6 weeks and thinking about going FF full time.

[SarryB]

My LO will be 6 weeks old on Sunday. I am considering FF full time - but just wondering if anyone has any tips for me, as I would like to continue BF if possible.

We had a little trouble the first couple of days after he was born with latching - he was very sleepy from the drugs I had during labour. But after a few days, he got it. We had to top up from a bottle as he lost a bit too much weight at the start.

I have been BF during the day, and FF at night (I FF at night because I fell asleep while feeding once, and when I woke, I was back in bed, with no idea where the baby had gone. It really scared me that I had no memory of putting him back into his bed). We have only had two days in the past six weeks where he only had one bottle, the rest breast.

He has always been a very angry feeder - he will fight, pinch, grab my nipples etc, and usually cries too. The past few days he has got extra angry. He now cries before I have even tried to latch him on, sometimes just when I get him into the BF position.

I have tried different positions (lying down, football hold etc). I have tried sedating him with a dummy first, or giving him a little bit from a bottle just to calm him. I have tried dream-feeding him, and feeding him when he's wide awake and calm. My mum (7 of her own children, and a family support officer, she is well versed in babies!) says that she has never seen such an angry baby.
Sometimes he will latch on fine, eat for about 10 minutes, bob off the boob, and when I try to put him back on (when he is making rooting signals) the anger begins again.

I am really considering going FF full time, unless anyone has any tips or tricks that I haven't already tried??

What are his weight gain and nappies like? How many feeds is he having during the day/in 24 hours and how often?

What difference do the things you have tried make? do any make a difference?

He was 7lb 13oz at birth, and weighed 9lb 11oz at his appointment last Tuesday - he's put on 8oz in a week, so his weight gain isn't a problem.

He feeds about 7/8 times in 24 hours, varies from about 2 hours to 4 hours in between feeds.

Nothing seems to make a difference, he can be so angry about feeding for days, and then suddenly change (like at 3am this morning) and feed with no problem at all. That's very rare though!

My DS was a bit of an 'angry feeder', he would shake his head about, cry loudly etc until he latched. This more often than not would make it take longer to latch. By 8/9 weeks it just wore off and now he's completely calm all the time, in fact if he's crying and I start getting him bf position, undo top etc he actually calms down in anticipation of the feed.

The anger is hugely frustrating, especially when you know they're delaying the thing they want the most but I'd give it a few more weeks and see if it improves :)

That's reassuring Mrs Cog - my LO can sometimes take up to 20 minutes to latch.

It generally goes like this...
LO starts 'rooting' - I pick him up, hold him in the cross cradle hold, and put him to my breast. He will begin to cry, shaking his head madly, with his face going really red. If he does manage to chill out and latch, he'll bob of after 30 seconds. Rinse an repeat for about 20 minutes. Then he'll either stay on for a good long feed, or I give up and offer him a bottle.

When he comes off the nipple is the milk spraying out? If you have fast let down it might be surprising him a bit, hence he comes off. I spray like crazy from my right side and my normally calm DS2 can get a bit annoyed about it. He's only 4 1/2 weeks so I'm hoping it'll calm down or he'll learn to cope with it.

If it is an overactive let down there's a lot of info on kellymom.

Nope - my milk never sprays out. I know that I have a slow let down, and so it helps to lean forward during feeding. I think he can get angry because it's slow.

im a student midwife and we are having lots of academic and practical work on breastfeeding, and we also have to pass a standard set down by UNICEF so heres a few tips that i have picked up...hope it can help in some way. ps i dont want to be a patronising twat...i had horrendous experience trying to BF my first 2 and only clicked with my third when i had lots of support. i wish i had understood about the mechanics of making milk and had bottlefed mine with breastmilk. For successful breastfeeding you MUST MUST have at least one breast milk feed during the night (BF/hand express/pump)....a hormone called prolactin is higher at night and when you feed more prolactin is produced at this time...the prolactin is sent to the breast in the blood stream and the receptors in the milk making cells (trying to keep it un technical) make the milk for your NEXT feed,(and every feed but more so at night) introducing any formula at anytime is going to reduce your supply. milk production is upped and maintained by lots of feeding. you also need to fully drain a breast of milk as there is a milk production feedback inhibitor in breastmilk...so if your breasts are full the signals are picked up to slow down milk production. we are encouraged to help mums with hand expression as its gentler and more effective at draining all lobes of the breast, and once the rhythm is in full swing its amazing how quick it is to drain the breast and then give baby the milk in a bottle if they are a fussy feeder. HTH, i wont be offended if theres any faces and there will be lots of advice for you on here...any breast feeding cafe/clinics near you?

Well, my first thought was that your milk supply may have been affected by the FF at night, as as has been said, feeding at night is important for milk supply/production overall and it wouldn't be unusual for supply to be affected by not feeding at night. Obviously your son's weight gain is good, but that could also be because of the formula your son is getting, so I would say it's possible your supply may have been affected. Certainly grabbing/punching/pinching at the breast is one way of babies stimulating your supply. It's not that uncommon for babies to feed better at night either, usually they are more relaxed.

There's also the possibility that as your baby has had bottles from a very young age that he has got used to/prefers the faster flow of the bottle and so is getting frustrated at the breast because of that.

From reading your replies on the other thread and combining with the information on this thread, it's pretty obvious your care has been poor. Things like midwives telling you that your baby doesn't need to feed at all for 48 hours post birth and then after seeing weight loss on day 3 (completely normal and certainly to be expected if your baby hasn't fed much at all in the first 48 hrs) saying you needed formula top ups. I also wonder how big those top ups were? 40mls, for example, is a huge amount for a newborn baby and more than a full feed really and that would really undermine your choice to BF and your supply.

