Hellobee Boards

We combo feed. When I was working my supply wasn't enough to cover his bottles during the day. So, he got a 50/50 mix of pumped milk and formula. Then, I'd nurse when we got home and formula before bed (he's a lazy nurser, I like him to have a full feeding at night!)

I just stopped working on Thursday and need to work on getting my supply back up. I'm taking supplements and domperidone and nursing more. Although my goal is to primarily nurse, I honestly don't think I'll fight to go EBF at this point. He's had formula for 4.5 months and I like the flexibility combo feeding provides.

I EP but was never able to make enough. The first month she was 100% on BM but after that she had a bottle of formula before bed and the other bottles all BM. As I dropped sessions we ended up at 2 bottles of BM and 2 bottles of formula a day for awhile. Now she's drinking from cups mostly but it's still 50/50.

We decided to supplement at hospital because LO was shrieking and was having a hard time latching. It made me happy that her belly felt good after drinking it. She's three months and mostly nurses. Sometimes at night she gets lazy and panics that milk doesn't come out fast enough so I'll give her formula. She also haaaaaates nursing covers now, so if she doesn't nurse enough when we are out I'll give her a formula bottle so she doesn't starve. But formula is not every day. I know I could supplement with pumped milk and sometimes i do, but am really bad at pumping.

@Espion: does your milk have a soapy smell or taste? or is it just that it's frozen.

Everyone's situation is different, but here is what we did:

We had to supplement starting at 4 days because LO had lost too much weight (more than the normal 10%). Then when I pumped, I realized that my supply was incredibly low and that was the reason for her weight loss. I tried and tried and tried and tried to increase my supply but was never able to give her more than about half of what she needed. Doing the combo thing was ok for a while, but very time consuming. It was hard to go out, it took over an hour to do both every feeding. On top of this, I also had a tremendous amount of nipple pain for all but about 3 weeks over the 6 months that I breastfed. In the end, I weened her off the boob for all feedings but first thing in the morning at 6 months. By 7 months, my milk was entirely gone (even in the morning). I weaned her at six months for two reasons: first the pain was just too much to keep going. second, I could not imagine breastfeeding, supplementing with a bottle AND feeding her solids. There would literally have been no down time from feeding all day long. It was a hard decision to stop breastfeeding, but once I did, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted (not because I didn't like/want to breastfeed my baby, but because of all the pain).

Now LO is 9 months and she still takes about 5 bottles a day and eats three solid meals and one snack. She is a very happy baby.

Hope this is helpful

We supplemented for about 2 weeks, I pumped and tried everything to raise my supply for a while, she was fully FF by 3 months old. It wasn't worth the stress of the aggravation. I was a much happier person after I stopped torturing myself over BFing and had a coming to jesus meeting with myself. Formula is not poison, babies grow just as healthy and smart and strong on it as they do BM.