Desperate breastfeeding help

[flyingbeet]

I have a beautiful daughter who is 4 weeks old but I'm really struggling with breastfeeding. It has created so much stress and isn't the 'magical' experience I had hoped it would be. Apparently the latch is fine which is what the midwives told me but the problem is that she sucks for 15 minutes and unlatches herself. But then after 10-20 minutes she is hungry again. This is constant throughout the day and night. Sometimes she starts pulling and grunting on my nipple in a frustrated manner. I pull her away and squeeze my nipple and see that there is milk coming out so I don't understand why she does that.. My day is consumed with breastfeeding and it is much easier to give her a bottle of formula which I do sometimes and she drinks it well and falls asleep for longer. I don't know if it's problems with the latch, my milk supply or if this is all very normal. Can people who have experience with breastfeeding let me know if this is normal or not please?

Completely normal. She’s cluster feeding to encourage milk supply. It’s absolutely exhausting. One of mine fed for hours at a time. Literally hours. it’s normal.

This is the point where many women stop feeding because they’re convinced they don’t have enough milk. Especially when they see baby guzzle a bottle and then sleep for hours.
Bottles don’t have a stop start flow like a breast so they are forced to just keep sucking. A combination of the effort of sucking and the longer to digest formula is why she’ll stay asleep for longer. It doesn’t mean she was still hungry or that you don’t have enough milk.

Just resign yourself to doing nothing much other than feeding for these next few weeks. Avoid formula if you can because that will reduce your supply. There’s also no need to pump at this stage. It will pass. Once feeding is established she will go much longer in between feeds and you will feel much better.

As an aside, are you offering both breasts? ie, once she falls off one side do you offer her the other? If not, do that.

Congrats by the way. You’ve done brilliantly to get this far. Take it week by week.

It was normal for me and my daughter when she was that age - well-meaning people kept telling me she was only doing it for comfort. I did find it stressful but spoke to someone at La Leche League who reassured me it was normal, so I carried on. The pulling and grunting is to stimulate your milk glands - most baby animals do it when they’re very young. New babies have small stomachs, so they need to feed often.

Cluster feeding!

It will calm back down again, at this point you just need to keep going. So hard I know, but you can do it

I wished someone, anyone, including the midwife at the hospital had explained this to me. I was up googling all the things about “why my baby keeps crying” but he just needed to be on the boob.

1000000% this.

This is totally, 100% normal. She is instinctively cluster feeding to ensure your milk supply. She doesn't need formula and this stage will end soon.

Aww @flyingbeet it is hard work, I know. Had 4, and did breastfed for 1 (until 9 months) and 2 (not for long) , mainly bottle for 3 and 4. Firstborn was really big and I was on and off continually all of the night and all of the day, had all sorts of problems (mastitus, worn nipple shields etc,). Had DC2 a year after and given DC1 was only just 12 months went quickly to the bottle. Did not hesitate for DC3 and DC4 for bottle fed. Found it loads easier. Anyone can give them a bottle so close family members got really involved, and they stay full for longer. I do not regret it for a minute. I regret somewhat persevering with breastfeeding if I am honest, but felt pressured. They are all grown up now. No difference in intelligence, ability to cope with illness, size or anything. Of course there are some upsides for breastfeeding, you have to be a bit organised with bottles and so on, but the difference it made should not be under-rated. 4 hours sleep being one of them.

@Neverhurt ❤️. I’m sorry you didn’t get the right support. Not many do.

@TheM55 When someone is asking for breastfeeding support there’s no need to tell them they could just switch to formula. BF isn’t a walk in the park. Sometimes you need some guidance and cheerleading which is what OP is asking for.
I’ll never know why women are so quick to discourage other women from breastfeeding. It’s a very weird phenomenon.

@opine because women say, as the OP has said " It has created so much stress and isn't the 'magical' experience I had hoped it would be" I don't know the OP personally, but I would bet my bottom dollar that she does not need more "cheerleading" as you say. I think she was just actually asking how it went with others, and that is what I have posted, having had two breastfed and two bottle fed, and I know that breastfeeding was not a "walk in the park", far from. There is absolutely every need to tell women that there is an alternative, which suits plenty.

If You can get to 7 or 8 weeks of breast feeding, it should get much much easier. All my babies got much more efficient quite quickly past this point. After10 weeks it was quicker and less fussy then bottle feeding.

If she is latching well and putting on weight and generally well in herself then this is cluster feeding.

It's hard and you feel like a milking machine. But it won't last forever.

If your still worried then absolutely get the health visitor to come out and see you, see baby feed etc.

Your doing great 💐

Well done for getting this far OP, you've done amazing for your baby! Like a pp said this was all normal for me and everything changed and became much easier around 10 weeks

@TheM55 She knows about formula. Who doesn’t. Virtually every baby is the UK is formula fed.

Something not being a magical experience or a walk in the park isn’t enough reason for some women to stop. I’ve had to learn to feeds twins, another time get through an ulcer, another time horrendous mastitis. It has never been anything other than bloody awful initially but I really wanted to BF and so got through it all. Actually the cheerleading comes from the few. I was mostly told to just call it a day and switch to formula.

It’s entirely up to a woman how she feeds her baby but when a woman asks for breastfeeding support just stick to the agenda.

It’s really normal, and if you can persevere through the next few weeks it becomes so much easier.
If you can relax into it and accept that you will be sitting down a lot for the next fortnight then it might make it easier to cope with. Find a good book/box set, make yourself a comfortable area with everything you need to hand, make sure you are drinking and eating loads.
Have you got someone you can hand her over to for a little while? Having a shower and washing your hair can make you feel so much more human.

