Switching to formula from breastfeeding

[BeckyLouise92]

Hi all, I'm hoping you might have some advice from personal experience. My baby boy is 13 days old and we've had a really tough time with breastfeeding- struggling to latch, infected nipple, mastitis and thrush! I've been receiving support from an NHS breastfeeding advisor and even she is out of ideas. I'm currently on antibiotics and baby and I are on treatment for thrush. I think I'm also suffering with postnatal depression. Breastfeeding has simply become too painful so for both of our wellbeing, we've made the decision to switch to formula but also give him my expressed milk when we have enough.

I'm struggling on guidance for amounts to give to baby - his birth weight was 6lb9oz which dropped to 6lb1oz when he was weighed a week ago. He definitely looks to have put more weight on which is good.

I gave baby 90ml of formula milk at 11pm last night with about 10ml of expressed milk afterwards as he was still rooting. He then had 100ml of formula at 3.30am, 90ml of formula at 8am and 60ml of expressed milk at 10.45am. He's now (11.20am) rooting again.

My partner is concerned about over feeding but I don't want our baby to go hungry, and I'm struggling to find guidance for amounts to give babies when you're combining formula and expressed milk.

I'm also planning on expressing from alternate breasts every 4 hours - does this sound sensible?

We have the health visitor coming tomorrow but I don't want to do my baby any harm in the meantime!

So the rule of thumb is roughly 2.5 oz (80ml) per pound per day. So if your baby is 6lb then 15oz (430ml) a day is recommended. It doesn't really matter if its combined formula or expressed milk. I did combined feeding but it was breastfeeding with an extra formula top up and we stuck to feeding her 8 times in a 24 hour period which worked well.

Are you planning on trying to express full time or phase it out? If so then I would express every three hours at least and don't neglect to do it at night when baby wakes for his feed.

At 13 days old then you simply cannot overfeed a baby but do watch his cues for feeling full and don't try and force down the last bit.

I mixed fed from birth and to be honest, I never looked at how much I should be feeding him. I fed him if he asked for it and stopped as soon as he didn't want any more (he used to purse his little lips like a disapproving granny- so cute!).

Yes, it meant some formula went to waste but I tended to make just a couple of oz at a time and then make more if he wasn't finished. It started to balance out so I knew how much he was likely to take.

I got him weighed every month at the child health clinics to keep an eye on his weight. Ds has always followed the 97th centile for height and weight and we've never had any issues.

Unicef have a really useful leaflet about bottle feeding safely and responsively.

Paced bottle feeding is key.

To be honest at 13 days old to be going from 11pm til 3.30pm is a big long stretch. Breastfed newborn babies typically feed around 12 but at least 8 times in 24 hours so it is likely that your baby will need feeding often even if it's formula.

www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/baby-friendly-resources/bottle-feeding-resources/guide-to-bottle-feeding/amp/

Thank you for your replies! I will definitely take a look at the unicef leaflet :) it seems from talking to the breastfeeding counsellor that we maybe just have a hungry baby - I'm sure things will settle down for us soon.

Xx

My FF fed baby only ever went 2 hours between bottles in the early days - more in the evening, we constantly had a bottle on the go! They have tiny tummies and don't have a watch so they don't know how long it's been.

Are you wanting to stop bf and start ff or do you want to mix feed?

I really wouldn’t worry about overfeeding him, your baby will know when he’s had enough. My baby purses her lips when she’s full and she will fidget and fuss if I try to feed her again.

As for the rooting so soon after a feed, sometimes babies need a little while to carry on their meal, as with us we have breaks between our meals :-)

You can't over feed, they stop drinking once they are full or fall asleep. I sometimes express for my newborn and he will stop drinking when he's full, can't force them to drink it. If your DC is hungry he will drink

We had to do mixed feedings from 5 days old and we did expressed milk first, which was only about 10ml (like an expresso shot). We then offered her a 90ml bottle and if she didn't want it all, she would push it out with her tongue or fall asleep. We would feed every 2 hours in the beginning then when she started to sleep through that time, we would wait until she woke up xx