Has my baby been medicalised into becoming a breast refuser? And how do I fix it?

[Joskar]

I need some help and advice about breast feeding. I have been absolutely adamant that I would breast feed with my DD who was born on Saturday 21st Sept. We had an emergency C-section for an undiagnosed breech and so we only got home last night (Wed 25th).

She didn't feed much her first afternoon but had a a few good feeds on Saturday night (inc. one 25 min feed). No bother at all with the latch and I'd go so far as to say it wasn't painful!

She slept most of Sunday through the day and I hand expressed milk and syringed it in because she kept falling asleep at the breast. I only managed a few ml at a time but Sunday night she fed from 9 pm til 4 am more or less every hour/ hour and a half.

She slept most of Monday through the day and again I hand expressed and syringed because she kept falling asleep. Again it was just a few mls. The MW told me to try using a nipple shield and she fed from the breast just the once using that. She wouldn't feed at all at the breast after that and the MW cup fed her with formula. I was deeply unhappy with this but MW told me they would have to phone the paediatrician and put DD on a drip if I didn't agree. And so the pattern was set.

Now I'm in a situation where I have to express milk at least eight times a day (three reps per breast) and top up with formula. I try her with the breast then give her the ebm then try her again at the boob then give her the formula. All cup fed so no teats. She now refuses the breast and pushes it away, goes red in the face etc. At night I have to try really hard to wake her to get her to feed every three hours as she just wants to sleep.

Every instinct I had to avoid formula, nipple shields and a strict feeding regime has been overturned during my stay in hospital. I'm exhausted, weeping constantly, totally out of confidence and ideas. I'm even starting to fight with DH who thinks we should ignore it all and go back to feeding whenever DD wants. If I do that I'm worried she'll fail to put on weight and the MWs have told me if that happens they will take her into hospital and put her on a drip.

Sorry this is such an essay. If there is anyone out there who can help I really need you. Like the A-Team but with boobs.

Hopefully someone who knows what they are talking about will come along but some of you story sounds the same as my experience with DD1. She was small, only just avoiding NICU so they were constantly testing her blood sugar and effectively forced me to top her up with formula. Also, I had a csection under GA and they made my husband give her formula from a cup after she was born. I was lucky as one of the brilliant nursery nurses in hospital was livid they had made me top her up, so she helped me through the next, very hard, day to get her back on the breast. It was effectively a day of feeding, denying her any top ups, and after a day, she was back on the breast exclusively. I then went on to feed her exclusively until around 6 months. So it can be done, but you need some good support. Good luck and I hope someone comes along with some good advice soon.

It really annoys me that hospitals push formula so much, I am sorry they haven't helped you get started as much as they could it should have. Don't despair though as all your expressing is keeping demand up so your supply is still there! If I were you I would try calling nct or la leche league breastfeeding advice lines and try to get a face to face with a breastfeeding counsellor. You might find there are breastfeeding groups in your area. I have a friend who hired a breastfeeding consultant for around £80 and says it was money well spent as she got one to one attention!
as poster above says it is possible to beastfeed you just need some good advice support and encouragement and plenty of cake

*should say breastfeed not beastfeed although there probably are similarities

Oh dear, you poor thing.

How is her weight? If she has lost lots of weight then my advice will be different.

I don't think your baby has been medicalised to not accept the breast. Something funky is going on, as it so often does, but you can sort it out. It's good that she has latched and fed before. Sounds like in her first few days, when she was falling asleep at the breast and having syringe feeds, they removed the need for breast feeding, for her.

As its such early days you need expert, eyes on help. Please visit a bf clinic run by bf counsellors. They are normally at childrens centres etc. if you tell us roughly where you are, we can find you one.

Secondly you need t start creating positive associations with the breast. That means skin to skin. Just spend as much time as physically possible with your top off with her snuggled next to you in just her nappy and blankets over you both. Express milk so some is on your nipples. And just wait, watch her for feeding cues and gently guide her to the breast if she shows any interest. Stop if she gets too cross. Have a bath with her, with DPs help. Just create as calm at atmosphere as possible with her pretty much permanently cradled against your naked breast and watch and wait. You have a milk supply, so you have time to sort this and you can carry on with the routine you have at the moment whilst doing this.

If she hasn't lost much weight or she is back to birthweight, you can think more about dropping formula etc.

joksar this is so similar to what I went through, I promise. Did you see my thread? It was very helpful. Go to every free breast feeding clinic or session you can get to and pump the midwives for help. My experience was exact the same and I found that baby needed to be awake to feed. So the ebm and formula helped give him energy which he needed to be asked to be more wakeful and with lots of skin to skin and perseverance, he got it. Best of luck-pm me If you'd like some more support x

We have had the best support from the bf clinic here (Lothian). We syringed to start and even used bottles for expressed bm top ups but are now successfully bf so don't worry, all is not lost. The support at the clinics from special bf mws was fantastic!!

