Help with Feeding a 4 day old

[thestripper1]

The midwife came on day 3 and she had lost 11% of her birth weight, watched me breast feed and said she's not latching on and That we need to feed her every 3 hours.
That night she was screaming with hunger and eating her way through the milk I had pumped and it wasn't enough but was in too much pain to breast feed so ended up the shop to buy forumal....
And now every other feed she'll have 10-30ml and the others nothing as she hardly wakes up... She now poos proper though....
I can't help but feel I'm letting her down... Any advice or your experiences with similar and how everything turned out would really help!

We had to top up to start with too. It woke her up enough to feed. It doesn't mean you can't breastfeed exclusively eventually, but the priority now should be getting some calories into her. Is there a breastfeeding group nearby you can go to, to help you work on the latch? Some bf counsellors will come out to you too if leaving the house feels a bit much. Good luck! It'll all be ok, day 4 is v overwhelming.

You need some experienced help, from a decent bf counsellor or a lactation consultant. Has anyone (who knows what they're looking for) checked for tongue tie or lip tie?

Please don't give yourself a hard time, you're not letting your baby down, you're ensuring she gets fed a safe appropriate food whilst you work out what's going on with the breastfeeding.

I had to express and use formula with both my children, and got breastfeeding going properly eventually. So using some formula now isn't necessarily the end of breastfeeding.

You are not letting her down. What would you like to do? Would you like to keep bf or would you prefer to swap to formula?
If it's bf then I would spend done time snuggled in bed with her, skin to skin, just feeding as much as possible. The advice to feed every 3 hours makes no sense to me as my DS2 fed every ten minutes. If you are in pain you could try shields? You need some proper advice on upping the bf and dropping the top ups.
If you'd rather formula feed, do not feel guilty.

Chill out, go to bed and take baby with you, lie and watch a box set. Loads of skin to skin, loads of water for you to drink, snacks, get snuggly. Has your milk come in? There's a new article, I'll try and link it, it's about baby finding her own way to the blob and establishing a good latch. There's a FB group I'm in that offers loads of support for new BF mummies. Day 3 is hard, day 7 is hard, day 10 is hard, day 21 is hard. Try to relax, stress is the worst thing xx

We were on a similar situation. Emcs and dd had lost 12% of body weight so we were put on a feeding plan which included breast feeding and top ups.
One thing that helped us in the early days was a nipple shield, but i know thoughts are divided on that.
Dd is now 12 weeks old and is ebf apart from one bottle of formula in the evening, mainly so dh can be involved and she doesn't forget how to use a bottle.
Get some good advice, my local breast start group is great and persevere if bf is what you want to do.