breast and bottle combined??? how to do it...

[minnumd]

I am 25 weeks pregnant and hope to breastfeed my little girl. However, I would like to introduce a bottle of formula in the evening that my husband can give her. Is anyone using this approach? How is it working for you?? Do you have to express so the milksupply don't go down?? If you express, when in the day do you do it, and do you feed the baby that milk later... or? What breast pump is best to use (and not too expensive!) Is it def. necesarry to express to ensure there is enough milk? I have read it can be difficult to keep to routine if milk supply is low, when baby is going through a growth spurt and this can be prevented by expressing every day?
Thanks for your help x P.S. I will staying at home with the baby and not going back to work.

[cass*4]

Due to low supply and poor weight gain I did combined feeding with all my babies. Prob most successful with my middle girl, by that I mean she bf till 15 mths, didn't work so well with other 2 in that i ended up mostly bottle feeding, only got to 12 weeks with my son, night feeds only and about 5 mths with my little girl. Think main thing is to wait till about 3 - 4 weeks, when bfing established, but probably before 6 - 8 wks. If you can express enough for a bottle then prob better than formula. If you get into routine with feeding and expressing your body should adjust it's supply. Bing in a routine actually helps with supply as baby is having full feeds each time. Think supply is mostly down to each woman, some have no probs and others(like me ) Spend the first 6 weeks after birth constantly trying to up it. Blessed Thistle is good for increasing supply. HTH

[chargerfans]

I agree with the comment above. Definitely wait until breastfeeding is well established. Otherwise your little one may decide he likes the bottle more since it is less work. This is what happened with me. My little guy was small so I had to supplement. I was nursing every 2 hours and after nursing I would pump and my husband would give him expressed milk in a bottle after I nursed. We did do the S&S (tube at breast) but that was a struggle since my son didn't like anything extra in his mouth during the feed. So we just used the bottle when we needed to supplement.  And at about 2-3 weeks my son decided he didn't want to nurse. He was only interested in the bottle. I really wanted to nurse so I had a lactation consultant come to my house. With the help of the shield, and dedication, he was back on track in no time. He is now almost 6 months and still nursing!

If you could pump that will help keep your supply up. I think its the same concept as if you work - when you work you need to pump the same amount of times they would be eating if you were home. So the same concept applies to when you are home.  Then again, I had my husband do the dreamfeed for awhile and I didn't pump during that feeding (I SLEPT!) and my supply didn't go down.

Good luck!

[Lewis'mum]

I introduced a bottle for the dream feed at about 4 weeks and it's worked really well from the start. I expressed for the first 5 weeks or so as I really didn't want to give formula - so many people tell you breast is best that I ended up thinking formula was poison - but I relaxed after a while and gave DS formula feed for his DF and he hasn't turned green yet! My supply didn't go down at all from this. In fact I was waking in agony with swollen breasts and wet sheets at 5 every night! What I do now is express at around 10pm and use this in a bottle for the DF. Sometimes I top him off with extra formula if I think he's extra hungry or I don't express as much as usual.

Sometimes I think what's the point of putting the bresat milk in a bottle, but I think it's worth it as it means he's used to taking a bottle ready for going to nursery (in 3 months - I'm dreading it) and also other people can give him that feed if I want to go out / have a drink. This is working really well for us at the moment.

Regarding pumps, I tried a manual and an electric one and would definately say it's easier with an electric one, although the manual one was fine it can hurt your hand after a while! I have the Medela mini pump and have had good results with it.

Good luck with it whatever you decide. Get into a routine first though and make sure you're comfortable with the breast feeding before introducing the bottle. It can take quite a while to get the hang of it, but I'd say it's worth it.

[Erin (redstarfalling)]

I agree with the other posters.  If you're ok with the idea of expressing and using that instead of formula, it would be ideal - especially to maintain your supply.  If growth spurts happen, you can either nurse more for the short term, or just express a bit extra during the day to up your supply that way (after a feed for instance).

[GraceKellysmom]

  First off I dont recommend a manual pump. It drove me NUTS,

I actually really like my ISIS hand pump. I agree with the previous poster that an electric is better, but I sold my Medela electric and prefer to use the ISIS. They both take about the same amount of cleaning, and I got about the same amount from each in the same amount of time.

Each pumper is different! I have not tried any other hand pumps.