Tiktok et al, I desperately need your help re slow (actually no) weight gain.

[suwoo]

Have posted quite a few threads now. Well DS2 had his weigh in today and had stayed the same. He is 23 days old now and is 400g less than his birth weight (roughly 11oz?)

The subject of topping up has reared its ugly head and I actually cried to the midwife who was very understanding.

My plan (for the very short term) is this:

Wear my breast shells and use any milk caught with the minimal supply in the freezer to give one 4oz? bottle at night. I will top up with formula to make the 4oz. While DH is giving the bottle, I will express from both breasts to mimic normal feeding and not affect supply.

Does this sound feasible?

Midwife has suggested not waking him after 2 hours, but letting him go for 3 so he may be more hungry and feed more effectively whilst also letting my milk replenish.

Am speaking to the lactation consultant who is looking after us, tomorrow.

Very grateful for any help/advice.

You do know you don't need to get him weighed every week, don't you!

Oh yes, I know. I won't bother when he is gaining effectively. We haven't been signed off by the midwife yet so don't want to rock the boat just yet.

Took him today and he has gained 2oz since Sunday. It hasn't cheered me up though because it wasn't me who did it IYKWIM. Hopefully he'll gain enough and I can stop soon.

You are doing brilliantly. And what matters above everything else is having a happy (as much as they ever are (!)lively baby who is learning to breastfeed.

well done suwoo!

Correct me if I am wrong, but you are topping him up with your own milk, that you have collected in breast shells.

So you are doing this yourslef.

Congratulations

prettybird.
I am predominantly giving him my milk, but he is maybe having 1.5 ozs per day of formula.

Hopefully when my electric pump arrives from the wonderful provincial lady I will be able to pump more.

How long do you think I'll have to continue this for?

: 1.5 oz per day of formual is going to make a biiig difference to his rate of weight gain

You are the one who is providing with him with almost all of his nutrutional needs.

TBH - and with the large caveat that I am saying this with a) the benefit of hindsight and b) even more importantly, with seeing your ds, you could probably stop now as 1.5 oz is really not going to be making much difference.

But just as important is the confidence that it is giving you.

BTW - I learnt all the tricks for keeping a sleepy baby awake to feed: stripping off, tickling feet - and, as the last resort, dripping water into his ear. He didn't like that!

Well he is having 3 bottles with 1.5 oz in each (0.5 of formula). I really need to do more to wake him up at the end of feeds.

Prettybird, when did yours become more wakeful?

I can't remember now - he will be 9 in a couple fo weeks!

I think it was a gradual process - plus a started stressing less about it as I realised that he was gaining weight at the same rate whether or not he got lots of expressed milk or not - so he must have been getting plenty "direct" from my boobs.

The consultant paediatrician I say when he was 6 weeks old also did a lot to boost my confidence. He was more interested in what my (retired) father (a former colleague) was doing than the happy, healthy and alert baby in front of him. He told me that ds would start to creep back up the cential charts, find his own level and follow that curve, and guess what - that is exactly what he did.

He also told me to stop the faff of expressing, continue with the breast feeding and enjoy my baby

As it happened, 'cos I was going back to work when ds was 4 months old (only 4 months maternity leave back then) it was quite useful that I had got used to expressing, so I continued to build up stocks and give him bottles of EBM relatively frequently.

suwoo, you are doing brilliantly well!

You are saying word for word what I felt last spring when DS3 lost weight and then was slow to regain. Why, oh why, are we so hard on ourselves?? I found emotionally I could only relax once he was on solids and felt the "pressure" to provide for him was no longer on me alone.

And it is galling to hear other mother's fretting over their "fat", fully BF babies, I know .

But: it is NOT the tiddling amounts of formula your DSs is getting that are ensuring his weight gain, it is all the feeding/expressing you are doing!!

IME, the most effective help for us was time passing: he got better at it, I got better at it and it just went from there.

So, carry on, give yourself a pat on the back, and enjoy your baby!

Are you familiar with this?