Topping baby up with formula bottle

[ScotHill]

3 weeks old and pretty much every other day my wife is going nuts over breastfeeding - wee guy can feed for an hour and a half, as he was 10lbs 1 when born so is a chunky monkey, and can doze off while feeding. An hour later and he wants more, this can go on for the whole afternoon, and then again after dinner. We have an expressor so can sometimes knock him out with a 100ml bottle in one go, but she has to find the time to produce it inbetween normal feeds.

So thinking about using a formula topup but keeping the breastfeeding going as much as possible. Anyone managed this? Ideally it would be a big glug of formula before bedtime to get him to sleep longer, and then usual feeding in the day, but have read that with the best intentions many parents end up using the formula more and more until breastfeeding goes by the wayside or even isn't practically possible any more.

Breastfeeding is great, yes, but you don't want a woman to end up resenting her baby.

Any tips?

[Gunk]

It does work, bottle of formula milk is like vanilla ice cream compared with breast milk.

[grumbledoak]

Do what you have to do.

Ignore the breastfeeding Nazis; that nonsense has actually killed babies. If he's hungry, he's hungry. If mum is knackered, she's knackered. If you need formula, get formula.

All the best to all of you. It's a tough time. Get through it.

[fat80b]

grumbledoak said:

Do what you have to do.

Ignore the breastfeeding Nazis; that nonsense has actually killed babies. If he's hungry, he's hungry. If mum is knackered, she's knackered. If you need formula, get formula.

All the best to all of you. It's a tough time. Get through it.

Good advice - there are far too many people telling you what they think is right for you and the little one at this time,

Do what's right for you,

Bob

[Djtemeka]

Ours wouldn't latch on so the wife was expressing and formula feeding every other feed. He's 2 months old today and the boob pump is nowhere to be seen. Formula only now and a happy wife and baby. Baby couldn't give a rats ass what he gets and the wife has halved feeding time and doesn't express so she has more free time which is important for mental health as babies are all consuming little st bags

[MiniMan64]

grumbledoak said:

Do what you have to do.

Ignore the breastfeeding Nazis; that nonsense has actually killed babies. If he's hungry, he's hungry. If mum is knackered, she's knackered. If you need formula, get formula.

All the best to all of you. It's a tough time. Get through it.

Absolutely.

Breastfeeding is all well and good but it's rather counterproductive if it makes Mum very unhappy. Happy Mum is much better for a baby that breastmilk.

Means you get to feed too which is nice.

Now if I could just get mine to sleep....

[768]

ScotHill said:

wee guy can feed for an hour and a half

Take him off if he's not feeding properly, an hour and a half sounds excessive to me, I'm just a dad though.

Send her to bed if he's not on, do what you can to prepare food and drink for her. It's probably only a few weeks before things ease off. I know it's horrendous at the time.

Absolutely agree with the advice to do what you have to, but we found formula top ups a lot more hassle with our first when my wife's milk supply wasn't sufficient. And hassle is stressful in those early weeks.

[essayer]

grumbledoak said:

Do what you have to do.

Ignore the breastfeeding Nazis; that nonsense has actually killed babies. If he's hungry, he's hungry. If mum is knackered, she's knackered. If you need formula, get formula.

All the best to all of you. It's a tough time. Get through it.

Couldn't agree more. Baby won't care. This first bit is tough but it doesn't last long before you get into a better routine.

[The Char]

Breastfeeding mum here.

There is a huge growth spurt at 3 weeks so extra feeding is totally normal, but feeding for an hour and half is not in my experience. As long as the weight gain and nappy production are ok you don't need to worry. There's nothing wrong with a formula top up before bed, we had to do the same because our boy had feeding issues to begin with. I'd say it got us an extra hour or two for the first stretch of sleep but this was 5/6 weeks old onwards- before then they have no idea the difference between day/night so frequent waking is normal.

Can you access a breastfeeding support counsellor locally? Where we live there is an infant feeding team who will come out to you. La Leache league and NCT have similar. They will not advise you to avoid formula they will advise you what is best for you and even a bit of breast milk supplemented with formula is amazing.

The only issue with topping up is when you start replacing feeds altogether and then mum's supply drops. This was a big worry for me, but then my little boy was 6lb 9 and off the bottom of the charts for weight! So I expressed as well to keep my supply up. But only once a day for 20 mins or so. Mum might need to express just to prevent becoming engorged and then the risk of mastitis.

Anyway, see if you can some expert support because that's definitely going to be better than asking dad's on here (no offence intended!) Happy to try and help but I'm only speaking from my own experience. Breastfeeding is most definitely one of the hardest things I've ever done but it's so rewarding and once you get it established it's a piece of cake.

Charlie

[ScotHill]

The Char said:

but feeding for an hour and half is not, in my experience.

He gets relaxed and takes pauses, sometimes falling asleep. If he's moved and wakes up he will go back to feeding again, it's not just a pacifier thing, he needs the milk but just seems to take his time which can be normal. Or is taking in gallons of it, shame they don't come with a fuel gauge.

The Char said:

As long as the weight gain and nappy production are ok you don't need to worry.

He was slow to start the weight gain but is getting there (99th percentile at birth and down to 91st at 2 week check, regained birthweight at 3 weeks but birthweight can include a lot of mucus and gunk apparently so don't know how meaningful that is).

The Char said:

The only issue with topping up is when you start replacing feeds altogether and then mum's supply drops. This was a big worry for me, but then my little boy was 6lb 9 and off the bottom of the charts for weight! So I expressed as well to keep my supply up. But only once a day for 20 mins or so. Mum might need to express just to prevent becoming engorged and then the risk of mastitis.

