Combination feeding a newborn

[GR91]

My baby is 8 days old and due to bf issues at the start is now used to taking expressed and formula via a bottle. We are now bf well but have continued to give formula at her 11pm and a top up after bf at 2am feed as she is never satisfied at these times with just breast even if she’s on for over an hour. Has anyone else used this method? Am I making a mistake and being selfish as it gets me a few hours sleep!

You're not being selfish, but I will say that it's very not for baby to feel unsatisfied early on and to feed constantly. It's knackering but if you can keep it up and feel you can go without formula, maybe give it a try? Nighttime is a really important time to breastfeed when your trying to establish your supply and the first 6 weeks is super important. I combi fed for two weeks as my son was too unwell to breastfeed. It for significantly easier at 6 weeks once my supply was established and I was happy I dropped the formula.

This is only what I would suggest however if you're sure you want to combi feed from now then hopefully someone more experienced can help you.

Congrats on your little one

Very normal

We combi fed our baby from being about a week old to after a year. He mostly just had one bottle of formula a day from his dad before bed, then all of the other times I fed him myself or he had bottles of expressed milk. In our experience it made a very adaptable baby who wasn't at all fussy about where his milk came from - breast, bottle, expressed, formula, cold, hot etc you name it, he's drank it.

I had health issues which meant we were unsure how long I'd be able to breast feed and had it been hard we would have given up. As it was I found it super easy, had ample supply that I could get 200ml plus a day just from using a Hakka at normal feeds meaning I had absolutely loads of frozen milk for when I could no longer feed him myself due to health issues. If we have another baby we will definitely be doing the same thing again as it's really good for your partner to do some of the feeding too.

Right now she's cluster feeding to increase your supply which is important if you want to give breast feeding a proper go, but that doesn't mean you can't continue to use bottles. This is why she seems dissatisfied - that's good and completely normal. I'd be tempted to have the first formula feed around 7/8pm (this is what we did) then you can get a 4hr chunk of sleep until midnight. Then swap with your partner until say 6am - overnight for the first few weeks are the hardest but I found knowing it was "only" 6 hours was useful. We slept in separate rooms for the first 6 weeks - definitely do this if you can, it makes a massive difference.

Actually, just reread what I wrote - at the very start I fed him around 7.30/8 for about half an hour, then would go upstairs to sleep for 4 hours and my husband would give formula at about 10ish. Then when he could go for longer stints (3 months ish I think) we had the formula at 7ish before bed and then I fed him overnight at around midnight, then 4am, then in the morning at 8am. Ish. Then there are nights when it felt like he just fed all night, hehe.