Help! Just gave my 5 week old exclusively bf baby some formula. Where do I go from here?

[OldieButGoldie]

My 5 week old DS has been breastfed on demand from birth with no real problems but over the past week he has been on the breast more and more often - rarely goes more than an hour when awake - and today has been ridiculous, with him almost constantly sucking since this morning. I was convinced there could be nothing left in my breasts and yet he still seemed hungry, so I tried the electric breast pump and could not express anything. So...as he was crying with hunger I gave in and gave him 2oz of formula. Never seen anything disappear so fast and my nips are getting a little break for now.

But where do I go from here? I thought milk was produced according to demand. How do I keep my supply up? I really want to bf for a lot longer.

I'm no expert but it sounds like a growth spurt. I remember when ds had these my boobs felt empty as he was sucking almost continuously. It's hard to keep your nerve when they do this sort of thing, I had to keep telling myself to trust my body. Ds was a very frequent feeder at the best of times so you have my sympathies.

Oldie, milk is indeed produced according to the demands of the baby.

Your baby was feeding ok, and just wanted to be on there for a while....the only thing that stopped you continuing to let him be there was the fact you were 'convinced' there was nothing there! You were wrong, though

The pump does not show anything about the amount of milk available to the baby.

If you want to continue bf, then just do it! Avoid formula. This interferes with the amount of milk produced.

Your breasts are never empty - it does work on supply and demand. How much you can express gives absolutely no indication of how much milk you actually have.

Sounds like a growth spurt, which you can feed through if you want to.

Do you still want to exclusively bf?

• You're still in the process of getting bf established so how things go now is no indication of how they'll go in the future - it won't always be this bad, you know!

• A pump is a crap indicator of whether there's milk - a baby is much more efficient at getting out.

• Milk is produced according to demand, so the big demands ds has made on your system today will ensure there's lots there tomorrow. However it's easy to muck up this system by giving formula, as your body doesn't know ds needed that extra 2oz so won't respond appropriately.

I think the best thing you can do is install yourself on the sofa with the remote and some decent novels and feed feed feed through this growth spurt (for that's what it is) while dh brings you snacks and drinks.

Keep smiling

Right, so the baby can always get milk? It was just that I couldn't see any in his mouth either. He was sucking so much that I couldn't see how I could possibly be producing fast enough - it must take some time for my body to produce it.

Yes, I would rather continue to exclusively breastfeed. I guess I have just panicked.

oldie, tiktok will reassure, but the hormones of milk production are pretty instantaneous. baby sucking sends message to the brain that sends a message to boobs to make milk, baby gets the milk.

they have a wee growth spurt at this age. I remember being glued to the sofa for what seemed like days, but it passes and life gets easier.

If you want to excl BF, put the formula behind you and just keep feeding him at the breast

www.kellymom.com has lots of information on the mechanics of it all

Starlight - sometimes. But not always. No real system in place

Thanks for the other replies/advice.

Oldie, I am a few weeks ahead of you. My dd is nearly 9 weeks old and she has been feeding alot since she was born, at one point almost continously through the night.
She is getting much better now and going longer between feeds.
I think you just need to perservere for afew more weeks and things will get much easier.
Try expressing first thing in the morning. Then save the feed for the evening. This settled my dd alot better and gave me a break.

Good luck. It's worth it.

Starlight, good question....Oldie, you don't have to have a system in place but it is very important in the early weeks to routinely offer the second side to the baby. Sometimes babies take it, sometimes they don't, but they do need the opportunity to have it (if baby is totally zonked out after side one and shows no sign of wanting/needing side 2, then that's ok, too, but often the baby will perk up after a little while and he can have it then).

A few weeks ago I was asking questions like this - my "problem" was DS cluster feeding for up to 6 hours in the evening. Everyone told me that this was normal, and that things would sort themselves out - I "gave in" then and just let him feed without worrying about how long he was going, and now he only does about an hour and a half (or less) feeding in the evening - half an hour before his bath then up to an hour between that and sleep.

Just wanted to let you know that you can use expressed breastmilk with formula. Make up formula as instructed on tin and add expressed milk to the made up formula.

When my son was in special care we had to give him some formula as I couldn't express enough to give him his medication. So we mixed up my breastmilk with formula. We then went back to all breastmilk when I could express enough for him.

When I went home I got an infection (due to c-section) which reduced my milk supply, I then used some formula to help keep up his milk intake. This was very useful when he went through a growth spurt (his growth spurts generally lasted about 3-4 days).