Desperate - newborn, bleeding nipples, switch to expressing / formula?

[cheapredwine]

Please, can anyone help. 4 day old newborn, first timer and anxious as fuck. He's keen to feed, rooting, lip-smacking etc but my nipples just can't take it. Both are cracked and bleeding. Lots of midwives on ward checked latch and they think it's ok. Not getting huge amount of advice from community midwife now we are home. He wants to feed a lot, especially overnight, and I just can't see how we can carry on. I am spending a lot of time in tears, it's absolutely awful. It was a traumatic delivery and he also has jaundice (blood levels were checked yesterday though) but was 7lb 12 at birth. I've had about 5 hours sleep since Saturday morning which of course isn't helping. Feeling utterly overwhelmed.

We in arse end of nowhere so struggled to find nipple shields other than Boots own which are huge on me and he wasn't having any of it. He won't feed from the worse effected side now and it's agony trying so I haven't in the last 6 hours or so, he's been solely on the other side.

Husband has just been out and bought Avent manual pump in desperation. I hardly have the energy to look at the box let alone read instructions.

Seriously considering FF but don't know where to start.

Logically I know am being hormonal etc etc, that this is basically normal, but I just don't know what to do.

CheapRedWine so glad you made a decision. I ended up EP for a year as my dd had tongue tie and I felt enormous guilt. Please don't. If I could do it all again I would just switch to formula!!! That year was hellish!

Thank you all so much.

So...another update... We are 2 weeks into FF and there's no doubt, it was absolutely the right thing for us. Touch wood he's really taking off now and gained 4oz in 4 days last week to take us to a lofty 7lb 15 which is safely over his birth weight

To keep stress levels down we've been using the ready mixed Aptamil 200 ml bottles so far but he's on 100 ml at a time now (hungry boy!) and it's already getting expensive and conscious that we should look into using powder, at least during the day. Very nervous about it (visions of salmonella blah blah) but it can't be that hard right? Ooof. Been vaguely contemplating a prefect prep machine but don't want to rush into buying one, so I guess we'll just see how we get on...

Cheapred really pleased to hear that things have improved for you. We ff with aptamil powder and it's very straight forward. Say for a 6oz bottle we keep 4oz of cooled boiled water in the fridge, mix the powder to 2oz of just boiled (as the box now says about needing to sterilise the powder) then mix the fridge one to that. To be honest 7years ago ds survived the old recommended way of mixing powder to cooled boiled water but the guidelines have changed and made me paranoid.

Lots of people love their perfect preps but there are mixed reviews of these too so have a read. I just didn't want another thing cluttering up the kitchen.

I have a perfect prep machine and I love it, I got mine cheaply on Amazon.
I also sometimes put a large bottle of cooled boiled water in the fridge (Amazon again ! They sell 32oz water bottles ) then a flask with boiling water.
Like pp said two oz of boiling to mix in formula then top up with cold.

OP that ready made Aptamil stuff is amazing!! If I have another child I will buy those bottles by the hundreds I swear, the little ones that come with the teats are amazing, no sterilising just boom ready to go, give to mum/dad/nan/sister/friend and you get to have a wee/shower/nap amazing!! Expensive but life is so much easier. Even the big ones that go in the fridge that last 2 days (I think?) are really cool.

When your tiredness gets better (after a couple of months) and you start getting a good nights sleep, making up formula from powder is more doable. But I think the newborn phase is all about doing whatever is EASIER.

Hope your nipples are all healed now

Or as whosthemummy says above those prep machines are awesome too, they weren't around when I had DS I don't think, but I would get one of those if I did it again too.

I only managed to breastfeed for a few days - but I would definitely invest in the perfect prep machine - look online for the best price then most of the big stores will match it (we got it for £55 from toys'r'us by doing this). Figured we'll use it for a year and then hopefully pass it on. We keep it upstairs so nighttime feeds are easier - popping upstairs in the day seems much easier than downstairs in the middle of the night. We got a few extra white tops for shaking as I wanted to sterilise between feeds and you only get 1 in the box. We only use ready made as an emergency in the change bag (just leave it and a sterilised bottle all the time).