Combination feeding: breast and bottle with expressed milk

[Sandrine1982]

Hello there. So I'm 22 weeks pregnant and have been wondering about this. I am planning to breastfeed when the baby is born, but I would also like to introduce some bottle-feeding with expressed milk (mainly so that dad can feed too, or when I need to go out or catch up on sleep, or when I drink alcohol).
Do people actually do this? Do babies accept both breast and bottle? I'm not talking about formula, just expressed milk. I've also heard that babies might go off the breast if they find bottles easier.
Any tips would be greatly appreciated. :) xx

My experience was:

With dc 1, she took a bottle of expressed milk at first, but I wasn't consistent with it and by around 3 months was refusing a bottle. It took until 8 months for her to take one again and did me to be able to wean her off the breast (something I really wanted to do!)

With dc2 after a months or so I introduced a formula night feed (dream feed) at around 10pm and we did this every night - she was always fine taking a bottle from them on.

Breastfeeding + expressing is still EBF - combination is when you do a mixture of breast milk and formula.
(Just telling you as it might make finding info easier).

Congratulations on your pregnancy.

You may find this interesting reading;

kellymom.com/ages/newborn/bf-basics/importance-responsive-feeding/

The first few weeks of a babies life are hard work, and sometimes breastfeeding can be difficult to establish or painful. You shouldn’t expect it to be really painful (and it’s often quoted if it’s painful then something’s wrong) but the sucking sensation can feel rough and tender (mild pain that stops). Depending on your local area, you might have a lot of support and resources from La Leche, breastfeeding peer supporters, NHS IBLC’s or midwives. Being aware of how babies are at the start is a bit of a shock especially with cluster feeding and the frequency
kellymom.com/hot-topics/newborn-nursing/

The guidance mentioned by others not to express until 6 weeks is because your milk supply ( kellymom.com/hot-topics/milkproduction/ ) is considered established enough at 6 weeks. If you begin to pump during the first few weeks then your body will produce more but the pumps remove milk less effectively than baby. The risk is that you end up with an oversupply and must continue pumping in addition to feeding or risk blocked ducts, mastitis etc. For low supply, expressing in the early weeks might help build up enough for baby to EBF.

Pumping can be time consuming, you have the bottles and pumps to clean, bags or bottles to use / prepare. And it can be upsetting if you don’t pump enough to use as a full feed, often 1oz is all I could pump in an entire day (4 sessions). Some women can pump 4 oz in a few minutes, whilst others (like me) struggle. kellymom.com/bf/pumpingmoms/pumping/bf-links-pumps/

For any “missed feeds” provided by bottle, you will need to pump or potentially decrease your supply. It can take several days to restimulate your supply back up to meeting babies demand. The early morning and night pumping can be the most vital sessions to actual pump, seemingly (for me) is when I collect enough for a full feed.

Sorry this turned long, but I was convinced that everyone found breastfeeding easy and the shock of how hard it was for me was awful. Especially with my HV and Midwife telling me to just use formula, which I do but I wanted to continue breastfeeding too. Good luck with it all

Wow .. cheers ... "newborn slow flow teats"... there's so much to learn .... :-)

Sandrine1982 I didn’t know about the teats until last week 🙈

I got mixed messages from midwifes about when to start pumping. But after week 3 i started expressing milk & there’s been no nipple confusion or preference for breast / bottle.
We also use MAM bottles & the pump. NUK bottles were also suggested but we already had some.
We brought a pump after she was born as they can be expensive & wasn’t sure how breast feeding would go. If you buy a pump I would get an electric one as manually pumping will get tiring for your hands especially doing it multiple times a day.

My advice would be to get the best pump you can afford. I've got the ameda lactaline double (electric). Prior to that with DC1 I used a manual Avent and then a single tomee tippee (electric). They just didn't cut it and expressing was far more time consuming.

There was a thread done by MN which included the best pumps which you might find helpful. Mine cost about £100 but you can get them secondhand from marketplace. You can usually get spare parts online if needed.

To maximise your supply it's best to feed baby and then express straight after. You don't want to express a babies feed iykwim.

We are doing exactly what you describe using either formula or expressed milk for one feed a day (usually) but it can sometimes be two and other times nothing. We've been using bottles since week 1 or 2 with zero issues. He's now 9 weeks. I borrowed an electric pump from a friend and use that a couple of times a week but mostly collect using a Hakka silicon cup at the same time as feeding which gives me 150-200ml per day that we either freeze or give to him. I'd highly highly recommend getting one, mine was around £8 on Amazon and it's been so useful.

We were very ambivalent about whether we would breast feed at all, mainly because I have a big health issue meaning I won't be able to breast feed for very long due to the treatment. I've also already had 48 hour periods where I can't breast feed him meaning bottles were our only option. For this reason we mostly ignored the advice and did what was best for our personal situation and out of our NCT group we are the only ones who have had zero issues with feeding (breast or bottle) and also had the best birth experience by a large margin, even though we'd expected to have a tough time due to the restrictions on my options due to my medical history. From our experiences it really is best to not get hung up now about what you will or won't do, and likewise the guidelines are just guidelines and you will end up doing whatever feels best at the time with both the birth and beyond. I certainly feel the fact we approached the birth and breast feeding with low expectations and knew some of our choices would be restricted meant we didn't get as tied into the "perfect" plan and as a consequence have been a lot more relaxed and flexible than others which has ironically meant we've had everything they wanted but haven't got yet.

Thanks so much for your detailed experiences. You are right, plan is a plan, but the reality might end up being different, so I'm not getting too hung up on things, I'll just see how we get on when she's here :)
xx