Tell me your combi feeding experiences please

[BeeHobz]

Hello MNers!

I'm looking for some more experienced mums to share with me their combi feeding experiences. I EBF my 14 week old DS until recently, but now we give him a bottle of formula before bedtime (about 8pm-ish) that sees him through until 3ish.

It's really helped take the pressure off me in the evening as I'm not stuck under a baby for hours BUT I am worried that my boobs will start to reduce milk production. Does anyone have experience of this? Is what I'm doing really bad? Should I just keep BF til he conks out??

I asked at my local BF clinic, but I think the response I got was a little biased

So please, share you experiences with me - I always find it really reassuring to hear what other mums have done.

Thank you ladies!! x

Hello!

I have combi-fed my now 7 month old since she was three weeks old. I started off pumping and giving a bottle of expressed milk every day or two purely to ensure she would take a bottle. She then lost a lot of weight which was put down to feeding aversion due to CMPI so I topped up with prescription milk.

Since about 2 months old she has had a bottle of formula in the evening before going to bed. Gradually I moved it from being a top up so after the breast feed to being the main feed with a breast feed for comfort.

She still feeds happily from me during the night, first thing in the morning and various points during the day if she fancies.

I have now introduced a lunchtime bottle and and doing less feeding to sleep.

All this is off one breast only as she has always refused one.

So in short mixed-feeding has been a huge success for us. It has given me great reassurance when my supply dipped and I needed a hospital pump to boost it after her nursing strike and now means I am confident that we can make the transition to bottles when We are both ready.

She also uses a dummy. No nipple confusion, no issue with supply.

I mix fed dd from around 3 weeks, just a tiny amount of f to begin with (1-2oz)at around 10.30 ish, when I went to bed. This switched to a feed at around 7.30 when she was 6 months and she had a proper bedtime. She was bf all of the rest of the time with absolutely no problems at all. I suppose the only thing I would bear in mind is that when she was weaned dd took to food incredibly well and started reducing her feeds really quickly so by 10-11 months the only milk feed she had left was the bedtime formula one. I was ok stopping bf then but if you have your heart set on bf over a year maybe chose a different feed to replace? Overall it was reall great for us as I really didn't want to ebf.

I combi fed my youngest from about 2 weeks old, just because I needed to in order to continue life with the whirling dervish that was my then 2yr old. Worked well. Gave her a very small amount at first and build up so that two feeds- mid morning and final at night- were formula. Didn’t effect my supply, continued BFing her until she was a year.

Combi feeding kept me sane and without it I wouldn’t have breastfed for as long as I did without it.
I started by just giving formula at the 10.30pm feed at 6 weeks, then moved to a daytime formula feed instead and by 4 months I was doing about half and half then at 6 months I was just doing the bedtime feed. I was told by an nct counsellor that my supply would totally drop if I did that but it didn’t.
I think it’s true that your milk production decreases but only for that feed; so if you’re doing 8 feeds a day then due to the formula you start doing 7 your body will adjust to the 7 but won’t drop milk production any other time. It’s the same when your baby starts dropping a feed any other time. When my baby dropped her 1am feed is wake up really full then after a few feeds they adjusted. Your body makes what you demand of it. I was reassured about this by the health visitor who was a bit unimpressed with some of the advice I’d been given.

I combi fed right from the beginning as DS was in special Baby Care for a week and started off tube fed. After a couple of days I was allowed to start BFing, but he had formula top-ups. Once we were home and I was able to get into more of a routine, he had bottles at night and I BFd the rest. I never managed to express, but kept up partial BFing until he was 6months, when I decided to stop. I always seemed to have enough to feed him at the times I fed so the supply seemed to adjust.
I wanted to do the same with DD, but she was a bottle refuser/formula refuser/milk refuser so finally gave up Bf at 15 months.