Although breastfeeding has been easy for me, I wish I'd never done it.

[SarahScot]

I was incredibly lucky with breastfeeding DD. After strggling to breastfeed DS, DD took to breastfeeding like a duck to water and we had 5 months of no feeding problems.

However, I have been back at work for 3 weeks, DD refuses all bottles so has no milk through the day. Ocassionally, if she's starving she'll take 1 or 2 oz once a day, but not every day. She's been getting up more and more at night and it's now at the stage where I can't cope. Last night she was in her bed for 11 hours and got up to be fed 8 times. I have tried to get her back to sleep without feeding her but always give in after half an hour as I'm so shattered.

It's having a negative effect on my kids, on my relationship with my husband, my relationship with friends and my ability to do my job. I am miserable, I am making my family miserable. I am so tired that I constantly feel dizzy and am terrified of crashing the car.

I have tried 5 types of bottles, I have tried using expressed milk, a mixture of bm and fm, just fm. I have tried different brands of formula. I truly feel at the end of my tether and don't know what to do to make the situation any better.

I don't know what I expect anyone to say, I think I just want to vent.

Ooh, I just remembered, we had loads of problems getting DD2 to take a bottle. We ended up persevering with just one bottle (Avent) and making a slit in it to make the milk easier to come out. At first DH would literally squeeze the milk out of the teat into her mouth. Eventually she realised that if she sucked milk would come out. It doesn't always work, but we persevered and fortunately it worked for us. DD2 now happily takes both breast and bottle.

It is a good point about the milk temperature. Ds2 who was BF will only take his milk hot, whereas DS1 who was formula fed always had his formula and now cows milk at room temperature. Hope that helps a teeny bit.

I think juneau means well. It's true, the OP may have found the same situation whether she was breastfeeding or not. It's a big change when their mum goes back to work. My DD2 cried when I got in every day for two weeks when I went back. It's a very shit situation for the OP to be in though. Sleep deprivation in awful, but it's not forever, and may get easier when the LO is on solids.

Lots of interesting points, thank you everyone.

I get what June is saying, she's confused that all of a sudden I'm not there for her. . Maybe getting DH to do nights isn't fair then.

Will try the milk at a hotter temp, will also try giving her it when she's sitting up so it's less like BFing. My mum looks after her 3 days a week so I will get her to try giving her milk when she's sleeping. The other 2 days she's at nursery and barely manages to get any sleep so they might not manage it.

I HATE that I have to go to work. I used to love my job but now I hate it. I'm a teacher so my current crapness is not only affecting my own kids, it's affecting 30 others too.

Darling, I feel for you. It took, well, a while to get DD2 onto a bottle of expressed milk - she was exclusively BF, I went back to work when she was four months old and she was still exclusively on breast milk till she was six months old - but we did get there.

Oh, but wrt the childminder she was fine. If that helps.

Also meant to add, she is almost 6 months and has been on solids for just over 4 weeks. She eats quite a lot for a baby her age I think - porridge for breakfast, veg for lunch and sometimes fruit for pudding, then a wee bit at tea time.. My mum has tried last week to give her no solids, just milk in the mornings to see if she'll drink it if she's hungry.

My DD refused a bottle. But would drink from a cup.

sarah you might want to consider some foods which will be higher in iron and zinc which is pretty much the only thing that between 6 and 12 months a Bf baby needs - so if you can introduce some meat that might be useful to her.

She does still need that milk though, poor both of you, what a horrible situation :(

I suppose it's stupid to say could you take any more time off/go part time? No doubt you would if you could.

My son goes to a nursery near work so I could feed him during the day - maybe???

I hope this is not a completely unrealistic suggestion, but just wanted to put it out there...

Is there anyway that your Mum could bring her to you in your lunch hour so you could at least get one decent breastfeed in during the day? Possibly more if you do have any other free periods?

I was thinking if you could manage to squeeze in 2 feeds before work, 1 at lunch time, and then 2+ more between when you get in from work and when your DD goes to bed... Well it's just a thought.

Another thought, are you mixing ebm/ff in with her porridge, fruit and veg? Might be able to squeeze quite a few extra ounces into her daily intake that way as well.

x posted there with organiccarrotcake

The DH taking over thing totally depends on how you do it. If you suddenly disappear in the night too that might be hard for your DD. But if DH always takes over with a bottle at the same time every night and you only switch one feed at a time then it shouldn't be a huge issue. Work out which hours matter most to you and use DH as your sub then!

