Move 8 day old from formula to breastmilk

[Lucy211]

Hi! I have a 8 day old baby. She’s currently having 300ml of formula a day, but I want to move her on to exclusively breastfed - any tips?

The reason she’s on so much formula is when she was 4 days old she’d lost 10% of her birth weight/had a day with no nappies and was very lethargic- so we went to A&E, and they said move onto formula. So we had 2 days where we basically poured formula down her throat and while I did offer breastmilk, I think she learnt to prefer the bottle. Now her weight is up, I’d like to reduce formula, but whenever I try to offer breast she just screams at me!

I don’t have any advice, hopefully someone who has managed this will be along soon but I just wanted to recommend the national breastfeeding helpline. You can call 24/7 but also they respond to Instagram or Facebook messages 24/7 if you don’t want to call. I’ve used them a few times (using the messengers) for various middle of the night questions and have found them to be helpful and kind.
Best of luck OP

Reach out to your local feeding team & breastfeeding support team for advice OP, but the answer really is to just persevere if you want to BF. It’s a process, baby learning a skill, your body figuring out how much is needed & at what time, the problem with using formula like this is that now your body has no idea what feeds are needed and at what time so it will take a bit of time to get that up to speed. Pumping would be a better option for building supply, even if you want to give that in a bottle because at least then your body is still learning when a feed is needed. Definitely reach out to feeding team x

Thank you both! I’ll keep working at it :)

Hi OP I’ve just been through similar with my now 3-week old twins. We were admitted to hospital for a few days after both babies dropped too much weight and worked with the infant feeding team there. I’d really recommend contacting the team in your area as they were invaluable for me. I’ll explain what we did but obviously Im not an expert, they might advise differently for you.
We started off doing three hourly feeds where I offered the breast and then gave a top up from the bottle which was worked out based on their birth weights (think it was around 40-50 ml). Initially we used formula for this, but after each theee hourly feeds I would also pump for 15 minutes to increase my supply and so we gradually moved to topping up with breast milk. Once they were both gaining weight again we were taught about pace feeding where the baby has to actively suck on the bottle. It’s so much easier for them to drink from a bottle that they can start to prefer it just because it gets them milk quicker so this is more like breastfeeding. Gradually we reduced top ups and we’ve been back to exclusively breastfeeding almost two weeks now with only the occasional top ups of expressed milk when they’ve both been cluster feeding for hours and I need a break! Our feeding team lent me a hospital grade pump for a week too which helped, Im back to using my home one now but happier that my supply is more established. Hopefully the team on to it area is as helpful!

In the short term op you need to build and sustain supply. Start pumping as often as you can - the more you take the the more you make. Not sure from your post if you have been doing this but if not then it’s really important, especially if you have never breastfed before.
Getting baby back to the breast is going to help if she can feed so I would seek support with positioning from a bfc or ibclc but nipple shields will usually help with this too. The aim is to remove them later but that can be sorted after feeding is established.
If you have observable supply I would be tempted to try the shields personally and start to pace bottle feeds.

Hi, I was in a similar situation and the infant feeding team really helped get me back on track but in short you'll need to pump to build supply. Nipple shields are also helpful as the make the nipple more bottle like for baby to latch.

You need to pump every 2 hours - day and night. I laid out 12 sweets to keep track. I got the latch back by bathing with my baby. Lots of skin-to-skin time. Pop your baby in your sling wearing only a nappy. You need to be topless.