I think EBF is making me miserable.

[PearlGrey]

I type in tears as I feel so guilty but I feel totally trapped. Dd 2 is 10 weeks and all I seem to do is feed her. Bf this time around has come easy. Good supply, no pain, good latch etc. but I feel miserable and exhausted. We live abroad so I have no family to give me a break. DH answer is to get a nanny. I just want to run away from it all. I don't know how to continue with this level of responsibility. At least if she was ff I could hand her over. I'm co sleeping too. I'm not even the attachment parent type.
Has anyone felt so totally overwhelmed by bfing even if the actual physicality of it is easy?

I think it depends on the mum to a degree but once I introduce other milk my supply dwindles and with it my confidence that my baby is full. I like it to gush but again my own insecurity
Four hourly gives me the knowledge that baby is full and in the next 3-4 hours - if he cries it's something else
It's a great method and I thanked my HV who retired this Christmas on behalf of my breastfed babies

iclaudius in mothers with older babies who have a robust, well established milk supply then feeding no more often than four hourly does not have to mean anything too serious.

In other cases it means the end of breastfeeding.

Feeding responsively to the baby's needs is for most women the best way to keep their baby happy and themes elves comfortable and their milk supply sufficient.

Read up on hindmilk and fore milk so you become better aware of the facts around this. As I said happy you found this regime worked for you. It's not a great idea to recommend it as a general thing though.

Tiktok your advice is well meaning but I would like to present to you my son wok is six months old ebf never touched snything else and fed four hourly from day three

And he is not my first baby to have done this

I'm sure you have read a lot but I can only say that over the past 21 years I KNOW this advice works

Reading is something I've done an awful lot of tiktok having had d mer and still wanted to breastfeed

I've succeeded - this is my eighth breastfed baby and this method works

I have been asked by HVs to advise new mums and people frequently jest I should write a book

I only failed to bf when told to feed as often as possible. That baby ended up on formula

You often cross me on these boards but as someone who struggled A LOT with breastfeeding and does not love it - I offer my advice where I can to help others

Feeding four hourly works. I have 8 red books to prove it

Feeding 4 hourly works for you. 8 red books doesn't prove anything other than your babies were ok on it.

It does prove they gained weight

Which meant the babies were content and thriving whilst also allowing me to have time without feeling guilt about a hungry discontent baby

8 babies isn't much of a sample size. It might have worked for you but won't for most.

iclaudius you are overstating your case now sorry. Your red books prove nothing that can be generalised out to anyone else let alone a wider population. For some women a four hourly routine from birth suits them and their babies are just fine. However we have excellent theoretical and 'in vivo' evidence that a policy of four hourly feeding is inimical to breastfeeding effectiveness and infant well-being so giving this advice as something women should follow in general (rather than 'this works ok for some individuals in some circumstances and I did it happily' ) is not a good idea.

Reacting to a mild challenge by saying you have done plenty of reading and therefore (by implication) there is nothing you don't know is not a good idea either :)

I don't think you have understood foremilk/hindmilk fully despite all your reading so do check up some recent evidence about this.

No tiktok I fully understand the fore milk hind milk argument thank you

I have had such a huge real life experience with women who struggle with breastfeeding that - I'm just all too aware that your general advice of 'just feed more' sadly frequently leads to mixed feeding or throwing the towel in completely

iclaudius, have I ever said to anyone feeling trapped and unhappy 'just feed more'? I have absolutely not said it on this thread, and in fact saying that would be spectacularly inappropriate and unkind to the OP of this thread. In fact, I would just not say it to anyone in her situation or in any similar situation.

I resent very much your caricature of what I say/would say - unless, of course, you can back it up somehow and show I am indeed as simplistic and uninformed and unsympathetic as you accuse me of being.

And I urge you, again, to update your understanding of foremilk/hindmilk. If you understood how breastfeeding actually works in practice, you simply would not come out with a statement like 'to demand feed is counter productive and can [...] encourage the baby to snack not getting hind milk' .

What can I say? This is not how it works, really it isn't. If you want some links to help you with your understanding, then just say :)

And I would add.....I almost certainly have had way more experience than you have of real life breastfeeding in the real world, with real women who have real struggles.

