To stop breastfeeding newborn ?

[Onedownonetogooo]

I want to start by saying I know all babies are different .

I was unable to fed dc (18 months ) I was devastated . However I realize I was able to let DH feed him , we could go out unplanned as I just took a bottle and my MIL was able to take DC out for the afternoon as she had a bottle . DC1 seemed very contented.

Dc2 is two weeks old and I can feed her ( yay!) but she seems to feed constantly. Very 30 mins . If she isn’t feeding she is mostly crying and won’t be settled . DH / MIL can’t settle her . So I take her and feed her .

Getting out of the house seems almost impossible as the she is always being fed . We have been out 3 times straight after a feed and she has slept around 45 mins then woken up crying so we have had to power walk home so she can feed. This is hard as I don’t want to be at home with an 18 month old and newborn . I would love to be walking and getting toddler out. I’m scared I’ll be stuck inside as i need to be in to feed ( not sure how I’d feed out with toddler !)

Also DH is now pretty much doing bath and bed times with toddler as I’m always feeding. I’m Scared I’ll lose my bond with toddler ( he is now always shouting for daddy !)

The baby has wet and soiled nappies and midwife said she is a good weight ( so appears to be feeding well ) it is just so so different from DS1. Im worried that Brest milk isn’t satisfying her .

I also feel alone in parenting baby as DH can’t really help with baba.

Please help me ?
AIBU to consider giving up breastfeeding???

Baby is only two weeks old and I’m sure I’m exhausted .

Everyone told me bf was magical and I was devastated when I couldn’t bf ds1 but in retrospect it was far easier . Or is it just this time my baby is different to dc1?

Has she been weighed?

Feeding every 30 minutes and crying in hunger in between those times doesn't sound like a baby content with feeding.

On the contrary I'd say this sounds like a really typical baby before 1 month. Mine was the same and has always hit the milestones and been median weight/length

Feed on the go! Feeding in a sling is a lifesaver, especially with my pre schooler needing me to run about while I fed baby. I'll also just feed standing or sitting while out and about, even if I don't have my sling on me. That'd the beauty of breastfeeding- no need to go home or inside somewhere to sort out a bottle. It's available anywhere, anytime!

Read your update- definitely give the carrier a go. If you find it comfy to feed in, it is a game changer. I would feed mine to to sleep then they would really well in the sling with me just getting on with life with loads of noise (much better than they did in a quiet room and comfy crib... of course...)

Breastfeeding took me around 6-8 weeks to establish with DD, she had a tt cut at 4 weeks and then it was another 2-4 weeks until I really felt like I had a grasp of it. That when feeds went from 1.5 hours to 3 hours apart and she also went 7-8 hours at night. It does get easier but bfing is tough to begin with!

Have you considered breastfeeding and then topping up with formula? This is what my sister (a paediatrician) recommended I do right from the beginning, and it's been great. It also means someone else can feed your baby, as he/she will be used to accepting a bottle. Best of both worlds!

Breastfeeding is very much not one size fits all.

Exhibit a). Friend 1. Could feed a starving African village for the first six seeks until it all settled down. Milk flying in all directions. Times 4.

Exhibit b). Mothers group friend. Baby took 5 minutes per side! I had to see it to believe it. Friend always decamped to parent room when out in public.

Exhibit c). Me. It took 7 weeks to bed down. By then I was taking fenugreek seed by the tbs 4 x daily to help. Whatever you are drinking out of, replace it with a pint glass. Every hour and when you wake up at night. Eat lots of protein. And I (dc that is)still took 45 minutes per side with a nappy change at half time. I fed everywhere. If I withdrew to a parents room, I would have had no life for 2.5 years. At two weeks, dc was losing weight and MW said to top up with formula which we did for about six weeks or so. Then dc was fully bf, tracked on the weight percentile well. And we loved it.

