Hi everyone
So I had an emergency c section almost 3 weeks ago and had always planned to breastfeed. He breastfed brilliantly at the hospital, and for the first day after. After that, he screamed and screamed and I struggled to feed him/not sure I had enough milk for him - I haemorrhaged and lost a lot of blood and was discharged 10 hours after the op without any medication, GP had to prescribe me blood thinning injections, iron tablets among many other things the next day.
My wound also split in the days after and I got an infection and was put on a course of antibiotics.
So as he was screaming so much and my DP and I were losing our minds with exhaustion, shock and sleep deprivation, my DP gave him some formula in the middle of the night one night against my wishes (that’s another story!) and also a dummy to soothe him, and after that he would never latch to the nipple again.
In fairness to my DP, he was like a different baby after we began giving him small amounts of formula and put on weight, became calm and happy and was still very alert etc so I reluctantly accepted this as the way forward.
A few days later when I was feeling a bit more alive, after many more attempts at getting him to latch with no success, I decided I was going to Express so started doing this every day with varying levels of success... I wasn’t getting much milk so he was still mostly formula fed.
After lots more research online I decided to try with some nipple shields, essentially to try and trick the baby into thinking it was a bottle teat... this was 3 days ago, and it worked! I get plenty more milk now he is feeding through the shields (when he is on one side, the other is leaking heavily) but he’s also being topped up with formula, now we’re about 60/40 breast to formula and I’m fine with this.
The formula is HiPP Organic if that’s relevant.
In the last couple of days, DS has seemed to really struggle to poo. He cries a lot, goes pink and seems to be straining quite often and is generally irritable. It took him most of the day to poo today, and when he did it exploded and went everywhere (he was naked on the changing mat on the floor as he has a bit of a nappy rash) and went on for a good few minutes... so he seems to be struggling and I’m wondering if the reintroduction or breast milk could be upsetting his tummy?
He was fine and quite settled with the odd windy day when he was mainly on formula.
Now I don’t know whether I’m doing the right thing by reintroducing the breast as he seems so uncomfortable?! Has anyone else experienced anything like this or know anything about it? Will it settle down? Should I stop and put him back on formula only?