Week old baby, breastfed, content but no dirty nappies

[Beamae]

I am breastfeeding my newborn, I feel quite successfully. We've been feeding on demand, seem to have cracked the latch now mostly, and she is feeding for anything from 10 minutes to maybe 25 minutes followed by a snooze and then often another 10ish minutes on the other side. I'm not timing her feeds at all so these are estimates. She seems really content.

Our only issue is that apart from her first two days, when we had six meconium nappies, we haven't had any further dirty nappies at all. I have been upping my fibre intake on the advice of the community midwife who has told us that if she doesn't poo today we have to do a formula top up to see if that works or be transmitted to hospital where we will be forced to put her in formula.

I'm obviously quite upset and worried now. I dint want to harm her but really don't want her to have formula this early. My twins previously were forced onto formula top ups and it was such a struggle keeping up the breastfeeding which limped along for just under six months before they finally refused the breast completely. I don't want to go down that same path again.

Has anyone else been in this situation? Is there anything I can do to avoid the formula?

We just saw a fantastic lactation specialist at Milton Keynes hospital. We did a little demo and straight off the bat she said she could see the problem. Posterior tongue tie which is quite obvious when you look. She showed us a biological nurturing position which will hopefully help the baby to get a better mouthful of breast and we are going to pump and supplement with breastmilk over the weekend. If this doesn't work she will get snipped next week.

Relieved not to have to do formula and very relieved that it wasn't a supply issue!

Also relieved that we went to Milton Keynes rather than Northampton where the baby was born, because they allegedly don't believe in tongue tie being a feeding issue. Our birth notes say quite clearly that she doesn't have one.

Also, she had put on a bit of weight so am less worried about her.

Thanks for all the replies and advice everyone.

Haven't read all the replies but my 13day old is the same - after the first 3/4 days of meconium, NOTHING. I called health visitors, midwifes, postnatal ward etc at 7 days and was told if she is having wet nappies etc she is probably fine. (weight gain fine). On monday the midwife asked me to take her to the GP if no change. Tuesday the GP assessed her and prescribed lactulose low dose. She did then poo!!! but apparently too soon for it to have been the lactulose. He has asked me to keep her on a v low dose for 2 weeks then bring her back; if she still has no discernable "pattern" they will assess her at hospital for a "ridge" in the bowel or something making it difficult for her to go.

Anyway not sure why I'm sharing other than to say, me too... It's confusing with conflicting advice. Our baby does have a TT but the health visitor says it's not a problem if she's gaining weight.

Hope yours is sorted soon!

I hate the way mws and hvs tout formula as the answer to everything!

You've had some great advice already so good luck.

Really pleased you've got some answers Beamae
It's sad that lots don't recognise tt as an issue, it can I believe affect speech later in life so it's not just a weight gain issue.

There is a tt Facebook page, mawbroon will be able to tell you more

So glad you have managed to find out the issue so quickly OP.

Just to say that posterior TT caused us all sorts of problems even though dd was gaining weight.

DD was very windy, slept terribly, clearly in discomfort from the wind a lot of the time, and whenever we hit a growth spurt my nipples got badly damaged from DD's "clamping" BFing technique which she'd developed to compensate for not being able to latch properly. She would also get exhausted and frustrated during feeds. Better positioning and latching did nothing to help really. But all resolved once the TT was snipped at 16 weeks.

personally I don't know of any down sides to getting a TT snipped, and there are plenty of downsides to not having it done, so now that you know one is there, I would be pushing for a referral to have it divided ASAP.

Sorry if I dished out crap advice - think I thought your baby was a bit older. I'm in France and the growth curve they use Is based on data for FF babies from the 1970's or at least that is what the mw told me :)

Main thing is your little one's problem has been diagnosed and you can get it fixed.

The eagle has landed! We have finally had a poop!

Phew! Thank goodness for that. 3 cheers for baby Beamae!

well done! was it a monster? glad you had such good advice!

The first one was big but the second one was the monster!