for those who both breast and formula feed

Vii Lii

Do you find that lo transitions well between each kind? While I'm awake, I'm able to feed colostrum to lo just fine, but at night she is more active and I fins that she's hungry with me every hour almost. I tried pumping for dh for when he covers her at night, but I have a very hard time expressing enough to satisfy her in that 3 hr window. Thinking we might have to supplement that time with formula, because otherwise lo is very fussy and dh has to wake me to feed. I'm still waiting for my milk beginning day 5. Would it be ok to introduce formula for that time period? Part of me is terrified that she will reject me as a result.

tjg5275

my baby at 5 days old took formula , breast milk from and bottle and breast fed, no confusion what so ever-----

 as far as formula does he did the best on similac sensitive.

 if you give the baby formula at night, like i do---- she will sleep much longer and you will get some relief if that is what you are looking for

 our baby gets 25% formula and the rest BM

I do this bc i am also pumping to get stock for daycare...

Vii Lii

That Is encouraging, thank you

StangJK13

I do both BF and formula feed. My LO is a big baby (9lbs 2oz) and her hunger far exceeds what I am producing. I mostly pump with maybe 2 feedings at the breast per day. I find that in order to satisfy her, I must do a pump session of 1.5-2oz of BM then next feeding I feed from breast and give her the pumped milk as well. This leaves me short on a feeding so I have to give formula. It is not ideally what I want to do, but it is what is working for now and keeping LO satisfied. I'm hoping my milk production increases soon so I can drop some of the formula feedings. I do notice that she is a little fussy at the breast because she doesn't get the milk as fast from the breast as she does from the bottle.

k3montel

DS lost too much weight, which is why we supplement. I don't have enough milk for him...I had a breast reduction 7 years ago which has had an effect on my supply.

That said, if you want to get away from formula, you'll have to feed on demand, even if that means every hour on the hour. Breast feeding has been harder than I ever imagined; I feed him first, then while I heat the formula, I pump to tell my body to produce more. Then I give him 1-2 oz of formula.

Its tough, but stick with it, it gets easier. 

k3montel

k3montel:

DS lost too much weight, which is why we supplement. I don't have enough milk for him...I had a breast reduction 7 years ago which has had an effect on my supply.

That said, if you want to get away from formula, you'll have to feed on demand, even if that means every hour on the hour. Breast feeding has been harder than I ever imagined; I feed him first, then while I heat the formula, I pump to tell my body to produce more. Then I give him 1-2 oz of formula.

Its tough, but stick with it, it gets easier. 

Also, DS had nipple confusion for like the first week. Now he goes back and forth with no trouble. 

Sweetest116

We're mostly breastmilk now but when we did a combo I noticed he would spit up more formula.

SapphireDreamRock

I have been supplementing 2 oz/night (usually between 2 and 4am) for a few different reasons.  Mostly because LO had a few incredibly fussy nights, to the point where she wasn't latching on and I felt horrible that she wasn't getting enough milk.  Sometimes my DH will feed her at that time while I pump, and she usually calms down enough to get some sleep before her next feeding.  I have not been able to get much while pumping, but I figure every little bit helps. 

I was actually about to start a new thread about this, but I'll say it here as well.  I LOVE the Medela Calma bottle.  It is built so that she has to suck similarly to how she would on a boob.  Very slowly, with deeper sucking (not just the end like most nipples).  I had to buy it online through Amazon because my DH couldn't find it at BBB or Babies R Us.  It was $20, but well worth it.  For the first 2 nights of using formula, we used a regular slow-flow bottle, and I did notice it taking her a bit longer to latch the next few feedings.  She also lost her latch several times and had a more difficult time re-latching.  However, she was less than a week old at that point, so it could be because she was still learning how to BF.  She's much more efficient now, although she definitely has issues when she's super fussy at night. 

natalie_wn@yahoo.com

KEEP PUMPING! I can't express this enough! I pumped from day 2 to help bring my milk in because LO wouldn't latch properly, so we wanted to get things going anyway. I would pump more and more colostrum every time, and what we did (and still do sometimes with milk that I've pumped) is put it in a syringe and then attach a tube (the hospital showed us this). We then put the tube against the nipple when he is latching so he at least gets something to encourage him to latch and he gets stuff from the syringe and my breast. Sounds confusing, but it worked wonders (and still does when he freaks out because the milk isn't coming out fast enough).

 At first I wasn't getting much collestrum/milk so we would do the tube thing with formula and my baby hasn't rejected me. Do whatever is best for you and baby and everything will be okay.

footnotegirl

We had to start supplementing at 5 days in because my breast milk just wasn't coming in enough. I still don't produce enough 2 weeks in. 

Since we had wanted to exclusively breast feed at first, and I was afraid of nipple confusion, when we started supplementing they gave us a little cup to feed from. The two days we did that was the most terrible frustrating, sleep deprived time of my life. The cup is totally for the birds! Then I remembered that I'd been on Heparin before the baby was born, and we used one of my left over syringes (needle removed of course) for a while, but it was only 1ml. So we bought a feeding syringe from a pet store (hey, it's clean) and used that for a couple of days until we could see the lactation consultant.

At the LC, they tested how much I was producing (weighed baby before and after, turns out it was only 1/2 an oz after a 30 minute feeding) and checked my LO's latch (she latches like a champ) and gave me two options. First off, they said her latch was good enough that occasional feeding with a bottle was not going to give her nipple confusion, so to go ahead and do that when I needed to. Also, they gave me a feeding tube. It's a silicone bottle that I wear around my neck that has a very small tube that comes out of it and gets taped to my breast, so LO both suckles (thus stimulating milk production) and gets supplement at the same time. It's a wonderful thing! We're all so, so much happier now, and LO has not in the least stopped wanting to breast feed.  

jju_stb_jju

Our lo has done well with both breastfeeding and bottle feeding with no problems. But at first I tried exclusively breastfeeding but he wasnt getting enough and would be fussy and hungry so now I do breast first then offer 2 oz of formula, burp him, lay him down, and if he's still fussy offer one more ounce. But at night we exclusively do formula and have never had problems, I also pump so I bottle feed him that during the say and we have never had problems.