Should I give up?

[Jadefeather7]

I’ve been struggling with Bf since the beginning. Baby was born almost a month ago by c section. I lost around a litre of blood. Milk took about ten days to come and he lost a lot of weight so started topping up. Have been continuing to try to BF and then offer top ups. When I bf (usually takes an hour) he comes off crying and is still hungry so he guzzles the formula and then calms down. When I take him off to switch sides there’s never milk on his mouth or on my nipple. If I squeeze hard I can get a drop out. I’ve tried pumping after feeds and I only get 1ml from each breast. I’ve been taking fenugreek and taken domperidone for the last three days but no difference. Saw a bf counsellor. Latch and positioning are good. She didn’t really offer any advice other than frequent feeding followed by top ups which I have been doing. At my next appointment where I mentioned that nothing has changed I felt she was basically telling me to give up :(

Can you dedicate a day to staying in bed watching Netflix, eating nice food (including flapjacks as oats are good for milk supply, or look up lactation cookies!) and do nothing but eat and feed the baby? Spend all day in skin to skin and feed feed feed. Make sure you’re taking iron supplements if you’re anaemic (should have been checked before you were discharged home) and drinking tonnes of fluids.
Try to reduce the top ups, and maybe hand express after a feed whilst your partner gives the top up, to try and encourage an increase in supply. Some people never get much off the pump but the baby will always get more, also some people have more luck with hand expressing than a pump.

This sounds like me. C-section, blood loss, feeding was a disaster at first. Was the person you saw an ILLB lactation consultant? If not find one near you and see them, their advice is so much better than other councillors who may have limited training. They’ll check for tongue tie which may not be very obvious.

I was advised to pump/top after feeds/record every feed and by the time I’d done all these things I had no time to enjoy my baby. So I stopped pumping as the baby sucking should be better stimulation than a pump and I stopped recording every feed as that was extra stress. Like the above poster said cancel all plans and just feed for a few days as much as possible. I gradually cut down on the formula but it took till he was 3 months old to stop fully. He then fed till he was 1 1/2!

Also drink lots of water and eat well. Good luck!

Also there’s nothing wrong with combi feeding or changing fully to formula if that’s what you want to do. Don’t feel pressured into anything!

Thanks ladies.

I’m happy to combi feed long term and not expecting to be able to exclusively breastfeed although that would be amazing. At the moment it feels like my breastfeeding is useless because he seems to be totally unsatisfied with my milk and I cannot bear to let him go hungry so I have to give formula :(

The bf counsellor that I saw was IBLBC. I could try another one I guess but I wonder whether it’s just a hopeless case.

Should I really go beyond 1.5 hours a feed? I feel like if I do the nursing vacation he will feed for 10 hours straight and I’m not sure that’s good for my nipples which are already sore. The Bf counsellor said I shouldn’t have him on me for more than half an hour at a time as she didn’t think he was actively sucking after 10 mins. She thought a pump would offer more effective stimulation. The pump is just making me more depressed though because of how little I’m producing.