Will bottle feeding an expressed feed in the evening mess up my supply?

[ZippysMum]

I am breastfeeding 8 week old twins. The larger twin seems to want more milk than I have at the 'bedtime feed' - he can sometimes stay on for 2 hours and ends up punching the boob and pulling off - it seems like he is not getting as much as he would like. He is putting on weight really well, by the way - 3/4 lb per week.

They are fed on demand - about 2 hourly in the day and they are going a couple of 4 hour stretches at night.

I seem to have loads of milk in the night (well, early hours ). Last night I expressed 230mls.

My question is: is it reasonable to express at night to do the 'bedtime feed' from a bottle, or will this mess up my supply? Or could we use the expressed bottles as an 11.30pm roll-over feed so I could get a bit more sleep? Yesterday, when we tried this for the first time, it did seem to knock out into a milky stupor so we could get some sleep satisfy DT1.

But I don't want to do anything that will jeopardise the breastfeeding.

Advice? Many thanks.

Hi there. I didn't have twins, just the one, but did this from 6 weeks with my dd, mostly to get some more sleep. I expressed in the morning a couple of times and then used to breastfeed her about 7pm, put her down to sleep, eat my own dinner, and then try to express again before getting in bed. I never got a lot of milk out after dinner, but once she started to sleep through until 6 or 7am I found that if I expressed then it seemed to keep the supply up better than if she fed at 7pm and then that was it for 12 hours. My DH would then do a 'dream feed' at about 10pm with the bottle, so I could just get in bed when I'd had dinner.

Worked a treat, and she was on boob milk only until six months, so no problems with supply. Sounds like you produce a lot more milk than I did anyway, or at least have less difficulty extracting it! The bottle seemed to keep her asleep longer as well, I think because she was getting fatty morning milk instead of the thinner evening milk.

You can always try it and if it doesn't seem to work out go back to feeding them yourself - it doesn't take long for the supply to build up again. Hope it gets you a few more hours' sleep!

Philippa

Thanks Phillipa

Glad it worked for you! Yes, I guess it isn't a one-way street.

I am also hoping for a bit more sleep!

I expressed with both my first and now 4 week old.

I bf dd#1 for 18 months with up to 3 bottles of ebm a day from her birth{ long story} with the rest of her feeds on the breast, only time I noticed a reduction in my supply was when I was ill or exhausted, then I got medication from GP to increase supply.

With dd#2 my nipples have been so sore that she has had 2-3 bottles ebm daily as well as bf and I have not noticed any reuction so far.

I find expressing less demanding than constant feeding and that is only with one. We also gave a dream feed of formula from about 8 weeks with dd1 which helped her sleep about 4-5 hours as compared to 2 with bm alone.

Loads of bf mums will warn you away from expressing as they say it will a, cause nipple/teat confusion, but my babies where not that daft, and b, the said reduction in supply.

It sounds as if expressing the night feed would make perfect sense.

Good luck