Advice sought - return to work at 9 months, breastfeeding —> bottle how many feeds?

[Quickdraw23]

Hi folks,

I’m hoping you can help! I am returning to work in a months time. My baby is currently 8 months old, is predominantly breastfed but happily takes a bottle, has taken to solids.

at the moment he does 6 feeds per day and eats solids 3 x per day. Night weaned himself a month ago.

I am hoping to continue morning and bedtime feeds when I return to work, which leaves 4 feeds currently to replace in the daytime. My partner will be off on leave until he starts nursery at a year.

I went to work yesterday and we had a trial run, with morning and evening BFs and then he drank 1x150ml post breakfast, 1x100ml post nap 1, 1x50ml post lunch and 1x150ml post nap 2. A mix of formula and expressed breast milk. He also ate breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I feel like the sensible thing to do would be to consolidate the bottles a bit but I’m not sure how or what quantities to offer? The post lunch bottle looks the most superfluous, so should we drop that one and offer a bigger bottle post nap 2? Should we offer snack in its place? I’m aware up to age one he should still be getting most nutrients through milk/formula.

if anyone has any advice or a feeding routine that has worked for you I would love to hear from you!

thanks for reading

I went back to work for 3months when DS was 6months old as we did shared parental leave.

Breast fed in morning, expressed twice in work for 2 equivalent bottles during the day. DS took to food well so also ate a fair bit. I breast fed when I got home about 6 and then again at bedtime. He also still had a night feed.

Once I went back on mat leave when he was 9months we settled into the same pattern just breast feeding replacing the two bottles.

But as I said he was one of those babies who took to solids so milk was a top up rather than being most of his nutrition. I know friends who had babies that were far less keen on food so might have needed more feeds

I would start dropping a bottle now. The guidelines are that between 10 and 12 months that they have 450 mls a day so dropping one now should make the transition to going back to work a little easier.