Struggling with breastfeeding

[Usedtobechilled]

Hi,
This might be more of a 'need to vent- more than anything else but it was also to see if anyone oneelse was in the same boat?
Gave birth last week through emergency section which I've probably not emotionally dealt with.
Now I'm struggling with breast feeding to the point I'm super emotional. Started EBF however baby is tongue tied and potentially lip tied. After a few days I dreaded every feed. Now decided to feed by expressing however I can't seem to keep up with babies demands which is making me super emotional - by the end of the evening I might get 25ml and that's me pumping every 2 hours. Any tips? I feel my only option is to top up but I really don't want to do that yet, feel like it's a bit like giving up.

Are the hospital/drs planning to sort the tongue and lip tie? If you have a plan/date for that, it may help to see an 'end point' in this difficult phase.

If baby can manage to latch, things like supply/demand can really sort themselves out and things often get a lot easier (disclaimer: not for everyone)

25ml isn't much - but be easy on yourself. If you only gave birth last week, you've only been producing milk for a few days. Unless you have a medical reason, you should start producing more soon. Can you speak to a midwife or health visitor? They should be able to either help, or refer you to specialist help.

My baby is bf and because of medication I was on in pregnancy, she had to be fed immediately after birth - she was bottle fed for her first feed. We topped her up with a small bottle a day for a few weeks. It hasn't affected her bf, and she is now happily and successfully ebf. If you do top her up, it won't be giving up, you'll be feeding your baby and supporting you, enabling you to bf with less stress!

Have you been referred for baby to get his tongue tie cut? Are you able to express enough for him to drink all day, are you meaning the 25ml at night is extra on top of this? And are you pace feeding? If not baby could be guzzling much more than he needs.

Hi, congratulations 🤍🤍
The first couple of weeks are an emotional rollercoaster at the best of times with all the hormones going wild. I used to cry at the tiniest thing, daily.
Are you in the UK? There's a FB group called Breastfeeding and lactation support that may be of use, they have various folders with advice.
Have you decided what to do with the TT? Has the latch been checked to see if the TT affects feeding?
Did you HV mention if there are any local BFing support groups in your area?
Sorry, feel like I've asked a lot of questions but not given any advice 🙈

Not everyone can pump/ express. My mum breastfed my sister for two years fine but couldn’t get more than a few mls off expressing.
the most important thing is baby gets fed.
I had insufficient glandular tissue which meant didn’t produce enough to fully breastfed so for me the main milk was formula and the breast milk was the top up. Any breast milk you can give is great. It’s not an all or nothing situation. Topping up is fine.

Hi,
Thanks for your replies, the hormonal roller coaster has been an experience to say the least, I'm not a crier at all and then cried because I turned his mobile on and it played its a wonderful world 😂 wasn't prepared for that!

He has been referred for the TT, just waiting on an appointment.
The 25ml is what I managed to express before bed, I have no back up supply because I'm only just meeting what he needs however I was getting about 50ml in the morning and assumed it would start to pick up however I feel my volumes are getting worse 😑 I think we've decided to go for a top up before bed at least.
I've spoken to my midwife loads about breastfeedong because it took us 3 days for us to even get him to latch on and their advice now is to do what's best for me and the baby. I feel they're reluctant to advise going for a top up.
I thought the baby would be the hard part but he's an absolute dream, its me that's letting the side down 😫

Do you have an Infant Feeding Team in your area? Does a Google come up with anything? I got fantastic support from my local (statutory, NHS) service but no one told me about it. They arranged the tongue tie appointment, gave advice, reassured me on when to be worried/not to be worried.

Hi OP, the first few weeks are awful. Do what works best for you. My large c section baby is almost 4 months and I can still only express around 60 ml. I supplemented with a goats milk formula in first few weeks as baby dropped weight but then quickly managed to move onto EBF which I honestly never thought was possible. I found I got so much conflicting advice from HV and midwives. At the end of the day fed is best, and once babies latch issues have been dealt with things will get easier. Congratulations and good luck.

