Have I messed up my milk supply?

[Asiama]

My baby is not putting on enough weight so I'm having to top up with 30ml formula after each feed. Today he wouldn't stop crying, wouldn't latch on and it just go so frustrating, I gave him 60ml formula instead of breastfeeding him. I just felt so helpless seeing how upset he was getting. Now I'm worrying myself that I've just further reduced my milk supply. Is there anything I can do to undo the damage? I really want to breastfeed but the formula top ups and pumping milk is hard.

Why do they say that he’s not getting enough milk if he’s producing lots of very wet nappies ?

And also why have you to only feed 8 times a day, that seems very infrequent for such a young baby?

Why are they asking to you limit the number of feeds when you want baby to gain weight ?

I’m sorry if these are stupid questions, I’m not an expert of any kind , just a mum who Bf for a long time. I’m pretty sure my babies BF more than 8 times a day when they were over 12 months old, let alone 12 weeks.

The most important thing is that your baby is fed and healthy and happy. It doesn't sound like that's the case if he is tetchy, not wanting to latch and underweight/losing weight. I was where you are at three months. We had been admitted to hospital due to weight loss by this point. No one would say to me though, "maybe it's time to stop struggling" and I wish they had.

So I'm going to say it to you: "maybe it's time to stop struggling". I stopped fighting with my son to get him to feed at about three months. I offered him the breast if he took it great, if not he got bottle straight away. Or once he came off the breast he got the bottle.

He was happier, I was happier and he gained weight. Best decision I ever made. That three months of struggling and fighting with him was horrific but I couldn't see the wood for the trees at the time; I felt like I was in a weird breastfeeding tunnel.

I was anaemic when he was born and I now know this affects milk supply. He also wasn't a very strong sucker. So upshot was that I wasn't able to feed him. Luckily we have formula so when this happens children can be fed and stay alive.

Just a quick update as we are currently away. The blood tests have shown something which may indicate why he's not gaining weight. They want to repeat the bloods in a week to see if there's a trend before they reach any conclusions. They also want to do an ultrasound.

I'm breastfeeding as much as he wants, for as long as he's actively sucking, then topping up with expressed milk and formula. He's been taking about 200-250ml per day, today he had 360ml.

At this stage the most important thing is that he's fed, whether formula or breast. Ideally I hope he will take more directly from me.

Glad you are getting some useful feedback from the medical tests and hopefully this is something that can be treated easily. It’s good to know that the doctors are on it.

Well done for persevering with the BF, it must be so stressful for you.

Hopefully you will get a little rest too while you are away.

That sounds really constructive. I hope you are having a relaxing trip away :)

Hello all, thank you again for all your advice and support.

My baby's bloods were repeated a few days ago and no issues were found this time. He was also weighed today and has put on 540g in 2 weeks! He's now slightly below the 0.4 percentile and if he carries on like this, he will be back on his growth curve of 9th percentile in 8 weeks. The paediatrician has advised that I feed him at least every 3 hours, then top up as much as he wants with formula and expressed milk. Over the past 2 weeks he's had on average 300ml top up per day.

That's brilliant :)

Feels like we are going 2 steps forward, 1 step back

We've had no weight gain since last week so we are going to top up with prescription formula instead of the standard supermarket formula. I'm really at a loss, it's so hard to get him to take the top up so they are telling me not to force him if he doesn't want it, but at the same time they are saying he needs to have more because of his weight issues.

He is such a happy smiley boy, I just wish his weight would go up.

I thought I'd update after all the great advice I have received here. Baby is doing well and is coming up soon to the 2nd percentile! He is supposed to be on the 9th given his birth weight so that's good progress. I am continuing to breastfeed and topping up with prescribed formula, around 300ml total a day. We will start weaning in a week, hopefully this won't negatively impact his weight gain.

Good to hear you are doing well. Bet you can't believe it's weaning time already! The amount of milk they take doesn't really gp down much initially and I found I had to massively lower my expectations about solid food intake at the start- it really is just tiny. Have fun with it!