Need advice with introducing a bottle milk

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My baby is few days shy of turning six months old. She has been exclusively breastfed and at times given breast milk with a bottle. She is achieving all her milestones. I want to introduce infant milk once a day, right before her night sleep. This is for several reasons - hoping she will sleep longer, not sure if she is getting enough before sleep with breast milk and trying to reduce sleep association with feed.
I have never bottle fed my baby so I have few questions and would appreciate some help and advice. Some of my questions are:
which is the best bottle milk to introduce?
how much milk should I be giving her before sleep?
any tips I should be aware of?
what type of bottle to use and teet flow to use?
should I even do this at all? I am so conflicted.

I would really appreciate some advice on this. Thanks

Any first stage milk will do OP, just choose one that’s readily available in your area. All formulas in the UK have to stick to pretty strict nutritional guidelines, any brand saying that one is better than the other is pretty much just marketing.

Will LO take a bottle now? If not I personally wouldn’t bother with introducing one at this age and would go straight to cup feeding.

If she will take a bottle, I’m perhaps not the best to advise you on which ones to try as neither of mine would ever take one.

As for amounts, BF babies take roughly 25 Floz in 24 hours so if she takes between 2 to 3 Floz, that is a good feed. Some babies will take more but that’s usually the novelty of the bottle.

Kellymom has this article on bottle feeding a BF baby which might be useful and I’d also have a read of this on introducing formula or solids to improve sleep.

Have you tried the No Cry Sleep Solution if you’re struggling with LO waking? We found that useful

There’s no evidence giving formula helps sleep. At that age i would be moving to cups rather than bottles anyway. And there’s nothing wrong with feeding to sleep, if it works! She’s still tiny.

Agree, forget about bottles and move to a cup. You might need to experiment with a few designs to find one she can cope with.

Thanks everyone. I had read the same but it’s my desperation to try things out at this stage. My problem is less about feeding but more about sleep. She is waking up every two hours and it isn’t sustainable. I am trying everything and this was one of it. I might not give her bottled milk in this case. I don’t think it will improve her sleep.

You could try a cup of milk before bed? I used to give mine an open cup in the bath so that they would get used to drinking from it and I didn’t have to worry about spills.

Have you moved her to her own room? Has that helped with sleep? Have you tried feeding every 2 hours in the day and using breast compressions?

Unfortunately waking every 2 hours is not unusual at that age. Are you breastfeeding a lot in the day, mine was feeding loads at that age. Can you cosleep?

Crack on with weaning, make the evening meal priority and add calories to whatever solids you give (eg porridge oats with peanut butter).

I would also say that when I moved my (combination fed) baby to their own room around 5 months, I sent my partner in for settles before 2am, then I would BF, then dad again for wakes until 5am. Baby would not settle for me without breastfeeding but would for dad. This has the advantage of baby doing much bigger feeds at 2 and 5 and being properly milk drunk and therefore going easily back down.

Eventually this also stopped working, daddy was sent in with formula and baby stopped waking overnight for feeds at all. However, we had started solids at 18 weeks (a capital offence on MN) and baby was really well established with an evening meal at 6.5 months, so not waking with hunger.

Do you have a partner? The way we improved things at that age was sending my DH to handle any wakes before 3am as I noticed that baby was not hungry and just sucking for comfort before that time. I wasn't comfortable with letting him cry it out and I figured a cuddle and rock from a loving parent is not too traumatising. It really reduced night wakings to just one, around 4/5am. And it worked in like 2 nights.

I guess baby decided dad with no boobs isn't worth waking up for 😂