Moving from BF to combining BF & bottle-feeding while weaning - advice please!

[SamJohnsMum]

I hope it's okay to post two questions on here, but I need lots of advice at the moment!

My DS (21 weeks) is currently exclusively BF, but his feeds are rather random and he doesn't sleep well ( I have posted a lot on MN about that and MNers have been utterly fantastic) and I'd like to combine breast and bottle when I start weaning him.

However, I waited too long before introducing a bottle and now he won't take a bottle. Aargh! We are currently trying a cup and we're using fresh EBM and then worrying about trying to substitute formula, if necessary, at a later date.

In an ideal world, once weaning is under way I'd like to BF first thing in the morning and last thing at night, but FF around other food during the day - is this possible?

I'm just bumping this in the hope that someone can offer advice!!

It depends how strong your supply is... I've found as I've increased the amount of bottles of formula my supply has suddenly dropped. I'm still able to do one night feed but that's not even filling DD up much anymore so will probably have to wave goodbye to BF this week... Until next time anyway!

My DD is 5 months.

I suppose that's quite common - how long has it been since you've introduced bottles of formula?

I dont know if this will be any help - am not an expert but can tell you what worked for us with our now 5yo ds.

The first thing we did was to have a routine to the bfs - and this may well go against your instinct but if you want to introduce formula then you will have to feed it at the same time each day - we did 2pm so that it would fit in with nursery when I went back to work.

you have to drop the feeds one at a time as well with long gaps in between so your body knows what its doing - if you drop more than one at once then your supply will be massively affected.

Our schedule from 6 months was:

bf on waking then porridge or whatever.
10am bf (these were gradually dropped in favour of dairy snacks/solid food)
12.00 lunch and bf
2pm formula
5-6pm tea
bedtime bf

this time I am going back to work later so am not introducing any formula at all - once you introduce even one bottle it all becomes a bit touch and go but it can be done - have a look on kellymom or nct etc to see what they advise.

I started with one bottle of formula at 10 weeks then upped it to 2 at 14 weeks by 17 weeks (probably due to the 4 month growth spurt) my supply just wasn't able to keep up so she started having bottles during the day and boob at bedtime, night and morning... Now (she's 21 weeks) I can't supply enough to fill her up in the night so I reckon that's the end of that... But hey, I managed 5 months! Which considering the awful awful start we had is pretty impressive