Combination feeding

[AliciaHill917]

Hi,

I'm a first time mum, due on 20 February. I'm wanting to try and breastfeed initially to allow baby to have the colostrum but then wanting to switch to formula feeding. Does anyone have any experience of this?

Ideally I'd like to do the formula feeding alongside the colostrum but really struggling to find a straight forward answer on how it's managed. Thanks!!! :-)

I think it depends on the baby and how things go. I was forced to do bottle top up feeds with dd from very early on as she was losing weight and they were concerned about her getting enough milk from me. This led to teat confusion (not sure what the term is) so dd struggled to latch on to me and it would take hours to get her to feed as she would do it for the bottle but not for me. I had to really persevere but we got through it and stopped the top up bottles as soon as we could.

Having said that lots of babies I presume have combination method and are fine, so maybe dd was weird, but I remember reading on mn it was a thing with other babies too, so you might want to look into this and maybe start just with bfing and introduce the formula a little later.

Just following here as I would love to do the very same as you Alicia but likewise can’t get a straight answer and also a FTM

I combi fed my son. Although he was exclusively breastfed until about 4 weeks, then i introduced a bottle of expressed milk or formula so his Dad could help with feeding. He combi fed until 4 months then formula from then on.
Everyones experience is different but do what suits yourself! You can always harvest or express your colostrum into a syringe and give it to your baby that way. Or you could BF for the first 3 days until your milk comes in then switch to formula. There are lots of choices, although many midwives may tell you that feeding with a bottle and breast as early from birth can cause nipple/teat confusion and baby may prefer the bottle if its an easier latch.

I did combined feeds with my youngest (he's 5 now) - he had the boob juice during the day and bottles during the night. We made it to six weeks before he went on boob strike.
Looking back I missed the boobing terribly and I wasn't ready to give it up but I had no choice, he only wanted a bottle. Just be aware that it may happen.
Otherwise, it works really well in my experience - and has the added bonus of a bit more sleep (2 hourly, but you know... that's great going for a newborn )

I hope this doesn’t come across front but I’d see how breastfeeding goes.

I know I thought I’d do formula but turns out I absolutely loved breastfeeding and we’re still going strong 6 months on. I also wouldn’t have been able to combo feed for a long time as she cluster fed and my supply wouldn’t have come in.

Congratulations and good luck.

Forgot to say though that I did give DD a bottle of expressed milk every now and then right from the start which has worked really well as she easily takes a bottle. We found Mam bottles were the best and she never experienced any confusion going from breast to bottle.

DS needed to be combi fed whilst we were staying in hospital. The MWs made me feed him out of a cup so he would lick it up - they said to save him getting confusion between the bottle teet and my nipple.

Anyway, when he was about 3 weeks old I decided I would start expressing and see how he would take to the bottle and me. He was fine, aced it straight away. We just used Tommee Tippee basic bottles too. He took okay too formula too when we moved him onto that.

If you are wanting to continue breastfeeding I’d make sure it’s well established before attempting to introduce a bottle. Having done both (eldest was prem and wouldn’t latch onto the breast) breastfeeding is by far the easier option once you get through the first relentless 6-8 weeks.