Breast Milk in Bottle/Combination Feeding?

[Inmydreams88]

I'm 37 weeks pregnant and a FTM. I am extremely nervous about the birth due to a lot of anxiety so I haven't really given breast feeding too much thought or research to be honest. I just figured I would deal with it after the birth.

After some thought I would ideally like to express using a pump and then bottle feed my baby. If this means a combination of breast milk and formula I am fine with this. I think this would make it easier for my husband and I so we could share the night feeds.

Obviously I have no experience of this and I am quite possibly very naive about the whole thing so any advice would be appreciated.

I guess my question is; would this be possible? Did anyone else do this or could offer any advice? Thank you x

Personally I hated pumping, it made me feel like a cow and took forever. Feeding directly from the breast is far more efficient and skin to skin and baby 'putting in their order' by suckling to increase production for later in the week is really important in the early weeks.

Feeding directly also means you have to stop and sit down and that is incredibly important as you recover from the birth and to help with the sleepless nights. If you bottle-feed it'll be far easier for someone else to do it whilst you complete chores etc and not get the rest you need.

Re night feeds, although breast feeding means you have more disturbed sleep you release a hormone which means you get a deeper, higher quality sleep (although it may not feel like it at the time).

But a fed baby is more important than how you feed your baby and what works for each family is different.

Hi OP. Congratulations on your little one coming very soon!
As a mum who ff her first and bf her 2nd I would 100% combi feed. With my first I had no support with bf and baby was tiny and failing to thrive so I did ff (first big covid lockdown). He's a happy healthy boy now.
With my 2nd I was determined to bf and did really well. I couldn't express much which apparently can happen even with good supply which I had. Baby was exclusively bf until 15months. It was amazing but brutal as DD refused a bottle from 3 weeks old and would never ever take one no matter what I tried. I must have bought every brand of bany bottle going. I had to keep her with me 24/7. It was exhausting but I'm so proud of myself at the same time. She happily now drinks from a cup and water bottle.

You do what works for you and don't let anyone tell you you can't combi feed like I was told by a midwife as lots of mummies I know did/do and its worked out great!

Look what will work for you only you will know.

If you have a good supply you could literally pump bottles in a sitting and then its practical and easy. Alternatively you might find it hard etc and then pumping becomes an extra chore.

OP your milk supply is stimulated by the baby feeding but also there's some fascinating research that suggests the main immunity benefits of breastfeeding come from the baby physically feeding. That's because through a bizarre process called retroactive milk flow (basically baby backwash 😂) viruses and pathogens the baby encounters enters your bloodstream and your body produces antibodies to fight the infection. It's amazing and really cool research which begins to explain why breastfeeding helps babies recover quicker from illnesses. It is tough being the only one doing the night feeds for the first few weeks while the baby doesn't sleep at night as much but for me my baby was only waking up briefly a couple of times by 6 weeks. And your husband can help loads in other ways, too. Worth thinking about directly feeding from your breast. Plus you might surprise yourself and enjoy it!

Hello 👋🏼 don't worry, I didn't really think about the practicalities of feeding until DS arrived (he's 2 now).

For various reasons (tongue tie, having to be fed by tube or a short period) his latch wasn't v good and I did a lot of expressing and bottle feeding.

Expressing is a lot of work!

So, the big thing to know is that breastfeeding works on supply and demand. When the baby drinks milk from you directly, your body knows to make more milk.

Expressing is similar of course, although some women find expressing has a negative impact on supply or they can't pump much even if their supply is great and their baby gets plenty of milk when fed directly.

If you want your baby to mainly have breast milk, you need to be either breastfeeding or expressing at night as well as in the day time, to keep your milk supply up. Not feeding or expressing at night will have an impact on your milk supply.

So it might not necessarily be that helpful for your husband to be feeding a bottle of expressed milk at 2am if you also have to get up and pump anyway.

What I'd suggest is exclusively BF for the first 6wk to establish your supply and then do some expressing/add in some formula, and see how that goes.

Best of luck for the birth 🙂hope it goes smoothly.

I can't express milk and never manage to pump much too so that can be an issue for some people. But I honestly don't mind being the only one who can feed out baby now she's 4 months and takes short speedy feeds. Combination feeding is one thing but I'd advise against solely pumping for the reasons i gave above. Finally sorry I forgot to say congratulations and good luck!

Congrats OP! This is exactly what I did with my baby.

I had a really hard time BF so we used formula in the beginning, and I started pumping to try to get my supply up to be able to BF. But actually the formula worked so well with my partner doing half the feeds and me being able to go out and leave the baby, that I just continued with the formula + pump. We stored the expressed milk in the fridge and then added it to the bottles.

It worked really well for us!

Congratulations on your pregnancy!

Regarding the feeding, you'll definitely be able to figure it out after the birth. The midwives can help.

Personally, I found that expressing was too much hard work and DD didn't drink beast milk from a bottle anyway. So, when she was four weeks, DH started giving her a bottle of formula once a night. This in hindsight was a fantastic idea. She got used to the bottle. DH got a chance to bond with her. I got to sleep for at least four consecutive hours in the spare room, while he fed and cared for her with the bottle. We could have done this with expressed milk, but it was a right faff and didn't seem worth it since I was breastfeeding the rest of the time anyway.

Good luck! You will find what works for you

Congratulations OP and thank you for this thread! I'm a FTM and 32 weeks so the advice being shared is really helpful, thank you all!

I think i'd like to exclusively breastfeed for as long as possible for bonding (skin to skin) as well as the nutritional benefits, and also just to avoid the faff of making bottles countless times during the night. My husband will be more help during the day but personally I don't think i'd sleep at night even if we take shifts if I know him and baby are awake so I might as well do those feeds. I'm trying not to be naïve though and keeping an open might because if I can't breastfeed for whatever reason or have to combi feed, i'll do it without guilt because i'll at least know I tried the method I wanted to do.

I don't think there is a right or wrong decision. Do what's best for you and your baby. As long as baby is fed, happy and comfortable that's all we can hope for.

Wish you the very best with the rest of the pregnancy and hope you have a safe delivery. x

Combi feeding can be the worst of both worlds. Obviously you need to do what suits your family but I would suggest establishing feeding before dragging a pump into things. It can be very time consuming and is not always very efficient. I had fantastic supply with DC1 and am absolutely sure that pumping would have worked well . I never attempted it as baby was a very efficient feeder and I wasn't working. Baby 2 was very difficult to feed and I am convinced that pumping would have been a nightmare. Baby 3 was a great feeder but they were a sick child , in and out of hospital and I tried to pump so that he could be tube fed by the nurses. Almost no milk; I had to continue to breast feed on ITU or HDU and luckily he was efficient enough that it didn't set him back. I would have been happy to give him formula btw if he couldn't. My point is , keep an open mind but if you want to use breast milk in any way you need to build supply and take your child into account

Something else to consider is what your partner's job is. Does it require driving or operating heavy machinery? If so I would (begrudgingly) wan to do the overnight feeds on work nights as microsleeps kill.

Pumping is a pain in the arse. It takes three times as long as direct feeding. You have to pump, then feed the baby, then wash up the pump. I did it from about 2months to get baby used to a bottle and enable me to work part time from 6months and keep breastfeeding. It’s worth it for when it can give you a proper break from the baby. Listening to your baby scream for you at 2am while you pump because the crying has triggered your let down and your husband gives a bottle to ´let you sleep’ does not count as a break in my book).