Breastfeeding issues vs bottle at 4 months

[Khanga27]

Hi there

Since a couple of weeks old we have combi fed our baby due to initial weight gain issues while my supply was coming through. This has worked so well for us and now our baby has breast milk for all feeds with the exception of their last feed which is formula, and they sleep through the night. Their third feed of the day is an expressed bottle which I express a few hours before my baby wakes (as otherwise my boobs are over-full). This meant taking out a breastfeed in the day as wanted to follow NHS advice to reduce supply gradually.

However in the last few days we have noticed more possets/small amounts of sick come up after breastfeeds which doesn’t seem to happen after a bottle. This happened at around 2 months old which led to us adjusting position and this helped (had been using rugby hold due to c section). I’ve tried to adjust position to be more upright this time which initially helped, but the first feed of the day still brings up a few possets.

Has anyone else experienced this? With this not happening with the bottle I’m wondering whether this is their latch, or whether it’s position issue vs keeping sat upright during bottle. I’m not sure whether this is perhaps the end of breastfeeding for me and whether I need to perhaps just express and bottle feed? Any advice or experience sharing is very much appreciated.

Some babies are just sicky, surely?! My baby still possets after some feeds at eight months, and it makes no difference whether they are after breastfeeding or formula. If your baby doesn't seem distressed and it's not projectile vomiting of large quantities, surely just keep doing what you are doing?

Sometimes my baby would keep crying for more milk at the breast as the end of feeds and would eat more than she could actually hold because there's always a bit more milk in there and no arbitrary stopping point like bottle. I learned to stop her when I judged she was full, and put up with some crying (a cuddle would settle her). It's possible your baby has eyes bigger than their plate when it comes to the breast!

If you WANT to stop breastfeeding directly and move to pumping - do it! But if you want to keep breastfeeding, then keep it up and don't worry about spit-up. It's normal baby behaviour, it gets less frequent as they get bigger but it doesn't entirely go away IME.