Apologies in advance: this is going to be looong...
My two month old baby son latched well straight after birth, and I always planned to exclusively breastfeed for a year if I could. Things seemed to be going well in the beginning -- milk came in on day three and my midwife observed him feeding a couple of times and said everything looked perfect (Ha! little did we know).
Anyway, at about 10 days old he had a major screaming episode -- 10 hours solid, trying to feed but too distressed. We called the out of hours GP who referred us to the local children's hospital to be on the safe side. They said medically he seemed fine (hydrated, alert etc), but was hungry and distressed. He was tube fed over night, and we were sent home the next day after a day of breastfeeding (they recorded the times he fed but never observed the feeds).
Anyway, having only lost 5% of his birthweight in the first five days, he stopped gaining consistently. He would gain a bit, lose a bit and repeat. The midwife became concerned, and on the advice of a paediatrician at the hospital we started him on 30ml top ups of EBM or formula (depending on what I had) every three hours. He gained a little.
I started researching myself, and became concerned that the problem was that he wasn't feeding effectively (he often fell asleep, I could rarely hear swallowing, and he seemed mostly to be just 'nibbling'). I contacted the infant feeding advisor at the hospital where he was born and she observed him feed and said he was basically transferring no milk at all! We went for another medical review and were referred to a pediatric consultant.I was also told only to put him to the breast briefly and give full feeds by bottle to get his weight up and monitor whether he could actually gain weight if taking in a reasonable amount of milk. Thus began my close relationship with the breast pump.
Fast forward five weeks and I feel like we are treading water... he is gaining weight and the consultant concluded that he was medically perfect, it was a problem with intake, but he has a strong suck, good latch and no tongue-tie -- there is no reason why he shouldn't breastfeed effectively, he just doesn't.
CUrrently I am only able to express four or five times a day (since my husband has gone back to work) so he gets about three bottles of EBM a day and four of formula. I try to put him to the breast before every daytime feed the only time we get anywhere is first thing in the morning when he appears to do some good sucking and swallowing, probably because my breasts are pretty full. I'm so frustrated and depressed the feeding advisor has no answers for us and we are basically on our own now. I've tried lots of skin to skin, going to bed with him for two days etc, but it doesn't seems to have worked. I want to give him as much breastmilk as possible, so am willing to carry on expressing if I have to but am worried my supply is dwindling and would much, much rather breastfeed directly.
Has anybody come across or dealt with a problem like this before? Any advice or just words of support? Is Is it possible to express 'part-time' and maintain some supply? I want to enjoy my baby but feel like I spend all day worrying about this and trying to fix it. Can't really leave the house for any period of time because of the expressing. I hate giving formula (nothing wrong with it, and no offence meant to mums who choose to formula feed, it's just not what I wanted to be doing) but I can't keep up with expressing to give EBM exclusively.
I should add that he loves going on the breast – no refusal! – and that sometimes it’s the only thing that soothes him.
Sorry for marathon post, and for any typos, he is crying so I am rushing this!