How can you set up a feeding schedule for both breastmilk and formula?

how do you feel about using both breast and formula for feeding the baby? Also how would you set up a schedule when using both options?”

There’s no doubt that a diet of 100% breastmilk is best for both baby and mom health-wise, for a whole lot of reasons that include all sorts of disease-protection benefits for baby and weight loss for you. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding exclusively for at least six months, but this isn’t possible for everyone, such as women who have to go back to work and can’t pump on the job. If that’s the case and you know you’ll need to add formula after your maternity leave is over, your first step is to breastfeed exclusively for at least baby’s first four to six weeks to get milk production well established. It’s not possible to nurse too much in the early weeks, but it is possible to nurse too little.

After your milk is in and your baby is latching on well, wetting a good 8 diapers a day, swallowing milk and gaining weight at a healthy rate, just replace one of the baby’s regular “meals” with a bottle. If you’re breastfeeding 12 times a day, for instance, and have to go back to a 12-hour work day, replace one feeding a day with formula until you are down to six feedings on the new schedule before you return to work. (You can also pump after formula feeding if you want to have extra breastmilk bottles). The one-bottle-a-day weaning will help keep you from becoming painfully engorged.

When it comes to the first bottle, it may be easiest to have someone other than mom introduce the bottle while you’re out of the house for the first feedings, because the baby may reject formula if he can smell you nearby. Take bottle- feeding slowly and provide plenty of burping, because fluid flows from a bottle at a quicker pace than what the baby’s used to.

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