Hi there,
I have a 3 month old who has been getting progressively worse for feeding since birth. She is formula fed since she was a week old. I tried everything to get breastfeeding established but nothing worked. She had her tongue tie cut at 1.5 weeks old and feeding went from bad to worse after that. In the early days though, she would feed a decent amount. But as the weeks and months have passed she's very gradually taking less and less and feeding her has become extremely stressful because she starts to either get full, bored, upset or something else around half way through her bottle and we can't get the second half in with out a lot of distress for her.
I started to notice she was feeding less about 6 weeks ago but I just let her stop when she was full. At 9 weeks she was weighed and had dropped from 95th percentile at birth to the 50th percentile. After a referral & few nights' stay in hospital for failure to thrive she was prescribed a high energy formula. A month on and she's gained weight well and has climbed up to the 60th percentile.
My worry is that while she's gaining weight for now, every day feeding seems to get harder and harder. She's figured out how to spit out her formula now instead of swallowing it so it's hard to tell how much she's actually taking in. She's a happy wee girl and while she does throw up sometimes during or after feeds, she generally doesn't seem to be in pain so I'm not sure about reflux. When she started on the new formula she was taking over the minimum amount every day. That has steadily reduced though and she hasn't hit the minimum (620mls per day) any day for over a week.
We've seen a lot of medics and specialists and not one person has offered an explanation for why my baby doesn't feed like she should.
Does anyone have any experience of this kind of thing that you could possibly suggest a reason? I'm at my wits end and need to try to get answers from doctors but don't know what to ask for. Thanks in advance.