Advice please. Messed up.

[indecisivemomma]

My new baby is a week old and it's been a really rough start. I began breastfeeding in hospital but latch wasn't correct and my boobs became very sore very quickly. When we got home baby was very unsettled and crying a lot so I assumed he wasn't getting enough and was hungry. This along with the pain, crushing tiredness and recovery from birth made me decide to switch to formula and he is now on regular feeds and sleeping much better even after just a week.

However I feel bad about giving up on breastfeeding so quickly. Ideally I would still like to offer at least some breast milk. I have been hand expressing and pumping small amounts and giving him these alongside formula but was reluctant to put him back on the boob because of the pain.

Now my supply is coming in again and I don't know what to do. On one hand he is very settled on formula and we have developed a good routine already. Could I give both? Maybe just breastfeed at night? It's just that my breast milk is in much smaller supply. Any advice much appreciated.

You can certainly try!!

The best approach would be to spend as much time skin to skin feeding as much as possible for as long as possible.

The tricky part is that it's baby's sucking that 'puts an order in' for more milk so there's this bit where it's possible baby will be hungry whilst your supply catches up so don't switch back to formula too quickly each feed - really give it all you've got on the breast before 'topping up'

The night feeds are the most important for supply so it's a killer but don't be tempted to replace those with formula.

I bet the Kelly mom website has loads of advice on restarting breast feeding.

Make sure you are well fed and drink loads of water too.

Good luck!

Contact La Leche League to seek advice on positioning and expressing. It is possible to combine or even establish bf again.

My local breastfeeding consultant says that pumping may help to re establish my supply but I know that if I want to EBF I need to have baby on the boob a lot more and frankly I don't see that happening now. He is much happier and so am i. I always knew the first few days would be hard but I didn't anticipate quite how hard.

In an ideal world I would tailor my supply to being able to do a couple of breast feeds a day. Consultant said this is possible. So for now do I just keep pumping and giving baby the small amounts in addition to formula? I feel so out of it depth and really indecisive about how to move forward :(

Totally fine to feed your baby any way OP, I suspect that doing combi feeding so soon you will quickly prefer formula as it seems easier at the beginning; your baby seems more full etc.

combo fed mine but a little later down the line- it’s very hard to do without establishing supply, and that is almost exclusively breastfeeding at the beginning and going through cluster feeding.
eating porridge helped my supply with my second.

It does not sound like a supply issue. Can you try to latch when your baby is not frantically hungry, maybe expressing a little before hand if you are full. Different positions like rugby hold, with cushions to support your baby, may be more effective. Does the mw or bf consultant do visits?

It's my understanding that your boobs regulate the amount they produce to the demand of your baby. If you know roughly when you want to breastfeed, that is when you should be pumping/feeding regularly so that your body becomes accustomed to producing milk at that time. For every feed you give formula, your body doesn't know that milk is required and therefore won't produce as much. So if you want to breastfeed exclusively eventually, you should be pumping roughly when your little one is having a formula feed to let your body know that milk is still in demand then (like putting an order in essentially).

Sorry if that makes little sense.

@Smileatthesmallthings that makes perfect sense and is similar to what my breastfeeding consultant said. I can't lie, formula feeding is so much easier. But I think I will look back and be cross with myself for not trying harder with breastfeeding in a few months time. So I'm trying to at least provide some breast milk although I think it will almost certainly be on a combi-fed basis now.

@indecisivemomma Absolutely no issue with wanting to combi feed. It worked really well for some of my friends and they were allowed much more 'freedom' as it were; hairdressers, early night, lunch out etc. My boy wouldn't take a bottle AT ALL after about 3weeks (we had to do top-up feeds). Remember that your expressed milk can be frozen and given in a bottle too so any efforts you go to now re expressing will not be wasted. Try not to worry about beating yourself up in the future, or what others may think, you just enjoy your little one xx