Why do you often see US women formular feeding before their breast milk comes in on those Sky baby channels??

[tryingtobemarypoppins]

Have I missed a very important feeding fact!! Is this why my baby appeared to be so unhappy the first few days

us tv babies always have hats on in hospital too.

Well it went 'tits up' when I didn't , so intend to do differently next time.

I suspect your baby didn't lose a colossal amount of weight in the first three days.

Brettgirl it is absolutely your choice and decision but do you think it might be wiser to contact one of the BF organisations to talk about why things went so badly for the first few days with your first child? Because it is not normal for that to happen, so something must have been wrong, and you could make a plan to stop that happening, rather than potentially scuppering your chances by giving formula.

I imagine you must have a warped idea of what normal BF is like for the first few days, because of your horrible experience.

Sadly, when my sister had her baby. She was told by a MW on her maternity ward to offer formula to her baby by a cup (this was the start of the roller-coaster ride to the bottle). The MW advised this only because my sister had already convinced herself she didn't have enough colostrum and was really flapping, panicking about her baby and getting herself into a right state. So the MW advised this just to reassure my sister about her baby. Also, sadly my sister refused to listen to me at any cost, even though myself had 3 children, exclusively BF 6mth and BF for 2-3 yrs! I tried telling her that colostrum is only a minimal milk only cos it needs to be and that you don't need to have buckets of the stuff (colostrum) pouring out of you to feed a newborn with a stomach the size of a penny!

These American programmes aren't anyone much good, cos I know my sister is a keen watcher of these.

Very interesting thread. I was told that with DS that my milk was "late" because I had a em cs and that he needed topping up. I was exhausted, emotional and confused and agreed to a top up on the basis that I put DS on the breast before each top up. I was advised by one senior midwife that nipple confusion was a myth.

DS then was weighed and had lost over 10% and hence I had to stay in an extra day and shove formula down him every 2 hours. He appeared to put vast amounts of weight over night leading my community midwife when later checking the records to believe that the HA had f**ked up the weighing.

We eventually got to go home after 4 nights and I cold turkeyed him straight off the formula and exclusively bf'd for several months and mix fed for another 4. I actually wish I'd stuck to exclusive for longer now but gave in to people like MIL advising a night time bottle.

Yes I know better now - will be more stroppy next time. I hadn't actually realised how shit my experience was. Interesting to see it really isn't that uncommon either.

One of my twins had a tongue tie and struggled to feed. The paediatrician insisted she be ff to keep her blood sugar up and insisted on a very high blood sugar level according to the midwives. He was totally uninterested in the long term, or how I would maintain bf, only in the here and now. Obviously I wanted to make sure she stayed well, but I also wanted to bf them both. Luckily I had good support from the daytime midwives and support workers on the ward who encouraged me to put her to the breast before each bottle feed. Unfortunately, the night time staff were only too happy to ff her whilst I was sleeping. This was also an interesting example of the advantage of having twins! Because I was able to keep bf the other baby it obviously helped me stimulate my supply. Also, once her tongue tie had been sorted out, she was able to feed well enough for us to work together to drop the ff top ups. So, there are some situations where it would be very important to mix feed to make sure babies are not ill, but I do wonder how well I'd have been able to keep up my milk production if I'd only had the one baby.

My milk with my first baby was 'late' too, came-in at day 6, but I myself didn't know this was late at the time! Sometimes it's best not to know when to expect your milk to come in, then you don't have to think, worry about it nor seek advice (wrong advice) about it!

My milk came in on day 4 though! Well, the previous night actually. God knows how this was classified as late. In my case, more education would have been a good thing. Had I known more I would have resisted the top ups.

Oh I hate the phrase 'milk come-in', because it's like saying the other stuff colostrum is the crap bit and isn't milk when it's well is!

No wonder why there's a lot of confused mothers out there.

huh? you're not meant to BF before milk comes in? this is madness noone has ever mentioned this to me. why is it strange to see american women bf'ing newly borns? i really am puzzled.

I've no idea when my milk or colostrum or anything else 'came in'. I merely trusted that if my body was clever enough to make ababy, then it was clever enough to feed it. So I just plugged the baby on and let her feed.

I also hate the word "breastfeed"! I think it wrong and misleading word for offering a breast to your baby cos babies do a lot of other things at the breast apart from just feeding like suck, sleep, comfort etc. In Germany they've got "stillen" for our word of breastfeeding this mean to still, quieten your baby it just sounds so much kinder.

It sounds to me like you were very lucky moondog.

Swotty, I don't think that anyone is suggesting that American women don't bf before their milk 'comes in' just that they tend to offer a bit of formula at first as well.

Or perhaps just 'normal' and me 'very unlucky'

That's nice Hoppity. Brett, I may have been lucky in that I was surrounded by people who knew about breastfeeding are were able to help me through a very sticky 6 weeks. I'd like the same for all women.

whats all this squeezing the colostrum out business. no midwife ever tried to squeeze colostrum out of me! what a mental thing to do! As if youre going to be relaxed and produce when put under that kind of pressure...just let the baby do the business, they have plenty of supplies for the first few days until your milk comes in anyway and quite easily go without. Im so sorry for people who go through these experiences. Poor them, and poor their babies! i reckon if anyone had tried to 'squeeze' my nipples after giving birth I'd have lamped them!
love the fast food theory!

5uper5tar - neither me nor a midwife could get DS to latch on for more than a couple of sucks, he was very sleepy and it all seemed too much effort for him, or else he would get too agitated to latch on at all. I would love to have 'let the baby do his business' but he wouldn't. And I wanted him to benefit from the colostrum since everyone goes on about how important it is. It wasn't a case of worrying about lack of sustenance (on my part anyway, though the mws and paeds were bothered about weight loss and blood sugar levels).

when I had DS this summer he was given formula the first night as I was too unwell to feed him (due to pph). I'm not sure whether this was really necessary or whether the MWs did it to settle him (he was in the nursery.
He then developed jaundice and was so sleepy he wouldn't latch on so I had to express colostrum and can confirm that the MWs did grab me to try and hand express when I only got a little (ouch)- he was cup fed this. Once my milk came in he was given ebm and 'topped up' with formula until bfing was established- I was told this was necessary to reduce the jaundice?
I have to say with regards to bfing some of yhe MWs were excellent but the advice was totally inconsistent. One MW would put DS on a feeding chart and the next would take him off. One told me to pump before feeds to make it easier for DS to latch and then the next MW came on shift and told me to pump after feeds instead etc. It was confusing and I found it upsetting because all I wanted to do was get it right.
BFing is going well now though and DS hasn't had any formula since leaving hospital