We are having a difficult time feeding DS1, who is now 11 days old, and I would value advice, and experiences from anyone else who's had a similar situation re: waiting a while during a period of poor weight gain before giving formula to a newborn.
He was born at 41.5 wks weighing 3.3kg, no meconium lost during the (home) birth, and he passed copious amounts in his first few days.
We thought everything was going well with feeding as he asked to feed often, and I thought latch on was good as had no pain (in fact latch pretty bad, poss partly due to tongue tie which we had removed at 6 days).
However he was down to 2.9kg on day 5 (12.1% loss) and at that point we realised he had not been getting much food at all. I had wondered on day 3 whether my milk had come in, as no sensation of this, and spoke to someone on the phone, but was reassured that it would. However when saw lactation consultant on day 6 she diagnosed breast hypoplasia, and thus it's quite likely I will never produce a full supply.
From day 6 we have therefore been doing 2 things intensively: 1) trying everything possible to increase my supply (cluster pumping with hospital grade pump in between all feeds, fenugreek and domperidone, trying to improve latch altho still not v good); 2) supplementing with milk donated by a relative.
Yesterday was my best pumping day, when I pumped >70ml. Key for me seems to be emptying very often, as my storage capacity is small. My supply is increasing but who knows what it will reach. We're supplementing with between 100-200ml donated milk a day.
Since day 7 DS1's weight has been static around 10% loss. He is being weighed next tomorrow morning and I think that is going to be the point at which we may decide to use formula. We are investigating getting more donor milk as that seems preferable, but of course who knows if we could arrange this in time. We had him checked by the GP yesterday who agreed he seems very well (good colour, tone, no heart problems etc).
He is doing 1 large mustardy poo a day and a few wet nappies. He is sleeping a lot, but also having at least two alert and awake periods each day. He's not getting very distressed at any point, although you can tell he is still hungry sometimes after breastfeeding from me (if he hasn't fallen asleep).
Am I too hung up about using formula? If baby is well how crucial is weight gain in the early days? Trying to balance the negative effects of formula on the gut vs the positive effects of calories on the baby seems a very difficult call.