It may well not reduce feeding frequency initially - DD didn't drop the final night feed until she was well past one I'm afraid. But it gives you a chance to catch up on some core sleep.

I don't buy the not-fair thing. In our case the decision was made for us because I was seriously ill in hospital and DH has to do the feeds (ironically I was of wide awake in hospital with horribly engorged breasts dammit). Fairness doesn't come into it when you are under that much stress, you have to do what will maximise the health and well-being of your whole family.

Have you tried mixing EBM with her food to ensure she is taking in enough protein during the day? Put it with the porridge or other cereal, mashed potatoes, rice pudding etc. It's not the same as getting her to take it in a bottle but might help to fill her up so she is settling better at night. Banana milk shake is a good one for older children but might be worth a try.

oh god- i feel your pain. I was convinced DD was never going to take a bottle as she held out for days at a time then had feeding frenzies on my return. In then end I tried a breastflow bottle here. And it worked! Have you tried them? If not if you pm me your address I am happy to post them to you...

Sorry - I didn't mean to sound harsh! Just trying to analyse the situation, because I think it can be helpful to see things from the baby's POV too. Yes, your situation is very hard, but from where she's sitting she's being deprived of something she had ready access to until recently and that's very upsetting and confusing for her. Hope you find a solution that works for you both!

Hi, xbfing teacher here too. Sorry you're having a hard time, it sucks. When i went back fo work. I made sure dd had cheese and yoghurt a lot during the day. It made me feel better that she was getting the right things to eat at least, when she wasnt taking milk. She finally took a mam bottle as it is a bright colour and it was so different to anything else. I also co-slept and was at the point where she could feed and hardly wake me.

It's okay to take a night off and leave it to DH.

I also got great support on here (it's my favorite part of MN). She will get there eventually, so do everything

Sorry.... Do everything that you can to be kind to yourself in the meanwhile.

DS was like that for the first three weeks or so when I went back to work (refusing bottles and nursing all night, but then he started taking bottles (actually sippy cups) quite happily. It just seemed to be a case of his adjusting to the new routine, and also finding his individual quirks. He was a couple of months older, though.

I feel your pain. We're through it now as DS finally sleeps through the night, but when I first went back to work I wanted to throw myself out of the window, I was so tired. I was actually hallucinating at one stage.

I also wish I hadn't breastfed, even though we did get through it. The first few weeks were hellish, it got easier after that but I never enjoyed it and the stress we all went through when I went back to work, when DS was 6 months, was horrendous. I'm not sure that the health benefits to DS were worth the emotional strain on all of us.

We never did get DS to take a bottle, although we tried with loads of different kinds: until he could drink reliably from a cup DH was spoonfeeding him milk during the day.

I agree that the only way to crack this is for your DH to take over at night - we dealt with it by splitting the nights. We went to bed ludicrously early (in different rooms), I did a couple of feeds before midnight, DH dealt with anything that happened between midnight and 6 a.m. so that I could get 6 hours solid sleep, and then I took over again from 6 and got two feeds in so that DH could catch another couple of hours before I left for work at 8.30. But that may not work if your DH has to leave early in the morning.

Also our DS absolutely loved Greek yogurt and would eat lots of it very happily from the beginning of weaning, so that might be another way of getting useful nutrients into your DD in the daytime, so that she needs less at night.

The other thing, if you can afford it, is a night nanny. We got one for a week when DS was 9 months old. We didn't intend to do more than get a break so that we could catch up on sleep a bit, but actually it broke the habit of waking for feeds and DS started sleeping through the night after that. She was brilliant. It cost about as much as a self-catering family holiday, so we didn't go away this summer, but the sleep was worth every penny.

I'm so sorry to hear what you are going through. I think a lot of us working mums have the same problems (worries). Think on the positive side. She's with your mum 3 days a week so you know she's getting good care. And she'll really be getting onto solids at 6mo. Once she can eat dairy and meat, and she's more used to you not being there during the day, I think her number of night feeds will back down to normal. And 6 months she can start learning a cup too. So there's that possibility of formula in a sippy cup as well.

Hi Sarah, I'm in completely the same boat as you with regard to regretting BFing.

