Advice on eating

[LeonieSarah]

My DD is nearly 4 weeks old and we have had difficulty breastfeeding from the start. I have been expressing and topping her up with formula. But now I'm making a last ditch attempt at breastfeeding. Today she latched on and was sucking for about half an hour both sides, using expressed milk in a bottle to calm her when she was getting frustrated. And after about an hour and a half and she was dropping off I offered her the formula to see if she was still hungry and she had 100ml. which is one of her normal feeds.

Does this mean that she didn't get that much from me?? (Whenever she pulled away my nipples started to leak and she had milk in her mouth)

[twiglet123]

Hi there,

Well done for persevering with the breastfeeding - i too found it really difficult for the first few weeks, and DS is now almost 13 months and we are still going strong!!

When DS was that age I too was worried that he wasnt getting enough milk. If DD has milk in her mouth, then that should mean your boobs are "working". Do you feel a tingling sensation a few minutes into the feed? that is your 'let down' of milk and can be quite painful for some women. But its a sure sign that the milk is flowing!

They can feed for a long time at that age, DS used to feed for an hour, then have half and hour off then want to go back on again! So i think you are probably producing enough milk, its just that babies want to/need to feed for a long time as they are quite inefficient at that age. DS is done is less than 5 minutes nowadays!

Be aware that topping up with formula may affect your milk supply - did your health visitor advise you to do this? How is your DD's weight gain? Basically, the more you have DD BFing, the more you will produce! So the best way way to improve your supply is let her feed as often as she likes! For me, this meant spending most of the day on the sofa with a tiny baby on my chest :-)

Good luck! I know the first few weeks are hard, but BFing really does get easier.