My DD is now three weeks old and things have been tricky for us from the beginning - for unknown reasons she wasn't interested/couldn't feed for the first few days of life so I had to express colostrum and syringe feed it to her untill my milk came in, when we started to use a bottle to feed her.
saw a good few midwives/health visitors/breastfeeding support people, but they could never get her to latch on, untill one suggested using nipple shields on day 3 - as she could drink from a bottle but not from me.
this worked well for a bit, but we spend an awful lot of time fighting at the breast, she's awful for falling asleep and she never seems satisfied (still sucking hand after an hour feed etc), and i'm just hating it. We were advised to still give her some expressed milk - so i've been giving her three feeds a day of expressed milk and putting her to the breast on demand (which is pretty constant).
when she has a 2 or 3oz feed from the bottle she will be content, and go 2 or 3 hours till the next feed, wheras at the breast she wants feeding every hour or less (i dont move from the sofa).
so, i'm considering turning to exclusively expressing - as neither of us seem to be enjoying breastfeeding. do you think it's too early to make this decision?
i'd be really interested in hearing from those who have exclusively expressed - my plan is to express every 3 hours for 15mins (using a double pump), untill dd is 10weeks and then consider dropping a feed after that. at the moment i pump in the evening, night and morning (11pm,3am,6.30amish).
would love to hear stories!
p.s - sorry for the lack of capitals, typing one handed is tricky.