I have two DD. DD1 was born too early (35+2). No tongue tie but not strong enough to drink. Long story short: I could not keep up with supply and we had to top up. Felt so guilty. Is now a smart, happy and healthy 4 year old.

Now, when I look back, I don't feel guilty for combi-feeding DD1. We had a few weeks that we only used breast milk (as by this time she could breastfeed), but my production was not enough. So the top ups came back. I cried back then out of guilt...

DD2 is 4 months now. Had a complete tongue tie. Was nevertheless surprisingly getting enough breastmilk, but lots of problems with reflux and sleep etc linked to this. We were also referred. Things are better now, after the appointment. But somehow, magically, all this time I had enough supply. And why? I don't know.

So please, be kind on yourself! Try to sleep, eat and drink. Take care of your body after your emergency C-section. Pump regularly. This will all help your supply a bit. And accept that this may not be what you wanted, but it is the best that is possible under these circumstances! And that is enough.

And chase the referral, get that appointment. We had a certified lactation specialist at the appointment in the clinic and it was wonderful, all the advice that was given. So please, get help to get a good latch, especially after the tongue tie and lip band tie have been severed.

You are not letting anyone down, least of all your baby. Even if you never bf again, you will not have let anyone down. It feels huge at the moment, but I'm a teacher and I 100% cannot tell who in my class has been bf and who hasn't!

Thank you for your words of advice, it's hard when you're sat there at like 3 in the morning with sore boobs and a baby that will not stop eating 🤦‍♀️
I've a mw appointment today so I'll chase the appointment and I'll at least add in a feed before bed, hopefully it'll help my sanity at least.
I know having a baby woukd be hard but I didn't anticipate the hardest part, for me anyway, is feeding.

How are your nipples ? Do they stick out much? Sometimes a flatter nipple can really hinder the ability to latch and a nipple shield may really help.

The advice re: expressing is at least 8-10 times in 24 hours. The one in the middle of the night between 1-4am is really important. It's the one that stimulates your hormones to increase your supply. Hope this helps 😊

You are absolutely not letting anyone down!

I’ve bf all 4 of mine and I reckon it takes a good 3 weeks at least to get into the swing of it all, even without any issues. It’s not necessarily as easy as some make out. One of my DTs had tongue tie too and the pain was excruciating so I expressed and combi fed her.

With my current 6 month old I can only pump decent amounts if I’m looking at her / thinking specifically of her. Doesn’t leave any time to watch tv unfortunately!

Also drink loads of water! A pint after every feed sends my milk supply through the roof.

But whatever you end up doing will be the best for your child. Be kind to yourself

I remember crying on night nr two because of all the clusterfeeding with DD2... now knowing if I would have enough. Not sleeping... Then my milk came in. (With a tongue tie, they can't latch properly, also less stimulation for production...).

For the first 8 days my nipples were in pain, including bleeding... now it is fine!

Please keep in mind that after the tongue tie and lip band tie have been cut, you will need to do some 'exercises' to make sure that they don't reattach. So it is not a magical cure, not everything is solved after this, but you will notice improvement day by day.

It is a difficult time, I wish you all the strenght you need. And know: this is a phase...

Does your baby use a dummy? My first would feed CONSTANTLY during the night, a dummy made a huge difference. It didn't negatively affect feeding with any of my 3, and is actually safer re SIDS.

Don’t stress yourself- I managed 3 weeks after an emergency section. I had a lot of complications and I was too ill and baby too hungry- he lost a ridiculous amount of weight cos I was so determined to breast feed. When I finally gave up we both thrived. If you can great, if you can’t just dig out the bottle. I was soo hard on myself for not managing. When I think back I was bonkers to even try but that’s the pressure we put on ourselves….and from midwives.

