SOS please someone help me out of this impossible situation

[Doggomom91]

SOS. Help and advice needed please.

My baby girl is 11 weeks old and combi fed. She mainly gets pumped milk and formula about 50/50 but she will have 5 min breastfeeds as and when she wants them. From day 1 we struggled with breastfeeding due to latch issues but we managed to get to 2-3 bottles per day and mostly BF which was manageable. She's always been one to fall asleep on the boob and feed little and often. However when she was about a month old things started going downhill and her short feeds became even shorter. As a result we have been giving more bottles as she is always still hungry after breast and often won't go back on again - either falling asleep then waking up hungry 5 mins later or just refusing them. She had had a tongue tie treated 5 weeks ago and we thought it would help but it hasn't. My supply has taken a hit now which probably isn't helping and now she's got bottle preference.

I'm now pumping 6-7 times a day and manage to provide over 50% of her milk myself but I don't think I can sustain it anymore. My supply isn't increasing despite my efforts. My heart breaks over how our journey has gone and I cry constantly, I long for the days where she fed from me and wish I could get them back. It was amazing. We've had every type of help there is out there, NHS and lactation consultants. Nobody knows why this has happened. I don't know why this has happened but all I have done is try to keep my baby fed - when she was still hungry after breast I topped her up, like the professionals told me to. She is absolutely thriving but of course she will be - she's got the best of both worlds but time with mommy is sparse.

I don't know how long I can carry on like this. I am at breaking point.

I have nothing against formula, I wish I could just switch but my baby seeks out the breast constantly - she just doesn't take it when offered. If I quit and switch to formula, I have to reject her when she searches for boob. She's also much more sick from formula than BM with her reflux. If I carry on I risk my mental health and the time I spend with my baby. I want to be with her but I'm just pumping all the time. I do have wearables but I still can't give her a cuddle in them. I feel like I'm missing out on time with her and time goes so fast.

Has anyone been through this? How did you decide what to do moving forward?

Are you doing paced feeding with the bottle feeds?

Well done on going on for so long and providing so much of your milk for her with expressing, it’s so tough 👏👏

Thank you for replying. Yes we do pace feed, she has thickener in her bottles though so she needs a wider teat now otherwise it just blocks after a few mins. This does affect how well we can pace feed.

It is so tough, thank you for understanding.

What were/are her latch issues? Have you been to any of your local breastfeeding support groups? The volunteers at them are so knowledgeable and have seen so much, they can be a great help and support.

She couldn't latch properly due to tongue tie so we used shields until she could get it done. It's now been done and she can latch both with and without but not for more than 5 mins.

Yeah I've been to my local group, they were lovely but not overly helpful as they keep saying it's normal for baby to feed for 5 minutes and I should just persevere, but at the point where she only feeds for 5 mins and comes off hungry and refuses to go back on again, or wears herself out that much that she falls asleep, i can't do that to her. That's not normal to me.

I was in this situation. I had gestational diabetes on insulin while pregnant, she was born at 37/40 and was also jaundiced so finished up on top ups from day 0.
i was expressing from one side / feeding from the other 2 hourly 24 hrs a day, dropping to 3 hourly from about 3 weeks.
ditto health visitors /lactation consultants. I know how horrible it is.
i went to Australia when she was 4 1/2 months old and didn’t have room in my suitcase for the pump / storage bags as well as bottles. I could put her to the breast on the plane but essentially she was completely formula fed from then and it was a huge relief.
Actually the best thing about going away was getting out of the slightly toxic comparisons in baby classes.

That sounds really stressful. What positions do you feed her in? Does she have preferred positions she latches on better in?

Have you brought her to an osteopath?

breastfeeding was so stressful for me it was making me ill and hence the milk was less filling and baby more hungry. When I switched to just formula in bottles my baby was much happier and it totally changed my experience of parenting for the better. There comes a point where you have choice to accept that breastfeeding is not helping but hindering tiredness/ relationship/ baby’s nutrition. Yes there can also be a sense of loss of your hopes of what breastfeeding may have looked like but didn’t.

Sorry but that part about the milk being less filling because you were stressed isn’t true, yes stress can affect supply but it doesn’t do anything to the quality of the milk.

I’m not going to be much help but I’ll just say that I’ve exclusively BF from the get go and my 14 week old has never fed for more than 5 minutes. Neither did my now 4yo who I BF for two years.

my 14 week old is also off and on and gets grumpy, then falls to sleep. Went about two weeks getting angry sometimes. I’ve never topped him up with anything and he’s a chunk so obv getting enough milk. I’ve just always given him a boob if he’s wanted it, and assumed when he’s messing around like that (going off and on, getting grumpy) it’s nothing to do with being hungry. It’s cus he wants to suckle to sleep but for whatever reason is getting mad (slow flow, fast flow, full, gassy, who knows) cus he can’t sleep.

sometimes I try to distract for 15-20 mins and start again and then he’ll feed and go.

all that to say, don’t just assume baby is getting No milk from you? I think the 5 mins can be normal. My DD was same and so are some of my friends’ babies

for reference I might feed 3 times in 2 hours, the shorter 5 min feeds. Once about 45 minutes after he wakes up, and then once or twice before he goes to sleep for a nap.

