Breast feeding...help!

[jazzhands44]

Based on a few other threads I've been reading tonight but didn't want to hijack, I've started one of my own!

I'm 30 weeks and hoping to bf. I'm really not sure what to expect though. Ideally I would like to combi feed either with expressed milk or with formula just so dh can be involved with feeding and I can pop out if needed. Maybe only one feed a day. I'm confused because guidelines suggest EFB for the first 6 weeks so as not to interfere with supply. However I've also been told that if the baby doesn't take a bottle fairly early on then they might refuse to take it at all.

And what if my milk doesn't come in for days? Do I offer formula or just wait it out? I've read that they can survive on colostrum alone but I've known many people who have given up on bf in that first week because their milk hadn't come and their babies were so upset.

I really want to be prepared but there seems to be so much conflicting information.

Lots of women find breastfeeding hard but lots of women find it pretty straightforward. Don’t worry too much about the numbers (number of feeds, frequency of feeds) and just let your baby feed whenever they want. Keep an eye on weight gain and regularity of wet nappies and then don’t worry about anything else. Instead of making your life harfer expressing so DP can give milk, just get your DP to do baths and nappy changes and he can give a bottle/help weaning onto solids wheb it’s convenient or helpful for you.

Hi OP! I’m in no way an expert, want to say that upfront, but I’m currently going through the same thing so wanted to let you know how I’ve found it

My baby is a week old and is taking a bottle a day alongside breastfeeding. I’ve had conflicting advice on this from 7 midwives (3 in hospital and 4 who have since visited me at home in pairs) and my health visitor, so you’re totally right re conflicting info. I must say I feel like everything they say is to push exclusive breast feeding, with only the health visitor and my regular community midwife listening to me properly around WHY I want to introduce a bottle at this stage

Obviously things are different for every woman but my milk has come in fine, no issues with supply despite giving a bottle each day from around 4 days. Baby has taken the bottle with no issues, and also breastfeeds fine, which I think is an advantage of starting early as you say

My reasons for doing so are similar to yours - I feel like I would find breastfeeding incredibly difficult if I felt chained to the baby, it’s been important for my mental health to be able to get out for an hour for a coffee and know that DH can feed the baby so I’m not constantly checking my phone in case baby is hungry. I also think breastfeeding is easier mentally because I don’t feel under pressure - I have another option if she isn’t feeding well, which relaxes me, which in my opinion helps her feed well

My HV and regular midwife have both said they think this is sensible and I just need to keep an eye on supply, which of course I would be doing regardless! At the end of the day sayings become sayings for a reason - fed is best, and a happy mum is more important than the method of feeding - you should feel supported whether you go breast/combi/formula!

Hi OP

I'm mum to a 4 week old so will share some tips I've learnt so far

-Expressing colostrum in the last weeks of pregnancy can help stimulate supply and get you armed with a stash to help baby with in the first few days until milk properly comes in.
-Babies are designed to go without big volumes of milk in the first week. When they are crying/'wanting to feed often in the first week, it's not that they are necessarily upset, it's just how they stimulate your milk supply. It's normal (doesn't mean it's not hard), but having the right support around you is key.

-Babies (and mums) vary hugely with how easy they find latching and breastfeeding. If you and your baby find things at the more tricky end of the spectrum then you may want to hold off at least a few weeks before introducing bottles into the mix. We started with bottles around 2 weeks but I was lucky my baby took to latching at the breast relatively easily.
-I'd recommend a haaka or other passive style breast "pump", this is what I use to collect milk from the other boob whilst my baby is breastfeeding, I save it up for my husband to give 1 bottle each day which enables me to get a bit of protected sleep.
Good on you for doing your research and getting prepped! Best of luck with the rest of your pregnancy.

I am 32w pregnant with my second baby and breastfed my DS until almost 2 years. Had a big blood loss following delivery which meant my milk did take a couple of days to come in but just kept persevering to encourage supply and syringed colostrum in the meantime. As the other poster says milk usually comes in quite quickly if you have a straightforward delivery. DS was a big hungry baby and did lose a bit of weight but put it all back on quickly.

I found those first few weeks the toughest but IMO longterm was much easier just being able to latch him on rather than mess about with bottles and sterilising. The advice from MW and HV’s does conflict I agree but I think if you’re getting on ok with breastfeeding quite early on introducing a bottle before 6w isn’t going to catastrophically reduce your supply, especially if only once a day. Just make sure you’re in the stage where s/he and you can latch and unlatch with relative ease- once baby can do that the bottle is a new skill.

For what it’s worth I was really precious about not giving DS formula as all I’d been told was ‘breast is best’ by every professional I’d encountered. But those days and nights felt endless- and for the sake of my sanity this time around I am planning to do the same as you just to let DH help me more. I think I will see how it’s going and take heed from that.

When my DS did finally have a bottle of expressed milk he was probably 4m and no problems.

