Should You Supplement Breastfeeding with Formula
There might be no greater debate to start out our lives as parents than whether to use breastmilk or formula. No one will argue with you that breast is best, but in all honesty formula has its place too and is a perfectly safe and viable supplement to use when breastfeeding. Here are some reasons why you might need to supplement some formula.
Why Supplement Breastfeeding with Formula
There are numerous personal and biological reasons why one would need to supplement feedings with formula for an infant. Let’s took a look at some of those.
* Your child is failing to thrive. Sometimes babies just don’t get enough calories from the breastmilk that they need to thrive. We don’t always know the exact reason why, but if your child is falling dangerously off the growth curve, then you might need to supplement with some formula.
* Mom just doesn’t want to exclusively breastfeed.
* Pumping doesn’t produce enough milk and mom has to go back to work or leave baby for some other reason.
* If mom gets sick and has to be on a medication that is not safe for breastfeeding, or needs surgery and can’t breastfeed for a period of time and there’s not enough milk stored up, she might want to start using formula.
* Extremely sore and cracked nipples in mom resulting in numerous breast infections.
* Too time-consuming or just plain exhausting.
For these and maybe other reasons, you might be thinking of supplementing with formula – either all the time or just on occasion. Whatever the reason is, though, you want to make sure you do it right. With that in mind, here are some tips for combination feeding.
How to Effectively Supplement Formula for Breastmilk
While it might be very easy to say that a woman didn’t try hard enough to breastfeed for whatever reason, we don’t know what another woman’s pain is like. If she’s willing to continue breastfeeding with a little supplement of breastmilk, then more power to her. This is a perfectly viable option for any of the reasons given above.
Here are some ways to make the supplementing formula go as smoothly as possible.
* Try to wait to offer a bottle until breastfeeding has been established. That means give it at least two to three weeks. This will help ensure your milk supply is built up and help avoid nipple confusion.
* Barring any unplanned event, try to make the transition a slow transition. Start out giving one bottle a day for a few days two or three hours after breastfeeding. Add a second bottle after a few days, slowly taking out one nursing session and replacing it with a bottle. This will help eliminate clogged ducts and breast infections.
* Keep an eye on your supply. The downfall to supplementing with formula is your supply will likely dwindle. So long as you give around six good nursing sessions in a 24-hour period, your supply shouldn’t be too greatly affected. However, you might have to pump to help keep your supply up if your baby isn’t nursing long enough or well enough.
* Make sure you have the right nipple for the job – on the bottle that is. Try to find the ones that look most naturally like a nipple, with a wide base and a slow flow.
Following these tips you should be able to combo feed without a problem if you discover that’s the best choice for you and your family. Breastfeeding doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing deal.