breastfeeding advice please

[bumpsoon]

right ive made a colossal mistake and want to know what i can do about it ! ok bit of background ,breastfed dd for 13 months without any problems. had ds2 4 months ago , fairly traumatic emcs with ga ,lost half my circulatory blood ,ds2 spent 4 days in special care ,general all round fun ,oh and then i was snowed in for 6 weeks ! started breastfeeding while he was in special care ,going up there every 4 hours ,expressing etc . came home and started to give the odd bottle ,am now almost entirely bottle feeding ,still producing milk ,just . have had a go with a manual pump ,but its not very good and wondered if you can hire electric ones to try and increase my milk production enough to go back to breast feeding ? any advice

You need tiktok.

In case she doesn't see this thread, I'll have a go...

I would put baby to the breast first at every feed. Let him have a suckle for a while then when he seems finished or gets frustrated, finish the feed off with a bottle of formula. The sucking should signal to your body to produce more milk and as your supply builds up, your DS shouldn't need so much from the bottle to satisfy him so you can slowly phase that out until you are totally breastfeeding again.

I got into loads of trouble with my DS after a traumatic birth and EMCS. The midwives told me I wasn't producing enough milk and I should top him up but in retrospect, my body didn't know I was giving him a bottle so it never upped my supply to replace it until I stopped giving one. With DD, I just braced myself for a few weeks of hourly feeding after my ELCS and while it did take an extra day or two for my milk to come in, we got through it without a bottle which I was pleased with.

The difference was I wasn't so poorly with DD as I was with DS though so it was easier to do. And I was nowhere near as poorly as you. Hope you're both feeling better now.

HTH

yes you can hire them

call the NCT and they should be able to tell you

if you want to re-lactate it is possible but requires a lot of feeding/pumping (at least every 2 hours)

why don't you start by having loads of skin to skin today?

if you search the archives on here there are threads about re-lactating