Just wondering if anyone has any advice to offer...
I have a 3 yr old son and 5 week old daughter. I b/f my son for 9 months but got off to a terrible start after having supply issues - because I had been advised by health visitors to 'top up' with formula as he wasn't putting on enough weight (with hindsight he was putting on weight fine but hadn't reached his birthweight of 9lbs in 10 days!). This meant that I wasn't producing enough to meet his needs as I was having always topping up. What a mistake - I now know this but I wanted to do the 'right thing' and follow advice given. Anyway after a long battle I did end up getting back to EBF from about 3/4 months to 9. This was sooo hard to do and I really struggled.
Anyway, that is just to give a bit of context to my situation now. I was determined now to make the same mistakes (of topping up) with my dd and so woke her up every 2-3hrs right from day one in order to get my supply going. Milk came in brilliantly and I have carried on offering her milk every 2-3 hrs however and she has been putting on weight well - 8lb13 at birth and 10lb 6 oz at 5 weeks. It is the last week I am concerned about. I have been offering her milk every 2-3 hrs but she is only feeding for about 10 mins max and then isn't interested. She will then sleep or stay awake seemingly satisfied but I find this hard to believe after only 10 mins? And sometimes she won't take any milk at all after 2-3 hrs and will only feed after 4 hrs has passed (too long surely?) She will only feed from one side each feed so the other side isn't getting stimulated to produce more. She is six weeks tomorrow and I know that is the growth spurt point and I am so worried that I won't have enough milk because she hasn't been feeding enough this week to up my supply. I really don't want to have to top up during a growth spurt but I feel that this week she just hasn't been upping supply enough, if anything greatly reducing it -arrgghhh
I have tried to express but don't get much at all. When I say I offer her or wake her every 2-3 hrs I mean that she doesn't ever seem hungry (my husband says that is becasue I don't give her the chance to?) so I guess I'm not really feeding on demand?
I was so determined to get it right this time and it has been going so well, I've been really happy but now feel really down that all this hard work will come to nothing after the next week and I will be at the same point I was with my son. 6 weeks tomoorw and I'm really scared of the growth spurt.
Does anyone have any advice to offer?