FF nightmare - any experience on going back to BF?

[gillhowe]

So I bf ds for 7 months then progressively moved over to ff. He's 8m now and has maybe one bf a day (well more often in the middle of the night) and the rest formula.

We started on aptimil but as soon as he drank any volume it made him sick. He's now on SMA and he's really really constipated (he was a bit on the aptimil as well but its worse on sma). He's really suffering and I've had enough.

Has anyone successfully moved back to BF? It never went that smoothly for us (he has reflux and hated feeding) but this is just horrible.

Sorry for the long post!

I think that as you've not given up bf-ing completely you would be able to slowly increase your supply in order to drop the formula feeds.

Agree with Soupy. BTW - SMA is known for its propensity to cause constipation in some babies. My DD was terrible on it.

I guess the problem will be whether he will feed from you rather than a bottle.

DS1 used to throw up immediately after one of the Cow and Gate milks (but not the other versions!) so if you can't (or don't want to) go back to bf-ing I guess it's worth trying all milk options.

Thanks! I might give cow and gate a try while I try to boost my supply.

He'll only feed from me if he's sleepy, might try to solve that problem once I've got the milk back....

I spent ages trying to get him to BF as well!

Drink lots of fluids, rest and try and increase one feed a day bf and drop one bottle. Watch his weight gain and honestly I think it will be fine. When are you going to wean onto solids?

If it doesn't work try another brand of formula or give a bit of water inbetween feeds to help and sometimes tummy massages help consitpation.

Have you tried expressing your breast milk?
I did this when I wanted to increase my milk, you'll only get a little bit out at first but then it will increase.

I don't have any experience of this but a couple of years ago Stafford NCT carried a story in their newsletter about a woman who had successfully managed to do it with the help of their bf counsellor.

The details for Stafford NCT are:

www.nct.org.uk/branches/stafford/

Hope this helps

you need to try and get baby to suck at the breast as often as you possibly can, even if there's not much there. this will increase your supply. my best friend had a situation v.much like yours with her dd. took her about 2-3 weeks and she was back to fully breastfeeding. you just need to get them to suck, suck and suck some more, even when they're not hungry. that's the only way you'll get your milk production up