Mixed feeding

[Elephantgrey]

I am planning on breastfeeding my my baby ( due any time now) but my doctor has suggested that for health reasons I consider mixed feeding. She suggests giving him a bottle at night so that my DH can share the night feeds as tiredness could cause a relapse of my condition.

Has anyone got any advice on how I can do this successfully. I went on an NCT breastfeeding course which suggested that if you attempted to mixed feed your baby your milk supply would dry up and your baby would get nipple confusion.

Has anyone managed this. What did you do to make it work?

Are you going to use a bottle of formula or expressed milk?

I was think of using expressed milk then he is getting the same think and it should help with my supply.

I did this with both my kids. DD who is now 6 months until recently was breast fed all day apart from a formula feed around 10/11pm. Or the odd occasion when I wasn’t availble. It worked well

Initially we had to supplement with formula due to jaundice, so for the first month I breastfed every feed and we gave a bottle afterwards for a few feeds a day. Once a pattern emerged we moved to one or 2 bottle feeds a day, mostly when she was cluster feeding on an evening, but I moved it around whenever to suit me. At about 3 months we implemented the formula dream feed.

So it absolutely possible, but if you want to mostly breastfeed you need to feed as much as possible in the early days to protect yourself supply and that is exhausting.

My now toddler DS was mix fed with much more formula until he was about 4 months.

Also expressing is awful. As tiring as feeding and then you still have to feed them. I’d personally go for formula unless you have an oversupply

It's important to get your milk supply established, which might well involve evenings of cluster feeding

and

It is vital for prolactin levels to do some night feeds, and that means the really night ones

and

Not all babies take a bottle

But plenty of people can and do mix feed. My DS gets one or two bottles a week, usually formula as i can no longer quite figure out time to express enough for him even for one feed as he's hungry and it's not as easy as it used to be. He's Bf the rest of the time and supply is fine

My son was in nicu for a week when he was born. I couldn't feed him. Expressing at the very beginning was incredibly difficult.. The whole week he was in the most I ever managed to express was about 20ml. Nicu gave him formula with any of my expressed milk by feeding tube initially and then bottle for the last couple of days he was there as i had already been discharged from the hospital and couldn't be there overnight. I got mixed reports on expressing during the night to get supply going and then one midwife who said to sleep as I would need my energy when baby came home so u expressed before bed around 11 and then when I got up to phone nicu for update at 6am.
Since he came home he took to breastfeeding right away but with a low birth weight he wants to feed a lot. If his eyes are open ds wants fed (now 8 weeks old and he has almost doubled his birth weight) he gets mainly breastfed but he does get about 1 bottle of formula a day because it means I can go to the shop for an hour or get a couple of hours sleep during the day of my mum or husband take the baby. Ds us starting to go a little longer between feeds now but I'll go back to work in 8 weeks so I figure is best to keep him used to taking the bottle so it isn't such a big transition when u have to go to work for a full day.
Mix feeding can work.
Before ds was born weighing were also told not to give him a dummy for at least first month as it causes confusion.. Ds has used dummy since birth as we could give him it in the incubator, he has been tube fed, bottle fed and breast fed and he loves his feeds and doesn't struggle with any of them.

Only thing is he isn't always so good at taking the bottle from me but he will happily take it from anyone else.

For the ease of things, in that situation, assuming bf is going well otherwise, I would aim to just feed from the breast and skip the bottle. Going a feed at night is relatively quick and easy. I’ve bottle fed my first (mixed feeding, expressed milk and then formula) and full bf my 2nd, and the actual feeding really is the easy part of doing nights. The settling in between is the more exhausting bit (as is waking to express during the night), plus all the extra washing and sterilising. What you may find helpful instead is that rather than doing a feed it may make more sense for your partner to help with all the other things so you can sleep more.

My dh pretty much did everything else so I could just feed. He would stay awake and hold baby or settle them back to sleep, do all the changing, etc. Basically all I did was feed and pass them back to him and go back to sleep. For the first 4-6 weeks we did shifts so I slept from 8pm to 1am with a wake for a feed and he just sat downstairs with them and I took over more in the second half of the night. But the actual feeding bit is easy and quick so I didn’t need much help with that. It’s definitely much less stressful this time not needing to wash and sterilise bottles and not having to pump. So that’s really just to say that you may be better off finding ways for your partner to help you maximise the sleep you get without adding the hassle of a bottle and expressing. So I would try various things the first few weeks and find out what works best.

I've expressed a bottle a day for my partner to do one night feed and it's been a lifesaver - we have a bad sleeper and means I get a three hour chunk of sleep a night. He's five months now and considering switching it to a bottle of formula soon but expressing has worked really well for us

We did mixed feeding from 5 weeks old. DD switched between bottle and nipple quite easily.

Our DD would have a bottle of formula in the evening. I’d go to bed about 7pm, my partner would give her a bottle at about 8pm and then wake me for breastfeeding at about 11pm. So I’d get some rest before the night of breastfeeding.

It worked great for us. Gave me some rest and my partner enjoyed feeding her. It also got her used to a bottle so gave me flexibility if I wanted some time off. If we had another baby I’d aim to mix feed in the same way.

DD did start to refuse the bottle at about 12 weeks old - we switched from the number 1 size teat up to the number 2 size and she happily took the bottle again.

I tried expressing - it’d take me ages to get very little and then DD would need feeding again. I found it exhausting and disheartening so I made peace with giving her formula pretty quickly (I felt an immense amount of pressure to avoid formula). I think I’d try expressing again if I had another baby but just because formula is expensive!

We used a cup to mix feed for 2/3 weeks as needed to give formula top ups then introduced the bottle after that.. both babies went between bf and bottle happily. Might be worth trying that in the early days?

Ive mixed.m fed both of mine from birth. DS1 (now 4) has top ups with bottle for a couple of days as he'd been in scbu and tube fed so my milk was a little delayed, and we just kept going with one bottle a day so he'd do both. Never has any issues and happily took both and I bf him until 10 months. Also meant we didn't go through the stress if trying to introduce bottles later on that most of my friends had.

DS2 is 9 weeks. Was planning to do the same but he needed top ups for every feed for a bit as he lost lots of weight in first week, but now settling into feeding him mainly bf but 2-3 times a day he has a bottle. Send to be working ok.

Personally I would just give formula for grr bottle. I found trying to express on top of everything else so stressful, it just seemed impossible and not worth it.

I also found doing a bottle late eve helped him sleep a bit longer which was nice!!!

My DH would give mine a bottle at 10 ish, so i could do the 7pm feed and head right to bed and sleep through until dc woke at 2/3 ish. It made all the differeence to my tiredness. We started introducing a bottle at 3 weeks and then just did the one feed every day until I switched over from breast to formula at 5 months ish. We had no problems with nipple confusion.
I would try pumping to use expressed milk at the bottle feed, and if it is too stressful, use formula. Just remember you can get nipples that flow at different speeds. Start with a couple of the slow ones, but have the next speed up in reserve as if your milk flows quickly, your dc will expect the bottle to do the same and vica versa

I honestly think that if you want to introduce a bottle because you have a medical condition that means you need to avoid getting more tired than you can help I wouldn't consider expressing-I would use formula for that one bottle. Expressing is a faff, a significant number of women find it very difficult and it can increase stress. I would get bf established then have someone else give him a bottle of formula at whatever time suits you. I would probably go for evening-you feed then go to bed. The next feed can be a bottle giving you a good chunk of sleep. Then carry on bf.