Bottle feeding

[babysnowman]

Sorry if this is a really obvious question but I don't have anyone I can ask!

I'm breastfeeding my 12 week old at the moment. There's no real routine, sometimes she's on for 5 minutes sometimes it's 45. Other times I think she maybe just goes on for comfort. In terms of frequency, sometimes she'll go a few hours without a feed, while other times it seems she'll be going on and off every few minutes.

I'm thinking I will start expressing soon so she can have some bottle feeds, and I'm able to be away for a few hours if I need to be. My question is that if you are bottle feeding (either expressed milk or formula), how does this change the dynamic? Does the baby just get fuller more quickly, meaning they are not wanting to be fed more than once every few hours? Or do they sometimes take what's in the bottle over the course of a few hours. What would we do to replace the times where I think she just wants to go on the breast for comfort?

Hope that's not too rambly!

Hi op.

I am bf my almost 8 week old and he has 1 or 2 bottles of expressed milk per day and we have also tried formula at night (to see if he sleeps longer!)

So far he’s still feeding approx every 3 hours so we’re no further forward unfortunately 😂

I could be wrong but I think your meant to discard the milk in the bottle if they don’t finish it rather than keeping it for a few hours ?

Not too sure about the times, this too is something I would like to learn about as would like to combi feed soon. At the minute we just replace whatever feed suits ie if we are going out or if it’s through the night and I make sure I pump something to keep the milk and to stop my boobs getting too full!

Look up 'paced feeding' , it should help your baby consume a similar quantity of milk as it would straight from source and not stretch it's stomach. If your intention is to continue feeding your baby after bottles are introduced then you would ideally pump at the time your baby has it's bottle to maintain your supply. The person with the baby will workout what kind of cuddles it needs for comfort when it isn't hungry, both mine fed into toddler hood, so I've got no idea personally , but were happy in childcare settings from 10 months and got lots of cuddles there.