Everyone's topping up

[naturelover]

In my NCT group all but two of us are topping up with formula, mostly on the advice of HVs because of slow weight gain, but I know two of them have convinced themselves their babies are going hungry and they aren't producing enough breast milk to satisfy them. It seems obvious to me that their milk supply will actually drop now that they've introduced a bottle or two a day.

Our babies are +/- 4 months and we are all doing some breastfeeding. I just think it's a shame so many of them lack the confidence to continue exclusively breastfeeding till weaning. None of the babies have serious health problems or seriously low weight, either.

Seems sad that topping up is pushed by some HVs when I suspect most bf counsellors would not recommend it.

perhaps you could invite a nct counsellor to your next meeting? and to discuss starting solids at 6m because twerp hvs will have them all on baby rice next week if not.

local NCT branches should have a breastfeeding counsellor who they can talk to.. and should talk to.

Fishie the ironic thing is that we had a session on breastfeeding by an EXCELLENT bf counsellor while we were still pregnant, and some of us have consulted her since having our babies with one problem or another. But I'm the first to agree that hearing about breastfeeding while still pregnant is very abstract indeed, and I'd forgotten a lot by the time DD arrived.

In my friends NCT group, by 6 weeks all of them were giving one or more ff a day. By 6 months all but my friend had moved to ff all the time due to 'poor supply'. Only a couple waited till 6 months to introduce solids too.
I think that some advice books have a lot to answer for in pushing a bottle at bedtime to 'aid sleeping through' Also this weird concept that Dads can only bond through doing a feed.

I agree with you naturelover, but I believe it is a controversial issue. I firmly believe that the body can and will produce enough milk for your baby (with some rare medical exceptions). I think the problem is that nobody prepares new mums for quite how long babies spend feeding so when their baby wants more than 20 minutes every 3 hours they panic and think they have to top up. Not helped by the idea being reinforced by HVs.
Also, these days, a lot of mums are expected to just carry on with their lives. 8 days after I had my first baby I was alone in the house, everything "back to normal", DP back at work, family visits over, me wondering how to get to the supermarket as we had nothing for supper.

I didn't ever top up. I like the Sweetpea analogy - the more blooms you cut, the more grow to replace them. With milk, the more your baby drinks, the more you produce. I find the human body quite awesome in the way it knows how to look after you and your baby. It's breathtaking and exciting. It's sad that the culture these days is to have no trust in your own body.

I will finish by saying that now, to see my daughter and all her friends running around, you really can't tell who was breastfed, who was topped up, who was formula fed. It doesn't really matter what other people do, and people make the choices that are right for them.

I have heard so much about topping up recently, I just don't understand why the HV's are so convinced it's a) necessary and b) a good idea?

My son is almost 6 months and has established his own supply-and-demand system as have so many other babies. I just never thought about topping up. He's only started having any solids in the last week or so.

My mother suggested formula the other day as I was ill, but I was able to breastfeed with a bit of help holding him in between etc, and was a bit at her keenness to start him on stuff he doesn't need and muck up my supply, and his sucking. Perhaps this is harsh but she didn't feed me for more than a few days and is maybe a bit unaware of the whole method, I don't know.

She ended up feeding him half a jar of baby food quite fast, and he screamed for the next two days on and off - he never screams.

Oh dear. She tried to help but I've gone off on one here, sorry!

Good on you for not falling for the HV stuff

I gave up on my NCT group as they looked at me as a madwoman for never giving formula. Again all by 6 weeks were giving FF at night at least, nobody else made it to exclusive BF to 6 monhts. I'm still BFing my 13 month old she has never had a FF in her life. She was 91st percentile until she was 8 months old - I definitely had enough milk. The 3 hour/routine feeding leads to babies being hungry, you can only exclusively BF IMO by demand feeding. A few babies naturally space out their feeds in the early days others later, some never do. My DD didn't feed around every 3 hours until 6 months at the earliest..

My NCT group is exactly the same - I am the only one not topping up and two started baby rice at 16wks.
Mind you many of them seem unhealthily obsessed with weight gain, to the extent of dragging obviously healthy kids down to the clinic every single week - madness.

BroccoliSpears I agree, nothing prepared me for how time-consuming bf is. But I look upon it as an opportunity to sit down and (kind of) have a rest!

I agree it won't make a lot of difference in the long term how these babies are fed - as you say you can't tell by looking at someone! I was ff myself and was always a healthy child and now adult. What makes me sad about these women is the way their confidence is undermined by the HVs and various books.

MrsBadger I see lots of women doing that too - taking their thriving babies to be weighed very regularly. I haven't had DD weighed since she was 8 weeks old. She's bright and alert and healthy and fills lots of nappies, so until she ceases doing that, I feel no need to know how much she weighs to the ounce.

I top up. I have to. I really do have "poor supply".

During the first five days of my DD's life she lost 20% of her body weight as I was not producing enough milk: we had latching-on difficulties right from the start that were not picked up upon and my milk came and went, so to speak. I spent three weeks in tears because of what had happened. I expressed and expressed and expressed and eventually built up a supply of sorts but it will never, never be enough to exclusively breastfeed. This actually kills me, and it's taken me weeks and weeks to feel okay about giving her formula. I desparately wish things were different, but my DD became seriously ill because she hadn't, in effect, eaten for four days. We mixed feed now, I'm doing my best!

My only concern is that my DD is with us - my HV suggested she was gaining too much (she's 8.5 weeks) but turns out she's long, so the perfect weight.

So I'm afraid I've "fallen" for the advice of a number of health professionals, and now have a lovely, healthy DD, rather than the sick, grey one I had to watch them rehydrate via a drip at 5 days old. A breastfeeding midwife at the hospital made me feel terrible for giving her formula during this time, but had I not, it sickens me to think what might have happened. In the end, it was my community midwife, to continued to visit long after she had to, who convinced me that what I was doing was okay.

I don't mean to have a go at anyone, and I don't want to start a row, but sometimes topping up is the only answer. Believe me, I would give a limb to be able to breastfeed exclusively.

Sorry, bit of a rant there!