I had DS1 last Thursday (2nd) with a c-section. My DD is 21 months. I had a very difficult time bfeeding her - my milk never came in and I only built a decent supply by demon pumping and lots of domperidone. Even so she was never completely fed at the breast, and needed top ups at almost all feeds until she started solids. I know she had a suck issue, I just didn't know how much of our joint issue was her and how much was my supply. Our difficulties with feeding caused me a lot of grief and took a long time to get over.
DS started off as a great little nurser, he was on the breast within 45 mins of delivery, nursed for 2 hours, and I gave him unfettered access for the next three days despite the midwives telling me he was feeding too much. My milk came in, such as it was, overnight on Saturday, although my breasts didn't get engorged or anything, they did get lumpy and hot and the milk I could hand express changed colour (never had anything like this with DD). On Sunday he started sucking less well. I could see his latch was poor and my nipples were already shredded, but whatever I did I couldn't get him to take a decent mouthful of boob. Then he got jaundice, which eventually required 18 hours under lights overnight on Tuesday, and bottles had to be used so they could measure the volume he was getting. I was able to pump all he needed bar 10mls, which I felt pretty good about. They weighed him and he'd lost weight to day 3 as normal, but had stayed flat after that so I thought that was a good sign things were turning a corner.
They sprung us from the hospital on Weds lunchtime, and I thought he was doing ok, but I was concerned enough to get a lactation consultant in on Thursday evening. By then he was having a top up after every feed, but only about 20-45 mls, and all expressed milk so not too bad. I was depressed to be pumping again but thought we should be able to fix this quickly as i seemed to have enough milk, he just wasn't getting it out of the boob well.
The lactation consultant was great - the first really well informed one I've seen. She told me to start the domperidone as I didn't have enough flow to keep Junior interested on the boob - there was very little 'productive sucking' when he was on the boob, and none at all if I wasn't doing breast compressions. So I started. She also suggested to start using an SNS rather than bottles as he was clearly developing a preference. So I struggled through thursday night trying to use the bloody SNS, which he kept spitting out, or milk would spill out of his mouth because I hadnt got the tube positioned right. By the end of the night I was using it to finger feed at least some of the supplement. Latching was still crap, and involved lots of screaming and pulling off constantly. That's continued through the last 24 hours, and last night the 2 feeds involved up to 90 mls of supplementing, meaning that for this morning's feed I had to finally supplement with formula as I was out of breastmilk.
And I weighed him and although it's the first time on our home scales and I know consistency in measurement is important here, he's lost weight since he was weighed on day 5.
I am angry and sad and not sure what to do. Because I'm trying to ensure he's fed very regularly - that was one of my many mistakes with DD - and because the whole feeding process is taking about 2 hours by the time he's latched on and off lots of times, fallen asleep on the boob, had his nappy changed twice, I've pumped and finger fed until he's happy to settle etc., I have pretty much no time in between feeds to do anything, and I'm only getting about 3-4 hours of sleep. Which means very little time with DD, which I hate.
Until some time last night I had the sense that this could really work if I tried hard enough. I thought I had more milk than I did this time last time, and he had started off being such a good feeder. I'm sure it's theoretically possible to make this work, and I remember last time by about 4 months how happy I was that I'd persevered with breastfeeding, but I'm not sure it's worth trying that hard. I cannot do what I did with DD, it's not fair to her. So I dunno. It's all a bit crap really.
Not really sure what I'm looking for but thanks for reading so far. I won't quit today, I'm clear on that. Tomorrow I'm less sure about. After that I'm not sure how to manage the grief that this bfeeding relationship yet again hasn't worked.