I've never got o BF Luke as he was fully tube fed. I expressed for 6 months to keep my supply up on the hope that one day he would be well to try a BFeed. When the dietician told me that he wouldn't feed orally I decided to give up as by then my milk already being heavily fortified with extra calories.
good luck with your decision. I don't think there is such thing as a one size fits all when it come to breast feeding, everyone's journey is so unique.
I was advised to mix feed from around 4 weeks due to him not gaining weight. As has been pointed out to me here, if I had fed more during the night perhaps we wouldn't have had that issue. Thing is, he was sleeping 10-12 hours every night from birth and I was very happy with that! I had to go back to work full-time when he was 6 wks because I was ill throughout the whole pregnancy and couldn't afford to live on SMP after months of being on SSP, we had got in to some debt. So switching to part-FF whilst gearing up to returning full-time made sense. I ended up keeping my night and morning feeds when i went back to work but after a couple of weeks I dropped the morning one as I found it hard logistically, and then eventually dropped the evening feed too. I would guess we were fully formula within 3 months.
If I were ever to have a 'proper' maternity leave I would dearly love to try exclusively BFing. But I imagine it is really difficult to stop after so long, very emotional.
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I've never got o BF Luke as he was fully tube fed. I expressed for 6 months to keep my supply up on the hope that one day he would be well to try a BFeed. When the dietician told me that he wouldn't feed orally I decided to give up as by then my milk already being heavily fortified with extra calories.
good luck with your decision. I don't think there is such thing as a one size fits all when it come to breast feeding, everyone's journey is so unique.
I was advised to mix feed from around 4 weeks due to him not gaining weight. As has been pointed out to me here, if I had fed more during the night perhaps we wouldn't have had that issue. Thing is, he was sleeping 10-12 hours every night from birth and I was very happy with that! I had to go back to work full-time when he was 6 wks because I was ill throughout the whole pregnancy and couldn't afford to live on SMP after months of being on SSP, we had got in to some debt. So switching to part-FF whilst gearing up to returning full-time made sense. I ended up keeping my night and morning feeds when i went back to work but after a couple of weeks I dropped the morning one as I found it hard logistically, and then eventually dropped the evening feed too. I would guess we were fully formula within 3 months.
If I were ever to have a 'proper' maternity leave I would dearly love to try exclusively BFing. But I imagine it is really difficult to stop after so long, very emotional.
L was 14 months, it was at the point if I was there I'd feed him if I was at work he'd have cows milk so it just felt the right time to stop
Isaac was 12 months, my aim was 12 months with him,he was a VERY frequent feeder so I was keen to stop when he got to 12 months