Anyone else out there who doesn't produce enough milk?

[babbler]

Hi I have a 4 month old son, and always planned to breast feed fully from the minute he was born.I was very fortunate he latched on properly from the start. However after 2 weeks of this the poor little mite had lost about 11oz of weight. The midwife then made me feel so inadequate as a mother by showing through expressing the milk i had that I was only producing a few mls. I was devistated, tried everything to produce more milk but couldn't. I had to give my baby formular, which he is stioll on and thriving on it, but still giving the breast at every feed, in the hope of giving him something good from me.Anyone else had the same experience, because i feel alone in this, and get upset when i see mums breast feeding fully when out.

babbler have you tried the NCT breastfeeding line 0870 444 8708, they will be able to offer you support and advice.
A friend of mine used a Supplemental Nursing System made by medela (www.medela.ch) with some sucess. Basically the baby latches on to your breast but you have a bottle containing formula / expressed milk round your neck with a fine tube from it running down to your nipple. Baby sucks the breast and stimulates your milk supply but at the same time is getting milk from the bottle. It's a LOT of faffing around with sterilising etc but if you're determined to bf it might be worth a go.
I had an awful experience with bfing my ds and although I'm going to try bfing my second baby (who's due today and so LATE!) I'm not going to beat myself up if it doesn't work. There are lots of ways to be a good mum and breastfeeding is just one of them. I'm sure you're a wonderful mother however your ds is fed!

Yup. This feels like a while ago now. I followed everything that i was told (basically bed bound for six weeks), and no one (midwives/HVs/NCT bf counsellor/HV bf group) could find any probs with latch. She fed for hours - towards the ends she wasn't sleeping more than 5 hours a day - but by 6 wks still below birth weight. 2nd centile weight vs. 75th centile height. Emaciated. Terrifies me to see those photos. Last few weeks she was very angry all the time - all but talking to me saying 'please mum, I'm hungry'.

Brought in formula at six weeks. Completely turned the corner - wegith shot up, satrted to sleep, I felt much better (under less pressure too). Had a lot of tut-tut from HVs/bf counsellors/gran, and predictions of milk drying up/all the other doom. Got very tired if hearing the 'supply and demand' chesnut. However, Dd 7.5 months now. We've finished bf - but literally two days ago (because she bit me and drew blood!). Dh reckons that formula saved my breast milk, because if Dd had spent any more time screaming at the breast in frustration, then she would have rejected me completely as soon as she could (and my exhaustion would have completely scuppered things). As it was, we spent a month with 4 oz formula a day, then built up slowly from there. I weaned her at 5 months, at which point we were 50:50 bf/formula. Worked hard at it in the meanwhile, but tried to be pragmatic about the formula. Used to talk about it for hours, had several initiatives to reestablish bf. Was v. v. embarssed at bringing out bottles - felt very inadequate. Got very frustrated at people's cynisism about there beimg any remote possibility of me really having a problem.