Exhibit d). Another mate. Dc 1 fed then screamed for weeks until dh said “bottle”. Dc1 still not patient today. Dc2 was on the boob for hours. However, was prepared to wait for the letdown and is still full of patience today.

This is normal. Both my kids fed forever and the first few months I did hardly anything else other than feed.

It worked for me and I didn't mind.

I bought a short and long sleeved one of these https://www.boobdesign.com/shop/i-am-looking-for/t-shirts
and just lived in them. Kept it all quite private, seeing as I fed everywhere. I only ever one comment from an elderly lady about her memories. She was lovely.

To add to the great advice you’ve already had OP. See if there’s a breastfeeding group locally for support. They might also have a sling library or can direct you to one. So you can try a variety of slings and borrow one to see if it works. You might need to try a few to find the right one for you. Also have a look at the Kellymom website for breastfeeding advice. I mixed fed both of mine and expressed as well so they could have a bottle from the early days. Seemed to help DC1 sleep longer, he seemed to take more from a bottle as it was easier for him. I think he had/has tongue tie looking back.
Don’t let anyone make you feel bad whatever you decide. As long as baby is fed that’s what’s important and you need to be happy and rested too.

This sounds normal and it just is really tough.

I've been looking after both of mine mostly by myself since the baby came (but that's for another thread). We're past the worst of it now (baby on solids), but my 5yo has had to put up with some fairly lacking parenting at times. Having dinner shoved in front of them and eating alone or left by themselves in the bath while I breastfed and read their library book to them from a chair in the corridor. Very little time and energy for playing and interacting. I would have struggled with a younger child tbh (and am lucky that 5yo is quite chilled) so hats off to you for getting this far. Whatever works best for your family is the right decision.

Learning how to feed DS in a sling was a game changer for me, trying to look after toddler DD as well.

They do cluster feed a lot in the beginning and also will be very fussy in the evenings (witching hour... Or witching three hours) I exclusively breastfed my first, but this time I combi fed giving her bottles of expressed milk and later formula, which worked out better for us. You need to do what's right for you, but what you've described is perfectly normal, and the fact that you have weight gain and wet nappies shows you are giving her what she needs.

It depends on the baby as to how much they feed.

Dd1 did huge feeds. So even at 2 weeks old we had a sort of routine.
8am (breakfast), 10am (sleep), 12:00 (lunch) 2:00pm (sleep) 6:00pm (dinner) 8:00pm (bedtime) 2am (snack).
At 6 weeks she dropped the 2am feed. Each feed would be 10-20 minutes on each side.
Dd2 was much more as you describe. She went for quick snack, and then move on, but then wanted another about 45 minutes later. The only time she went down for a length of time was about 6am-11/12noon. She's 19yo and still doesn't like breakfast, and prefers snacking to a full meal!
Ds was more similar to dd1, although was an early bird, which she never was (he still is, even though he's more than half way through his teens!)

It depends on you as to whether you're willing to continue. I don't know whether I'd have continued with dd2 if she'd have been my first because it was so exhausting. But I don't think it would have been that much better if I'd gone for bottle feeds. I suspect it would have been similar timing, but with the added frustration of throwing away feeds only 25% used and then having to make another up shortly afterwards.
You can have someone else feeding, which is the advantage, but that would only have been weekends and evenings/night.
But it's also a disadvantage at times I got very good at giving dh a list of things that had to be done while I fed.

What I did with dd1, was when I was feeding dd2, then it was story time. So she'd bring me a book to read and we'd read together while I fed dd2. So she'd often be the one saying "does dd2 want milk?" when she wanted a story.

BFing in the first few weeks is utter hell. They basically feed non-stop and it's almost impossible to do anything else. There's a growth spurt at three weeks which is a horror show for non-stop feeding, but then it does start to improve.

You could try doing combi? I did 50/50 BF/FF in the end and found it was far more convenient for us - meant DH could take her, we took it in turns to do bedtime etc?

Hi OP, you've had loads of great advice!

