24 hour weighing - lost again. What shall I do?

[AlienLady]

Midwife came yesterday - Day 5. DD lost 10% of her weight
Midwife came today and she lost a further 0.3g.
I have been trying to feed her every 3 hours since yesterday.
She seems sleepy today and not that bothered so I’ve had to strip her just to get her to take some milk. Midwife wanted me to give her a top of expressed milk so I got my haaka out and tried expressing for the first time. I got only 10ml out of my left breast. What do I do? It’s my birthday today as well and I am so upset as I thought I was doing a good job. Do I do a formula top up and how?

@AlienLady if you're finding it gets painful, you'd need to hand express a small amount to relieve it. You might need to do that over a few days but a really small amount, not using a pump or anything.

She got weighed today and has put on 50g. Which is good. Still have to carry on doing what I am doing and apparently they want me to express 8-12 times a day?? I have elder child and a house to run too. Where do they I have the time?

OP if it's too much then maybe you're best formula feeding? It seems to be causing you a lot of stress and not sure it's worth it

50g in. 3 days is good I suppose?
Shes 60 g away from her birth weight

I can’t just switch over. I’ll get mastitis.
i do want to breastfeed or combi feed. I don’t want to express. But if I don’t express, I can’t breastfeed if my milk supply goes down.

Yes it's great but if it's too stressful to do what they're suggesting maybe you need to work out if it's worth it for you.

Are you still in hospital? I wouldn't want to breastfeed that much to be away from my home and other family. They are asking you to express to increase supply. I would switch to formula to take the pressure off. Expressing is awful.

Oh wait no she weighed 3.4g initially. Got ahead of myself there

She only perks up when I give her the top up. It’s so sad to see.

Right now, this comes first. You need to be able to drop all other tasks.
Outsource them.
Pay for childcare support. Get a cleaner just for a short time. Call in any family and friends you can. If it means moving in with family so that you're only feeding and supporting your baby then do that.
This era will pass but you need to protect your health. If you have mastitis you do need to pump regularly if your baby isn't feeding well at the breast or you will get seriously sick- the antibiotics alone aren't enough to resolve it.

I know you really want to breastfeed but it sounds like she just can't get enough from you at the moment, whether that's because of your supply or her tongue tie. She clearly needs the extra calories in the formula top ups and you need to think about her well being.
I'm not sure why you're so against formula when you used it with your older child and you clearly didn't do much research on breastfeeding if you're so surprised it's difficult. I don't know a single woman who's had a straight forward breastfeeding journey so I'm not sure why you just expected you could stick her on your boob and that would be that. Sorry if that sounds harsh but you sound very naive about all of this.

No I am not against formula. I wanted to combi feed from 6 weeks plus.
i hate washing, sterilising bottles etc so wanted the best of both worlds.
i am giving her the top ups. it’s sad to see because i wish I could just switch over but I am stuck in a rut now with the midwives who are pro breastfeeding and my fear of getting mastitis if I just make a switch.

I am waiting for her tongue tie to be snipped on Tuesday and then I can make the decision of either I can combi feed or it’ll have to be exclusively formula feed.

But you are right… I was naive about it all to be honest.

Oh don't listen to the midwives, they all have to push breastfeeding but they're not living in your house or your head. Who cares what they think? If it's not working for you or baby then there's nothing you can do. You're making such an effort already. Hopefully the tongue tie snip will help. If you can't continue bf then you can slowly add more formula and feed less to avoid mastitis. You're less likely to get it that way than quitting cold turkey.

She’s put on 100g in 2 days! And now is 8% below her birth weight so heading in the right direction.

@GreenFlamingo11 there are plenty of women who luckily for them and their babies have no issues breastfeeding, I’ve met some at breastfeeding or baby groups, and 2 of my sisters had no issues, loads of milk and babies latched from day 1 etc.

I has lots of issues at the beginning @AlienLady similar to you but after a few weeks I was able to stop formula top ups entirely. I haven’t read your whole thread but things that helped me were, skin to skin, nipple shields, a lactation consultant and a supportive partner who knew I was very determined so did whatever possible to help. My baby was born a tiny bit early (full term but lower end) and I honestly think it just took time to learn the skill once the tongue tie was cut. Well both of us had to learn, positioning was difficult which was where the lactation consultant helped. She got my partner to take photos of me in the position as looking at some line drawings was not helping my poor sleep deprived brain compute how to do it.

How did the tongue tie division go?

Not great… she’s forgotten or has to re-learn how to suck!

That's really common after tongue tie division. It took my DD2 a good few weeks to improve. The person doing the division should have warned you that it can be an up and down process whilst the tongue heals and takes at least 10-14days. Look up RockABye_Hub on insta and they have some good tongue tie resources. If it doesn't improve in a few weeks, we were referred to a specialist team to help DD2, but that's quite unusual I belive.