Tips for introducing bottle for expressed bm

[Stripeyshirts2450]

My little boy will be 6 weeks old just before Christmas and is ebf. I'd like to try expressing and giving him the odd bottle around Christmas so I can 1) have a drink and 2) get DH to bond by feeding him maybe once in the night.

I have no idea what bottle or pump to get and they're so expensive I want to get it right. I have a lot of milk so dont think expressing should be an issue. I guess my questions are:

1. when in the day to express? Is it just after a feed or does it not really matter?

2. does it need to be consistent so can you do it every now and then or do you have to make it a daily thing to make it work with milk supply?

3. any pump recommendations?

4. Big one! Which bottles do you recommend for breastfed baby and how many do you need? He uses NUK dummies if that helps but I already have a tommee tippee bottle was given free.

5. The whole sterilisation process! How do you do this and which one to get? The dummies have their own sterilisation case which is easy.

TIA! Starting to wonder if worth the hassle@

Also how much do you express into the bottle?

Firstly, you can have a couple of drinks and still breastfeed.

At 6 weeks old I would be wary of dropping a breastfeed at night. You release a hormone at night (peaks between 1am and 5am) and when you breastfeed during these hours your body gets a message to keep up milk supply. If you drop a night feed you may find your supply decreases.

DD took in a lot of air with the Tommee Tippee bottles. We found MAM really good but as you already have a relationship with NUK that would probably be my first port of call.

I preferred to use a steam steriliser as i like the idea of just using water rather than a product like Milton.

Are you expressing already? It can take a bit of time to get to grips with it and can be disheartening at first as lots of women only manage to pump tiny amounts (5ml) at first. I was like this but eventually got up go around 100ml at best.

I found first thing in the morning best, 20 minutes after DD’s first feed of the day, and having a big glass of water and something to eat in between breastfeeding and expressing.

@INeedNewShoes I've heard really mixed things from professionals about how much alcohol is safe. I epxressed at the beginning but with syringes and cup feeding when struggling with latch.

Would you recommend a particular steam steriliser?

I imagine they're all much of a muchness but the Tommy Tippee one was good. They're really easy to use.

You can also just boil bottles/expressing equipment in a pan. I feel as though I read that expressing equipment didn't need sterilising but I just thought I may as well given that I had the faff of sterilising bottles anyway.

MAM bottles can be sterilised in the microwave without any other equipment. Or you can buy microwave bags from Boots etc to pop your stuff in. If you're serious about getting into bottle feeding (either expressed, formula or combi) then I'd get an electric steriliser if you have the worktop space. We've got a TT one and have a mix of TT bottles and MAM bottles. Don't over think it for the steriliser though, they're all much of a muchness. Our baby has been happy with any form of bottle, with any form of milk from anyone from the outset, although I'm still feeding him twice a day from my breasts at almost 10 months. I'd also strongly recommend getting a Hakka style silicon pump/milk collector. I got mine on Amazon for about £7. This has been a godsend and I've got about 80 bags of frozen milk in the freezer due to how easy it has been - I just pop it on every time I feed and usually collect about 60ml each feed. I then have a manual pump (MAM) for when I skip feeds if I'm out etc, but we had an electric one that I borrowed from a friend in the early days. As above, when I first started pumping (around 3 weeks as we needed the milk) I got really upset as I barely got anything out so don't be disheartened and keep trying, as I got to the point where I was getting 200-250ml a day just with the Hakka (no actual pumping) and still ebf my baby. My supply has dropped dramatically though now as I need to stop by Christmas, hence the frozen supply so he can continue to have at least a bottle until he's one. I was quite laid back initially and just did it every day but at different times as your body is still stablising anyway, then later on I used the Hakka pump every time I fed at home and then used a manual pump around the time I'd feed him if we were out.

I started out not wanting to bf as I knew I would have to stop at some point due to medical treatment that I'm currently having so didn't have any expectations or pressure. I think this has helped as I've done the best by far out of everyone I know and the main reason we carried on is because I had zero problems (literally) and it's easy. If it gets too stressful or hard then stop as it's not worth it, in my opinion, although I know others may disagree.

On the alcohol front you'll probs find that you get much more relaxed about everything the longer you go on. I wouldn't have touched alcohol in the early days but now think nothing of having a glass of wine in the evening before feeding him about 6 hours later. Apparently the best time to drink is when they're actually feeding from you, and the "worst" time is about 90 mins after you've drank but the amount of alcohol in your blood stream is minimal if you only have one drink, from everything I've read.

Literally don't over think it. We didn't and didn't have any problems and our baby is happy with whatever whereas everyone we know who tried to do the right thing and over think it (ie will my ebf baby even take a bottle/dummy?) have had issues both with bf and getting them to take bottles generally.