Hospital feeding plan and top ups

[DrivingMissCrazee]

My little girl was admitted to hospital at 5 weeks due to poor weight gain where they advised us to top her up with 60ml of formula every 3 hours with me offering the breast before each feed and whenever else she wants it.

She doing really well and gaining weight nicely now, due a follow up in a few weeks. I will ask them about next steps/ coming off the feeding plan and reducing the top ups but wanted to hear if anyone else had experience of this?

I’d like to get back to mainly breastfeeding, with the option of giving a bottle now and then so my husband/grandparents etc can look after her now and again.

She still feeds ok on me, better some times than others, if she’s really hungry and my milk flow is slower (late afternoon/evening) then she can fuss and not feed properly so I just have to give her the bottle. I’m currently trying to pump once a day if time/baby permits.

Is there any hope of weaning her off the bottle in future?!

I did exactly this...we got down to just one bottle which DH gave at the end of the night, and I bf DD until 15 months old. There is hope! I had some great advice from LLL and really recommend giving them a call. Essentially putting her on the breast as much as possible, eventually instead of the top ups just put back on the boob. But I would ask what was the cause of the weight loss and has that been resolved. For Dd it was un detected tounge tie which caused her to be an inefficient feeder. After that was treated she fed much better. Good luck.

We had this and I’ll be honest it didn’t go as planned! We tried to wean him off top ups just to get him back on breast feeding and he ended up dehydrated with no wet nappies. He just couldn’t get what he needed from me so now he has pumped milk and formula. Hes thriving now and my mental health is so much better! I really wanted to EBF but his needs just weren’t being met so I had to put that first.