Absolutely. I hate the idea of "BF is a bit tricky, just give the baby formula instead". There are so many advantages to BF if possible so if a new mum asks for a bit of support and advice on how to make it easier to succeed, then that's what should be given. Not just "give the baby formula".

Thank you for your responses. Honestly makes me feel a lot better. Although it is hard I just wanted to know about other people's experiences and whether or not the struggles I've been facing are normal. Now I know I'm not doing anything wrong.
This is a bit long but for context I had to be induced because baby was measuring small for gestational age. She was a full term baby but was so small and I had gestational diabetes so I felt the pressure to feed her right away when she was born. After only 10 minutes of trying to breastfeed and baby not latching on properly I accepted to give her formula when the midwife suggested it would be best because we didn't want her blood sugars being low if she couldn't feed. Now that I think about it I wish she would have actually helped me latch her on. The next day there was an infant feeding specialist on the ward who visited me. Told me to stop breastfeeding after 40 minutes and top up with formula because baby was always on the breast and to make sure she was getting enough milk to help her grow. I think a lot of midwifes/nurses follow a schedule of waking baby up every 3 hours, changing their nappy and feeding them for a maximum of 1 hour and then letting them sleep for like 2 hours. I stayed in the neonatal unit for 1 week because baby had jaundice. Even though she had jaundice she wasn't a sleepy baby and would always want to feed. The nurses told me it wasn't right for baby to be feeding so much and so frequently and that she had to have the same amount at every feed. I used to think that she isn't a robot. Sometimes she drink more frequently and sometimes less and sometimes she'll drink more ml and sometimes less. I knew she was getting enough through her wet nappies but I was always made to feel like there was something wrong with the breastfeeding. Even once I got discharged I went to a breastfeeding clinic. Unfortunately baby was not hungry and sleeping so she didn't want to feed in front of the lactation consultant but when I expressed my concerns about how baby was feeding a lot. She also told me about the robotic schedule of how because I keep feeding so often baby is running into the time she should be sleeping

BF stats in this country are tragic. One of the lowest globally. I have my theories on why but that’s another conversation.

My otherwise very competent GP told me I could switch to formula now as baby wasn’t getting anything out of breast milk anymore. She was 9 months. So breast milk was definitely at that point but its substitute wasn’t?? She then went on to tell me she didn’t breast feed and it was fine not to. So she was just projecting and that’s often the case.
You'll have to learn to deal with that often because BF is very triggering for even women who chose not to. The inference will be that you are just somehow lucky and had a flawless experience unlike them. That isn’t your problem so you’ll just have to nod and smile. It’s very annoying when you know it definitely wasn’t magical for you either but it’s a pointless discussion that you’ll learn to avoid.

It’s very obvious that feeding is going well for you. Keep going. By 12wks it will be so much easier. I know that seems a long time away but you’ll get there and feel victorious.
Just keep her at the breast for as long as she wants it. She may be tiny but she’s clearly healthy and strong and that’s down to you 💐

Hi OP,

Firstly breastfeeding is really tough going for many and you should be so so proud of yourself for getting to this point, you’ve done amazing to ride the first initial weeks out !

Secondly, something that jumped out was that you said you had introduced a bottle of formula, which might be causing your issues.

As others have said cluster feeding is completely normal for bf babies and happens lots, especially in the beginning, however, introducing a bottle can really mess things up.

I can confirm this because it’s just happened to me, I bf my first and gave expressed milk by bottle .. no issue, transitioned great between both, assumed I could do the same with number 2 and she quickly developed a huge bottle preference, bottle feeding is much easier for them and so I found my lo started to fuss on the boob, got upset and there began the demise of our bf journey.

Now if I had the opportunity to solely bf and not use a bottle for expressed milk (which I didn’t for a number of reasons) I’d have stopped that bottle and bf exclusively. But for me, I needed the option of giving the bottle also and number 2 just decided she didn’t want to bf anymore. It’s caused me huge emotional distress to be honest, still dealing with it now but anyway what I would say to you is if you want a successful bf journey, for now id stop giving that bottle, baby will get into a better routine with bf again and you can probs work through the issues butttt if you really want the option of the bottle, your journey will likely be cut short as that preference for the bottle will likely grow over time.

If it was my first baby, I’d have dropped the bottle and went back to bf ex because I had the time to dedicate to it, second time round I’ve not been able to do that.

I hope you are okay, feeding journeys are really tough and it’s really confusing and upsetting when things don’t go how you’d hoped

OP, breastfeeding was the hardest thing I've ever done- it's REALLY really so tough and all-consuming. You're doing brilliantly. The cluster feeding you describe is totally normal, as others have said.
Keep going and it will become so much easier - even by week 8-10 babies are more pro at it (they are learning too) and I always found it easier when their mouths were a little bit bigger, weirdly.
Those magical feeds are on the horizon ❤️❤️

I think the bf advice can be terrible sometimes, I had one amazing midwife who came round and said I know this isn’t the ‘done’ thing but the text book way isn’t working for you, so let’s find what does. It totally changed my experience. I also panicked a lot about the cluster feeding and everyone around me kept pushing me to formula feed because baby ‘obviously’ wasn’t getting enough. But if you can hear the swallowing, and weight gain iss as consistent, then she’s ok. You have to just get through the cluster feeding hell! ( or not if you decide to switch to formula!)