Switching from bf to ff ..... Advice needed

[Melandmartyn]

Hi my LO is 15days old and iv breast fed since his birth but I had a horrible health visitor come and see us yesterday and told me he hadn't put enough weight on which I was really upset about ( his weight at birth was 8.6 1/2oz day 3 - 7.14oz, day 5 8.2oz, day 10 8.11oz and day 14 8.12oz) so iv decided to go onto formula feeding (also my nipples are in a mess) iv chosen aptimil but how much should he been eating (oz) and how often?

 

[NickyKB]

I'm not a huge amount of help here as I'm new to FF and my LO is 7MO! But from a BF perspective your LO's weight gain is absolutely fine your HV is talking rubbish (more than regained birth weight by day 10 which is fine) so if you wanted to stay BF you could do from this perspective without worrying. However if there are other reasons you want to switch to FF this is is totally your choice to make, just wanted to say about weight.

As i said sorry I'm not much help on the amount of oz/frequency etc hopefully someone else will be able to help more but are you planning to breastfeed at all anymore as this will effect how many oz baby needs?

 

[mommy0629]

Well the health visitor is an idiot, his weight gain is perfectly fine!! I that's the ONLY reason you want to switch to formula then don't switch, keep bfing. BUT, you also mentioned your nipples being sore so if there are other reasons you want to switch to formula then of course that's fine and your desission, just don't do it only because of that.

So 2 weeks old he should be eating about 2-3 ounces every 3-4 hours, but that's just the average. Feed him on demand just like you did with dfing. I've noticed that a lot of mom's here that switch from breast to formula are worried about how much to feed and thing they can over feed with formula. Just listen to your baby, they self regulate on formula just the same way they do on bm.

 

[Melandmartyn]

Thanks for the replies that's not the only reason I fed LO a bottle for a day last week to give my nipples time to heal as I was dreading feeding cuz it was so painful and now he won't latch properly and I was getting stressed and upset which was making him stressed so I guessed going onto bottle is the best option for us both and we are much happier atm! He is eating 3oz every 3 hours through the day and 4oz every 4 hours through the night so think he's getting enough he seems content and is pooping well so fingers crossed all will be ok I'm now dreading next health visitor app on wed xx