Mixing breast- and bottle-feeding for your baby
Mixing breast-feeding with bottle-feeding, for whatever reason you wish to do this, is completely possible. You must, however, respect a few guidelines so that it works for both you and baby.
Mixed feeding: not too soon
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The first question many mothers ask is whether can you adopt mixed feeding straight away? “It’s better to wait three weeks to a month after you have started feeding to adopt mixed methods,” advises Véronique Darmangeat. The idea is to use breast-feeding exclusively at the beginning in order to establish lactation,” she adds. After the first month, the volume of milk is generally more stable.
The ideal time to move on to mixed feeding? Five months, according to our specialist. “The more established lactation is, the better mixed feeding will work,” she explains. However, this lactation consultant also says that: “Some mothers start on a mixed feeding routine after ten days and this can work well”. Every case is different!
For guidance on this, keep these two important ideas in mind: you can move on to mixed feeding if your lactation is firmly established and your baby has good suction. “If baby doesn’t suckle well, he is going to have a tough time moving on from the breast to the bottle and back again,” Véronique Darmangeat explains.
Mixed feeding: a practical guide
“Begin with one bottle of formula milk every 24 hours”, advises the specialist. Should you focus on replacing a particular feed? “This doesn’t matter at all” she says, “except if the mother seems to have a lot of milk in the morning, in which case replacing this feeding time might be uncomfortable for her.”
She adds: “Before moving on to a new feeding time, you must wait for lactation to adapt so that swelling subsides at these times.” You should wait for around two to four days generally speaking. Carry on in this way until you have replaced three or four of the daily feeds.
Ideally, you should continue with around three to four daily breast-feeds so that lactation continues. “It is better to continue with even more feeds than this in the first three months if possible,” the consultant adds. What’s the risk with fewer feeds? Milk production can be reduced further than you want it to be.
But even here, everyone is different. For some mothers who only breast-feed for two of their baby’s daily feeds, lactation will stop altogether, but for others it will not prevent them from continuing with breast-feeding.
Another tip for successful mixed feeding is not to bottle-feed for a few feeds in a row, but alternate them instead with breast-feeds to avoid breasts becoming engorged. Ultimately, you will be able to do as you like.
You can be completely successful in adopting this type of mixed feeding by yourself, particularly if you have already breastfed a baby and know how you lactate. But if not, getting some help at the beginning is a surer way of being successful.
For mothers who are going back to work, Véronique Darmangeat advises a breast-feed in the morning, one when you wake your baby up and one just before putting him to bed.
Mixed feeding testimonials
Ginni, 30, has a little girl of nearly five months:
“I adopted mixed feeding after one month to give myself a break”
I started mixed feeding when my little girl was about one month old, mainly just to give myself a break every now and again, so I could go out for longer than an hour and a half without her and also so I could hand over when I got too tired. The first month was pretty tough; I didn’t sleep more than three hours in a 24-hour period. I needed help. I thought about expressing milk but I only did that twice, as I never had enough time to do this when my daughter was not at my breast.
I introduced a bottle in the evening and a bottle in the morning. Daddy would get up every other morning to feed the baby at six, and this gave me chance to recover for a bit. I had never produced a lot of milk and it was immediately obvious that the less I breast-fed the baby, the less milk was produced. My baby had an overactive milk rejection reflex as well, and so feeds had become much more of an effort at the end of the day and at night, despite my efforts to adopt all the advice I’d found on dealing with rejection reflexes.
This was difficult to live with, and, feeling more and more constrained by these evening feeds, I introduced more bottle-feeds… which ended up in complete replacement at two months. If I had to do it again, I would have started mixed feeding a little bit later, and would have introduced fewer bottle-feeds, except for in the morning when it really helped me to keep going.
For me, however, it was definitely a good compromise in that my baby got all the feeds she needed while I still got some time for a breather or for a bit more sleep.
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Copyright © 2011 Doctissimo
Posted 09.11.2011
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