Anyone else conflicted about ebfing?

[titferbrains]

I am doing it for baby and my health but it is so draining and i am so fed up. I feed him for everything and now i have a baby who won't sleep very long in his cot, sleeps with me at night, and at 18 wks feeds about every 1.5 to 2 hrs. Less at night' tk goodness, but he can only go 4 hrs max. And despite me feeding him as soon as he squeaks, he only weighs 9 lb. He was just under 6 lb at birth. He is tiny,but incredibly alert and smiley, and strong too.

The health benefits of ebf to6mo are really important, but god i miss having a life. I spend so much time thinking about how difficult it is and that the reason bfing hardly ever works anymore is that we want it to suit us and it was designed to suit the baby. I want to go to th e cinema and to dinner, and I want baby to sleep better, but this conflicts with demand feeding and putting him in a sling (when my back is already aching from accommodating baby all day and all night). I know what it takes to have a happy contented baby, but i have to give up a fair bit of happiness for that to happen. But ds is utterly wonderful compensation!!! I wish i had more people around to support me but most people cannot understand why I don't just introduce a bottle to make life easier.

I know I'll plod on feeding tmw but just wonder if anyone else feels the same way?

i have felt like this many, many, many times. suddenly i've made it to (nearly)12months and i feel like the end is near, i will get my body back all to myself! i had a gp and hv telling me to put 2 of my babies on a bottle after 6months to make my life easier but the hassle wasn't worth it, ds3 threw the bottle in disgust and wouldn't go near it till 9months. some days he'll have 2 bottles, other days none. i always think of the pennies/washing up/sterilising i'm saving every day i go without a bottle.

you can get a lot of help/advice/support with sleep and settling to sleep. i had a nightmare with ds1 and ended up with a strict routine which helped save my sanity - ds3 went in a strict routine from day1!

is he going through the 4month sleep regression? my 1st baby was a nightmare at 4 months and i ended up weaning early then doing cc, it just went on for weeks and weeks till i'd absolutely had enough and didn't know what to do with myself.

Sounds normal for an 18wo to me (likes to co-sleep, sleeping for 4 hours) - DD at the same age would only go for 4-5 hours and she was FF at 18wo, so it's not just because you EBF :)

Introducing a bottle won't make life any easier - you're not guaranteed that DS would sleep any longer, or would even take a bottle in the first place. Plus you then have the expense of formula, and the faff of having to sterilise a bottle, make up the milk, get it to the right temperature...

You know you're doing the right thing, and soon enough he'll sleep for longer between feeds, in his cot, and you will go to the cinema and for dinner :)

AND he's put on 3lb down to your milk. That's fab. I take my hat off to you - I FF DD from 7wo and I regretted it almost straight away. It didn't make my life any easier and as it turned out, I didn't want to let anyone else feed her even when they could.

yeah it's hard work in the early days and i think you're right that a lot of reason it doesn't work out for some people is that they have totally unrealistic expectations of what it will be like, plus we have so many more expectations placed on US than people used to.
i woukd imagine that mums used to basically stay at home most of the time when looking after little babies, whereas we have vastly more complicated social lives, not to mention work. plus people are expected to be up and about within hours of giving birth

fear not though. you will look back on this time later and feel proud. proud that you not only made a whole baby but that you then sustained his life, by yourself, for so many months,
and it will seem like such a short time in the grand scheme of things :)

You'll get there. He won't be small forever. You're doing really well.

However... don't ruin your life over it. If you want to mix feed to regain some freedom then do it.

Do what's right for you.

ds1 was ebf and fed every two hours day and night until he was 10mos.

dd2 was born with no suck or swallow and was tube fed, so i had to express etc. eventually her suck developed but she still couldn't latch so i expressed and then bottle fed.

dd1 was ebf to start with and then had a mixture of expressed bottle, bf, and i introduced occasional formula at about 4mos.

breastfeeding is honestly the pick of the bunch. soooooo easy. no washing, rinsing, sterilising over and over and over again. no tipping half drunk expressed milk or formula down the sink because it wasn't drunk. no stressing about how much/ how little. ugh. bottles don't make your life easier at all. they make it far far more complicated.

