Breastfeeding

[justamum98]

Hi all, my little one is 5 days old. We’ve been working really hard on breastfeeding. Long story short I’m in agony everyone I breastfeed. She has tongue tie and made my nipples so sore. I’ve ordered a bunch of different nipple shields and other bits to help heal my nipples in between feeds. The shields are helping. I find that they’re quite the faff but it makes breastfeeding painful but bearable so I will continue using them. im also working with midwives to help get the latch right as I don’t think we’re doing this correctly.

since this morning I have had to top her off with formula after feeding. My milk is still quite yellow so I don’t think it’s properly come in yet. I let her feed for as long as she wants. Usually anything between 10-30mins. She’s drained both my breasts to the point of nothing coming out and then she gets frustrated and needs formula.

is this normal? Is it because my milk hasn’t come in yet properly? I let her feed on me as often as she needs even if nothing comes out I think this makes your milk come on even quicker?

not sure if I’m doing the right thing by topping her off with formula but it she’s still hungry and nothing coming out of me I don’t really have another option.

Is she weeing? Alert in between feeds?
unlikely she needs topping up with formula unless she’s losing weight etc
best thing is skin to skin, offer the boob at every squeak, try a rugby ball hold and deffo get the tongue tie sorted
feed as much as you can - the first few days are intense but the more you feed, the more cues your body gets to produce milk
your job is basically to feed and feed day and night and hopefully you’ll get feeding established
congrats on your new baby

I had a c section and it took like 6 days for my milk to come in. I just left baby to feed, even when he seemed frustrated and nothing was coming as 1) some colostrum was still coming and 2) it stimulates the milk. You know when your milk comes as your breasts become quite full and leak. My nipples were also really sore from the 12 hour long cluster feeding sessions and a mild tongue tie.

Make sure the latch is correct. Try the rugby hold, it really helped us.

I never topped up with formula but his weight was fine, just under the 10% weight loss limit. He gained it back within 10 days. Still breastfeeding at 8 months now.

I did pay for a lactation consultant which made a huge difference, she helped me with proper latching and basically encouraged me to keep going through the cluster feeding. My nipples were chewed through after the cluster feeding, I used to cry every time i could see baby was hungry as I was anticipating the pain.

She was quite adamant we don't introduce formula if plenty of wet nappies and no jaundice/weight issues. Babies' stomachs are super small and if you get them used to getting more so early on, you are artificially stretching their stomach so now they are actually hungry and it's hard to pull back from it.

If you can afford to see a Lactation Consultant then I strongly urge you to do this so a proper feeding assessment and feeding plan can be implemented.

A good two hour consultation with an IBCLC can be invaluable.

https://lcgb.org/find-an-ibclc/

How are you both this morning @justamum98?

More skin to skin. This wakes baby a bit more... Your body won't make more milk if baby isn't at the breast 'asking' for it.. No need for formula unless a professional tell you so.
Imo

About topping up with formula - I had to do this as I wasn’t able to feed in early days, but a lactation consultant advised me that if you do top-up, then express milk with a pump to tell the body it still needs to make more milk. If baby isn’t able to extract enough due to tongue-tie then expressing can help to increase your supply. Are you able to get the tongue-tie snipped?