Four weeks old - feeling like I want to quit breastfeeding

[Springbaby2023]

I’m at my wits end with my four week old DS. Feeding has been going fairly well in that he’s gained a lot of weight and has been having lots of wet and dirty nappies (gone from 25th to 75th percentile!)

But the latch has been quite painful for me. It’s eased a lot now and I had more advice last week which has helped further. But it can still be quite painful for the first few seconds, especially when he is cluster feeding which seems to be all the time.

He cluster feeds from 6pm - 11pm. Then we might get a 2.5 hour stretch of sleep if lucky. After that he will go no more than two hours between feeds, so by the time he’s actually fed and been changed and winded he’s only actually asleep for an hour max before waking again.

Then he tends to cluster feed all morning.

This morning I am at my wits end, I physically don’t feel like I can feed him any more. But he won’t stop crying or settle unless I do. I’ve tried to give him a dummy to buy me a break.

I really want to go and buy some formula to see if that will help. He just seems like a really hungry baby and nothing I do is enough. I understand he’s just building my supply and it’s still early days etc but I just physically and mentally don’t feel like I have anything else left to give.

He’s also been looked at for possible reflux and CMPA as he makes the most awful noises at night, is constantly sick, stuffy nose etc. It might sound selfish but I really don’t want to give up dairy.

Would I be caving too early if I just completely switched to formula? Should I try and persevere in the hope it gets better? Or protect my mental health and stop now.

I EBF DS1 for a year and loved the ease of it but I just can’t see us getting to that point.

Oh and I know I should probably see a lactation consultant about the latch but I can’t really afford to. I am going to our local feeding group but not until next Friday, and I have a HV check next Tuesday but everyone keeps saying latch is fine. Someone suggested he might just have a powerful suck, as pain eases as soon as let down happens and he starts swallowing properly.

Do it! Many will be along to say no keep trying but you sound exhausted and formula is fantastic now days so your child will not miss out from being formula fed and your DC will benefit from having a mummy not at breaking point!

You are doing a great job it’s a tough gig and the third trimester is so hard as there is no benefit so just keep swimming mumma

Honestly I'd quit if I didn't want to do it. You've already done it once and it's different for you this time. It might start feeling better but it might not.

Poor you, OP. I was struggling and it turned out that my Borough had a breastfeeding support team who were able to ring me for a chat and then send a lovely consultant in to help us get the latch sorted. All totally free. Worth seeing if there is anything like this in your area? Wishing you luck with this. I’m really glad I stuck with breastfeeding but I did need a lot of help with issues very similar to those you describe. My baby had a tongue tie, which loosened up with exercises with an O-ball over time.

Seek BF support by all means but if you do give a bottle please don’t see it as giving up or failing.
Plenty of babies are FF and it’s fine

Do it, happy mum happy baby. It doesn't have to be all or nothing too, could do a bit of both if you wanted to - a bottle of formula before bed for example and gradually wean on to bottle for all feeds if that's what you wanted to do.

Just don't stop cold turkey as it causes a big hormone drop! Xx

My DS is 11 now but I remember weeks 3-6 well. It was brutal. He was my first. Was IVF and I was determined to do feeding "naturally" because of that (that an because of a history of BC in my family). Even with all of that as motivation and reason, I still wanted to quit. I get it.

However, because I'm the most stubborn person ever, I did stick it out and eventually saw the infant feeding specialist at 10 weeks. I'd had infections and thrush too. By which point it was much better. However, if you don't want to carry on, you really don't have to.

I ended up feeding DS til he was almost 3 in the end. But you do what's right for you and your baby.

You've done really well to get to this point! Totally up to you what you want to do. My borough also had a free baby feeding consultation service which I found super helpful. I thought it'd be useful because baby was fussing a lot during and after feeds, and quite colicky. I was exhausted. I was "hand held" until I felt confident to go it alone. We talked about latch and different baby feeding positions. I still haven't got a perfect latch but I'm fine with that. Baby is putting on weight and feeding very well. I'm not experiencing any pain. I hope you find a solution soon, whatever that may be.

I’m going to be the advocate for saying keep going, but it does sound like you need some help. When it settles down you will be so pleased at not having the faff and expense of bottle feeding. But I know that lack of sleep is absolutely brutal.

I would say, do you really need to change nappies every time you feed at night?

If you are doing some variation of co-sleeping then babies don’t really fully wake up when they feed as you can get to them before they are in the loud crying stage that babies in another room need to do to attract attention. As they are semi-sleeping then their digestive system doesn’t get going.

