I want to give up breast feeding already

[ExcitingTimes2021]

My little girl was only born 2/8/21 so only a few days old and I always said I would try breast feeding. Now only 5 days old and I just want to give up and switch to formulas instead.

I feel I just either have her on my breast or screaming for my breast and nothing else. I feel awful for my partner as he is getting no cuddles or baby time as she is always screaming. My nipples hurt, Iv watched endless videos but can’t get a good latch. Nipples just look like lipsticks at end of every feed and baby wants back on 10/20 mins later. I just spend all my time crying and this is not what I thought being a parent would be like. Two of my friends have recently had babies and their formula fed little ones just seams so much less screamy and theirs daddies can actually enjoy being daddies. Please help!

I have a video consultation with and infancy feeding person at 10am and a routine hospital appointment Saturday morning but can’t see them helping to be honest now.

It’s entirely up to you. Neither option is wrong. Breast feeding has lots of benefits for babies and Mums and in my experience is easy in the long run but it’s really hard at start.

I have a friend who is a lactation consultant and experienced breast feeder and she says with her second child it took her a week to get the latch right and that’s with all her additional experience and training. It took we a couple of weeks with DD2 to get a good latch. So it’s definitely not too late.

It's really tough to begin with for many people. Do you have any friends that successfully fed that can come round and support you? I found saying 1more day really helped, that it wasn't forever, just the next 24hours, then it just gets easier until its the easiest think in the world. Having a support network really helps though. Try different feeding positions, lots and lots of skin to skin, strip off, go back to bed with lots of water, your phone Netflix and your baby. I found feeding lying down on my side a good starting point. Best of luck

I had similar with my first. Awful pain and eventually mastitis. When I had mastitis I introduced formula and mixed fed. Most will advise against it but it worked for me and gave my nipples some respite. I gradually went back to 100% breast. Might be worth mixing it up. You do run the risk of baby preferring bottle and not wanting breast again but if you are poised to drop breast that would not matter. Worth a shot?

Whatever you do don't beat yourself up. I remember the pain and it is one of the worst pains. Look after yourself

I hated it too and felt like you. It does get easier... by 3 months I'd look at formula feeding mums having to fiddle around with bottles on days out and be grateful I stuck at it as by then breastfeeding seemed easier.
What helped me was giving myself permission to go to formula if I still hated it "next week" and so on. Just setting short term goals. I also expressed early so DH could do some bottle feeds and give me a break.

You're in the very early stages where you're both learning, and yes it's horrendously hard. However I found it was worth persevering as the benefits later on were worth it. Baby is probably coming up to a growth spurt and has to nurse constantly to increase supply. Get whatever support you need but if you choose to give up, be kind to yourself, your baby will be perfectly fine either way!

I hooe the appointment later is helpful.

It does sound as though your little one is struggling to get a deep latch. If you feel in your own mouth with your tongue, the soft pallette is really far back! That's where the end of your nipple is aiming.

I can hear how fraught every feed must feel. It sounds like breastfeeding is taking up all of your time, eveb when not physically feeding you are thinking about it or bracing yourself for the next feed.

I wonder whether you have come across the video for the flipple technique? Milk Meg has a good one.

Another idea could be to hand express a little bit of milk onto your nipple before a feed. Sometimes this can help stimulate a baby's natural reflexes.

Formula is there as an option to go to - first steps nutrition trust have good information about choosing a milk and paced bottle feeding can help families who want to move between breast and bottle. However it sounds like breastfeeding is (was?) important to you so seeking support wherever you can might feel like a worthwhile idea.

The National Breastfeeding Helpline can be reached on 0300 100 0212 also.

How do you guys express? I would maybe be happy to try expressing. I know my partner is doing his best to support me but I feel so guilty like I have ruined his life as all he is getting is screaming and nappies x

@ExcitingTimes2021 its only been a few days, he has a whole lifetime of being a 'daddy' so don't let that guilt you.

BF is hard, baby is learning and so are you. It is completely and totally up to you, personally I found the move to ff harder - as per pp the having to remember to have enough milk, bottles, sterilise, be so prepared for going out of the house - it really triggered an anxiety in me as I felt so disorganised every day, however - I'm the only one of my friends to bf and all of them said they thought it looked more difficult that ff - so each has its benefits and drawbacks.

Please don’t worry about your partner at the moment! You have not ruined his life, I promise! These first few days/weeks are so tough on everyone.

It's so hard at the beginning, I had my first in May and struggled at first. It really does get easier around 6 weeks, they feed at more regular intervals and being able to just stay on the sofa and whip a boob out is so much easier than getting up to prep a bottle.

I have a pump and express two feeds a day for my husband to feed our 10 week old. It works really well I'd recommend it

It is really painful to begin with but I really wanted to carry on (even though my nipples felt like dd had razor blades instead of gums)

I am so glad I did as the benefit not just in health for me as well as dd but also as time went on the fact that going out of the house was so much quicker and simpler.
No need to prepare and pack formula, water and bottles. Equally night feeding. I didn’t need to get out of bed to make or heat a bottle up as I carried everything already made up at the perfect temperature with me

If you can battle through then it does get easier and there are benefits of time and less hassle to go anywhere or even just to prepare a bottle to the perfect temperature.

It is your choice and there are no right or wrong answers as each choice has good points

Don't feel guilty for your partner. Your baby is not even a week old.
Breastfeeding is like any other learned skill, when people say its natural that doesn't mean its easy.
The first 2 weeks both you and your baby are still working it all out.
As pp has said allow yourself the option to switch to formula if you want.
I used to bite my thumb when feeding because of the pain of mastitis, in the long term though bf was so much easier.
Only you can decide but your decision should be for you only, not your partner. He will get his cuddles soon enough.