I think you're somewhere remote aren't you? In the highlands maybe? Feel free to pm me your location if you'd like some help googling for support in your area.

Some great advice so far. Def do as much skin to skin as you can. Google sns too. Supplemental nursing systems are brilliant for this type of situation. Fiddly but brilliant.

Joskar, what a difficult start :(

Seems to me you had good and appropriate 'management' for the first 2 days. The use of the nipple shield on day 3 is questionable - it's not good practice (though it is common practice) to use one before the milk is in, and it's also highly likely the shield was not a good fit, so your baby was not really being supported to remove milk effectively.

The threats to call the paed and put your baby on a drip were not good :( You were able to express, and would almost certainly have been able to get what your dd needed that way - although of course all the relevant info may not be there and we don't know what was happening with blood sugar, for instance.

It may well be that your dd's reluctance to feed is because so many people and so many hands have been 'helping' and there have been struggles and bad times at the breast. This can be turned round - it's not a permanent thing.

Everything Kidnap suggests is worth trying. No pressure. No struggle. No fights. Just gentle responsive care. Expressing often - yes, 8 x in 24 hours is about right. Go from breast to breast and back again for maximum yield.

Ask the midwife (if you are confident in her) about stopping the cup feeding. There is zero evidence for 'nipple confusion' but it's become a huge thing, and mothers end up messing about with cups because they are terrified the baby will not go on the breast. When babies 'prefer' the bottle teat, it's not because of confusion, but because the breast is not productive, or has some other negative association. If it is easier to give formula/ebm via the bottle, then you can do so - obviously keeping up all the other stuff to teach her the breast is a lovely place.

Any of the bf helplines would be good with this, but basically, the solution is to keep bf calm and unpressured, and to keep your baby close :)

You could have been me a year ago. My dd struggled with her latch in hospital and mw sort of pushed her head down onto boob. This led to a disaster, she started refusing, I had to express, syringe and top up with formula by day 2. I like you was very upset, but determined. I hired a hospital pump and like you pumped 8 times a day. I hated pumping, was getting exhausted and although wanted to breastfeed everytime I tried she got very distressed so I did too and I stopped trying and relaxed a bit.

With support though, I got there, by week 4 she started latching beautifully, at first with a nipple shield which she had previously rejected and then on her own. I think she just suddenly could do it, practice makes perfect. I still pumped for a few weeks after each feed but by six weeks we were ebf and I could drop top ups. She refused bottles by 8 weeks ( and never took them again)

She is now almost 13 months and we are still breastfeeding.

Yes, probably the support in hospital didn't help you get started but you still can do it. Go find support groups. Hire a lactation consultant maybe. But if your determined you will get there.

DrMcDreamysWife Thank you. I am sitting here crying like a fool because I'm so relieved to hear your story. I need to know that there is a way out of this and I'm not some kind of failure/freak for struggling. Why does no one, no book, no MW tell you that mixed feeding is the reality for an awful lot of women? I've felt like a total loser for giving my baby formula. I discover that worldwide only 34% of babies are breast fed exclusively. South East Asian has the highest proportion of exclusively breast fed bairns and even there it's less than 50%. So the majority of babies are actually getting formula at some point but yet all the books say that there is never a need to do so. It's like a massive fucking conspiracy of silence designed to make women feel like crap*. They present the formula - breast debate as options or choices. Good mother = breast feeding. Bad mother = formula feeding. So you think "Oh I want to be a good mother I shall choose to BF. I will get past cracked nipples and mastitis and sleepless nights. Other mothers who don't are BAD. They are not committed to their baby. They have chosen to not give their baby a good start in life." Then low and behold it doesn't work and you have to use formula and no one, NO ONE tells you that's ok and perfectly normal. Even one of my friends who struggled with bf because of having a tongue tied baby said to me to use formula to "save [my] sanity". It's not my fucking sanity I'm worried about. I can't give my baby 20 mls of ebm (even 8 times a day) and think that's enough!

Thanks to everyone else (esp Sept thread ladies) for your advice and support and stories of eventual success. I'm really trying to do the expressing 8 times a day but it's very hard when it takes an hour to get 20 mls. It's not so much topping up with formula as topping up with breast milk! 8 hours a day expressing means my interactions with dd are becoming fraught because I keep offering the boob and I just don't know what to focus on. Do I keep up the 8 hours expressing and boob offering at the expense of quality skin to skin time? Or the other way round? She's still asleep lots of the time (unlike me and DH!). Plus the c-section wound is extremely painful and there isn't a chair/bed in the house I can sit in with any degree of comfort. I've stopped the painkillers except some paracetemol because I am convinced they are making her more sleepy. I'm convinced of this because the leaflet in them says not to use when breastfeeding. I question why I was prescribed them but hey ho.

