quick question effects of introducing night time bottle of formula

[Snarf02]

a friend of a friend who is exclusively bf her child (child about 6 wks) is thinking of introducing a bottle of formula at bedtime and has asked for thoughts. Mine have only ever had bm as i wanted them just to have bm. What are the effects of introducing one bottle of formula to the baby and mum. I know that some of the benefits of bf get reduced and about the gut flora changing with one bottle is that correct? Any info grateful as she wants to know the impact of possibly doing this before she makes a decision

Gut flora certainly does change with formula, but it's hard to quantify the effect - it is dose related, though, so one bottle is not as harmful as two bottles, and one bottle once is not as harmful as one bottle every day. If all babies were 'predominantly' breastfed it would make a quantifiable difference to public health (fewer hospital admissions, less infection and so on) but in an individual baby, you can't really pinpoint it, unless the baby has a dramatic allergic reaction.

We know that giving formula does not make a difference to the amount of sleep obtained by the parents - there is a great little study on this, which is referenced somewhere in the mumsnet archives, showing babies who are fully bf give their parents on average 30 mins more sleep at night than the parents who give a bottle of formula.

So, I would wonder what the point of giving formula at night would be, unless she is convinced it would allow her significantly more rest because someone else would be giving the formula. To minimise the effect on her milk supply she would need to express at the time the bottle was being given (or else the long gap between bf might make her feel engorged in the short term, and produce less milk in the medium term) - another reason why it's not necessarily a time or effort saver.

The study that Tiktok is referring to is this one

Thanks for that - I see it is 45 mins more sleep the solely bf parents got, so even better

Just One Bottle Won't Hurt, or will it?

Just one bottle.....

The Case for the Virgin Gut

Does Formula/Solids aid sleep?

Early exposure to cows milk and diabetes

Is this the kind of thing your friend wants to see to help her decide?

Monkies

thanks loads

I think she should look at why she wants to introduce bottle and weigh against the above articles,

Purely anicdotal: DD has bottle before bed due to it being very difficult to feed her properly and me sinking further into depression after spending hours and hours with evening/nightime feeds. We found life (Daughter's too) life much improved by adding 6oz formular (worked hard at expressing but found myself unable to let down).

Also mummy gets a little rest (like now!) and daddy gets to do special nighttime stuff before he goes away for the weekend tomorrow.

Lots of breast milk for my little one but she aint sterile - the world will fill her full of crap anyway, can only protect her so much.

However - breast feeding should be well established.....try expressing.

Nipple confusion: DD can suck from anything and still breastfeed well. She learnt she had to ge her tongue out the way for a bottle.

that info is great thanks.

will save links esp the sleep one for family and friends who all think that i am stupid for not giving a bed-time bottle to 'help'.