Please help - breastfeeding difficulties - having to express to supplement night time feed

[Catla]

Can anyone help - basic background: DD went through traumatic birth and was then very reluctant to latch on to feed for about 2 weeks. We seem to have overcome that problem jsut about although it is still not a 'natural' latch, we have to work on it. DD has been sleeping through the night from about midnight to 6am which is great really, I feed her 6-7 or 8am and then she goes back to sleep until 11ish when I wake her up. During that time I am currently expressing 4oz ready for the night. I feed her again at 11am and then on and off for the rest of the afternoon if we're at home cos she won't settle again nor is interested in 'playing', just gets distressed if off the breast for too long a period. If I take her out for a walk in pram or in car she will drop off and sleep. I bath her about 5.30pm and then feed again for about 2 hours and she still doesn't seem satisfied or settled - I'm potentially feeding her on an off all night until giving her bottle at 10.30ish followed by a couple of minutes on the breast to settle her to sleep and then she'll go off fairly well all night. I don't really want to be reliant on having to express and bottle feed but there really doesn't seem to be enought to satisfy her. I don't know what to do to improve my milk supply and am extremely reluctant to get up in the early hours to express as I am exhausted as it is. Has anyone else fed like this? I don't really know what's 'normal'. My mum says that she always fed 10 mins either side and that was it until the next feed but I can't leave her screaming for food.

How old is she now, because a six hour stretch sounds pretty good to me if it's still early days! It could be that all the feeding in the evening is helping her fill up to go this long.

My mum told me the "rules" were 10mins a side every 4 hours as well. How anyone succeeded with bf back then is amazing .

(btw, frequent "cluster" feeds are normal)

Catla Phew sounds exhausting, but tbh pretty normal for such a young baby.

Your supply will really benefit from feeding direct from source at 10:30pm rather than a bottle.

It is the night time feeds that stimulate supply the most, and given that she sleeps for a long period over night your body isn't getting the right signals about how much she needs to feed, and so she's taking longer to get the milk she wants and you are feeding more than you would if you just dropped the bottle iyswim.

It will take a couple of days perhaps for your body to be able to anticipate the feeds in advance, so the feeds might be longer initially (as the milk is made to order).

However, you are lucky that it is the begining of the weekend because another lovely way of increasing your supply is to spend as much of the weekend in bed, or in the bath with her, as close to each other as possible, skin to skin and just feed and doze, feed and doze, feed and doze.

Good luck.