Benefits of one bottle breastmilk per day and boob pain? (not masitis)

[jobobpip08]

A summary ? DS3 was induced, seemingly fed well, milk production ample, a content baby however suffered reflux, bad wind pains and poor weight gain. A few days on childrens ward showed I produced enough milk which he took from the bottle but seeming did not take enough from me.

I went home and continued expressing to feed him, I found this a struggle (I vary from tired to extremely tired) and went back to breastfeeding with a FF top up. The milk I am expressing is reducing in volume as I don?t express enough times daily. (I was quite gutted as I EBF DS1 for 9 months without a problem but have now accepted that will not be the same this time.) DS is now gaining weight.

Two questions for you wise ladies - DS3 is now 11 weeks - is there much benefit in the one feed a day he gets that is pure breastmilk?

And does anyone else get random sharp pains in their boobs (not mastitis as I have had this before and think I would recognise the signs) and it is putting me off the thought of expressing. Thank you anyone who can give a little advice.

Really? No-one on mumsnet has an opinion!

Why did they not prescribe meds to control the reflux rather than suggesting bottle feeding? If the baby is still being sick it doesn't matter that you can count the ounces going in their mouth as you can't count them coming out!

Reflux is associated with poor weight gain in some babies because they vomit more milk out than they need to grow (a little vomit is ok if baby is taking on what they need). Reflux is not associated with poor milk extraction from the breast or poor milk supply usually mums have a cracking supply as baby is taking more milk to vomit up as well as milk to grow though that is not always the case (I thought I had a low supply but what I didn't have was the 1 & 1/2 supply DD1 needed to fuel the puking).

It sounds like you got very poor advice at the hospital to bottle feed expressed milk I'm sorry to say, is there anyone you could see in real life to help you re-lactate an start bfing direct again? (obv. if that was something you wanted to do)

DD1 had fairly bad reflux (fed lots, puked lots, screamed lots, lost weight and was very slow gainer before the loss too) but we went from bottle feeding formula/some ebm/the occassional bf to ebf at 8w and then on domperidone which helped the reflux.

Anyway, any amount of breast milk is beneficial to a baby no matter how small so if you can keep going then great but I understand that not everyone likes to pump or is even able to.

Sorry no one sensible is replying but my tuppenceha'penneyworth is this. I could not bear using a breast pump as I got shooting pains in the boob which I think was STATIC like you can get when knitting with metal pins or from a car door. I was able to express manually and got quite good at that. As you know 1 bottle of breast milk a day will do wonders for your little one it seems a shame to stop when you are still able. You cannot 'top up' again at a later date as your milk will disappear.

The pain could be thrush. I have no experience of it but what you describe sounds like what I waa told to look out for. So sorry you are having such trouble.

Thanks everyone.

Truthsweet Sorry, could have written a novel about whats happened and missed out the meds - DS is on 3 meds, infant gaviscon, domperidone and omeprazole and the monitoring in hospital took place after meds did not seem to have much effect on weight gain (have reduced vomiting tho).

Udderly will google thrush after the school run!

jobobpip - the pain might be from the pumping if you have the suction set too high. Having done a lot of pumping I have found that too high doesn't make more milk it causes pain for me.

Have you got a pumping regime? Do you do things like breast massage before expressing and then hand express afterwards?

There is medication that can increase milk supply (domperidone ironically enough) and herbs that can increase supply too (fenugreek/blessed thistle/etc). Info here

Here is some info on exclusively pumping - there should be some info that can help you increase your supply.

EPing is hard work (and I do speak from personal experience) so really well done to get this far - I only kept going for 8 weeks because we had the end goal of ebf so hats off to you for keeping going with out this