I exclusively pumped for almost a year and the biggest mistake I made was the wrong sized flange.The ones that come with the pump are waaay too big.Check online how to measure and then order the correct size.Also baby only needs a little athe start.So your body will mimic the amounts.I went from 30 or so mil every 3 hours to oversupply.If you really wish to pump you need to get the equipment right.
Good luck with whatever it is you choose :)

The pain of feeding a TT baby was also a shock to my system, I was in agony and it was nothing like the easy journey that I expected. It was also in the very first lockdown so support was really hard to come by. We made it through though and fed till 2.5 years - I miss it desperately now!
My tips would be:

• get as much support as you can, in every way shape and form. I had zoom calls with the infant feeding specialist team.
• even post tongue tie op you may need to do some little exercises to help stimulate the right muscles. Google infant sucking exercises - these were a big help.
• rest as much as humanly possible, and nourish yourself as much and as well as you can (food, drink, rest).
• I massively underestimated the value of rest and skin to skin contact on milk production - enjoy it!

Ellyo - how did you manage to pump for 2.5 years without losing your marbles?!
Feel like I'm hitting lows every day because I'll have a good pump where I'm like, yep I can do this followed by a terrible pump and im back to crying over the whole situation.
At the moment baby is feeding every 1h30ish and taking 60ml at a time and I physically can't keep up with that demand. I'm lucky if I get 60ml after waiting 2 hours since the last pump, sometimes I'll get 35ml. Those maths don't add up.

Explaining this to the midwives who still will not encourage taking formula to supplement isn't helping either. I didn't think I'd be this emotional about breastfeeding but the pressure to exclusively breast feed is phenomenal, its as if expressing is also frowned upon. I haven't been given any advice from MWs on pumping, just advice on how to get back to breast feeding.

And thank you everyone for your advice, it helps to know others have been through the same. You just want to give your wee people the best start and enjoy this time

I expressed but never managed every 2 hours at the start it was every 3 hours with 2 pumps from 11 till 7 in the morning.Then at 4 months I did every 4 hours and by 6 months I was expressing every 6 hours.My supply only dwindled when I went down to 2 pumps which I had to do due to going back to work .

60 ml every 1.5 hours?Is that for the whole 24h a day as that is a lot of milk.Close to 1L.

Yep, 60ml every hour and a half til about bed time around 10pm and then maybe 40ml every hour and a half through the night. Sometimes he'll last 2/3 hours not feeding(this is rare) but the last 2/3 days has been full on. This level of feeding hasn't resulted in much weight going on either, 20g over 2 days.

Well every baby is different aren't they :)

I cannot advise on much excepon the pumping.I learned quite a lot from initial mistakes.
So if this is something you wish to persue then make sure the pump flange fits your body and stick with the pumping for 4 months.Afterwards you can drop pumps as the milk is established.
I joined a Facebook group and they helped a lot answering all the questions.

Just a wee update in case anyone else is experiencing similar and comes across this thread. Sometimes think with a lot of threads, you don't get an outcome as to what worked.

Short version - Breastfeeding became increasingly painful to the point I couldn't bear it.
Started expressing, wasn't enough for the feeding monster I've created. Introduced formula at night because he is insatiable (people who say this helps them sleep longer is a liar 😂)
Decided I physically couldn't continue expressing all day, especially when other half goes back to work and it was no life.

Tried him on the breast again after a few days (took a lot of courage!) and while he's still struggling to latch and we're only successfully BFing every so often, it's made a massive difference to my mental health. I think my nipples just needed a break.

Now we're doing a bit of everything until his tongue tie gets seen to or everything clicks into place 😊

Honestly my wee man better be immune to everything after all this work 😂

ahh, lovely to read your update! I'm so sorry I wasn't clear, I didn't pump for 2.5 years, I meant I fed for that long but had real trouble in the early days with feeding and trying to pump etc. Remember feeling so stressed and knowing that that was affecting milk production, was a terrible cycle!
Really pleased to hear things are on the up for you :)