Breast feeding help please

[massagegirl]

Baby is 4 days old. Sleepy baby not very hungry. Hospital pressured me into formula before letting me home, incredibly unhelpful time there :( expressed and syringed colostrum. So now routine goes... Wake baby every 3hours, skin to skin try breast feed, she is getting better at latching on and sucking, then partner gives her formula while I express (pitiful amounts!) just feeling bit overwhelmed and any advice experience would be great. Don't know if this is the right. Board for this.
Would just like to be able to breast feed normally.

could you not just have the baby skin to skin and offer breastfeeds as required as the more formula that is given the less milk you will produce.

p.s. you might want to repost in the Breast and Bottle feeding topic

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/breast_and_bottle_feeding

kellymom.com/bf/normal/newborn-nursing/ - kellymom link

Thank you. Have reposted there.

I had the exact same thing. Skin to skin, try breastfeed then top up with formula (due to jaundice). I went to a breastfeeding cafe when DD was a week old - they loaned me a breast pump for a month to help get my supply up and over the course of the next few weeks it did. We could gradually reduce the formula top ups. DD now 17 weeks, has 1-2 bottles of formula a day (one is before bed) but otherwise breastfed.

Keep persevering with the skin to skin and breastfeeding, 4 days is still very early and your milk may not quite be in yet. Look into local breastfeeding cafes locally as they'll be able to offer you some advice & support - your midwife should be able to give you more info about them. Although I enjoy the benefits of mixed feeding, i'm glad I'm able to still mostly breastfeed even if it took a few weeks to get things going! Good luck and congratulations on your new arrival :)

Congratulations on your baby and v sorry to hear you are having feeding problems.. I went through very very similar problems when I had DD back in January - baby would not latch on and I was given advice by about 101 different people in hospital but nothing would work and I felt desperate and miserable. Eventually discharged 2 days later with feeding plan for formula, then a few days later severe tongue tie was diagnosed.

My supply continued to be woeful, baby lost weight and so had to continue with supplementing with formula.

Fast forward 4 months, the formula is gone, baby healthy and gaining weight normally and those early days of feeding problems are a fairly distant horrible memory. It took a lot of perseverance but we got there in the end.

As hedgehogpickle says, a breast pump will help loads and 4 days is very early on.

Good luck, and I am sure you will get lots of help on the breast and bottle feeding page. The Kellymom website is excellent too.

Congratulations well done for asking for help, you are going to get it speaking to real mummies was the best thing for me, I struggled for the first 4 weeks with a stay in hospital, very difficult latch and very painful nipples, I got lots of very different and at times terribly conficting advice from the midwives and health visitors, I found going to a breast feeding cafe and speaking to mums a real positive boost and at 15 weeks I am still feeding my little girl.

Good luck and Kellymom is a great site.

I think the hospital was a bit quick to say use formula. When I had DD, it took 3 days for my milk to come in. Before that she just sucked, had cuddles etc. I didn't top up though and I ended up feeding her for 22 months and exclusively for 6. Despite having no real milk for 3 days, she never dropped an ounce of birth weight so I do think you need to give you and your baby time to recover from the birth etc.

Relax. Try to have your baby snuggled up with you as much as you can. Let her try to feed whenever she wants.... you can do this, and the best way is to not stress but put your feet up and watch TV and let her do her thing as often as you can.