Breastfeeding expressing

[user1474320794]

My baby is coming up to five months (on Christmas Day) been breastfeeding with her having the very odd bottle when she was a lot younger. Although I'm very much enjoying it, the time has come where I feel if I was to leave her with her dad or grandparents that I would be able to, but coming across a few problems which just wondering if anyone has any advice for?

1. she won't take formula as soon as the bottle goes near her mouth and she knows straight away that it's formula she screams and gets pissed off.
2. she will only take a bottle if it's expressed and only if it during the day if I'm lucky this is it's a bit of hit and miss, won't take a bottle in the evening.
3. I am only able to express about five ounces and only in the morning when full up, and it's beginning to make me wonder whether I'm producing enough for her as she is slowly dropping in the centile. Was always between 50-75th now she's in the 25th the past 3 month slowly dropped down, not fast.

It's very normal for breastfed babies to drop centile lines after 3mo. My eldest dropped from 91st to 75th at this age and continued to track that line (even now at 2.5yo) and my 7mo has dropped from 91st to 50th. Absolutely normal as long as they are having plenty of nappies, hitting milestones, alert, generally happy and content etc. So please don't worry about supply.

It's also very very common to not be able to express much. Babies are better than pumps.

I haven't yet tried DD with a bottle but when I swapped DS to bottles I found I had to make the formula a bit hotter then was really recommended. Obviously not so it burnt him but definitely warmer than body temperature.

Expressing is not an indication of supply. Many women are unable to express but exclusively breast feed.

She seems so much more satisfied after a bottle of expressed though guess she's probably getting it faster. Do you know of a formula that is most similar to breast milk? I've tried cow and gate and she was having none of it.

But very true about the temp she also won't have it unless very warm, fussy little things

TBH she's quite close to the age when she'll start eating a bit of food rather than relying on BM alone. My two both dropped some daytime feeds once their food intake got going, and they started to have water from a Tippee or Doidy cup. That made it a bit easier to leave them, mine were bottle refusers too.

(I meant 6mo BTW, not suggesting you introduce solids at 5mo.)

Re. the volume of breastmilk expressed - with DS1, he was fed mostly on expressed breastmilk until after we started weaning, as we couldn't get breastfeeding to work. If I expressed as many times a day as he took a bottle, I'd get more breastmilk than he would drink, so I know I had no problems with supply.

DS2 was breastfed. When I started trying to express milk for bottles for him, I got very little expressed breastmilk out. I'm sure that my milk supply won't have been worse than it was with DS1, I think it's just that I wasn't getting much expressed milk out because most of my breastmilk was going straight into DS2 when he was breastfeeding.

So basically I wouldn't worry that not expressing much means you don't have enough milk.

Initially I wanted to breastfeed until six months when I start to wean and get her straight on the follow on milk but getting to five months I feel might make it slightly easier to combine and for her to take a bottle for others to be involved in her feeding, she's been very successful today