Is this a good idea or my hormones ruling my head?

[Purplelooby]

DS is 7 weeks old and has been exclusively FF, by necessity, since 2 weeks old. Over the last few days, he seems to have re-developed boob-obsession and keeps shuffling down to my boobs and trying to eat them through my top. In addition, a few of my friends have had babies since DS was born and watching or hearing about them BFing makes me want to cry. I'm thinking of buying a lact-aid to feed DS formula through. Opinions wanted, but be gentle.

BACKGROUND (optional):
DS was hospitalised at 4 days old. This was caused by a) presenting premature b) my milk not coming in and c) him not latching. Those few days were living hell - DS would not wake up at all, even to feed and I had to express every 2 hours for 1/2 hour a time to make my milk come in. Anyway 1 week into his life we started again; DS would still not latch but I could get him feeding with an exaggerated latch. However, it would slip painfully after 1 or 2 mins and he'd fall asleep - this got worse each feed and became impossible. We discovered a lip and tongue ties but a referal has taken 10 weeks (!) and we used nipple shields/expressed in the meantime. Basically, my supply decreased quickly and in the end, I had to call it a day at the advice of 2 Drs. By then I had symptoms of PND and our bond was in tatters. He has been FF ever since and although our bond has improved, it still isn't close.

There is absolutely nothing to lose by doing it, so why not.
And while you wait for it to arrive, there would be no harm at all in letting him latch on and suckle if he wants to and is happy

I agree. Nothing to lose.

Reading between the lines it sounds like it is very important to you to have tried absolutely everything before deciding bf actually is impossible, so even if the LactAid doesn't work it will have been well worth it.

Please be kind to yourself though and set realistic targets. Even expressing any feeds is a significant achievement and you should be proud.

Has he had the tongue/lip revised?

The appointment is not for another month still. I had considered not attending because I didn't really see the point, but now I'm thinking about re-establishing. I'm not convinced I'll get any milk though - it disappeared in a matter of days because it was already so low after the nipple shields. In fact, even if I can't re-establish any milk at all, I still would like to use the lact-aid.

Has anyone got any experience of re-establishing?

Please don't ignore the tongue tie. DS1 went undiagnosed until he was 6yo. He has/had multiple problems including reflux, sleep apnoea, allergies/intolerance all related to his tongue tie. Now he is about to get braces to expand his high palate (caused by the tongue tie) and even out the differences in his jaw sizes (caused by the tongue tie).

If I'd known he was tied as a baby, I would have had it done straight away. There is so much more to it than just breastfeeding.

There is a really good tongue tie support group on Facebook which includes really experienced lactation consultants. You may find somebody on there who has experienced tongue tie and relactation.

mawbroon that's wierd - I didn't know any of that! I have a tongue-tie and suffered from severe reflux as a baby (DS has reflux too, as it happens) and I also had issues with my palate and had to have orthodontic treatment to sort it out. No one suggested a link to the TT (and neither did they when my mother couldn't BF me). OK you've persuaded me!

I'm going to look for the Facebook group now.

It's a closed group, but ask to join and they usually approve you quite quickly.

Tongue tie babies support group