Struggling with feeding, mental health

[HEIHEI23]

We have a gorgeous baby boy who is ten days old although he did arrive ten days early! I’ve been breastfeeding from the start but have had to add formula top ups on a feeding plan from hospital as he lost too much weight and was readmitted.

we are trying to wean off the top ups now but the idea of exclusively breastfeeding is giving me a lot of panic. During our first night at home, where he didn’t sleep at all until 6am!, I was sobbing and having terrible thoughts whilst trying to constantly soothe him.

im terrified that if EBF, I’ll go back to feeling like that. He keeps falling asleep at the breast and I try to wake him but each feed/change is taking an hour and he wakes an hour/90 minutes after that. I’m terrified I’m going to drop him whilst feeding him so have been forcing myself to sit on a chair with a bright light on.

does it get better? How do people cope with getting so little sleep? I know I should keep trying but I am so exhausted I just keep getting emotional!

Ah I’m sorry, it’s exhausting but it does get better. As your baby gets older he won’t be as sleepy at the breast. I used to hate waking my baby back up to continue feeding but like you we were weaning from the top ups and it was essential.

I used to hate it when people would say this to me but it is okay to stop breastfeeding and alternatively can you just continue the top ups? Is there a reason you feel like you need to stop them?

I think I just really want to get to EBF as at the moment we have the worst of both worlds with pumping, sterilising and breast feeding 🙈 would be so much easier if we could just do one!

It's entirely up to you if you want to pick EBF or formula feeding but picking one would help you out it seems. If you want to EBF I would recommend looking into the safe sleep 7 and seeing if it's right for you. Would help you get a lot more rest. The moment I started cosleeping and side feeding everything got so much easier. Instagram account cosleepy and heysleepybaby have great resources x

I will preface this by saying that i have never EBF a baby and at the time, it felt like the absolute worse feeling in the world. But looking back I'm now very proud of persevering for as long as I had with any form of bf. I have combi fed two babies so can recognise a lot of your post. I know there are lots of amazing EBF posters who will be along soon, but i can maybe comment on the combi feeding.

If you haven't seen a private lactation consultant, then you definitely should. NHS advice is not always the best. An assessment by an IBCLC will be very helpful. https://lcgb.org/find-an-ibclc/

DD1 was two weeks early, very poorly at birth (NICU), and suspected IUGR. We were left triple feeding for weeks and it destroyed my MH. I had very bad PND which was probably related. I was pumping 8x per day which in hindsight was just madness. I switched to combi feeding (breast + formula - no pumping) and found this much easier.

DD2 has been combi fed from birth. She had a 90% tongue tie which wasnt found for 8weeks and caused no end of issues! Anyway, this time it has been much easier as I was very firm that I would pump max once per day, particularly with a toddler this time as well. So I did one power pump in the evening after DD2 had finished cluster feeding. If she woke in the middle of the night I did a pump between 2-4am, but I dropped that once she started sleeping through. I stopped pumping all together maybe around 3months?

I kept top ups going to 6months with both of them and then slowly switched fully to formula.

If you are triple feeding (breast, expressing and formula) make sure you have a plan to get away from this as it is the worst of all worlds. My experience was that the NHS just kind of left me to it. I had to be very clear the second time that this wasnt a good thing to be doing. In the meantime, make it easy on yourself - we used ready made formula for the first few weeks and we bought 8 bottles so we only had to do one batch of washing / sterilising per day. Same with the pump - look at the kellymom website https://kellymom.com/ and there are loads of tips for pumping mums (its US based so just consider that when reading) so that you aren't constantly sterilising. You can also buy extra flanges etc online so you can have a spare.

+1 for safe-sleep-7 and cosleeping. It's far safer to lye next to your baby in bed (following the safe sleep guidelines) then sit exhausted in a chair. You get more sleep too. I'm ebf our 2 month old. When he won't go to sleep and I'm exhausted I often just latch him on and go to sleep myself. I think it helps them learn to sleep better too because they see you and just copy. It is definitely in the trenches still at this point though. Cosleeping makes it mostly manageable but you'll still have days where it's hard.

Congratulations on your new baby

I EBF for 8 months and if I could do over, I would introduce formula very early and do half and half. When we switched to formula it was so much less stress.

With sleeping we kept a bassinet in our room and popped the baby in there (but I know it feels like forever that they’re up and before you know it, it’s the next feed). We used a rocker and white noise to lull DD to sleep then carried her to the bassinet.

Also just want to note that babies sometimes can’t sleep because of wind. If only DH and I were told about Infacol in our early days. Little gas drops that work wonders and can help relax the baby’s tummy.

Congrats in the new bundle of joy! You got this, mama🌷

I was in your exact position 12 weeks ago.
I promise one day/night things just weirdly change for the better.
I just started to be really on top of day time feeds like 2 hours offer the breast.
I couldn’t ever get the hang of lay down feeding as she was tiny we just couldn’t do it and I think I wouldn’t have slept anyway in worry I’d crush her being so tired. Baby wouldn’t be put down to sleep either so it was literally feed change bum hold baby on my chest then repeat all night!
My partner took all his holidays at work and as soon as I finished feeding I would give to him to change then hold whilst I got half hour or so sleep before the next feeding. We did this for about 2 weeks straight then things got slightly easier as she was going slightly longer. The only advice I can give is get help however you can, if your partner isn’t there ask family or friends to come and stay and help with baby the minute you finish feeding so you can keep a tiny bit of energy up.
I found ice cold water in my flask at night helped sipping it throughout the feeds, sometimes even some fruit for a bit of natural sugar.
I would put an ear phone in or watch something to distract myself from falling asleep.
When baby wakes to feed, take a minute to breathe just a few seconds or so, if you can get to the bathroom and splash a little bit water in your eyes that helped too.

Everyone kept telling me it gets easier and I just wanted to know when! It’s different for every baby from all the reading I did but I promise it does just suddenly start to get easier.

To summarise:
Try feeding as often as possible in the day - Offer the breast as much as you can it will encourage your supply too. It won’t stop the night feeds as baby needs them so early on but feeds may be a little faster at night and baby will start to get used to more calories in the day.
Get help asap - feed then pass baby to baby’s dad or your helper to take over.
Prioritise your calorie and water intake - drink drink drink as much water as you can. I ate pasta and veg constantly for the slow release of energy and very filled me up.
Ice cold water next to your feeding set up - small sips all through the feed.
When you have fed baby in the morning - shower straight away to reset yourself. I found mentally this helped to just calm my mind to tackle the next day. Every day you get through is one day closer to better times.

I cried and cried in the early days it is so so hard, I was not prepared for the sleep deprivation at all.

You will get through this time I promise you 💝 feel free to message if you need any more support. You are not alone!

I was in this situation and nobody cared about my mental health, which was spiralling down and down on the feeding plan - I ended up with severe PND four weeks after the birth.

I put my foot down and ditched the pumping which made a big difference as that takes up a lot of time. I just BF and then topped up with formula which made it a lot easier. I got a big increase in supply once I was getting more sleep. Also get your partner to do the top ups so you get more opportunity to rest as that will make a. big difference in how you're feeling.