MW is coming this morning to weigh her but she was weighed before we left hospital on Wednesday and she hadn't lost much so I'm hoping she'll be ok. I'm also upset because aside from being sleepy she never was ill. Not jaundice or low weight or anything. They checked. Swear they were actually disappointed* that she was ok after they'd threatened me with all sorts. I really wish they'd had me expressing properly on day one. It took until day 5/6 for my milk to come in and I think that's because I wasn't using a pump straight away.

tiktok thanks for the heads up about the cup feeding. I got DH to investigate this a bit further and it transpires that the WHO think it's a load of shite to use cups. The heartbreak when the 20 mls of hard won breastmilk ends up all over her vest is from today going to be a thing of the past. DH is off to get some bottles.

As far as clinics and bf midwives and so on it's all impossible at the moment. BF MW won't come out this far (in fairness nor will the postie!). The nearest support group/clinic is 20 miles away and I'm not able to drive. Even if I could arrange a lift the rough track and c-section are not a good combo just now. Coming home from hospital was dreadful. The clinic is once a week so hopefully I'll be able to go next week or the week after once I can sit with for any length of time. Sadly it is run by one of the MWs who "helped" by shoving her head at my boob. We shall see.

I'm going to see about getting a proper hospital breast pump. One of the main causes of my distress has been that the Avent pump I have leaks like a bastard because it is such a shitty design. Save your £100 folks. There's nothing more soul destroying than realising that the last 20 mins of pumping is in your vest.

Right off to get back on the Milk Express. Toot, toot. Honk, honk.

*this may be the hormones talking! Reading it back it doesn't seem entirely rational.

You poor love. Yes, for us at three weeks it was more topping up with breastmilk than the other way round, and she was on bottles then, we gave up with syringes pretty fast.

As long as you keep pumping as much as you can ( some days I only did it 4 times as I was too tired and I wouldn't leave her to cry) your milk supply will be ok. Once I got my dd on the boob, I just let her stay there as much as she wanted fed on demand and she built up my milk supply pretty quickly.

Get rest, get support and remember, the most important thing is baby is fed, in the end it doesn't matter if it's formula or breastmilk. I know how much you want to breastfeed I was there, but in the interim until breastfeeding is fully established top ups are needed.

Big hug

Joskar - I so agree either everything you said about formula and the breast feeding brigade.

I hadcthe constant pumpingvthing either DD1, I coukdn't keep it up. I have just written my tale in a long post on a topic entitled "combination feeding". Have a look, it may offer you some solace.

Good luck x

Joskar, as I said, you have had a really difficult start :(

"Why does no one, no book, no MW tell you that mixed feeding is the reality for an awful lot of women?"

There are plenty of books which talk about mixed feeding as a reality. And the fact that many women - like yourself - have been advised to give formula when their babies are a few days old, sometimes only a few hours old, indicates that midwives are talking about it, too.

"I've felt like a total loser for giving my baby formula. I discover that worldwide only 34% of babies are breast fed exclusively."

Yes - and this is a major public health problem. But you are not a 'loser' - you are distressed and disapppointed and angry , and totally understandably. You are doing your very best in a complicated situation which is not of your own making.

"It's like a massive fucking conspiracy of silence designed to make women feel like crap*. "

Or massive fucking conspiracy to promote a commercial product at the expense of infant health?

"They present the formula - breast debate as options or choices. Good mother = breast feeding. Bad mother = formula feeding."

Who are "they" ?

I do agree with you that the 'debate' is artificial and contrived, and women who have these values - largely imagined, because no one ever presents it as a 'good/bad mother' issue - will feel hugely let down when breastfeeding is a disappointment and painful.

"So you think "Oh I want to be a good mother I shall choose to BF. I will get past cracked nipples and mastitis and sleepless nights. Other mothers who don't are BAD. They are not committed to their baby. They have chosen to not give their baby a good start in life."

OK - those are your thoughts....they spring not from a desire to judge other mothers, but from a need to do what you feel is the right thing for you and your baby.

"NO ONE tells you that's ok and perfectly normal."

You are trying to find validation but to do so ignores the fact that in your case it was not the only option - you were given really dreadful support for your choice to breastfeed. The fact that your a story of conflicting advice, poor technical knowledge and lack of practical guidance is common makes it all the more upsetting.

It is utterly ridiculous and unfair that women find their desire to breastfeed supported verbally in maternity units, but then majorly undermined when they hit problems.

Please check your meds - you can call the breastfeeding network's drugline or check here: toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?LACT - it's almost certainly the case your painkillers are fine with bf.

" I really wish they'd had me expressing properly on day one. It took until day 5/6 for my milk to come in and I think that's because I wasn't using a pump straight away."

No - hand expressing is much better in the early days.

I really hope things get better for you, and stopping the self-blame will help, I think! You are torn between feeling like a 'loser' and railing against people who 'make' you feel like that. No one can make you feel something you don't believe in, and while you are right to be angry you are in the situation you are in, it has nothing to do with books, or the fact that many babies are mixed fed, or whether or not you are a 'good/bad' mother.

You need good help from someone who knows how to listen and knows about breastfeeding. When the dust settles, complain about the poor help and support. Hope someone helps you soon.