Feeding 12 day old

[Hannahb26]

Long story short, after a really difficult time trying to breastfeed at the beginning, I am now feeding my baby with formula and expressed milk.
I have spoken to the GP today about PND and likely triggers are around feeding because of the above.
My baby is currently sleeping in her Moses basket but I really struggle to work out her feeding cues before it is too late. I'm not sure if she is dreaming or is getting hungry (we are feeding on demand at the moment). I'm very conscious that I don't want to wake her up if she doesn't need to be woken?

Any advice/help/previous experience would be helpful. Please be kind, this is my first baby and I'm still trying to figure things out.

Be kind to yourself, you're both still learning! I remember the same worry with my first. General feeding cues are rooting and hand/fist to mouth. If she's asleep leave her to sleep (unless it's been awhile since she last fed then do wake her). She will wake when hungry. General rule of thumb is never wake a sleeping baby

Hi OP I started out mixed feeding and eventually transitioned to just my milk at 10ish weeks.

If she is at birth weight then don't wake her. Forget feeding cues for now and instead offer your breast immediately after every sleep. Then wind and automatically offer more. If she slips off and cries, offer more. At this age she needs to nurse for comfort, pain, thirst and hunger.

The danger with mixed feeding is thinking you're not satisfying a hungry baby and then slowly increasing formula, when you just need to protect your (not yet regulated) supply and offer the breast all the time to meet all of her needs above, not just milk.

As long as you're holding her as much as possible and changing her nappy after every poo then she will be crying for more milk so offer the breast.

And congratulations! Call the NCT breas helpline for free if you want to check out my advice.

@Samanabanana

Be kind to yourself, you're both still learning! I remember the same worry with my first. General feeding cues are rooting and hand/fist to mouth. If she's asleep leave her to sleep (unless it's been awhile since she last fed then do wake her). She will wake when hungry. General rule of thumb is never wake a sleeping baby

Thank you 😊 it's just so tricky to try and get things right!

@Flittingaboutagain

Hi OP I started out mixed feeding and eventually transitioned to just my milk at 10ish weeks.

If she is at birth weight then don't wake her. Forget feeding cues for now and instead offer your breast immediately after every sleep. Then wind and automatically offer more. If she slips off and cries, offer more. At this age she needs to nurse for comfort, pain, thirst and hunger.

The danger with mixed feeding is thinking you're not satisfying a hungry baby and then slowly increasing formula, when you just need to protect your (not yet regulated) supply and offer the breast all the time to meet all of her needs above, not just milk.

As long as you're holding her as much as possible and changing her nappy after every poo then she will be crying for more milk so offer the breast.

And congratulations! Call the NCT breas helpline for free if you want to check out my advice.

Hi there, thank you for your advice but I'm not actually breastfeeding at the moment. Does your advice still stand?

Hi OP, I just wanted to add something that slightly goes against the ‘never wake a sleeping baby’ rule. My little one starts growling and wriggling about long before she actually opens her eyes when she’s hungry in the night. If I left her to it she’d be doing that for a pretty long time before actually waking and crying, so once it’s been going on for 5 minutes or so (less than that and it could just be wind and might stop) I wake and do a change and a feed. She will then go back down and sleep properly. Your many may not do this, in which case please ignore, but I wanted to mention just in case it does happen and you’re losing sleep unnecessarily because baby is grunting and wriggling away in the bassinet but you’re waiting for a full wake up to feed.

I’m afraid I’ve only ever breast fed — too slovenly to manage all the bottles and sterilising, tbh — so I don’t know how things work with formula. Are you using a dummy at all? I think sometimes babies do suck for comfort more than hunger ( both of mine have sometimes seemed a bit put out when they’ve tried to do this and got a massive mouthful of milk!) so if you ever think this might what’s going on a dummy could be useful. If you’re not keen on baby having it all the time/without supervision you could just hold it while you cuddle, maybe, as a substitute for offering a nearly empty breast, which is what I’d try to do under those circs.

You'll get to learn the subtleties in her noises/movements about what's actually a feeding cue over time so cut yourself a bit of slack - you just need time to get to know each other feeding on demand is now seen as the best way whether bottle or breastfeeding so that is great.

If you're happy moving to bottles please ignore but did you still want to try breastfeeding? It isn't too late if you get decent support and advice. Happy to signpost some places you could go to if so but honestly no pressure!

Sorry I must have missed that in my sleep deprived state!

No it doesn't. If you're not giving your own milk or are bottle feeding formula it is different as you can over feed. Have you watched the Paced Feeding Method videos?

There are different stages of sleep and as someone has said above, sometimes your baby will be in deep sleep looking peaceful and content. No need to wake this baby! But if she's still asleep but starting to thrash around and grunt she may need milk not just a cuddle.

My DD would wriggle about a bit and start making little noises in her sleep. I'd put a gentle hand on her tummy and if she settled back down again she wasn't hungry, if she isn't settle, I'd feed her.

DS just went to full on melt down whenever he was hungry so there was never time to look for feeding cues. He still seems to eat every 20 minutes now he's a teen!

Like others have said, be kind to yourself, everything is very new, for both of you

Don't worry - you are both very new to this. Don't make the mistake of thinking that if the baby cries that it means you have done something wrong or failed him/her in some way.

Personally I wouldn't wake a sleeping baby, (unless the baby way premature and you've been told you must feed every three hours). And I wouldn't worry about routines and so on this early on. Just go with the flow. I was amazed to discover that a small baby can easily take 45minutes or more to breastfeed - don't think anyone ever told me that. But the more the baby sucks, the better for the milk supply. So just settle back on the sofa with the baby and some light TV and enjoy having a good reason not to do much else for a while!

Is your baby refusing the breast? If so, have you tried nipple shields. My DS wouldn’t take the breast until I got nipple shields. If she fusses and screams when you put her anywhere near your boobs then put a dummy in her mouth, get everything in place then pull the dummy out and poke the tip of the nipple shield in her mouth before she notices that the dummy is gone. You may need to swaddle her first otherwise she will pull the nipple shield off before you can latch her on.

If you want to teach a baby to latch then middle of the night dream feeds are the place to start. My DS got the hang of breastfeeding at night first before he got the hang of breastfeeding in the daytime. You can wait till she wakes before offering expressed milk or formula but if you are trying to latch her on the breast then you’ll have better odds of success if you do so while she is still dreaming.