Hi I need a bit of advice regarding combining breastfeeding and expressing. My dd is a week old and we've had a bit of trouble feeding. She had real trouble latching and we had to resort to using nipple shields. My nipples are so sore that I'm not able to wean her off them ( she has taken the nipple a few times but if she's a bit grumpy it's not happening). She lost a bit too much weight in her first few days and the mw put her on a strict feeding plan where I was expressing after every feed ( every two hours or less) and whilst I was doing so my partner gave her the previous ebm. She put on almost double the weight she ' had to' and now we're cutting down to ebm as a top up after every other feed ( she feeds from 10 minutes to over an hour. I have been able to express between 30ml - 90 ml after feeds and at night my partner has been giving her a bottle of ebm on its own so I can have a rest. The mw seemed to want me to cut out the use of shields and expressing a lot early on but even though I enjoy feeding her I have really sore nipples so a lot of the feeds are quite painful. She seems to switch quite happily between the bottle of ebm and the nipple and she's doing lots of wees and poos so I don't see why I can't carry on using shields and topping up a couple of times a day with ebm. We've been doing everything we've been told but I'm starting to feel a bit like I want to have control over my boobs and how they're used! My main priority is that my dd is healthy and a second is my own well being I don't mind if that's achieved with ebm and nipple shields.Feeling stressed about not doing 'it right' isn't how I want to be spending this time. Does what I'm doing sound ok?
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