Milk supply reduced after dropping one feed?

[Sarah8019]

Hi all, just looking for some advice from other ladies who have tried combined feeding.

DS is currently 20 weeks old.  He gets fed 5 times a day at 7, 10.30, 2.30, 6.30 and a DF at half ten. My breastmilk doesn't store ( gets sour taste and DS wont drink ) so as a result I decided to wean him onto formula by six months so that I can return to part time work.

I wanted to wind down breastfeeding slowly so I dropped the 6.30 feed about two weeks ago, my plan was to drop a feed every 2-3 weeks.  To begin with it was fine, but over the last few days it seem like not only has my body stopped making milk for the 6.30 feed, but for all the day feeds.  The 7am and 10.30pm are fine, I can tell when DS has had enough as he is happy and smiley at the end of the feed.  For the 10.30 and 2.30 feeds he drinks from both sides but then cries like he is still hungry  . Today he has woken up early from his nap screaming and he is clearly hungry only 2 hours after being fed. I don't want to start nursing him more frequently as like I say the end goal is to have him on formula.

I'm wondering if I should just give up on the  day feeds and just BF once first thing in the morning and for the DF but I'm worried that if I drop further feeds il dry up completely? Anyone managed to maintain their supply for just a couple of feeds a day?  DS loves having a bottle but I must admit I was hoping to be able to hang on to at least one feed a day as I will be sad to stop BF 

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Is he possibly having a growth spurt? I have done mixed feeding with all my lo's but my supply only ever decreased for the feed I dropped, though with DD3 when she had her last gs she wanted to nurse often (was feeding like a newborn!). I think temporarily doing more frequent nursing in the daytime will help your supply adjust perhaps.

[Beara]

Hi there.  In my experience with ds1, when he was 5 to 6 months old and I dropped the bedtime feed, I found I had lower supply for the afternoon feed.  But see how it goes over a couple of weeks, it might be a growth all spurt. In my case ds wasnot a good feeder and still has a small appetite so I'm not sure if that had anything to do with it. By 8 months he had dropped down the ccentile chart for growth so maybe he wasn't a demanding feeder  or hind sight maybe I should have weaned more quickly once i started dropping feeds. It's hard to know so don't do anything to hastily. 

[cath~]

I kept a single bf a day going for 6 months (12-18 mo, when I went back to work) with no supply issues.  And before that I had been cutting down BFs gradually.  Eg for a couple of mos I was just doing morning WU and BT bf. The only thing that seemed to affect my supply was AF and GSs.  But it bounced right back afterwards.

There was a similar qn recently here:
Is it possible to keep just the morning bf?

With more ppl saying they could keep just one or a sml no. of BFs/day.