Expressing amounts

secretbaba

Hi all, long time lurker to this board here. I'm starting to look into when it is convenient to feed my two week old expressed milk from a bottle every now and then (I won't do till at least another week has passed, she's got a great latch and I don't want to risk her losing that). I've been searching the boards and looking online, and it seems that she shouldn't be having more than 1oz per hour, so since she's feeding every 2-3 hours that should be 2-3oz. Does this seem right?

etayislove

Every baby is different and because bottle nipples are fast flowing some little ones chug as much as they can in one feeding, and others sputter and spit because it is too much too fast. There are some good articles on LLLI.org and kellymom.com about how to bottle feed the breastfeeding baby. It's also suggested to hold off as long as you can on trying a bottle, or to only do a bottle every other day. Also, to have someone else feed the baby the bottles to help forestall nipple confusion.

secretbaba

Thank you, I'm going to check those links out ☺️ definitely won't be me doing the bottle-feeding, it'll be more for my husband when I'm out or when I want him to feel involved (or let's be honest, down the line when I want to enjoy a bottle of wine.) I'm thinking of the first (and only, for a while) time being for my birthday on the 24th, but I'm going to give those sites a once over first.

MWoodside

Use a stage one nipple or a preemie nipple for a BF baby. Honestly, I'd start introducing a bottle right about now as long as BFing is going well so far.  We introduced a bottle to DD1 around 3 weeks (it was to see how much she was taking b/c she was slow to gain initially) and we didn't introduce one for DD2 until I returned to work at 12 weeks.  In the future, I will always do it earlier so that baby is comfy with someone other than me feeding him/her.  It was a real challenge to get DD2 comfy with these things.  Good luck!