Breast to Bottle

[Learnermamma]

My daughter has just turned 6 weeks, and after problems with bf, the HV is not happy with her weight gain - she has dropped 2 centiles since birth. Currently giving 2 ff a day and the rest bf, on her advice.
I am starting 2 feel like the best way 2 go would b 2 go almost exclusively ff (as she is so much nore settled and satisfied 4 longer after as bottle feed.) but wanna still give her 1 or 2 bf a day - so she's still gtting the antibodies and stuff from me. Is this possible and what is the best way of making the transition so that I don't lose my milk supply? And is it possible 2 switch from demand feeding 2 routine, or is it better 2 stick with demand feeding {even though she can b hungry again within 90 mins of having a bottle, especially in the evenings when she cluster feeds)?
Any advice gratefully recieved.

hi learnermamma,
I had problems producing enough milk, so actually supplemented from about 2 months, but did mixed feeds up to about 5.5 months. To keep up my supply, i started all feeds with breast for several months, but had the bottle handy to switch to. Once i stopped feeding so regularly with breast milk (ie not each feed), my supply dropped badly very quickly. I tried loads of stuff to get it back up (all the various 'foods', nutritional tablets, expressing, etc), but it never really came back again. Obviously, this is just my personal experience, but if i were you, i'd consider continuing the bf each time so that your daughter still has your milk supply.

As for demand/routine, I can honestly say that I think it depends on the baby (sorry, not what you wanted to hear).. just like us adults, some babies want to eat a lot a various times and not so much at others. if you try routine feeding, and she's not happy, switch back to demand. You'll probably find that if you're supplementing breast with bottle, the demand feeds will space out of their own accord as the bottle milk takes longer to digest.

I did the same - I fed six times a day and each time started bf (15 min on each side), then topped up with 6oz of formula from 8 weeks. Occasionally, I would just give a bottle. At 5 1/2 months it was just too stressful to keep doing this, so I was advised to choose two feeds (I chose mornings and evenings) to do this, and just give a bottle the other times, dropping one feed at a time and waiting until it felt comfortable to drop the next. At 6 months I now just give a morning feed, and it is still going okay.

Before mix feeding I was feeding every other hour through the day and more often in the evenings - with mix feeding DS put himself into a routine of 7am, 10am, 2pm, 5pm, 6:30pm and 10pm. It was as if I had a different baby!