2 ways how bottle feeding can cancel out breastfeeding or the reverse

Breast and bottle feeding have one thing in common nourishing a baby to grow and thrive healthily. “Helena is 10 weeks old. When she was first born she lost quite a lot of weight when we were breastfeeding in the beginning, and the advice we were given was to start expressing milk and supplementing her feeds.”

Corinne told us the above, she is a new mum. Here she had the need for combi feeding her daughter. This was not a choice for her, but what were her concerns:

“When we were looking at doing that we were obviously investigating different bottles, and my concern with starting to bottle feed so early was the issue with nipple confusion and whether Helena, would take the bottle and then go back to the breast. So after hearing some different things and seeing some adverts with Minbie and looking at the website and things like that we decided to give it a go and it happened to work really well. Helena feeds really well from the bottle when we need her to but she is very comfortable going back to breastfeeding we have never had any problems in that area.”

Breast and bottle feed are the two most common method for feeding babies but one can cancel out the other, how?

Having the option to do both forms of feeding are good for both mum and baby they both can cancel each other out for various reasons.

1. A baby may choose to only breastfeed and completely reject the bottle. This is most often because babies not only get nourishment from the breast, they also get comfort that cannot be gotten from a bottle.
2. A baby may choose to only take the bottle and refuse the breast. This may be as a result of nipple confusion or bottle preference for the babies who only want the bottle.

Breast is the best option for all the benefits to both mum and baby and a bottle is necessary when mum may not be able to feed for countless other circumstances that a bottle is called for. Thus, it is ideal to be able to do both kinds of feed without one making the other impossible.

“The really good thing about the Minbie particularly is that she can control the flow and how fast she wants the milk to come because she has to work to get the milk out herself she can do as little or as much as she wants so sometimes she can take a bottle really quickly other times it can be much slower but that’s led entirely by her which we think is a real benefit.”

When a baby is both breast and bottle feed it is important to keep the flow as similar as possible. It also helps when a baby has control over the flow of the milk from the bottle. It would be similar to feeding on the breast. A baby sets the pace of the flow making for a more comfortable feed.

“She hasn’t taken too well to other bottles because she has had issues with choking and sputtering where the milk comes out quite fast so again that is where the Minbie is a real positive thing. So we would always recommend them.”

When the reverse happens where the flow is too fast it may result in what happens with Helena: choking or sputtering. Hence, why the bottle has to mimic the feed from the breast.

“The advice that we would give to people who are in a similar position when it comes to breastfeed and bottle feed is to not be too hard on yourself that’s something that I really struggle with I gave myself quite a hard time in the early days but now that we are having so much success with the bottle it’s taken the pressure off and has made breastfeeding a much more positive experience for the both of us and now Helena is doing really well putting on weight really quickly and things seem to be really working so for us the Minbie has been a really positive experience and we will be continuing to use them all the time that Helena is needing to bottle feed.”

Are you supplementing your breastfeeding? How do you ensure that your baby’s breastfeeding is protected? The transition can be seamless if the right teat is used. Speak with us here maybe Minbie can help you too.