A bit of backstory: DD is nearly 7 months old. When she was a newborn I tried to EBF but we discovered at 3.5 weeks that she had dropped to the 0.4 centile . The next 4 months I did pretty much everything to get BFing back on track (tongue tie specialists, reflux medication, multiple IBCLCs, power pumping... everything). It was a really dark time for me and I completely lost faith in my abilities and instinct as a mother and extremely miserable/depressed. At around 5 months I finally came to some sort of acceptance and found a routine that worked for us - I BF between midnight and 7am; in the day I pumped 4 times for 20 minutes each which got around 400ml and meant I could bottle feed 50/50 BM and formula.
Unfortunately all the stress and exhaustion (on top of all the bf issues she is also a terrible sleeper 😬) has meant that my weight has ballooned. I tried to go running (the only exercise I really love) but wet myself which was not fun. I have re started my pelvic floor exercises but I don't think the weight can be helping either. So I have started a diet.. nothing crazy and still eating a healthy balanced diet but of course the idea is to burn more calories than you consume. And my milk supply has tanked .
I don't know what to do... I've worked so so hard, shed so many tears and spent £££ to give DD the amount of milk that I do.. I really wanted to turn my experience into a positive story "it was hard but I still managed to give her 50% breast milk for a year " but I also want to feel good about myself again. None of my clothes fit (even some of the maternity ones!) and I'm living in joggers and sweatshirts. I'll be going back to work in 5 months which seems like a long time but isn't really and the idea of going back looking like I do now horrifies me - even more so the idea that dieting while doing my job is nigh on impossible and I would likely never lose the weight.
Would I be crazy to keep up the diet? Should I give it up in order to keep feeding breasts milk? start power pumping to increase supply? Give up breastfeeding altogether? Or just keep the pumping at the level it is now but accept that I'll only be producing a paltry amount?
Any words of wisdom/experience/advice would really be appreciated.
Thanks.
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Milk supply and dieting quandary
5 replies
BoobyBarbara · 24/02/2021 19:16
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