Hi
Apologies for the rambling post but my DS is 12 days old and I am really struggling with feeding. The first few days after the birth we were in hospital and I thought there must be an issue because he wouldn't stay on the breast very long and by the second night started screaming a lot, but when I asked for help I was told the latch was fine and everything was ok. When I got home it got worse and he screamed all night but wouldn't feed more than a few minutes on the breast - sometimes he fell asleep other times he'd just pull himself off and scream. On day 5 he was weighed and found to have lost 12% of his birth weight. The midwife was quite stern saying it was obvious he was starving and I would have to top up with formula.
I was devastated by this as I should have pushed for more help in the hospital but they were so dismissive and made me feel stupid. I decided to see a lactation consultant. She told me to feed every 3 hours, offering 20 minutes on each breast, then a bottle (expressed milk if I had enough otherwise formula) then to express for 20 minutes with a medela symphony. I tried really hard to achieve this for a few days but found that it was never as simple as 20 minutes one each breast because DS kept falling asleep and so all the stopping and starting meant that the breast feeding part of each feed could easily last 1.5 hours. Once you add on giving him a bottle and then expressing I was often only left with half an hour between feeds. I couldn't survive like that so ending up only expressing once or twice a day which meant most of the top ups have been formula as I don't have enough expressed milk.
DS is now 12 days old and is now just over his birth weight. He is doing much better on the breast and is a bit easier to keep awake and I think he is emptying both breasts each time - I test by hand expressing periodically during a feed - but once he has finished on the breast he starts looking around for more food and won't settle until he has the bottle although he doesn't take more than 1oz now (was 2oz initially). I really want to stop the formula but don't know how to go about things.
My nipples are really sore but the lactation consultant and several midwives have all checked the latch and say it's fine so don't know what is going on there.
Also DS throws up at most feeds.
Please can someone help
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Infant feeding
Feeding issues with a 12 day old
5 replies
Blobby11 · 29/08/2011 18:22
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