You could try mixed feeding. I wish I had and I think I could have gone on longer. DD wasn’t getting what she needed from me and fed and fed and fed. I literally never got a break to recover. I think just one bottle a day would have improved my other feeds.

Just quit. I did never looked back. Formula is fine. I have two healthy 20+ DCs fed on formula who have hardly ever been I'll in their lives - not even Covid.

Swap to bottles if you want to. Much easier. Don’t be bullied into continuing breast feeding if you’ve had enough.

Hang in there a bit longer, it gets better. Literally another two weeks and you'll be out the other side of it being so bad. Then you can still quit. Formula generally makes wind much worse.

Good advice but I would like to add that you can stop now too if you want to

Just to add in support of combination feeding. I also hated BFing and combo helped enormously. If some formula can help you do another couple of days, weeks or (god in heaven!) months then that's ultimately more boob going into baby, isn't it? You're doing great

Thanks everyone. I’m going to try and give him a bottle of formula today just to see how he takes it and give me a break.

I would like to push on until six weeks at least just because I feel like things got a lot easier at that point with my son. But the exhaustion is really getting to me now.

@MagpiePi he poops throughout the night and wees loads too so I do need to change him, his nappies are so full. It doesn’t seem to disturb him much though, if anything he’s not waking up enough at night as I can only get him to take one boob at each feed, I feel like if I could get him to take both then he’d maybe go for longer. I did co-sleep with him last night from 4am for the first time as I was desperate but not sure it helped either of us.

The other thing that was a game changer for us was buying nighties rather than babygrows for bed time. Much less easy to find in the shops but so much easier for changes - we could manage a change without waking our baby when we didn’t have to get legs out of fiddly suits.

OP best of luck! Feel free to pop an update on here whenever you like. I personally found side sleep feeding extremely useful, an effortless way for both of you to navigate the night time feeds. I find that baby feeds for longer via this method.

When I'm doing our bedtime routine (bathe then feed), LO loads up on milk from both boobs (side sleeping position) and then I pop baby in our co sleeping crib after a brief burping session. LO sleeps for a few hours (the other day it was 6.5 hours straight, for example) and then wakes up for a feed and nappy change - we continue this cycle until it's time to start our day in the morning. He's just turned 3 months.

I forgot to add that I hope you find whatever method works best for you :)

Good luck. Formula isn't poison many babies successfully mix feed. If you have a DP could they give a bottle of formula around 9pm, allowing you to get to bed early. That is what we did with DC2 and it worked really well for us. I introduced a second formula feed at 1pm at around 10 weeks as I had to return to work when she was just 5 months.

Ahh this is bringing back memories of the tiny windows of sleep being shrunk even further by having to change nappies at every feed and burp properly- but I think by about 8 weeks or so we could go much longer stretches without changing and he started burping on his own so that also makes things so much easier!

So update - last night he took 2.5oz of formula from a bottle alongside a full BF and slept from 9.30pm - 12.45am. The longest he’s slept in ages!

BF at 12.45, 2.15, and then 5.45am. So the best night we’ve had in a long time.

Also tried infacol before each feed, a late evening bath before bed, and moved his Moses basket from downstairs into the next to me. So could have been a variety of factors rather than just the small amount of formula, but going to try to persevere with a nightly bottle.

The faff of it did make me realise that I definitely want to continue with BF for now though. I think a bottle will just help take the pressure off. Even just having formula in the house has helped mentally as I know that if I get to the position I was in yesterday morning where I just can’t face another feed that I have an alternative!

That’s great news. I think having the odd bottle and a little bit of rest can make all the difference. It also means DH could give an evening bottle whilst you get off to bed early for a long sleep.

Sounds great OP! Do you have a sleeping bag for LO? That "snug" sensation may help, and mean that you don't have to move the Moses basket into the next to me on a nightly basis.

Similar to this:

https://www.boots.com/snuzpouch-designz-sleeping-bag-2-5-tog-0-6-months-cloud-nine-10247417?cmmmc=bmm-buk-google-ppccPLAsAsHeroCompareareCatchAll---UKSmarttShoppingCatchhAll&gbraid=0AAAAADrIajVsOfUoBTGZebKq6WMs-eD&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI78DJr8GiiwIVCsDtCh3n0ATqEAQYASABEgLWGfDBwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

@MuddaUdders we were using swaddle bags but ironically he slept better last night under a blanket. We do have some sleeping bags too we could use now he’s bigger.