Also we’ve just found the angry/fussy stage is just starting to subside and have put it down to a developmental leap

Yeah, I think it's normal to feed in 5 minute bursts too.

I think you need to either go for full on bf or full on ff.

So, I'd give yourself a few days of full on bf. Don't pump, unless it's to relieve your discomfort, and only do it enough to take the edge off. Don't plan to go out. Just plan to hang out with baby, as much skin to skin as possible and just keep putting her on the breast. If it doesn't work after a couple of days, then maybe it is time to switch to formula.

How is her weight gain?

It is 😞 we do cross cradle, rugby sometimes but she is over 14lb now so it's pretty difficult even with a nursing pillow and also seatbelt/laid-back nursing which she struggles with. Yeah we've seen 2 different osteos too, her tension from birth (forceps during section) and from the very tight tongue tie is almost gone apparently.

Gosh that sounds very very similar. Madam also had jaundice and we kept being told "just top up more", it took 3 weeks to regain birth weight and while they weren't overly concerned they kept pushing the top ups.

I also find the baby groups a struggle. I want to cry every time I see a mom smashing the BF which I know is awful.

Did you grieve your decision at all? I'm worried if I do this I will regret it.

Hi, thank you for replying. I get what you're saying about the 5 mins being normal, and my little one has always been one for feeding little and often. But they got shorter and shorter, sometimes only a couple of minutes and then stopping. When trying to put her back on she would be crying/punching the breast which made me doubt my supply. Either that or She just wouldn't open her mouth to latch but still shows hunger cues. She could be on and off 10 times in less than an hour and by the end of the hour she's been screaming. I couldn't watch her struggle like that.

Hiya. We've tried these "baby moon" days but after a few hours she's literally screaming, red in the face and getting really angry so I'm so scared she would be come breast averse and refuse it all together. Saying that we have had one successful baby moon day where we managed 12 hours without bottles. This was going back about a month though.

Incredible. She's following 91st centile perfectly and she's a right chunk.

Maybe a nipple shield when she's angry will calm her enough to go back on the breast?

I struggled to establish breastfeeding. One tip I was given was to end each feed on the breast. So give most of a bottle then switch to breast so that baby associates breastfeeding with feeling full and content.

Hi, thanks for replying. We do use nipple shields when she gets annoyed and upset but it doesn't help 😢

I was given this tip too but I struggle because she's got severe reflux so if I switch her position when she's just had a bottle she projectiles 🤦‍♀️

No regrets at all.
She got colostrum, she had some passive antibody transfer ( from memory evidence of BF benefit if >20ml day up to 6 weeks), and it wasn’t working for us. I subsequently discovered that lots of people very ostentatiously feeding at baby groups were mixed feeding. Also took about 3 weeks to regain birthweight and I spent 10 days having to walk to my local hospital daily for weighing +/- jaundice checks.
My mother BF my sister and I and was insistent that I needed to be able to feed on the plane if delayed. 2 hourly expressing was brutal. 2 years later I remain comfortable with my decision,
Its a horrible place to be and if it is spoiling your enjoyment of a gorgeous baby, not worth it ( to me, you may be different ).

My daughter went to 5 second feeds due to allergies and reflux! Bottle refuser. I don't know how but she had beautiful weight gain so I just had to put up with it.
I ended up on a stupid diet due to her allergies and in the end it put me in hospital and she ended up formula

My grandmother never could produce enough milk. Her sister used to feed my mum and auntie as well as her own children to top them up. Supply issues are as old as time but we used to have a village in the same situation

My dad was only 1kg a birth and he was fed on condensed milk!

A full tummy is all that matters. It sounds like the breast feeding is more for comfort than for milk. Do you think you could let the pumping reduce and just let her have those moments of comfort so you don't feel like you are rejecting her.

When I stopped breastfeeding my daughter didn't accept a dummy, was a bottle refuser, breastfeed to sleep for naps and through the night. Is she was upset she breastfed for comfort. I had to stop cold turkey as I was in hospital and she had to go home to dad. 3 days later I went home for the weekend and she didn't try to breastfeed once. She's nearly 4 now and she gets so much comfort from me it's just no longer the boobs doing it. It took a few weeks to figure out life without breastfeeding but after that we really haven't looked back.