Hi all, Congratulations to everyone who's popped (just about everyone i think?!)
We're 5 weeks tomorrow and all is gtoing well, ended up putting Isaac on bottle last week as he lost a lot of weight and was struggling to put it back on - I was stressing it was down to me and getting miserable, so decided not worth it and he had already had 3 weeks, so the best bit. Also DD (20 months) was getting jealous when i was feeding him and with him being over 10lb this was pretty much all the time, so made sense for her too.
1st couple of weeks felt all over the place with him so introduced a strict routine for 5 days before relaxing it, he's pretty much stuck to it on his own though and already dropped one of the night feeds (did this routine with DD and it worked for her too). So he's now going down at about 6.30 (got eveings back - yippee!), topping up at about 10, then have one feed usually about 3 and then wakes again 6.30/7ish. I'm not one for being strict with babies usually but for a few days resulting in sleep and sanity I can deal with it!! It also introduced a long (3 hr ish) sleep around midday and he seems to have stuck with this too (hence time to be on mumsnet!)
Hope everyone else is doing ok, those struggling with the BF, the best advice I was given was if it is really important to you stick with it and it'll get easier, but don't get miserable over it. if it's taking over your life (and affecting those around you) don't feel guilty about using formula. It's good stuff and your baby won't suffer for it in the long run. I like a bit of routine in my life and with a young daughter it was the best thing for all of us. I did want to BF for longer but as with DD the stress, worry & misery was outweighing the benefits so it was time to change. I did mixed feeds with DD & this worked, but DS is a really fussy feeder so felt I had to make the decision on 1 or the other and stick with it, was a bit of a nightmare changeover, but a week later it seems to be going in the right direction.