Can I give newborn expressed milk?

[lllnelson]

Hi,

I've read a few places not introduce expressed milk in a bottle until baby is 4 weeks old. How come? My baby is 5 days old and just tried her on and expressed bottle which she drank no problems and had since drank from breast. Just wanting to be able to express the odd bottle so dad can feed her or do a night feed! Xx

It can lead to nipple confusion and affect breastfeeding so I think advice is to wait a while but not sure how long

The worry is that they find it much easier to drink from a bottle and (could) decide they want a bottle all the time. What makes you want to do it so early?

It's only because they find it so easy to drink from a bottle , which might make them less inclined to stick with the breast. If that doesn't bother you, go for it.

Just use a really slow flow teat so baby has to work for it. My DD likes Minbie ones and goes between those and breast fine.

Nipple confusion is one issue, but my concern would be the affect on supply. Your baby is telling your body what to make every time they feed, even if you express when they get expressed milk it is unlikely the same amount of milk will be generated. 4-6 weeks BF supply and skill of baby is better established. If you really want to do it I'd encourage expressing when giving expressed milk.

The advice from ‘breastfeeding experts is not until after six weeks. However, unfortunately if you wait that long it can be very hard to get them to take bottles-say if you’re leaving baby for a few hours etc.

If it was me I think I’d wait for 7-10 days to make sure supply established and then perhaps I would give twice a week and increase to perhaps one bottle every other day by 6 weeks. Just so baby is used to bottles by the cut off time and supply not affected too much. After six weeks I think it’s alright to express a bit. I only expressed two bottles before six weeks, I actually wish I’d done more as it was a bit stressful getting him to take a bottle when I went back to work.

My baby wouldn’t latch at first so when in the hospital they had me pumping when she was less than 12 hours old! At that stage obviously it wasn’t bottle fed as it was colostrum. When they eventually got her to latch 3 days in (using a nipple shield - we are still using it at 4 weeks) they told me to buy a pump to use when discharged to build up supply. I assume they intended me to feed her the expressed milk?! The pump we bought had a special bottle (medela Calma) which is supposed to not confuse breastfed babies. She has been on both since she was 5 days old. Worth noting we still have to use the shields but we had to use them anyway do not sure that’s to do with the bottle.

Lots of my friends are combination feeding, presumably their babies are switching between the 2 ok.

I expressed and DH gave both DC a bottle from the first week and did so every day. There was no nipple confusion. Use the appropriate slow flow test and shouldn’t be an issue with just one bottle a day. The downside of waiting for a long time is they might refuse a bottle altogether. But as pp have said, the reason is nipple confusion so depends how cautious you want to be. For me the benefits outweighed the potential risk.

I mixed fed my baby from 3 days old, no problem here