Thank you all this is really helpful advice. I suppose a lot of it is a waiting game and I have to wait until baby is here to see how easily they will latch, how quickly milk comes in and everything else. I'm trying to be prepared but I suppose there are some things you can't prepare for until baby is here.

I haven't bought any feeding equipment yet (including bottles or a pump) because i don't want to waste money on things I may not end up using. It's just confusing knowing what to do for the best. I don't want to rush a bottle too soon and interrupt my supply but I don't want to leave it too late and potentially have them refuse it.

My antenatal class teacher who is a lactation consultant and midwife said there's a sweet spot between 3-6 weeks for introducing a bottle. Basically as others have said giving you time to get used to breastfeeding but not leaving it too late. I'm also a first time mum due soon and planning to introduce some expressed bottle feeds but the more I read up about it the more complicated it all seems, hopefully it doesn't end up that way!

Well my baby did not survive on the colostrum alone. From day 2 I had to give her formula as she was so hungry (I had colostrum and she still had 250 ml formula on the same day). She has no problem to take bottles or has nipple confusion (she has tried at least 5 different one and I'm using the nipple shields too).
I would suggest to take formula with you and give if needed. I find it cruel that some women refuse to give formula while they don't have the milk yet or don't have enough. I would never let my baby to starve or cry for milk. There is some weird attitude towards formula, while it is complitely normal to use it while you're waiting for your milk to come or top it up.

In my experience, I’ve noticed that a lot of the panic and confusion in the early weeks all stems from the fact that we as a society are accustomed to how a formula fed baby behaves - ie feeds on a schedule and goes a few hours between feeds. And that is most definitely not the case with breastfed babies!! Particularly in the early days when you only have colostrum and are waiting for your milk to come in, it’s entirely normal for your baby to be at the breast constantly. That’s also the best way to stimulate your mature milk to come in as quick as possible.
For the first 3 days, I pretty much didn’t put my babies down or put my boobs away at all. I remember my mum (who only ever formula fed) saying “She can’t possibly be hungry again, she’s just using you as a dummy” - completely oblivious to the fact that non-nutritive sucking is a normal behaviour for breastfed babies and again, helps stimulate supply.
I’d suggest reading “The Womanly Art Of Breastfeeding” by La Leche League It goes through everything from biologically normal infant behaviour in the early days, all the way up to breastfeeding toddlers. Has fantastic visuals showing positioning and attachment too.
Good luck OP I hope all goes well for you.

DD is 2 weeks old and I bf DS for 12 months, colostrum is nutrient rich and very thick meaning they get all they need from it. Don't forget their tummies are tiny so wanting to feed all the time is totally normal. Lots of people think if they are feeding lot it must mean there's nothing there but babies are feeding to grow your supply and bring in your milk.

There are exceptions to all rules and you will find what is right for you.

I used my pump on day 3 when my milk came in as I was engorged this time. I expressed and stored milk and DS took a bottle from about week 3 but not regularly jut as a just in case to be honest.

Lots of drinks and snacks in the early days and be prepared to be trapped under feeding baby most of the day and enjoy the extra cuddles.

Also dad's don't need to feed to feel involved so don't pressure yourself to pump so dad can be involved in feeding as it's doubling your work -do it if you want and it works but there are 100s of ways you will both bond and connect with your baby.

I combi feed my 14 week old , DH gives one bottle of formula at bedtime which we started around 5 weeks iirc. Had to fight really hard to establish breastfeeding due to low supply in the beginning, we were topping up with formula from a little cup before that.

The best advice I can give is if your DH wants to give a bottle, make him responsible for the whole process- washing up, sterilising, buying & making up formula, checking and replacing teats, post-feed poonami. Otherwise it’ll just make more work for you which you don’t need.

Thank you so much for this thread OP! It is really hard to make sense of all the info out there.

Also, @MissingGrandstand, you've really summed up how I feel too. Thank you!

I'm a true introvert, who needs a bit of space now and then to maintain balance. I've been thinking a lot about breastfeeding and how it's going to work with my mental health. I'm all for doing it, but a little scared that I'll get touched out much quicker than others might. Being able to leave baby with dad for a short while and not worry about feeds is key I think, as is the comfort and security of knowing I can express if needs be. DP is also incredibly keen to help with it, as he wants to use it as a bonding activity. Provided all goes well, I may leave it a week and then see how she/my boobs feel about a bottle a day, increasing to two or even three per day if possible by 6-8 weeks.

Hi OP.

My baby was borderline low birth weight and I was put under a lot of pressure to formula feed in the first few days, but I resisted. I also had a C-section which might have delayed my milk coming in slightly.

One thing I did was I started expressing colostrum at around 36 weeks and I had some syringes of colostrum in the freezer. I supplemented my baby's feeds with extra colostrum in the early days.

My advice would be not to miss a breastfeed in the early weeks if you want it to work. Supplementing with formula can interfere with establishing your supply.

