Transitioning to Formula

The biggest challenge of having a baby for me has been breastfeeding. Tougher than 11 weeks of bedrest, childbirth with no meds, and even than powering thru on an hour or two of sleep.

Tyler had a tough time with feeding from the breast, which is normal since he was a preemie. (BTW, we past his real due date this past weekend!). They have a tough time learning the suck-swallow-breathe thing initially but usually get it by when they would have been full-term. For us though, we decided to have me pump exclusively, and then feed him the breastmilk from a bottle. This was double work for me, but it worked out well because Eric could help out with feedings. And, my production, up until recently, has been more than what he takes in a day. We've been freezing the breastmilk and then each evening I would prepare the bottles for the next day.

This past week we've moved his bottles up to 120 MLs per, and we're at the point that his consumption is more than I am producing per day. I'm already on Fenugreek to increase my supply, and given that he is now 6 weeks old, have decided to introduce formula. I thought this would be easy peasy, but not so much....

We were given formula samples at the hospital, which came in handy. Sunday I put 1 oz (30 MLs) of Enfamil formula in one of his bottles. He seemed to take it ok, he was a little fussier and maybe took a little longer to finish the bottle but that was ok. Monday I added the same amount to every other bottle, and he continued the fussiness plus took almost an hour on these bottles too (usually he takes 30 mins to finish a bottle). So yesterday, I used the Similac formula and put that in every other bottle, and it seemed to go down much better - didn't take as long, and he wasn't as fussy. Eric also gave him 30 MLs of pure formula, followed up by 90 MLs of breastmilk, for one feeding, and that went well. He's even eating more - hungry after finishing one bottle... Last night he was really fussy after his 2 am bottle (all breastmilk) so we gave him 50 MLs more of breastmilk and he seemed full but still fussy.

This morning we started the day off with one full bottle of (Similac) formula and he is snoozing. We'll see how this goes. The plan is to slowly move him to formula over the next few weeks, so stay tuned for updates!

In other news, I weighed him on our home scale and he says hes around 8 lbs! We've been on a couple more stroller rides and might try and fit one of those in today too.