Considering introducing formula at 6 months

[tinierclanger]

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DS will be 6m at the end of January. I was wondering about starting to introduce the odd bottle of formula, mainly to get a bit more freedom - it's very hard for me to express enough for one feed, takes several sessions. Also then DP could do the last feed of the night some nights and I could get a bit of extra sleep before the next one at around 2 or 3.

So two questions - will it just stuff my supply and I will end up exclusively on formula? And is there any chance DS will start to sleep a bit better?!? At the moment he goes to bed beautifully around 6, but then often wakes around 9, but I don't feed him at this point and we sh/pat him to resettle, so I can stall feeding him till around 10.30. Then I feed him the next time he wakes providing it's at least 4 hours later... but sometimes I cave and do it a bit early and then he seems to wake up earlier the next morning, hungry.

A good night is the bed at 6, feed at 10.30, 2.30, then up again at 6. A bad night has lots of wakings in between.

My main question is about the supply though. I really do want to carry on BF past 6 months but just don't think I can do it exclusively anymore,

Lots of people go back to work at this time and carry on feeding. I went back at 5 months and expressed for when I wasnt there and had formula for if the expressed stuff ran out so I was away from baby for most of the day, five days a week with expressing happening once a day. No effect on supply at all although I cosleep so fed a lot at night.

Hi Hercules, thanks for that. It's encouraging, although I don't really want to express for the 'missed' feeds as that sort of defeats the object of the whole thing.

I only expressed till dd I think iirc was about 7 months and then supplemented with formula when I was not there and no more expressing. Your supply is well established now.

I only expressed once in the day which in no way made up for missed day time feeds if you see what i mean.

at 6 months I think your supply should be well established. Presumably your LO will have food too.