My daughter is now approaching 8 months and been trying to get her to take anything other than breast - different bottles, different teats, different cups - to no avail. Stopped BF in the day in the hope that she'd take a bottle/beaker but uninterested. Now means she's up constantly in the night for BF and I give in eventually as I hate the thought that she's not getting enough milk. However last night she bit me which later meant that it was even too painful to have her on that particular side and it still hurts today!!

Feeling the pressure from others as well to give up too which doesn't help matters. I know it's easy to say that plenty of women BF for a while, but when your family start thinking that it's weird then things get a lot harder. In particular have people telling me that if she's hungry enough she'll take it, but the state she gets to in between just doesn't appear to be worth it.

Sorry I don't have any advice, shall try the sleeping feeding technique, but after reading your post just wanted you to say that I feel for you. Hope things get better and work out for you asap.

Oops, just typed a long post and it disappeared.

I'm touched you all took time to respond, and it helps just to know others went through it and came out the other side still sane. I'll take time to read all teh advice and decide what to try first.

My mum can't bring her to me at lunchtime as it's an hour round trip and she has my DS to drop off at nursery at the same time.

We put ebm or formula into most of her food.

Thank you Hettie for your kind offer, but we have some breastflow bottles already in our massive bottle collection!

Meanwhile, I'm off to bed. x

hi, not been in your situation but feel for you.
Have you tried the nuk bottles with latex not silicone teats? Im sure i read somewhere that bf babies quite often prefer the latex as its softer than the silicone.
Not sure how many bf you do manage to fit in the day but can you do 1 long one before work 1 long one as soon as you get home (maybe cutting out her tea solids if they are given close to when you get home) and then another long 1 at her bedtime?
not sure what advice ti give about the night i suppose either you just go with her and feed wenever she wakes(feeding lying down so you can still doze) or you sleep in a different room and let oh or someone do it for a few days/week. could she sleep at your mums for the days she has her (just for a week) to see how che settles there? You could ne there till her bedtime and then go off home with your eldest? Sometimes they tend to settle better (and sleep through ) when they are at gp's ( i know my ds2 did ).
You will all get through this.

Sarah, sorry to hear that you are having a hard time. You must be exhausted at the moment. Going back to work is difficult at the best of times.

I agree with OrganicCC and June - at the moment your DD is probably missing the comfort that feeding gives her just as much as the actual milk and this will contribute to the night wakenings. Although of course your DD will be using the night feeds to make up for the lost calories/nutrients during the day. Its such early days for both of you, although I'm sure it doesn't feel like that for you after 3 weeks of little or no sleep.

My advice would be to feed as soon as your DD wakens. We went through a phase where my DD woken constantly through the night and I wasted hours trying to settle my DD without feeding her only to feed her in the end anyway. I know that this won't be the anwer that you are hoping for but it will mean you will get back to bed quicker and your DD will get the nutrients and reassurance that she needs right now.

Although I have not used one personally, doidy cups are often accepted by babies who refuse bottles. No harm in trying. Either that or your mum could literally spoon breastmilk into your DD's mouth?

Use breastmilk in cooking/meals as much as possible too. I used 4oz in weetabix alone when I first went back to work. Are you able to feed her for long periods in the evenings too? I know that this may be hard as you have other children but may be worth it in the short term if it means getting a little extra sleep at night.

As an aside - my DD's sleep went downhill big time when we introduced solids, so perhaps it is a combination of her being hungry for milk, missing her mummy and unsettled at this develomental milestone.

Hope things get better soon for you.

Oooch - not been in this situation but I have friends who have. Their babies often started to 'reverse cycle' too and feed lots at night. All of them pretty much carried on co-sleeping as that way they all got some sleep. Most of them said it was a nice way to reconnect after being away all day but it's still tough and tiring.
5 months is very very young still so maybe like others have said you could just cosleep and nurse on demand for a little bit longer, she might come out of this phase soon

Right, have made a decision. (Finally!!!)

We're going to keep on with the bottles in the hope that she'll eventually take it.

At night we're going to continue to cosleep and bf on demand, BUT with one difference - after midnight I'm going to go and sleep on the sofa as we've noticed that she'll sometimes to back to sleep herself is she wakes up alone but if I'm there she'lll not sleep 'til she's fed.

And finally, and this is the best bit, I'm going to drop a day at work and just do 4 days . Now I just have to pluck up the courage to ask my boss about it!