Am starting to have doubts about my milk supply

[amijee]

Hello there

I never thought I would be doubting my ability to feed. I breast fed both my older kids for a year and I now have a nearly 5 month old who is bf exclusively.

Her sleep is absolute rubbish ( like all my kids were) but I am trying to minimise the night feeds to 4 hrly ( she is 3 hrly during day) Despite this she still wakes hrly after 1am.

My growing doubt is - is she getting enough milk at bedtime? My let down takes so long sometimes I have to pacify her with my finger whilst my milk comes in and my breasts never feel that full in the evening. I don't want to pump as I did it a lot with my first two and am just too exhausted to be doing that on top of everything else.

I have no problems with giving her formula because I am going back to work soon anyway and she will have to have it in the daytime anyway. Do you think it will help if I try to get her on to a bottle of formula last thing at night? The sleep deprivation is making me very unhappy and I have nothing to give back to my family.

could you feed more often during day to tank her up? my 3 month old is every 90 minas in day but sleeps through the night...

Could you maybe pump just once in the morning to give her a little top up at bedtime? My DD was mix fed and I used to bf her at bedtime then when she got sleepy and came off the breast DH would give her a 90ml FF top up, or whatever BM I had expressed during the day. This would wake her up enough that she would have another BF for about 10 mins or so before going down for the night. This routine made her sleep for 5-6 hours. Now we have gone back to EBF, I need to keep tickling her to make sure she has as much as possible for her bedtime feed and that gives me about 3 hours then repeat the tickling strategy when she wakes up to get another 3 hours. HTH

thank you for your input. I find feeding more frequently in the day makes no difference to her nights ( neither does cluster feeding) and it also results in her having shorter naps in the day as she is waking up from them after half an hour to feed. ( she doesnt sleep excessively in the day)

As for topping up at night,she hardly ever falls asleep before I put her down as I try to put her to sleep awake. When I am winding her and putting on her sleeping bag she wakes up and when I try to offer her some more milk she refuses. So maybe she isn't hungry? I'm contradicting myself I know!

I may try the ff top up after the breast to see if she is interested. Thanks again for your help x