Moving from breast to bottle - help please! (6.5 month old)

[Lalalul]

Hi all,

I have work meetings that I need to attend that will require me to be away from my baby for 1-3 nights. First is in April, and the long one (3 nights) is June. I am struggling with moving from breast to bottle, my 6.5 month old will take a bottle and actually gets excited when he sees it, but sometimes he will only take 30ml (1 oz), and on a good feed the most he’s ever had is 150ml (5oz) which can take a whole wake window of dipping to and from to have.

we have offered a bottle every day for 6 weeks now. He was also combi fed from birth - 3.5 months, taking one feed a day from the bottle (usually only 60-90ml) but moved to EBF from 3.5 months.

My current plan of action: I’m replacing the morning feed every day and not topping up with breast anymore. I’m also giving him his evening feed with a bottle but I do offer a top up just before bed with breast. Leftover formula I’m adding to his porridge. He’s only on one meal a day at the moment, sometimes two but he isn’t eating much.

I'm worried he isn’t taking a full feed from the bottle. I would like to stop breastfeeding for various reasons, and I am of course worried about my work trips if he is still not taking full feeds from the bottle.

The health visitor told me he should be taking 7/8oz a feed and he is nowhere near this!

any advice? Does anyone have a bottle fed baby who takes less than the ‘recommended’ 7/8oz per feed?

I am trying a cup too, and he drinks some but most goes all over him. He will take about 1oz (30ml) from a cup before he decides it’s more fun to blow raspberries into and make it go everywhere haha.

thanks so much

To add, I give him an empty bottle to play with and also let him play with his bottle with milk in once he takes it out his mouth after 1-2oz.

If it's only about the work meetings, TBH I'd say you can't go as you're BF and they should respect this/let you join remotely. For an employer to expect you to stop BF to facilitate a meeting would be ridiculous.

If you want to stop for your own reasons, recognise that he's much more likely to take a bottle from someone else.

Who will care for him when you're away? Can they spend a day with him and persist with the bottle? If it's one night for the April one and he will eat porridge, I wouldn't worry too much. By June lots of things will have changed and he'll probably be eating more solids too.

Thanks @NoCloudsAllowed! my husband has tried for a morning when I’m out and he takes similar amounts. I think my next step will to be to go out for a day. It’s work meetings but also I do want to stop breast feeding too for personal reasons. I need to remind myself how far off June is. It feels soon but in baby world a lot will change in that tums frame!

The advice the HV is giving you is a little dubious to say the least.

Yes a FF baby of 6.5 months is likely to take 7 or 8 floz but not all do. You only have to read threads on here where FF babies are taking a little and often.

1 floz os actually ok. BF babies take on average 25 floz on 24 hours so anything over 1 Floz can be counted as a feed.

I think you're doing it the right way. Choose one feed, swap it to a bottle feed and then in 2 weeks swap another feed.

It will take him a while to adjust to the new amounts he'll have to drink.

By June will he be 10 months? At 10 months they only need 13.5 floz a day and will be in three meals.

The thing id concentrate more on is getting DH to do the bedtime rountine and some of the night wakings.

You might have to go out and not be available for the bedtime rountine and the introduction of a bottle then. We did it that way and they just seemed to accept that I wasn't around but they were older so it's not guaranteed to work for you

I had similar. Absolutely would not take a bottle when I went back to work at 6.5 months- shifts, so included evenings and overnights.

in the end I gave up. By 6 months they’re weaning anyway, so whoever was looking after them would give yoghurt, or cereal, rice cakes, etc as a snack instead of a bottle.

worked fine. They breastfed if I was around, solids if I wasn’t.

i did leave ebm and /or formula but they never took it.

so I wouldn’t worry too much.