If you want to switch to FF, then of course, that is fine, but it might help to get some proper advice about BF from somewhere such as the La Leche league, NCT or Breastfeeding Network first. I say this as someone who stopped BF my first three DC quite early and have felt absolutely no guilt at all about it, but I do now know I got the wrong advice from health professionals at the time and took that as gospel and now I am still BF my DD at 11 months I do feel a bit of sadness/regret that I didn't get more help at the time. You can try ringing one of the helplines to discuss at first if you like and you may be able to arrange a home visit or to go to a meeting or group and get some RL help. BF counsellors can also help with the decision to switch to FF, so even if that's what you ultimately want to do it might still be helpful and they certainly won't pressure you into BF at any cost or if that's not what you want.

I had similar problems and expressed. Never got a real latch. 2 problems I would try to rule out are Tongue tie and flat/inverted nipples. I'm not an expert and didn't solve my problems BF, but in hindsight I think my probs were one of those. You will need a BF counsellor or such to rule them out. Good luck!

Gosh, what a difficult 6 weeks : (

Nothing to add here to the info you have got already.....it is not normal to be so angry, and babies are not like this for no reason. It is virtually impossible to bf an angry, fighty baby :(

My money's on the early formula, and the lack of night bf, too, leading to a compromised supply from the start.

It's not too late - the bf helplines will listen, and support you whatever your decision and help you talk through your options.

Well, I don't think he has tongue tie - when he does latch, which he can do very easily at times, and when he's calm he can actually feed for 20 minutes with no bother. My right nipple is definitely flatter than my left, but (when he's in a rare good mood) he doesn't have any problem latching onto that side.

I was told to give him 50ml of top up, after feeding every three hours. (I used both formula and expressed for these initial top ups, and continued like this for about a week).

I live way out in the sticks, an hour and a half walk from the nearest shop! So there's not very much chance of me getting to a BF class etc. I might ring the helplines though.

It is just very frustrating, as I know I have my positioning right, I know his latch when he is calm is great, I know I am making enough milk. I don't want to give up when I know it's so good for him. I just wish he wasn't so angry!

One midwife did suggest during the first week that if he wasn't feeding well by day 10, I should offer him nothing but the breast. Does that sound like a good idea? Essentially making him so hungry that he has no choice but to BF?

I think if you were giving 50ml 'top ups' early on it's very likely your supply has been affected. 50ml is a huge amount for a BF baby. Three hourly feeds are the minimum, but offering feeds more often would have been better, but obviously you can only go with the information you have at the time.

I don't know how much formula he is having now, as you haven't given any amounts, but it's probably not a good idea to just suddenly cut it out. If you speak to one of the helplines then they can advise you on a plan to cut the formula out, based on how much formula your son is actually having, but you may also need to do this in conjunction with a health professional, preferably one who knows about BF.

Letting him get very hungry so he has 'no choice' is likely to hinder BF rather than help it, so again, that was poor advice sadly. What can help is having lots of skin to skin, carrying your baby skin to skin in a wrap sling, such as a Moby can be useful and it also means you can get things done. Going back to bed for as long as you fancy with your baby and having skin to skin can help too, as the closer your baby is to you and the more contact you have, the more likely they are to feed and you will find it easier to recognise early feeding cues.

If you google biological nurturing, that might be something you find helpful.

Yep - a 50 ml top up is h.....u....g....e for a new baby. It would be hard to produce 50 mls x 3 hrs by expressing in these early days, so it's likely this was mostly formula - breastfeeding is gonna really struggle, and the fact you are still producing anything, and sometimes you do feel he is feeding well, signals to me you are probably a generous producer with a robust supply, given a chance. So yes, you could turn things round.

Hope things work out, and that you find some good support and info on the helplines, sarry.

I never had any trouble expressing a lot in the first 3 weeks - I was expressing 3oz from each side in just 20 minutes at one point.

We do a lot of skin to skin, I normally have a bath with him in the evenings too. I even tried not using any creams etc for a few days to see if he didn't like them on my skin. Didn't make a difference.

You are all very lovely :)

My DD1 was angry like this. At 6w she was diagnosed with silent reflux (the puking started at 8w). Looking back it must have hurt so much to drink, no wonder she was cross! Cranial oestopathy (sp?!) really helped chill her out. She was born under traumatic circumstances (2 failed ventouse and then foreceps and had had a scalp monitor for hours) so it made sense her head was v sore.

Just something to bear in mind. Hope it gets better for you.

What I meant was few women can start expressing 50 ml x 8 times a day from day 3, though, Sarry....not sure if that's what was being asked of you.

Sorry...I would attempt to feed him. Regardless of whether or not he took it, I would also offer him an extra 50ml of EBM/formula or a mix of both.

I really did have a lot of milk the first couple of weeks. In fact, I also expressed a LOT of colostrum too - I think I hand expressed about 25ml on day one.

To begin with, the top-ups were just formula (up to day 5), until I'd built a stash of EBM. After that they were generally just EBM or a mix, very rarely only formula. My OH would feed him the top-up while I expressed more milk.

Certainly sounds you had a lot of milk, Sarry - in that case the best way to help you would have been to ensure your baby got it direct and that the issues you had were only at the 'baby end' of things.....honestly, it does not sound like you needed to be supplementing at 3 days old :( Helping your baby have a 'direct' bf would have been the better solution. Instead, the problem-solving you did have has led to weeks and weeks of distress :(