I'm losing hope - should I continue to BF?

[RedPandaFluff]

I have an almost 4-week old baby girl and I've breastfed since she was born by emergency section (pre-eclampsia). She lost 10.5% of her birth weight by day 5 and it's been a huge struggle to get her to gain weight - we only just got her past her birth weight a week ago, and did this by offering a bottle of expressed milk after every feed. So, that worked, but slowly.

I'm at the end of my rope, though. The days are an endless cycle of breastfeeding, bottle-feeding when she isn't satisfied, sterilising, expressing etc. I've had a lactation consultant visit twice - there's nothing wrong with her latch, she doesn't have tongue-tie, I'm doing hand compressions and switch feeding and following all the advice the consultant gave me and yet now that I've started to try to rely more on breast milk and less on bottles (with the ultimate goal being to exclusively breastfeed) I'm finding that she's dissatisfied and I'm convinced she'll have lost weight (or plateaued) when I weigh her tomorrow.
I'm also still finding breastfeeding painful, which I thought would have eased by now.

I strongly feel that breastfeeding just isn't working for us, in spite of all my efforts and how much I want it to. I don't think I'm getting enough milk out of my breast into her when she's feeding, in spite of doing compressions and checking she's swallowing etc. I also have concerns about my supply - I can just about express enough per day to satisfy her, even though I'm using a hospital grade pump and timing expressing carefully. I followed all the advice available on how to increase supply and it hasn't made much difference over the past couple of weeks.

Do I just need to accept that it's not working and move to formula? Life would be so much easier and I'd know for sure my daughter is getting the nourishment she needs . . . but I'll be so disappointed in myself.

I'd really appreciate any advice - I feel so sad at the moment, it's just such a grind and it doesn't seem worth it anymore

Oh BRILLIANT, @elvis4nuts . . . ! Saying that seems odd because your poor wee DD will need to have it snipped more than likely, but it's such a relief when there's an issue with an easy fix!

It’s all done!

Baby girl went straight on the boob after with the biggest open mouth I’ve ever seen her do and actually coughed and choked on the amount of milk she got out!!! 💦 💦
😭 So amazing

I now need to take a leap of faith and feed on demand (no more alarms every 3 hours!!!!! 🤪) & cut out all bottle top ups 😬

What am I going to do with all the extra time?! 😂

I’m really proud of myself for not giving up x

@elvis4nuts I'm SO happy for you both! That's brilliant!

I'm a bit envious of your milk fountains though - I'm struggling with supply, but that's another issue . . .

I hope this is the start of successful, happy breastfeeding for you

@RedPandaFluff
How are you getting on?
X

Hi @elvis4nuts - nice to hear from you again

DD is steadily gaining weight - I think she's still a little small for her age (38th centile according to the WHO growth calculator) but from I've been reading, the important thing is that she continues to gain slowly and steadily, which she is (we bought electronic baby scales so we can weigh her every other day). Feeding can still be a little painful sometimes but nowhere near as bad as it used to be. My main issue now is that I have a lazy one - she's prone to falling asleep, so I have to prod her to keep feeding, and adjust her latch quite often. So, it's still hard work, but doable!

How about you? Did you give up the bottle supplements?

Stick with it girl! Sounds like you are through the worst part and, honestly, life is soooooo much easier than faffing about with bottles for the next year.

Oats and gallons of water helped my supply and just feed feed feed. Constant suckling is not necessarily a sign of dissatisfaction - it could be seen as 'putting in an order' for the next week

Ahhh thanks @FusionChefGeoff - yes, I'm trying to see this as an investment; hard work now but it will pay off later!

(Hopefully . . . )

I remember that feeling well of 'no one told me this was hard!!! I thought I'd just plonk DC in front of a boob and they'd get on with it.

We really really struggled for weeks but it was totally worth it by about 3 months. Just need a change of clothes and some nappies and off you go.

OP so very inspiring how you persevered with a tongue tied dd for so long. So happy it’s been snipped. You can cut back the pumping and bottle feeding and do more and more breast feeding- whichever is better for you. Expressing means Dad can feed the baby some nights or if you go out too! So you’ve already got a smart baby not at alll plagued by nipple confusion.

Do not worry about the growth charts and percentiles. You are correct that she just needs to be growing steadily. The charts are based on western babies who are over 75% formula fed and formula fed babies get heavier faster than breast fed babies. In addition, birth weight is mostly determined by good uterine environment.

In future, she will have growth spurts and you will worry about supply each time. Just know that letting the baby suckle on the breast. Say for comfort or fall asleep but not actually eating does also stimulate supply. I used to think if it as them putting in an order for how much milk they’d need tomorrow. I’d combine this with relaxing activity watching a movie, reading a book, looking through things on my pad.

Thank you for your supportive post, @PlanDeRaccordement - I've definitely come a long way emotionally/mentally too, I'm starting to trust my body more.

I would like her to actively feed for longer though, just so there's a bigger gap between feeds. I'm doing switch feeding, promoting her to keep sucking etc. but it's not always effective. She's definitely a grazer!

Also she has started to get a wee bit sicky - need to keep her upright for a good fifteen minutes after a feed, so that's narrowing the gap between feeds as well

BUT - we're over the worst of it!