Slippery Slope?

[Romily]

My DS is four months old and BF has always been a real challenge. He was 5 weeks premature in intensive care and then SCBU before coming home EBF and healthy.

At 5 weeks he was still not gaining weight as we hoped and an evening top up bottle of formula was introduced. Since then I have had mastitis, thrush, endless pain and although he is gaining weight it is slowly. We have been to many, many professionals for advice on latch, positioning and he has no tongue or lip tie.

However he is hungry all the time and hardly ever seems satisfied after a BF. I feed on demand during the day/evening and he feeds until he comes off himself however within mins he is upset and demanding to be fed again and this goes on over and over again all day so I am hardly having any break. He also does not nap at all during the day even though he is given the chance. One of my nipples is now so sore that I am having to only feed from it once or twice a day. On the upside however he sleeps through the night.

Due to the demands I have added in other FFs to give me some time and to hopefully satisfy his hunger. Now what I want to know is should I be trying to get back to EBF by trying to increase my supply or should I accept that the combination feeding is the only way ahead? There is no way I can offer him the breast anymore than I do during the day and at night he is out for the count and won't wake for feeds or dream feed. I really want to BF longterm however ultimately I have to do what is best for him. What worries me is that I am on the slippery slope to stopping BF.

Noone but you can know what you "should" do!! If you want your baby to be ebf then I'd give LLL a call but if your DS has had quite a lot of f over many weeks I understand it can be very difficult to exclusively bf. I suppose you really need to decide what it means to you to ebf. My DS has been mix fed after topping him up due to weight problems (he's 16 weeks). I decided (after many many tears!) to make my peace with it but I have been quite diligent with feeding regularly so as not to stop altogether.

I was told that mix feeding is essentially pre-ff and that I would end up gradually increasing the ff and reducing bf. It's actually worked out the other way around and now DS is around 70%bf( I think).Mix feeding doesn't have to be the end of bf--but you might end up "supply obsessed" like me!!!!

Just as an aside- LOADS of the women I know with babies around 4 months are secretly(whisper it) introducing a bottle of formula a day and would still happily describe their babies as ebf!!