Switching from expressing to breast

[FutureAquarian]

I have a 5 week old daughter who was born 4 weeks early weighing only 3lbs due to IUGR. She was in special care for 3 weeks and has been home 2 weeks. Since she was born, I have expressed breast milk and, once she came off the intravenous feeds, she has been solely fed breast milk - first via a tube, then from bottles.

Since she has been home, she has had bottles of expressed breast milk as I have been unable to establish a latch. Last night - a miracle - she latched and appeared to be taking some milk. I topped her up with a bottle.

I am now faced with trying to get the feeding solely from the breast as the effort of breast then bottle then expressing is too much for me (I also have a toddler to look after - he has flu).

Does anyone have any thoughts on a plan to phase out the expressing? It is important to keep her feeding a lot as she is still so tiny (well under the 0.4 centile) so a cold turkey approach to the bottles doesn't work. Equally a babymoon would be lovely but is not compatible with looking after a toddler.

If I don't figure this out soon, I will (highly reluctantly) have to switch to formula. I am basically at the end of my tether with this - I breast fed my son for 8 months, so I would like to do the same (or better) for DD. Any help would be massively appreciated. This is really affecting my emotions and I feel very upset by it all.

Hi, my dd (now 16months) for whatever reason, did not latch on for the first 8 days, and so I expressed and syringe/bottle fed up til that point until she eventually latched on, with nipple shields (that's a whole other story!).
I had a lot of support from BF clinic and babycafes, but what worked for us was giving a small amount of expressed BM to give her the energy to latch on/suck, then latched her on and let her feed as much as she could, then topped her up with more expressed BM.
She had lost a lot of birth weight so this is what we were advised to do and as she got stronger and put on weight we eased off on the topups, until they were happy with weight gain and we exclusively BF from then on.
HTH

Sympathies! My situation is slightly different in that DS was 14 weeks early but latched pretty well from early on, so didn't need bottles - but he was too tired to take in all he needed until he was nearly term, so kept his ng tube in for the first 3 weeks at home. I remember it as a haze of breastfeeding, pumping, sterilising, and sitting doing tube feeds that could easily last an hour (I'd get to last ml, he'd cough and bam- 10ml would shoot straight back up into the syringe!) No exaggeration, I was probably spending 20 out of 24 hours doing one or another type of feeding. I also have a toddler, and it was a really hellish time.

We were lucky to have help from grandparents - can you call in any favours on that front, or from friends? I'm not sure I could have done it without some support, just for the first few weeks - once we started properly transitioning to full feeding, it only took about 10 days to ditch the tube and expressing torture machine entirely.

I'd guess the principles of moving away from bottles are similar to moving from ng tube. We gradually cut out tube feeds in the day first - if you have DH who can do night bottle feeds, that can fortify you for the hell of the days and leave you free to 'only' express at night, rather than express and feed! I gradually cut down on pumping by first expressing just for 5 mins at end of a feed on the side he'd fed on, with a 'full' express on the other side at the same time. Then I moved to not expressing at all from the side he'd fed on, then finally only expressing when i felt hopelessly engorged, and then just enough to relieve the agony.

DS took a good deal of persuading to take a 'full' feed at first - needed a nappy change mid-feed to wake him up, for eg - but he got the hang of things pretty quickly. Once you start cutting down on the expressing, it's easier to tell from how soft your breasts are how good the feed has been -the problem with expressing and bf at the same time is that you get oversupply, so it's really hard to tell how much they've taken. But have trust that if she is latching well, she will be taking in milk! (watch for the weight of the nappies too, I found that helpful).

DS is now 11 weeks corrected. He is ravenously hungry, constantly, but in bf terms we haven't looked back! His latch is actually way better than my full-term DDs ever was. Hope I haven't rambled too much - happy to say even more if need be I know how scary it is moving away from tube/bottles when they hover at the bottom of the centiles chart and there is no room for error (DS was only just over 1.5kg when we got him home!) - but it really is possible.