I would recommend getting a Haakaa, and once you get to about 3 or 4 weeks postpartum, try using the Haakaa on one breast while you feed from the other to catch the extra milk. I recommend getting the Haakaa with the suction lip and the lid, because this makes it easier to store it. You may not get much milk to begin with. If you manage to get around 30-40ml milk, you could try giving it to your baby in a bottle at the beginning of a feed once they are about 4 weeks old, and then once they have drunk the expressed milk you can continue with the breast so you aren't missing a feed.

This worked really well for us because my baby got used to taking a bottle maybe a few times a week from when he was 3 or 4 weeks old. He didn't need to take a bottle very often while I was on maternity leave, but it did come in useful sometimes, like when I needed to leave him with my MIL for a few hours, or when I went to a wedding and wanted to be able to drink more than usual.

I would recommend doing it just enough to let your baby get used to it, but not so much that they start to prefer the bottle to the breast unless you are comfortable switching to formula before too long or you are happy to spend a lot of time pumping.

We managed like that with mostly breastfeeding and just occasional bottle feeds until he was 7 months old, when I went back to work. At that point I began expressing milk twice a day for him to have bottles at the childminder's, and continuing to breastfeed in the mornings, evenings and at weekends. He is now just over 10 months old and we are down to three feeds a day, one of which is pumped breastmilk.

One more thing: I would try to avoid replacing middle of the night feeds with your partner giving a bottle until your baby is a bit older, unless you are really really struggling with the lack of sleep. Breastfeeding at night is important for keeping your supply up, and I think it also helps the baby to settle down to sleep again much more quickly compared to a bottle feed.

If this helps, I had a bottle refuser. I introduced a bottle to her in the same way at the same time as her combi fed brother. She just hated bottles and dummies.

I really wasn't an issue at all. She settled into a feeding pattern pretty early on so I knew from then I had around 3 hours from a feed until she needed feeding again. I also knew what times here feeds would be (tip, do their first feed and get up at the same time every day to help them settle into a rhythm)

That meant if I needed to go somewhere without her I could plan to do it during those times. But there wasn't really anywhere I needed to go that she couldn't come to.

By 6 months she was using a sippy cup for water and she happily took milk in that. As she got older she took more food than milk and I could be away more. By 10 months she was only feeding morning and bed time.

Having a bottle refuser really isn't an issue if that's what happens.

I'd just have a rough plan and see how you go. Let your partner suss out the bottle part and you deal with BF. You might find you love it and don't want to bottle feed, or struggle then don't want to bottle feed because you want to establish your supply, or breastfeeding doesn't work out at all, there are lots of scenarios and in any event your baby will get milk.

You might find that you don't want to leave her to pop out for a bit, I found it very anxiety-making to leave DD in the early days and it was months before she was out of my sight.

Don't worry about volumes and simply listen to your baby.As someone here already said first couple days baby is literally almost all the time at your boob.This really helps establish supply as they eat very little but often.
Nothing wrong with the formula however I am glad I didn't start with it.It is easier by far and I know I would have kept it going instead of sticking with my original plan of bf.

@Tina8800

Well my baby did not survive on the colostrum alone. From day 2 I had to give her formula as she was so hungry (I had colostrum and she still had 250 ml formula on the same day). She has no problem to take bottles or has nipple confusion (she has tried at least 5 different one and I'm using the nipple shields too). I would suggest to take formula with you and give if needed. I find it cruel that some women refuse to give formula while they don't have the milk yet or don't have enough. I would never let my baby to starve or cry for milk. There is some weird attitude towards formula, while it is complitely normal to use it while you're waiting for your milk to come or top it up.

Interesting that you are calling something so natural "cruel". There is nothing wrong with formula and no "weird attitude" towards it, but baby needs to feed at the breast regularly at the beginning to build supply, any interruption to that will delay it further. If you found that too worrying, that's fine, but my babies certainly didn't cry for milk, they were fed when they needed and gained more weight than expected. It's this kind of misinformation that scares women into not meeting their goals. Feed your baby how you want to; don't call others cruel for building their supply.

What @User79853257976 said.

A newborn baby has a stomach the size of a marble and can't even drink more than a tablespoon of fluid at a time. That's why they need to feed little and often.

My baby was very small and lost nearly 10% of his birth weight in the first three days. It didn't even occur to me that I was starving him or that I was being cruel by not giving him formula. I just told the doctor that I wanted to wait until my milk came in and give him a chance to get the hang of breastfeeding before introducing formula. He had regained his (admittedly tiny) birth weight by day 11, had moved from the 3rd percentile to the 50th by 4 months, and is now on around the 75th percentile at 10 months. He still hasn't had formula. (I'm not criticising formula, we just haven't needed or wanted it.)

I combination fed dc1 worked well for us xx

My milk was delayed my baby was hungry so she was supplemented with formula in hospital. I was still having her on the breast a lot.
First day back home my milk came in full force . We stopped using formula and I expressed.
That only lasted a month though... i was then only BF.
But looking back I should have continued to express or used formula as she became a bottle refuser when I tried again 4 months after and therefore I could never be without her for more than a couple of hours...
Still an issue now at 10months