Advice on formula

[Manfa]

Hello,

My son is 4 weeks old and I am breastfeeding. It's going pretty well.

I've had offers from his Nan to take him for an hour now and again to give me a rest. And breastfeeding when we are out or have guests is sometimes awkward, so I do want to offer him a bottle. I would rather it be a bottle of expressed milk but but I have been struggling a bit with expressing. I can do it fine, but it's slow and I struggle to find the time to do it.... plus to be honest I hate doing it, I feel like Daisy the flippin cow.

So I was thinking of occasionally giving him some formula. I have given him a bottle of expressed milk a couple of times and he took to that OK and is still breast feeding OK.

I was wondering how often I should offer a bottle of formula.... just a couple of times a week so that he doesn't refuse the breast? Or would as often as once a day be OK? Would that be better so that he gets used to it? Is he too young to mix breast and bottle? Is mixing the two harmful? Too may questions.... please help!

 

[barbwong_130]

Dear Manfa,

First you have to decide how you feel about your baby being exclusively breastfed. This is when your baby receives nothing but breast milk. This gives the very best health to your baby. As soon as something other than breast milk, whether that is water, formula or some other food, some of the benefits of breastfeeding are reduced. All the major health bodies, WHO, UNICEF, AAP, etc. recommend exclusive breastfeeding for six months.

Once formula is introduced it takes two weeks of full breastfeeding for the internal flora to return to a breastfeed baby?s flora. So if you start to introduce formula even once a week your baby will ever be the same again.

If you are happy to introduce formula then because it sounds (from your other post) that everything with the breastfeeding is going well it is unlikely to cause problems with the breastfeeding. Once the baby has learnt the skill of breastfeeding they usually can cope with learning the second skill of bottle feeding.

Watch your baby?s behaviour if he starts to show signs of messing about while breastfeeding then stop the bottles and return to full breastfeeding for a few weeks.

Remember that as you increase the amount of formula your body will reduce the amount of milk it makes. So as you start to introduce more and more formula your body will make less and less milk.

The way breastfeeding works is the more you breastfeed the more milk you make. The reserve is true ? the less you breastfeed the less milk you make.

Best wishes,
Barb

 

[Matty]

The additional benefit of introducing the OCCASIONAL bottle of formula now is that you are unlikely to encounter problems in 6 or so mths time (depending how long you plan to breastfeed of course) with your baby flatly refusing to drink formula when you decide to wean.

Two friends of mine are going through hell at the moment trying to stop breastfeeding with their 7 mth olds. They will happily take breast milk from a bottle, but are refusing all attempts at formula.


Just something to think about.