

-whether it is necessary to express for every missed breastfeed.

• whether anyone had managed to go back to ebf or mainly bf once baby was bigger and stronger.

Any advice or experience would be brilliant. TIA

Hi @Bubblebox

That is exactly what had happened to me at the very start and then my MIL kept saying I was starving my DD so I've been very insecure about BF as I cannot see how much she is actually drinking and whether it is enough so we decided to pump and combine with formula.

DD is now 12 weeks today and her schedule has changed. It had been fairly consistent and then it was just the amount that was being upped and she went longer stretches but drank larger amounts. But the past week, her feeding schedule and sleep schedule has changed.

It is important to express when you are not BF so your supply doesn't drop. Mine did and I had to work it back up by power pumping, have tried all sorts such as taking fenugreek, lactation cookies and eating porridge with flaxseed for breakfast. The most helpful thing I've found so far is definitely keeping myself hydrated! Currently I do not have enough to feed DD solely with breastmilk for the whole day so we still do a combination.

Best part of expressing and/or combination feeding is that DH can participate.

@Mochiface Thank you so much.
It really bothers me too- not knowing how much/ if he is getting anything. I am finding that it makes me anxious and was the same with DD when she was little.
I also tried fenugreek and just found that it made me smell awful.

You're welcome @Bubblebox

I get where you're coming from. Do what you think is right for yourselves.You've done really well to have been EBF! Honestly, it's so hard and especially if you've felt anxious about it as well. It's more work pumping but to give us that peace of mind, it is well worth it imo.

I've been on Fenugreek for the past one to two weeks, I'm not sure if it's working for me, it's definitely not what people have said where they have an abundance of milk and they constantly feel full and had to cut back on the amount of fenugreek they've been taking.. And I also haven't had the side effect of smelling like anything at all so I wonder whether my body just doesn't absorb it at all 🤷🏻‍♀️ 🤷🏻‍♀️

Hi @Bubblebox How are you getting on?

I ended up combi feeding but slowly moved to mainly BF. I didn't follow a schedule/routine (after about 3 hideous days where I did and it was soul destroying). I just tried to BF on demand as much as possible and only topped up if baby seemed really unsettled after a lot of BF. So I would switch boobs back and forth and use breast compressions (google if needed) until baby would just not settle on either boob or sleep. On an evening this could be a couple of hours of on and off BF until giving the bottle. I also stopped giving expressed milk and just gave formula as top ups. This took the pressure off expressing, meant I didn't need to sterilise the equipment (I only ever got a tiny amount, I wasn't chucking away litres of breast milk). I actually just used to hand express any time baby slept for a couple of hours or after she had a bottle of formula, often in the bath or shower. My mantra was boob first, bottle if desperate, and if my hands are free and I'm not asleep then express something. I found over a few weeks boob seemed to be working more and we didn't feel the need to bring out the bottle as often.