Baby falling asleep on breast every night but still hungry

[HEIHEI23]

Hello

Our 2 weeks old baby is finding breast feeding at night so difficult. He will fall asleep after 5 minutes and I’ll have strip him down, use cold wet wipes on him and constantly poke him until he cries to try and get him back on. He’s only getting maybe 15/20 minutes on the breast but it’s taking me an hour. Then, he is still hungry because he wakes an hour later to do the same thing.

he was put on a formula feeding plan to help him gain weight as he had lost too much. Since reducing the top ups and eventually stopping them, his sleeping has got so much worse because he’s obviously hungry but not getting enough from me as he’s falling asleep.

I cry every night and every morning because it’s so hard and I’m worried it’s leading into some kind of depression. I keep thinking of just switching to formula but I feel like I’m letting him down and can’t bring myself to make the decision. My health visitor has said they’ll refer me to breast feeding team but that won’t be for another week and same for the mental health team.

does anyone have any advice? I keep crying because I’m breastfeeding but then keep crying because I don’t want to give it up!

Feeding for 5 minutes then falling asleep could fall into the range of normal at this age. A lot of feeding in the early hours especially will be about building up your supply rather than being hungry. This article from Kellymom will tell you if he's getting enough milk overall

Plus he's unlikely to know that he's actually a separate being from you just yet.

When you do put him down after a feed, where are you putting him? Is he in bed with you?

Just realised you posted this over 24 hours ago. How are you both doing today @HEIHEI23?

Mine always fell asleep feeding- it's their happy warm comfort place. I would offer them a breast every time they were awake and very frequently and they'd usually take a bit. It sucked a bit for me feeding as much as we were but they got quite chubby so I feel like this worked well. I never liked the advice to wake them up, I did it once and it felt so wrong, I just went to feeding whenever they were awake. But I'm not a medical person so I'm not advising, that's just what I did.

Just two more questions, have you tried breast compressions and has LO been checked for Tongue Tie?

I decided to stop breastfeeding as he was really struggling. I think he’s got used to a bottle and wasn’t getting much from me. We tried dropping the top ups and he stopped having wet nappies and was literally up all night unable to settle. He seems a lot happier on bottles of expressed milk and formula. I do feel bad that I was unable to breast feed but I needed him to be fed! He did have a tongue tie which had been snipped already.

It's always difficult when they have TT. I'm glad that your LO is more settled

Sounds like things have been really tough and my heart goes out to you and incase no one has told you yet you should be proud of what you have achieved so far.

Breastfeeding is so so tough and your body is still recovering physically and emotionally from birth so you really are going though it at the moment.

I received so much conflicting advice which I found really hard. I also remember the crying while feeding and not knowing what to do.

Incase you did still want advice as your original post, what I would say is it doesn’t need to be either or. You can continue to combination feed for the entirety of your breastfeeding journey if you wanted. Even if it doesn’t feel like it, you’ve already achieved a lot with breastfeeding and have overcome a number of challenges and even now have still been determined to express milk alongside formula. Maybe now the pressure of EBF is removed and you can see baby is also doing well on expressed milk/formula you can offer breastfeeds before or after bottles and see how baby responds. They may be happy to latch on and feed, especially if they are sleepy. You can build this over time and reach a mix between breastfeeding and bottles that you are happy with - it may not be balanced and be majority one or the other but you can find an equilibrium that you and baby are happy with. Happy to offer any advice on how to combination feed long term if it’s something you’re interested in.

Hope you’re feeling much better.

My LO had a tongue tie. He had also lost a lot of weight. He did the same thing as yours. I just fed on demand, which meant waking every hour and dealing with the cluster feeding. He did put on weight, breastfeeding became really easy and straightforward over time as we both learnt what we were doing. Establishing bf is not easy, despite what people are led to believe. It’s not for everyone, just do what’s right for you and be happy with your choice.