Switching from breastfeeding to formula feeding for one week Post Reply

[alexabeazer]

Dear All,
My son is almost four months old and I have been so far breastfeeding him with the odd formula bottle given when my mother has babysat for him. At the end of March my husband and I will be doing a walking holiday and my husband's mum will be coming with us in order to look after our son. I think for this one week it will make sense for him to be formula fed by my husband's mum, with perhaps just one breast feeding feed from me per day. My plan is then to continue breastfeeding for another month after the holiday until I go back to work. I assume I will therefore need to just keep expressing during the walking week?
Please can you let me know if the above should work ok or whether there are any pitfalls to it? Should I be phasing in formula for my son over the coming weeks so that it's not such a shock for him during the week away?
Thanks
Alexa

[supermummy]

If he already takes formula he should be fine but i'd probably increase it a little beforehand so he adjusts to not having the comfort of being fed mainly by you.

It's the expressing I'd be careful about - to ensure you keep up supply but also so you don't engorge. I had to leave my daughter for about 30 hours at 4 months for a wedding and although she was used to a daily bottle of formula I developed mastitis suddenly and was quite ill for most of it - expressing by then to reduce engorgement was too late. You might therefore need to reduce your supply a bit beforehand but not so much as to stop it coming back.

[Allsmiles]

If you are expressing anyways, you could put the expressed milk in the fridge and give that to your baba when needed.

[NYE31]

You can freeze breast milk as well if you freeze in it sterile containers & then defrost in the fridge. I think it is OK to use for a month?

Don't under estimate the amount of time expressing takes, I was unable to breast feed my DS & I bottle fed him my expressed breast milk, it took ages to express enough. On the advice of a breast feeding counsellor, I then introduced a fomula feed a week from 6 weeks & by 12 weeks he was on formula as I couldn't produce or express enough.

[twice_as_nice]

If you get on fine with expressing at the moment then u will probably b fine (I express fed pretty much the whole time for my twins and I found it quite quick and easy to express unlike the last poster so I think everyone is different).. But in order to make sure you keep your supply up you probably want to express at the times of the day that your baby feeds which makes it quite an inconvenience during the day when out and about (and hand pumps aren't as effective in my experience)