Transferring from bottle to breast milk 6 weeks after birth??

[StacyHall]

Hi all, my baby will be 6 weeks old on Sunday and he is exclusively FF and has been since birth, I wanted to give him the colostrum but I was rushed to theatre and lost a lot of blood so we bottle fed from the start. I now feel really guilty about bottle feeding because he has to wait while I male the bottle and he gets so upset which then upsets me :( is it possible to start pumping breast milk after 6 weeks? I have never really noticed any milk coming from my breasts though, I’ve never had any leaking out :/ he is absolutely thriving and gaining loads of weight, I just feel guilty that he has to wait for milk when I could just breast feed. Any advice appreciated xx

Have a read of this relactation advice, it’s from a really good breastfeeding site
kellymom.com/bf/got-milk/relactation/

Find a breast feeding support group in your area. They will have a drop in session you can go to and speak with a specialist who can help you try

Thank you I will call my health visitor on Monday for some advice, I just wondered if anyone had successfully transferred xx

It is possible but you'll need the support of a lactation consultant. Your health visitor is unlikely to have the training or experience needed to support with relactation as this is quite a specialised area. To be honest I would be surprised if she has even heard of it. Most people seem to think that it can't be done.

Try the search function on here: www.lcgb.org/

If there is nobody in your area or there are only private ones and you can't/don't want to pay, the next port of call would be your local NCT branch: www.nct.org.uk/branches to see whether they have a trained breastfeeding counsellor as they also have specialised training and should be able to help you. They don't charge for their advice.

Lastly if both of those two options fail, look up your nearest La Leche League branch. This can be more tricky as the leaders are often only available at set times, but it would be better than nothing if you can't find anybody else to help you. Use the contact details for your nearest leader unless the group meeting happens to be very soon. www.laleche.org.uk/find-lll-support-group/

All of these sources you can contact on a Saturday, although you might not get a reply straight away as women working in this area tend to have their own young families.

For now to reduce the time your baby has to wait while you make a bottle, it might be worth marking the times that he feeds either on paper or on one of the baby tracking apps and seeing if there's a kind of pattern you can predict, so that you can make the bottle up about 20-30 minutes before so that it's ready immediately?

And you might get more success finding experiences if you repost in Infant Feeding :)