babies are draining however you feed them. get out of the house as often as you can, and hand the baby over for an hour or two and kip when you get the chance. learn to feed lying down.

why does demand feeding conflict with dinner or the cinema? your milk is right there and ready? some cinemas offer baby showings as well now. and ds can be fed in a restaurant? maybe try and get out and about a bit more and get used to carrying on with ds in tow? try a few things and see what works.

he'll sleep when he sleeps tbh, but you can work on the rest of it.

ds1 was ebf because he developed double pneumonia at 5 weeks btw, and the constant nebuliser mask stuff meant that he developed a phobia of plastic, so i had no choice... he literally wouldn't feed any other way.

he's still tiny though, and it does get easier. you can literally feed him wherever you are, so try going where you want to. good luck x

Yes, darling, definitely - but I am still BF at 12mo and very pleased to be doing so as DS has been ill recently and would not eat but would have BM. I remember it seems to stretch out eternally before you - you being tied to the baby, feeling like you've given up everything and it's not even working that well for the baby anyhow. But what I can say is that both dinner and the cinema are eminently possible for me now and DS is only 12mo (excepting growth spurts, he was reliably over the magical 3 hour break between feeds by 6 or 7 months at the latest, I can't really remember). Also, once you're through the first few months of growth spurts etc., bf really comes into its own - it's cheaper and 100% less faffy than bottle feeding because you can literally lift your shirt and get on with reading the paper.

Also, my DS gained weight very slowly at first - we went from the 75th to the 4th centile - eep! - but then bounced up to the 90th at 6 months. I think this is because we took a long time to work out the whole feeding thing - I mean, we got to the 6 week stage and it didn't seem to get any easier but then at about 8 weeks it started to become more easy (this was the first time he'd ever rolled off the breast satisfied instead of the feed coming to a crying climax). It took a full 12 weeks for us both to really get it and a further few weeks when he got over the distance between feeds thing. By the time it was time to wean, the issue of 'filling him up' so there'd be longer between bfs had disappeared.

In the meantime, you may not have tried expressing yet but if you did and it didn't 'work' immediately, do give it another shot - I thought my pump was broken the first time I used it - it literally only got damp. A few sessions practice can really make a difference - I found looking at DS helped, or thinking about him being hungry (I swear!). There are BF counsellors who can help you hand express, too. Ta da - bottle in the fridge so you can go to dinner/ bed early while dp does a feed.

Re the cinema - do they not do baby screenings at your local? Where you can take your baby and BF the whole way through as everyone else has got theirs with them? If not, suggest them - they do brilliantly round here.

I remember feeling desperate and grim about the whole thing early on, and without really trying, it got better and easier. I know my son has benefited, but so have I - it may be an unpopular thing to say but I have a real sense of achievement about getting through those wonky weeks and having a lovely, healthy, growing baby, made mainly of the molecules of my own body. Marvellous! Good luck x

I felt like this, but it does end (promise). At the time, it felt like an endless slow draining away of my whole life and I was pretty miserable for much of the time, but DD wouldn't take a bottle so I was stuck with it. I gave up bf the day after her first birthday and you know what? It was MARVELLOUS! I had my freedom back at last!

I hope to have another baby and to bf again, but next time I will (a) introduce a bottle early on so that I can hopefully express and get a bit of freedom and (b) remind myself daily that it's not for ever, that it will end and that my life will return shortly.

Sparkly, am grinning at thought of yr "damp" pump... I was getting 30ml if i found time to pump but ds now won't go down for long nap in mornings so I struggle to fit it in.

I can/have done loads of going out and feeding in restaurants, cinemas etc but it's more the principle of going out and relaxing and as long as baby's on/with me, there's always slightvanxiety of when will he wake etc. Yes I guess he is spurting as I cannot rely on timing of anything ATM.

Have to add that I don't really believe in sterilizing as babies spend so much time licking our not very clean clothes etc so I just check bottles carefully and wash in hot soapy water, drain on fresh towel. Hate bloody sterilisers.

What everyone else said, and I'd also say it's worth trying to find other people in the same boat - they are out there! La Leche League is fab if you have a group near you, or maybe there's a breastfeeding group/cafe nearby?