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?

[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.

[ScotHill]

Thanks for the advice, tried a few topup bottles and it kind of does what we need it to, stops him breastfeeding endlessly and means MrsHill can express more effectively sometimes and get some rest at other times, and I can organise feeding sometimes rather than being helplessly reliant.

But - I never realised how disgusting formula milk is, I wouldn't be drinking it and whoever said it was like vanilla ice cream was bang on, apart from the flavour, it's like a thick gritty sugary liquid (the powder mixed stuff anyway) as opposed to the almost cantaloupe juice of breast milk. And it's turned his nappies from a sweet banoffee pie to some greenish hell that looks and smells like someone ate some sick, shat it out and then someone ate that st and then sicked it up again. Maybe he's just adjusting to it but I wish he'd hurry up.

So emergency topup but the traditional way still works best for us 90% of the time.