Hi everyone I'm just looking for some advice. It's a wee bit long but please read, I'm beside myself with worry.
My baby is six weeks old, and had a bit of a rocky start with a traumatic birth / emergency c-section followed by severe jaundice in the first 24h. She was too lethargic to feed and spent 48h under a phototherapy machine, and by day 5 had lost 13% body weight. The difficult start really messed with my ability to breastfeed as she was too sleepy to draw milk and I had to top up with formula to urgently get her weight back up.
Anyway this worked and she was back up to birth weight by 2 weeks and I continued mixed feeding. I have tried my best to get back to exclusive bf with expressing etc but to no avail 😢
Until yesterday I thought all was going well, she takes on average 1.5oz formula per feed after breastfeeding and I thought she was getting the rest of her milk from me. Yesterday was her six week check and she has dropped weight again from 50th to 25th centile. HV advised I skip a few BF sessions as baby might be using too much energy to BF then bottle feed and I might not be producing enough for her, so I did this. Turns out she's only taking 1.5oz from the bottle even without the breastfeeding (I haven't breastfed since seeing the HV yesterday).
There's no way she's getting enough if she's only taking 1.5oz per feed. I thought I was doing the right thing by breastfeeding her but once again trying to breastfeed has meant I'm depriving her of what she needs. I feel so selfish and like I've failed her again. I really wanted to breastfeed but I know I have to do what's best for my daughter.
But I can't get her to take any more milk after 1.5oz, her mouth clamps shut and she gets agitated if I try to get her to take more.
Does anyone have any advice on how to encourage her to take more from the bottle or to help her feed more? I just don't know what to do and I'm so worried 😢😢😢
Thank you