Yeah that's what I was concerned about, that one formula feed a day would become two and so on. Expressing isn't a problem in itself, just if you've been feeding for x hours a day already sleep tends to win over the milky machine. Guess we could set up the conditions when we would use a formula and stick to it, but that feels like saying 'okay, but just a little bit of heroin...'. Having said that, breastfeeding is more practical than formula in many ways, needs no equipment, can be done with zero notice, and even a bottle of expressed would last 6-7 hours out and about on a not-too-warm day, whereas powder formula needs to be used within two hours even at home, so nighttime feeds can't be made up in advance.

Dads tend to have a practical detachment on these things hence the thread here, and breastfeeding is the one area where we're almost helpless to directly assist. Plus I didn't have the energy to tackle Netmums.

[ScotHill]

fat80b said:

Do what's right for you,

Seems like common advice - breastfeeding does seem to be what's right for us at the moment, just need something to take that extra bit of demand away. I would feel rubbish if he was a formula baby in a month's time. Not least because I would be the one washing all the bottles.

[Eddie Strohacker]

Formula really isn't the drag you're implying it to be. Like nappies, it becomes one of those things you just do on autopilot. Pretty sure it keeps more than two hours too even if it is ten years since I had to knock up a batch.

Ultimately, you have to do what you have to do. It is a hack in the early days, but it passes. In our case, the missus just didn't produce enough & in our naivety, we just thought we had a grizzly baby. An astronomical bking from the health visitor when she wasn't putting on weight made the penny drop. I still feel guilty now when I think of those days, we just didn't know what we didn't know.

[The Char]

Sounds like you're doing a brilliant job, both of you.

Ok so baby is feeding through multiple let downs, referred to as cluster feeding. This is totally normal and won't go on for ever. Usually happens in the late afternoons or evenings.

Once they get to 4 months you have the opposite problem where they're so distracted they want to pull off and look around all the time, exposing mum to all and sundry!

Regarding weight gain health visitor shouldn't be concerned unless baby drops 2/3 centile lines, babies usually find where they're meant to be centile wise if that makes sense. Go by the nappies and generally how content and alert baby is but all sounds great.

Breastfeeding is physically, mentally and emotionally draining. What worked for us was we did the one formula feed before bed. Husband would do bath, bottle and settling while I would express in front of a tv programme. Gave him chance to bond with baby and spend time with him after being at work all day. I honestly couldn't have cope with bottle feeding through the night as our baby was a frequent feeder for quite a while (due to needing to catch up with weight). At least with breastfeeding I could get up, feed baby and be back to sleep all in 15-20 minutes. As they get older they get a lot more efficient.

Something else you could try is when you and wife go to bed do a 'dream feed', this really helped us to get a bit more sleep and it doesn't have to be done with a bottle.

Sol is 10 months old and has gone from below the 0.4th centile to between 9th and 25th. He was born on the 9th. Like I said it was extremely hard in the beginning but I'm so glad I stuck with it.

[The Char]

Here's a little pic of him with a car; this isn't mumsnet after all.

[Tri_Doc]

PM me if you want some specific advice on feeding support and i'll try to help where I can. Info above about discussing the feeding with your local breast feeding support or health visitor is a good start. Expressing is very helpful, but cluster feeds are a frustrating but normal part of the early days of feeding. Formula top ups can be very helpful though for some people.

[Cyder]

Eddie Strohacker said:

Formula really isn't the drag you're implying it to be. Like nappies, it becomes one of those things you just do on autopilot. Pretty sure it keeps more than two hours too even if it is ten years since I had to knock up a batch.

Ultimately, you have to do what you have to do. It is a hack in the early days, but it passes. In our case, the missus just didn't produce enough & in our naivety, we just thought we had a grizzly baby. An astronomical bking from the health visitor when she wasn't putting on weight made the penny drop. I still feel guilty now when I think of those days, we just didn't know what we didn't know.

I agree, we ignored the Nazi's and went to formula as it hurt my missus too much and young apple juice wasn't a happy girl.
We used to batch make the milk and keep them in the fridge for a few hours, it didn't seem to do her any harm at all.

Now she's 18 months old, full of attitude, happy as larry and amazes us on a daily basis with how quickly she learns things and develops.

Do what's best for you, your wife and your baby and ignore the feminazi's.

[PostHeads123]

Agreed do what you need to, we were pushed by mid wifes to keep breast feeding even when we felt he wasn't getting enough, we even called the breast feeding helpline told to keep trying. 8 days later the little one ends up in hospital due to how much weight he lost, all due to the good (sh*t) midwife advice.

[Butter Face]

Ahhh this brings back memories.

The first night that we got our daughter home (it was a Saturday) she wouldn't feed, just wouldn't latch on at all.

My wife was tired (understandably) and was getting upset (also understandably) as she really wanted to breastfeed as everyone said how great it was, midwife etc saying it's the best way.

Luckily we had planned ahead and frozen some breast milk. Defrosted that and fed baby. All happy and back to bed.

Until about 2am, baby awake, wants feeding, no more frozens stuff, not latching on, so I said 'bugger this, I'm going to get some formula'


Except I wasn't as it was 2am on a Sunday morning.

Frantic calling of all of the 24hr petrol stations within 30 miles and I found one open with formula, so off we all went to fetch it. Topped the Mrs up with a banana milkshake and some McNuggets on the way.

From the day we fed formula and never looked back. Breastfeeding is a pain in the ass tits.

[essayer]

...where did you get the frozen milk from?

[Butter Face]

essayer said:

...where did you get the frozen milk from?

Err, the freezer.


And previously my wife's breasts.