I just want to chime in to mention 'option c', which is combi feeding. Not EBF, not going to 100% bottle, but mixing and matching. It's worked brilliantly for me with DS2.

I started 'topping up' the breastfeeding with formula feeds when he was 10 days old (and HVs had concerns about his weight gain). I just breastfed as much as I could, ask much as he wanted, and if he seemed grumpy or unsatisfied I made up a bottle and offered that. Sometimes he refused but often he chugged it down!

He is still on a mix of boob and bottle (now sippy cups, obviously) at 2 and a half years old!

Having BFing available as an option for an extended time has been great - for example when he's got a tummy bug and the formula/cows milk upsets his tummy, the magial breast milk doesn't, so he stays hydrated.

It's also great for comfort e.g. if he gets a bump and is doing big crying, he'd bat a bottle of formula away but be keen for boob, and comforted by it.

The flip side is that if I've had enough of the endless 'boob as dummy' routine, and just want him to fill him up and stop him grizzling, I can chug a bottle of formula down him and he gets all full and sleepy and I get a break!

And if I'm away from him then can delegate a bottle to DH - like you I had an older DC so needed some time 'off' from the newborn to keep them comforted and feeling loved. Having DH feeding the occasional bottle to the baby really helped with this too.

FWIW I used Hipp organic formula which has probiotics in, and his poops stayed the yellow, "breastfed" colour, and he never struggled to switch from BF to formula or had reflux or anything.

Wish you all the best whatever you decide, and congrats on your bubba.

If you like to wear dresses Stylish Mum have a lot of breastfeeding friendly dresses.

A two week old on the boob constantly sounds very normal. They will be building up your supply and it will settle down over the next 6 weeks or so. That said, if you aren’t happy then you could try combi or just straight formula feeding. Breastfeeding really isn’t the be all and end all - a lot of people forget that there’s a mum on the end of the boob who deserves to feel happy too.

As hard as it is it all sounds really normal.

I always say breastfeeding is much harder for the first couple of months, but then after that it’s much easier. No making up and heating up bottles and no sterilising. You just have to get through the tough bit.

You’re doing well, it sounds like you want to try and stick at it, but just do whatever is right for you and your family.

This is literally part of my profession.

Please see unicef link.

A satisfied baby should be content after feeds (unless it's cluster feeding of course!) and feed around 8 times in 24 hours.

Not 48 times in 24 hours.

If I was visiting a mother I'd be asking her a lot more questions to figure out how to help and what the issue is.

I wouldn't be telling her it's totally normal.

It isn't, baby isn't satisfied and there will be a reason for that.

Hopefully she has good weight gain and got good output OP.

Please call your HV (or MW if you haven't been discharged yet).
Best of luck.

Link https://www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/10/mothers_breastfeeding_checklist.pdf

doh

Perhaps a baby "should" be feeding 8 times in 24 hours - but I have never come across a breastfed baby who didn't want it much, much more often! That seems insanely infrequent for a newborn and I notice you say "except cluster feeding"...! That's kind of the definition of cluster feeding isn't it? So you're saying that babies feed infrequently except when they are feeding frequently.

It is advice like this that has led to huge proportions of UK mums quitting early. Practically no mums make it to 12m breastfeeding in this country let alone 2y as WHO recommends.

Omg the first line in your link says 8 times or more in 24 hours which completely contradicts your point that more often is unhealthy...!!

Yep

Newborns feed a lot, by about 6 weeks breastfeeding comes into its own because you don't need any equipment, it's free ... you can still give occasional bottles if you are going out by the way, don't be a martyr to it.

Rather than a t-shirt, I found a button up shirt plus a poncho over or vest underneath we the best for breastfeeding. You can unbutton a little and the rest of you is still covered. It was hard with a toddler, but it gets easier as you get more confident and they start to figure it out and get themselves into the right position.

I could never feed in a carrier, but lots of people can.