I know that your simple recipe of 'just feed four hourly' is not likely to help or support many of them.

In my humble opinion exclusive breastfeeding is mental torture. I'm (right now, actually) bf my third now, and every single time mixed feeding and having the option to go out without the baby has made a huge difference.

I don't really recommend expressiby, it just puts more pressure on yourself. Mix up formula, get your dp to offer it to baby at the same time everyday. Go out, the baby is his to deal with for an hour, clear head, go home.

Once baby is used to that you can be more flexible and offer bottles as and when, baby will just feed more the next day. I went shopping on Sunday afternoon for 6 hours. It was lovely. DH had no issues with the baby.

If you want to introduce a bottle I'd do it soon though.

What Ragwort said. For various reasons dd had to have formula early on and maybe I could've got to 100% bf but my DH really wanted to feed her and I was totally freaked out that I was the only one who could feed her if ebf.

She's 5 months today and we're still doing both. I know it's not recommended but it has totally worked for us.

A x and some x

I hate the attitude that mixed feeding isalways the end of bf, if your baby bfs easily with no issues it's not very likely to prefer a plastic bottle to a nice squishy boob and a hug with mum.

My first was mixfed from 10 days to a year old. 2nd ebf because he was a bottle refuser, 3rd mixfed from about a month old.

Tewe you are right that formula does not have to mean the end of bf. You are also right that when bf is going well there is less chance of the baby rejecting the breast in favour of the bottle.

Too often though the situation is more complex than that. Breastfeeding may not be going well, for one thing. For another, the use of the bottle can mean the breasts are used less and this can have an impact on supply....and this can affect the baby's willingness to stay with the breast.

Your own situation with the three different outcomes shows just how difficult it is to have a one size fits all rule!

Tiktok. I would like some links about how foremilk and hind milk work please. Thanks.

TeWi, I know one person's experience does not equal data, but when I gave my dd a bottle at about 8 weeks she had massive nipple confusion and it was a total nightmare. I needed support to get latch back. It's not a question of plastic vs squishy. It's a different kind of latch and suck which is needed at getting milk from a bottle can be easier, so some babies prefer it. I have come across a few mix feed mums who have been unhappy with the way the bottle takes over.

Parents needs to be aware and look out for the problems, so even if you didn't have any problems it's worth mentioning what they are.

thefunnyshapedwoman.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/foremilk-and-hindmilk-in-quest-of.html

kellymom.com/bf/got-milk/basics/foremilk-hindmilk/

thetruthaboutbreastfeeding.com/category/research/forehind-milk/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16510619

www.nancymohrbacher.com/blog/2010/6/27/worries-about-foremilk-and-hindmilk.html

www.parentingscience.com/infant-feeding-schedule.html

Leafmold, the above links should give you the picture :)

Basically, the fat content of human milk varies with the degree of fullness of the breast.

Full breasts = proportionately less fat in the milk; emptier breasts = proportionately more fat in the milk.

As the breast empties, the milk gets fattier. This does not mean that babies always have to feed a long/longer time to get the fattier milk, therefore they should be placed on a four-hourly schedule to make sure they feed for a really long time instead of 'snacking'. Frequent, 'cluster' feeds do get fat into the baby, because the breasts' degree of emptiness rises (and also, therefore, so does the fat content).

Babies on a four-hour schedule, with mothers who have a generous milk supply which survives this regimentation (and some mothers do have this) may well manage to get what they need because they will adjust their volume of intake to get the fat they need (as long as the mother isn't doing something crazy like taking them off after an arbitrary length of time).

But mothers without a generous milk supply who decide to feed four-hourly may find the reduction in volume produced with this sort of schedule is very damaging for breastfeeding ie they don't make enough milk and their babies fail to grow.

We know (from testing babies and testing milk and tracking babies' growth) that babies do adjust their fat intake, and when babies are fed responsively, they may feed at different intervals (ie individual babies feed individually), and their fat intake is more or less the same overall....so the mother's body and the baby's needs work together, pretty much.

It makes no sense at all to say the baby who feeds four-hourly gets 'more hindmilk' and that this is a better thing and therefore should be generally recommended.

Hope this explains things.

That is very interesting thank you tiktok, it can be my bedtime reading!

:)