Should i move to formula?

[Liskey]

I had our little gorl just over 3 weeks ago. She's not regained her bithweight yet of 5lb 5 - she was only born at 36 weeks following an emergency c-section.

She never breast fed well - fell asleep after 10 mins and won't wake up to feed. So been feeding her expressed breast milk - found out on tue she hadn't regained her weight so a trip to hospital where told she isn't getting enough to thrive so me and DH are now trying to get her to take more in each feed.

I'm finding this nearly impossible now - despite helpful HV getting me a double breast pump - i'm not pumping enough times i think to maintain supply as only managing 5/6 times a day and what with feeding her and trying to settle her down - can take several hours i think its adversely affecting my poor DH and that I'm not enjoying being little Ellie's mum right now. We're stressed she's not going to gain more weight by sunday when she's being reweighed and that we're trying to feed every 3 hours which is very hard work with her.

Any reassurances, please? I keep crying at the thought of formula as I've always wanted to breast feed her but it just seems to be an impossible situation at the moment.

Liskey, hope you get help.

Test weighing - which is weighing before and after a feed - is not normally done any more as a way of assessing intake. Most scales are simply not accurate enough to give a meaningful result, and in any case, one feed is only a tiny snapshot of what happens generally. So even if it is accurate, it does not tell you anything about intake at other feeds. She might take a huge amount then and not at another time, or vice versa. So I don't think you'll find anyone willing to do this, sorry.

agree with tik toks post and also was thinking on this thread furthewr and remeber when ds's would feed for small amount of time and fall asleep. Something i was told was to block feed him on one side and change sides only after an hour after the first feed started. For example if at 10am he had a 5 min feed and then at 10.25 he wanted another i'd put him to the same breast to make sure he was getting the nice fatty milk. But then if he wanted another at 11am i'd put him to the other breast.

Skin to skin is so much easier too and nice for the cuddles and no faffing with sterilising.

Could you take you and your dd to comfy bed and lie with her skin to skin and spend the day there (esp with weekend coming up). That way she's getting lovely milk off you, you are both getting relaxed too

Your hv sounds a bit I think the key thing is that not every hv and gp etc are experts in breastfeeding. I think la leche and mumsnet (tiktok esp) are vbery valuable sources of help as well as some good books. I bet your hv may not have bfed herself successfully therefore hasnt the benefit of expereiecne and may be putting her issues around her expereience onto you xx