They really recommend against empress of so early. Your baby is on the breast all the time because she’s building up your supply which is really important and completely normal.

You have not ruined your partners life at all, I hope this isn’t coming from him. He should be doing everything he can to support you with breastfeeding. It is so much better for baby than formula.

My DH only had nappy changes and screaming in the first few days. Then he learnt that he had to hold baby in a different way to me so that baby didn’t look for the breast and get annoyed. Now baby is 7 weeks old and has play time with his daddy whilst I do other things. DH sings to him, talks to him and reads to him. It will change so quickly and your partner will be able to be so much more involved.

You’ve done so well to get this far already, I think I found 5 days after birth the hardest, my nipples hurt and my downstairs hurt, everything just hurt. But it does get better and it’s so worth it!! By about 2 weeks it didn’t hurt at all.

Do you have any nipple cream? Lansinoh HPA Lanolin Was a life saver in the early days.

Congratulations!

Yes, the first few weeks of parenthood are bloody hard.

There is some good advice on this thread.

If you can push through with breastfeeding, it's so much easier in the long run - no sterilising, no faff when you're out, instant warm milk on tap and time of day or night.
But if you can't, don't beat yourself up. Most babies in this country are formula fed these days.

Don't worry too much about DP's feelings because his job is to support you and baby however you want it. There is plenty of time for him to get to know the baby in weeks and months to come. Perhaps their special time could be nappy changes, bathtime or something else?

I pushed through with breastfeeding and fed my first for almost 2 years so I definitely knew how to recognise a good latch etc. So with my second child I thought it would be easy but it still took us a couple of weeks to work out what we were doing - two people getting to know each other's bodies and preferences and what worked for us. It's not unusual to struggle at the beginning.

Do it.
If it makes life better, it shouldn’t be a struggle and a stress.

@lucymagoo what pump do you reccommend? I don’t know why I feel like this. For 2 years being a parent was all I wanted. Now I’m just wishing it away x

Personally, I would set myself a time frame and say if it’s not better by then I will stop. Maybe for you this could be Monday after your 2 appointments and then a couple of days to see if it’s better?

I never really managed problem free breastfeeding, but it did get easier. Whether you stop, or persevere must be totally your choice, but as a pp said, one day at a time helped me get through to the 6 month mark with both of my babies. That, and introducing the odd expressed bottle and formula after a few weeks.

I am not sure how helpful a video lactation consultation would be! Please ask someone to check for tongue tie. That could explain the pain you are in, and why your little one is back on after ten minutes....if they aren't feeding efficiently, they spend hours feeding! It is quite simple to rectify, and getting it identified really helped with my second. Nipple shields are also useful when you are sore.

All the best, whatever you decide x

I also expressed which also gave nipples some respite. I used Avent manual pump.

From another perspective, I switched over to formula after a couple of weeks, dont see if as giving up, that has such a negative connotation, just think of it as switching. I wish I had done it sooner, I felt so pressured to keep the breastfeeding up, but by 2 weeks I was a mess, a shell of a person, I had no connection with my baby and it was getting worse, I was slipping away. I swapped over and everything became calm in my head and with my baby. Yes breastfeeding is great if it works for you but having a happy mother is way more important. Happy mum, happy baby. That's the most important. Do what is best for you, your baby and your family. That's the best.

I couldn't get to grips with a good latch either, so much more of your boob has to go in the mouth than I thought. One session, literally hands on, with a lactation nurse sorted it out, but I was happy to mix feed, especially a bottle in the evening, and it worked for us

You've had some great advice about breastfeeding and if you want to continue then you should absolutely try to do so. Don't worry about your partner, my DH has a brilliant bond with all three of our children and it had nothing to do with how they were fed.

I will say though, it's absolutely ok to hate breastfeeding. And it's also ok not to want to do it. I persevered so much with DS1, it didn't work (various reasons - tongue tie that we had to wait too long to get revised, mastitis multiple times, I have inverted nipples, blah blah) so I expressed for him. The whole saga was really detrimental to my mental health though and with DS2 I didn't even try. I felt no guilt about it and you would know no difference between them in terms of their health or our relationship. I did feed my third child but I'll be honest and say I didn't really enjoy it and actually prefer formula feeding.

There are many upsides to breastfeeding but there are positives to formula feeding too and it's ok to consider it as an option. It doesn't make you a bad person or a bad mother and it's nothing to feel guilty about.

I have experience of both. I tried BF my ds and it just didn't work for us so I switched to formula. I managed to do it with my dd.

I'd say it's harder to start with for breastfeeding but so much easier in the long run. However, I hated hearing that in those early days.

Do what feels right for you. If you want to switch to formula then that's fine and if you want to continue with feeding get all the advice you can get to help you early on. Both my children are perfectly fine so although there's benefits to breastfeeding I can truly say there was no difference in my BF baby and my FF baby

Oh, and in regard to your partner....his time will come

My midwife told me to view the first three months of the baby's life as the 'fourth trimester': the baby is out of the womb, but needs almost as much nurturing from Mum as during pregnancy. There wasn't much my husband could do, but the older the boys got, the more involved he became. It really is a short period in the grand scheme, and it won't have any impact long term if his bonding is a little way down the line.

If you want to stop, then stop. Don't carry on because you think you should, just do what's right for you. There's no stigma about not breast feeding. Fed is best remember xx