Breast feeding

7 replies

Room4onemore · 01/01/2023 18:07

Hi I’m wanting to try and breast feed my baby. I’m due in March wondered if I can breastfeed and express into a bottle. I want to establish breastfeeding first then introduce a bottle, is this possible?
also if so, what are the best bottles to buy? Thanks

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123woop · 01/01/2023 18:21

Yes! You can express/pump and feed through a bottle. The NHS advice is to only introduce a bottle from 4 weeks to avoid nipple confusion but people have differing views on that.
We were highly recommended the MAM bottles. You start with the slowest flow teat and then move up as baby grows and gets better at feeding.

bravotango · 01/01/2023 18:41

Yes, we introduced a bottle at around 2 weeks once I was confident with breastfeeding. Now we do one bottle overnight (DS is 6 weeks old) and from next week will go up to 2 bottles, one around dinner time and one overnight. We have the mam ones too - make sure to have an anti colic one in your collection just in case- we panic bought one when his reflux kicked in around 4 weeks. Also look up paced feeding! Best of luck!

K37529 · 01/01/2023 22:40

If your going to introduce a bottle I'd recommend doing it early, I waited until my second baby was 6 weeks and he wouldn't take it, ended up exclusively breastfeeding as he point blank refused, I introduced bottles after a couple of days with my first and they took it no issues

J1290 · 02/01/2023 14:41

Also dod it around 2/2.5 weeks one bottle in the evening she also took a dummy. Never got confused and fed well. Bur expressing is a pain. Helped in earlier weeks OH fed her at 10ish and i slept 8pm-1.30/2am.

Newmumma516789 · 02/01/2023 18:42

I'm also due march with DS2 and hoping to breastfeed. DS1 was born via emcs and didn't latch, point blank refused to put his mouth anywhere near without screaming. So watching this thread with hope.
For those of you that expressed so early how did you build up your supply? Did you use a manual or electric breast pump?

bravotango · 03/01/2023 05:33

My milk came in on day 6 but I was struggling to express enough colostrum to feed my DS so the midwives suggested the medella hand pump to get things going, think it was about£20. That was a life saver as I think it possibly helped my milk come in a bit quicker
and then I used it from 2 weeks to express a bottle a day, this used to take about 30 mins to get 25-50ml, now it takes about 15 mins to get 120ml. Unsure if I used it enough for it to have an effect on supply, think DS had more effect!

babyjellyfish · 03/01/2023 07:11

I think you'll have an easier job establishing your supply if you breastfeed for at least the first couple of months. We introduced a bottle when my son was about 4 weeks old but he didn't have a bottle more than once or twice a week in the early months, just enough to make sure he knew what to do and wouldn't reject it. It turned out to be very useful when I needed time away from him (for a medical appointment or even just an evening out with friends or a wedding when I wanted to have a few more drinks than usual), and especially when I went back to work.

You should look on the Reddit breastfeeding subforum for advice about pumping. There are loads of US based mums who pump exclusively because they have to go back to work so early. You probably won't need to build a huge freezer stash like they do, but they have great tips about pumping.

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