4 week old breastfed baby not gaining weight

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My DS is 4 weeks old and still has not regained his birthweight.

I struggled with my milk supply for the first week and he lost 15% of his birth weight (8lb to 6lb15 in 5 days). I was determined to breast feed so started expressing after every feed and things improved. But now he doesn't seem to be gaining much weight, last week only 1.5oz, which makes him 7lb8 at 4 weeks. I am loathed to give him formula but he feeds for 1hrish every 2hours day and night so not sure what else I can do except start expressing after every feed again which I can't do indefinately as I need sleep.

Any thoughts/ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks

jimbobsmummy - I can only speak for myself but when someone claiming to know that they know what they are talking about re breastfeeding and is a health professional starts talking about breasts being empty it does make me .

If you look at these threads you'll see hundreds of people have been given incorrect info about bf from health professionals which has more often than not resulted in stopping breastfeeding.

I know when I have been told by these people my breasts are empty that they are not. As soon as someone in a position of authority starts saying this I assume they know very little.

Of course I bow to tiktoks knowledge.

Yes indeed Tiktok. Exactly like real life!

Hercules - please before you or anyone else starts being unpleasant again, go back and actually READ what I wrote in my last few posts will you?

It is incredibly frustrating when people make assumptions rather than actually reading what was said properly.

This kind of knee jerk response (which happens all to often) is exactly why this site has such a poor reputation.

Also, please remember there is usually more than one approach, more than one opinion and no single right answer to a problem.

If it has such a 'poor reputation' and contains an'awful lot of nonsense' ,why are you such a keen poster Jimbob?

Also ,how come it is ok for you to come out with nonsense such as the assertion that a breast is'empty' and yet you tell us that doctors think this site is

'full of rather radical people with fairly single minded and sometimes (how can I put this?) 'not very medically evidence based' ideas. Things that most doctors would regard as unproven at best or dangerous at worst.'

And yet again you state that

'I actually don't think it matters particularly what the exact physiological reason for a problem'

Er.....OK then. Is that what you come out of 5 years of training with?

OK what I should have said was

'this is exactly why this site has such a poor reputation among doctors'

It does, on the whole I'm afraid. Saying otherwise doesn't make it not so!

Of course noone is interested in the normal stories of everyday good care. I wouldn't expect them to. But there are a small number of posters who generally seem to be anti doctor. They often have very strong opinions about things like MMR, independent midwives, hospital births etc and won't accept any 'medical' views that disagree with them. They are few in number but make a lot of noise!

Why on earth are you using the 'I'm afraid' caveat?

People like you reinforce our overall poor opinion of doctors.

FFS I give up.

Just go and ACTUALLY READ what I wrote will you rather than selectively picking bits you don't like.

(And as for the physiological basis thing, I'm merely saying that rather than focusing on semantics and technicalities, the important thing is to find out what the problem is and deal with it. Read tiktoks post after mine too. She agrees with me. Maybe you will listen to her as she is obviously the fount of all knowledge and you clearly have made your mind up that I talk nothing but rubbish).

Jeez.