Frequency of feeds anxiety

[Keggles36]

Hello

My daughter is now ten weeks old. She had tongue tie corrected at 11 days, and only lost 7% on day 5 however it took three weeks to get back to birth weight.

We got set on a slippery slope of triple feeding, and this eventually broke me. I appear to have high lipase and she won't drink my milk if stored .She's always gained weight since day 5, just slowly.

We now offer a formula top up most feeds and her weight gain is better.

My worry is I'm struggling to get 8 feeds in. She feeds on demand every 2-3 hours in the day but generally goes down for longer overnight which means 7 feeds is the reality. Do you think this is ok at 10 weeks?

She generally feeds at the both breasts and then takes anything from 20 - 100mls formula pace fed. I spend my whole life worrying she's not getting enough but obviously don't want to force feed.

I just feel like feeding has been ruined by the stress at the beginning, which I'm now thinking may have been a paed overreaction.

She's always had plenty of wet and dirty nappies, been alert, meeting milestones - just slow to gain weight 🤷🏼‍♀️ really struggling and wondering if just going to formula might be better?

You have options. Completely switch to breastfeeding and scrap the formula, go formula only, or keep doing as you’re doing. I scrapped formula feeds as quickly as I possibly could, and then just spent a couple of days focusing on breastfeeding so that I made sure my supply adjusted up. If she is gaining weight OK now then don’t worry about number of feeds.

@NewForestMum123 thank you. I just can't get past feeling like my milk is inadequate 😓 really struggling. It went on for about 7 weeks of just not gaining on breast/expressed breast so feels like it's only started going the right way with formula.

My 3-month old has a very similar pattern in terms of the feed timings, and once the baby is back to birth weight you don't need to worry too much about them sleeping for longer stretches at night (especially since you say she also has plenty of nappies and is alert etc).

Have you had any support from a lactation consultant or the health visitor? It might be worth getting some support to see if you can reduce the formula top ups if this is what you want to do. This should be done gradually and you will need to monitor your baby's weight and nappies carefully to make sure that your supply is increasing to replace the formula. Personally I've had issues with my supply for both of my babies and I found the process of triple feeding to increase supply too stressful so have made peace with combination feeding. It can be a good option as long as the baby doesn't develop a bottle preference, but paced feeding should help to prevent this.

@TheEarlOfGrey thank you.

I am happy to combi feed, but would like to get to a point where I'm not topping up every feed... Maybe having certain feeds that are bottle and doing the rest as just breast! But not sure how to get there.

The greatest ibclc i can find locally is £240 for an hour and we don't have the money, and the health visitor literally said "she doesn't offer feeding advice". I might head to my local feeding drop in again on Friday x