Weaning baby from feeding tube

[UnravellingTheWorld]

Looking for some experiences! My second child is 6 weeks and was discharged from NICU 11 days ago with a feeding tube. Since then we've been building up his ability to feed orally, both breastfeeding and bottle feeding EBM - he's been doing really well with both methods and some of his feeds have been 100% oral. My goal is to breastfeed exclusively, but I introduced a bottle to up his stamina for sucking (no nipple confusion so far)

I guess I'm wondering how I know he's taken a full breastfeed? I have a big oversupply from pumping (my freezer is full!) so he's not draining my breasts completely. This afternoon I fed him for 40min then went to get some milk for a top-up (my eldest fed 45min each side, so this was a short feed for me!); by the time the milk was warm he was awake again, so I bottle fed instead of using the tube. He took 10ml then gave signs that he wasn't hungry anymore, but I've never bottle fed an infant so I wasn't entirely confident in my decision to not finish the top up!

I'd also welcome anyone's success stories going from tube feeding to breastfeeding - it's been a gruelling week where I was afraid it wasn't going to happen for a day or two, so a little boost would be appreciated!

How did you know with your previous a feed would last 45 mins? Really struggling with my first :( he was formula fed for 5 weeks and I started bf two weeks ago- he falls asleep on me within 6 mins of bf, nothing can rouse him and then he will wake up 30 mins later super hungry :( really struggling

@An89 he would suck for 45 min, then when he finally came off and woke up properly would start rooting around for more: which led to another 45min on the other side

I started by breastfeeding first then topping with tube.
At the neonatal unit the advice I was given was to offer each boob aim 10-20 mins each boob. If the feed is 10-20mins total. All good, if less top up after with tube feed.

With the bottle mine only ever took 30-60mls a time till like 4.5 months but every hour or two 😅

Once discharged from neonatal with my LO I would take her to the midwifery unit in the community hospital and they would weigh her. It was every two days. So that was my reassurance. As if I fully fed and it dropped I knew to up the tube feed. Once she had a gain fully off tube for 48 hours was when we were on our way.
I couldn't guess by ml. As although she was healthy and gaining, even at 5-6 months she still only had like 450-550mls 600 sometimes depending on day. So if I tried to measure by other babies and the norm I would have been freaking.
We also had the health visitor after the doctors discharge who would then come over and weigh her and check her over.

Oh also to add...you know if he's feeding properly when they do little noises, took me ages to notice as for ages she didn't.
Also pump a bit out first to get rid of the watery milk so they get the fatty milk. It also stops it hitting them too fast when they aren't confident feeders (I had overproduction too due to it)