Supply when combi feeding

[Gemsy]

Will my supply naturally adjust to what I need it to be, or is there anything I need to do. Or, should I just expect my supply to decline until I can't do any breastfeeds?

Due to LO needing gaviscon to be given in a bottle, and work commitments I am doing a mixture of expressing breastmilk and formula feeds.

My routine at the moment is basically - 7am breastfeed, 10am formula feed, and I also express approx. 6oz. 12 noon expressed bottle, 2.30pm expressed bottle, 5pm expressed bottle, 7pm formula feed, 11pm formula dreamfeed, 4am breastfeed and often express approx. 6oz.

So I am feeding myself twice - at 4am and 7am. I love doing these feeds, its such a nice bonding time for us. But I am struggling to breastfeed during the day - I have so many work commitments, and I need to be able to get 6 doses of gaviscon into him a day. At the moment, I am having to express at least 4 more times a day, as I am so engorged it is agony.

I'd love to be at a point where I could just do my 2 feeds a day, and not have engorgement the rest of the time - will this be possible, or do you need to exclusively breastfeed to keep supply up?

 

[Mummy_midwife]

I am not sure I got everything, so you say you want to breastfeed twice a day only and the other feeds to be formula and no expressing at all. Is that correct?

If that's what you meant yes, you can totally reduce your feeds to twice a day and your milk supply will adjust to that. However you will need to do it slowly or you will get seriously engorged, do a little less expressing each time and drop one expressing session at a time. If you express 4 times daily I would reduce the time of the 1st express of the day for instance and the next day I would give the 1 st express a miss and carry on with the other 3. You might find boobs are sore so you can do a little hand express just to keep it comfy. Once you feel no longer full when missed that 1st one you would move on to dropping the 2nd expressing and so on until you're only down to your 2 daily breastfeeding.



Although I wasn't expressing that's more or less how I weaned my babies off the breast and kept breastfeeding morning only for a couple months before I stopped completely.

Maybe get your health visitor to give you some advice on this, as everyone is different and they will be able to give you good advice. Good luck xxx

 

[Gemsy]

Thanks, that is really helpful you have kind of answered my question - I was worried if I was not exclusively bf then I would lose my supply altogether, but it seems not. I will try and cut out the expressing sessions during the day. If possible I would like to express enough for two bottles during the day, as breastmilk is so much more transportable than formula!!

 

[BevG]

as long as you still boob feed lo those 2 times your supply will adapt to that need